Home Brewing Website
Home Brewing and home distilling has been around just about as long as mankind. Not being one of the converts I cannot attest to the benefits of home brewing as a hobby, but I know enough to know that this is a relatively complex hobby with plenty of scope for sharing of information, tips, and discussion of new gadgets, ingredients, and techniques as well as some amusing anecdotes. In short there is a lot of scope for content and for merchandising related products, which sounds like the perfect web based business to me.
Given that this is a web idea I will not to go into a lot of detail about different distribution techniques. Of course it is possible to sell home brewing kits and paraphernalia through networks, clubs, shops, and all the usual suggestions. If this appeals more than a web based business then read through our pages on "finding customers" using the link to the left of the page.
When you set up any website you should try to make sure that you can optimise your sites for specific keywords in the search engines. Try searching on the keywords that you want to use, for example Home Brew gives 11.5million hits and is more popular than just beer which only gives about 9 million. Naturally as a new site you do not want to be fighting for browsers against those kinds of stats.
A little thought and you can try a region and microbrew. NY microbrew gives 56,000 hits. Now this might seem like a lot but ideas2earn has more than 100 hits on its own, and is only 6 weeks old, so this will not necessarily be a large number of sites. Your next steps are to read up on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or hire someone who knows how to do this, then copy and improve on what the sites in the top 10 of the 56,000 are doing. I this case only 3 of the 10 appears to be brewers sites with the others being directories or forums, which should make it easy to get to the top of the list.
Now you are at the top of the rankings, well done. You had better have some primo quality content, and lots of it or your visitors will not stay very long and worse yet will not come back. What you want ideally is for them to browse the site and think within seconds, I should bookmark this. Having got that far; you want them to keep coming back and better yet to recommend your site to their friends and colleagues. The only way to do that is with content, lots of relevant, interesting content. If you already have an interest in brewing this will help, but you will have to research, add other people's articles (with permission) and link to other related sites.
Ok so assuming that you have people coming to your site and staying; with a bit of luck they will also be linking to you, recommending friends and you will see your traffic numbers increasing. None of this however earns you any money. So what next?
Advertising programs such as Google's Adsense, or Miva allow you to earn an income from your web traffic by paying you for each advert that people click on from your site. Don't expect to get rich this way but it starts the ball rolling. The adverts will relate to the content, so a page on Hops should be populated by adverts for things relating to Hops.
Suppliers such as www.bluefish.com will help you design, print and ship T-shirts. They will even take payments through a dedicated online payment gateway and send you a cheque for your share of the profits. All you have to do is push the T-shirts. Similar sites exist for other items, you may even be able to persuade a drop shipper to brand kegs and other paraphernalia with your logo and URL (web address).
If most of the content is your own, then why not sit down and re-package it as a book (or an e-book) that you can sell on the site. A nicely bound book makes a good present and should be easy to sell to your loyal customers.
The three ideas above will give you an income, but they are unlikely to make you very rich, unless you somehow manage to create the mother of all micro-brew sites, crack all the secrets of web traffic and internet marketing and strike the internet equivalent of a lottery win all at the same time. There are other ways to monetarise your site however.
As well as getting people to visit your site you need to send them a newsletter. It doesn't have to be daily as with www.ideas2earn.com but a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly issue with plenty of unique content is a must. This gives you a reason to collect email addresses but better yet gives your readers a reason to expect email from you without it going to the spam box. This is internet gold.
The reason this is internet gold is NOT so that you can sell the addresses, or do other unscrupulous things with them. Think about it all your loyal customers have friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances that are, or may at some point become interested in brewing. You don't want them saying bad things about you; you want them spending money with you.
Every time you come out with a new product you offer it to these members first, you negotiate bulk discounts for them on vital supplies, and access to courses, seminars, and holiday packages relating to their hobby. This is where you make your money. Every time you get a discount you keep some of it, every time you arrange a seminar, or seats at a seminar you get a cut, etc. etc. Of course it is hard work but by the time you get to this stage you may well have several people helping you and if you all do a good job this is where you will make the money.
Your stock is primarily information. You can find items on the internet that you can sell directly, or through a dedicated payment gateway like the one that www.bluefish.com offer, but if no-one comes to your site you will not sell any. There are also "drop shippers" out there who will deliver items that are ordered on an individual basis, and who may still be cheaper than your local high street.
You need to read and write as much material as possible. If you run out of ideas then beg, borrow or steal from others to make sure that people keep coming back to your site. Use article submission sites to find guest writers, invite other site owners to write and ask your own local experts for ideas. Write actively on several forums and read what others write, it will make life a lot easier.
As far as speakers, seminars, packages etc. You will be able to research and find these when you are ready. I recommend keeping a rolodex of useful telephone numbers and email addresses as you will meet all sorts of people while you are building up the site, who may want to work with you later.
There are many alleged get rich quick schemes on the internet. This is not one of them, it requires a medium to long term view and a lot of hard work but I believe is a genuine opportunity.
As with all our ideas there is scope for more than 1 site like this, and you can adapt it to specialise in Cider, spirits, wine etc. or change the subject matter completely to say cake baking without losing the fundamentals.