A portfolio of web based business's

niceirishfella

Hi,

Was out to lunch with a pal of olde. He's now unemployed due to the recession. He's asking me for advice so if you could help me to aid him with thoughts, that'd be mega as I most certainly don't know it all.

He'd like to open a range or number of new web based businesses. He says he has 5 to 10k to spend and if he could launch 2 to start with, he could grow from there.

He's thinking audio books. He reckons they are hot right now and will grow much bigger.
Thoughts anyone? Anyone know much about this?
The googling i've done shows up loads of places on the net doing it. Could it be a big challenge?

Thanks.

keefg

The biggest challenge I can see with the audio books idea is paying the author for the right to record and sell their works.

To make any serious money you would need to sell the most popular book which in turn would cost the most to secure the rights.

betonit

badwidth might be an issue. Definitely in ireland for downloading large files

keefg

betonit wrote: »

badwidth might be an issue. Definitely in ireland for downloading large files

Good point.

I was thinking more of a "traditional" web store where punter made purchase and cd was sent out in post.

Itunes have an audio book section but I don't know if it's a downloady type set up or a postie-out-cd type.

niceirishfella

betonit wrote: »

badwidth might be an issue. Definitely in ireland for downloading large files

yeah ,good point! Some of these books i see on the net are 11 hours in duration.
This would be a "download" site - not on Cd posted out.

Wolff

hed be up against Audible.com - which I use and is excellent - especially when you subscribe

Wolff

The whole DRM side of things means if your pal wants to launch something like this - he would need at least a couple of hundred thousand if not a couple of mil to splash out on a website with secure downloads etc

On audible the books are paired to a device you choose and you are not (in theory) able to listen to them on anything else

This seems to be the model the publishers are happy with to prevent piracy

Its not a straightforward downloading of an MP3 file

niceirishfella

Wolff wrote: »

The whole DRM side of things means if your pal wants to launch something like this - he would need at least a couple of hundred thousand if not a couple of mil to splash out on a website with secure downloads etc

On audible the books are paired to a device you choose and you are not (in theory) able to listen to them on anything else

This seems to be the model the publishers are happy with to prevent piracy

Its not a straightforward downloading of an MP3 file

wow - thats that then.:rolleyes:

I love the idea of web based businesses and I have a couple of ideas myself that I'd like to implement once I'm back from travelling.

I wouldn't go near audiobooks at the moment because there seems to be a lot of competition online already at very competitive prices! I suppose the most important thing you need to figure out is the cost price of each audio book, the estimated mark up and then you need to see if there is place for your friend on the market. He'd probably have to do something a bit differently to succeed.

forbairt

betonit wrote: »

badwidth might be an issue. Definitely in ireland for downloading large files

shouldn't be an issue ... you'd potentially link to something like amazon's simple storage service.

betonit

forbairt wrote: »

shouldn't be an issue ... you'd potentially link to something like amazon's simple storage service.

just something to consider. I have donwloaded songs from amazon and itunes can be very fast and very slow and these ar j ust songs. What you dont want is someone spending money and waiting hours for 250MB audio books to be downloaded. Service is everything these days. Just make sure the customer interaction is good by eliminating any problems that may occur well beforehand.

elgransenor

I have just started a website which I hope to grow into a web based business that will hopefully be at least self financing.

It is an informational/content site for small business people and entrepreneurs.

I would welcome comments and/or suggestions but essentially it is to provide relevant content and info. for business people and entrepreneurs.

If you have a look and see what you think it would be very helpful and please bear in mind that it is early days and I am still putting content up on it at the moment but it is pretty time consuming and it is an evolving project.

Realistically I won't be fully satisfied with it until about 1 month's time but if you have a look you will see what the intention and goal is and I have many useful articles to put up on it yet eg on franchising and the legal aspects of it, employment law, health and safety, buying and selling businesses and due diligence, share purchase v asset purchase, landlord/tenant problems,intellectual property,copyright,trade marks,counterfeit goods etc.

For example it is a prudent idea if you have a website and own the domain name to also register that domain name as a trade mark.

