Fan Related Web Site
We are all fascinated to some extent by people in the news. If you watch television or read a newspaper you get bombarded with the same names week after week and the newspapers know that they can sell more copies when there is news about someone famous. The same is true of driving traffic to a website.
If you follow things like what are the top search keywords on Google and Yahoo you will find that invariably they are related to news of the day, or entertainment industry topics. For reference the top searches for 2006 on Yahoo UK were: -
1 Heather Mills McCartney
2 Pete Burns
3 Big Brother
4 The Ordinary Boys
5 World Cup
6 Steve Irwin
7 Borat
8 Notting Hill Carnival
9 Zidane
10 Kate Moss
If you want to see what else made the top searches list then you can go to http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/2006topsearches/
If you can get large enough volumes of traffic to your website there are plenty of ways to monetarise it, as we will try to show you below.
If you look at the list of names above it is clear that many of them made the top searches because they were in the news, and this would have been hard to predict. I suspect that the likes of Steve Irwin would not have made the list had he not been so tragically killed. There are names that will always make the news though, and who will therefore always be searched upon, these include the obvious people like Madonna and Ozzie Osborne who thrive on PR as well as anyone involved with topical issues such as campaigning for a greener planet, anti-fur campaigns, and in 2008 the Olympics.
Once you have chosen your celebrity, TV show or other potentially newsworthy subject you need to build a website that does the following key things: -
Is updated regularly 2-3 times a week minimum with new material
Has an easy to remember name (url)
Loads quickly
Is optimised for keywords using the latest search engine optimisation techniques
If you manage all of this then you will get plenty of visitors, and plenty of repeat visitors. Also look out for big news stories and try to buy related websites, a good example might be www.britneyshead.com which points to other domains with pictures of Britney Spears etc. These kinds of domain names are cheap and may give you a quick inflow of additional traffic. I had a friend who bought www.savethemexicanwave.com after Australian cricket authorities tried to ban the practice at cricket matches. He successfully pointed this at his business website and drove an increase in sales.
Even with lots of visitors you still need to find ways to make money, some ideas are listed below: -
Google Adsense (or similar)
Books
Momentos / Souvenirs
Membership
Adsense is not a big payer, typical ads generate a few cents per click through, but if you generate a lot of traffic it can give you a steady cash flow to cover your set up and maintenance costs. If you have a large site with a lot of traffic then you may be able to generate a meaningful income. Many popular sites now host some form of click through advertising with Adsense being the best known. Other programs that may work for you are affiliate programs where you receive a commission for anyone who comes through your site and signs up for membership of your affiliate’s paid programmes.
You can either sell books directly through your site by contacting the publishers, or you can recommend books through programs like Amazon’s Associate program (see http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join ) where they will pay up to 10% of the books purchase price for anyone who buys through a link on your site. The advantage of this is that you do not need to hold any stock, but you can change the books you recommend regularly and if you keep track of new releases then you provide a valuable service to your readers.
Momentos and souvenirs are similar in a sense to books, except you may actually want to purchase the items concerned, mark them up and sell them on through your fan related site. This could include T-shirts made to your own design, coffee mugs, posters etc. or it may be more specialist items bought from other fans, through flea markets, or even off of Amazon. The benefit to you is that by selling them on a fan related site you are selling to a target market who should believe that as an expert you are trust worthy and the items are genuine….hence the room for a higher price tag.
Setting up a membership area is tough unless you have access to insider information, or copyrighted material that cannot be accessed elsewhere. In an ideal world you would have regular new material and guarantee this in the membership offer, e.g. one new exclusive photograph per month, or similar. You will need to password protect the members’ area and work on ways to push browsers to become members but if you can pull it off this is a lucrative way to generate an ongoing income.
Your stock in this instance is any materials e.g. gossip, photos, tour news, record, or show release dates etc. that relate to your chosen subject matter. You need as much info as possible and will need to work hard to get it. If you are already a keen fan you will have an idea of what is involved.
Read newspapers and other fan related sites, industry magazines, gossip magazines, sign up for RSS feeds on the sites which consistently get information first, and make sure that you either get permission, or at least credit the copyright holder for all materials that you re-produce.
Running any successful website is hard work and requires commitment but it is inexpensive and can generate a meaningful income over time
You don’t need to be a web guru to do this, some knowledge of HTML would be a benefit but you could simply use a blogging site/software to start with.
All websites need to be marketed, but if you are doing this primarily for kicks don’t waste money on programs like Google adwords and Yahoo ads, get in the forums and on the free ads sites and post away as much as you have time for. Your readers will find you.
Running a forum or even just a guest book on your site will make it more interactive and may help you to build a more loyal user base.