The site is http://www.businessandlegal.ie and I would appreciate comments,suggestions etc.
If you don't want to give your opinion publicly then you can pm me or email the site.

betonit

as a user my advice is turn off all that flash intro stuff. No one wants it, its annoying.

GoneShootin

elgransenor wrote: »

For example it is a prudent idea if you have a website and own the domain name to also register that domain name as a trade mark.

It's prudent to have a website that actually works perhaps? Tone down the pimping. The topic is based around ideas for web-based businesses, not a platform to advertise your own.

chillywilly

elgransenor wrote: »

I have just started a website which I hope to grow into a web based business that will hopefully be at least self financing.

It is an informational/content site for small business people and entrepreneurs.

I would welcome comments and/or suggestions but essentially it is to provide relevant content and info. for business people and entrepreneurs.

If you have a look and see what you think it would be very helpful and please bear in mind that it is early days and I am still putting content up on it at the moment but it is pretty time consuming and it is an evolving project.

Realistically I won't be fully satisfied with it until about 1 month's time but if you have a look you will see what the intention and goal is and I have many useful articles to put up on it yet eg on franchising and the legal aspects of it, employment law, health and safety, buying and selling businesses and due diligence, share purchase v asset purchase, landlord/tenant problems,intellectual property,copyright,trade marks,counterfeit goods etc.

For example it is a prudent idea if you have a website and own the domain name to also register that domain name as a trade mark.

The site is http://www.businessandlegal.ie and I would appreciate comments,suggestions etc.
If you don't want to give your opinion publicly then you can pm me or email the site.

the html site wouldnt work for me, but i like the idea of the site!

stepbar

elgransenor wrote: »

I have just started a website which I hope to grow into a web based business that will hopefully be at least self financing.

It is an informational/content site for small business people and entrepreneurs.

I would welcome comments and/or suggestions but essentially it is to provide relevant content and info. for business people and entrepreneurs.

If you have a look and see what you think it would be very helpful and please bear in mind that it is early days and I am still putting content up on it at the moment but it is pretty time consuming and it is an evolving project.

Realistically I won't be fully satisfied with it until about 1 month's time but if you have a look you will see what the intention and goal is and I have many useful articles to put up on it yet eg on franchising and the legal aspects of it, employment law, health and safety, buying and selling businesses and due diligence, share purchase v asset purchase, landlord/tenant problems,intellectual property,copyright,trade marks,counterfeit goods etc.

For example it is a prudent idea if you have a website and own the domain name to also register that domain name as a trade mark.

The site is http://www.businessandlegal.ie and I would appreciate comments,suggestions etc.
If you don't want to give your opinion publicly then you can pm me or email the site.

It's a poorly designed website if that;s the opinion you want.

heggie

I'm guessing it's poorly designed, although I can't see it. For some reason it's telling me I don't have flash when I do. You should never dictate to your users what they need or don't need for a site.

niceirishfella

+1, all the loading stuff is annyong on site. I just want to get straight in and have a look.

Nice idea tho'

gypsy777

The site isn't the best im afraid. Information is okay but not great. I wouldnt hang around personally.

As for monetisation what is your strategy...you just using a bit of adsense and amazon affiliate links. For that your going to want lots of traffic to make any income which brings us to the most important point...your source of traffic.

How are you planning to drive traffic to the site?

I consider doing a site redesign and id probably use a CMS like Joomla or wordpress rather than the poxy website builder youve opted to use.

Then your going to want to do some good SEO to drive traffic.

Also as far as monetisation i'd consider producing a cheap ebook or something based on some nitty gritty and valuable information or perhaps make it a membership site with a forum and specialist support.

I guess for it to be self financing you will only need a few adsense clicks to cover your annual hosting fees so guess it all really depends on what you want to achieve from.

Put it this way, its not going to produce an income for you. Its basicaaly just a business and entrepenural niche website made for adsense.

Its a start. If you figure out how to drive traffic and then build another 100 niche sites with adsense on you might see something that resembles an income.