Your chance to make your own business with WordPress

We’re super happy about your feedback, guys. Thanks a lot for all your questions. Let’s get you some answers.

Q: As you said, this project has been running already for eight years and you put hundreds of hours into it. But it is not enough. You need to create gut quality content and keep it up to date. That means more money. Last but not least: you have to pay for advertisement. The good texts, the original idea is not enough. You need to advertise your site in google, in Social Networks, grow your visitor’s basis to make them comeback.

A: Hey Rafael, Great comment. I definitely agree with you, your website needs to get significant traffic in order to be successfully monetized. I feel obligated to mention now that we’ve never run any ads to promote our website. The thing was that the content and niche of the website was so unique, nobody else was doing it – and supply vs. demand played in our favour, as we mentioned in parts 1 and 2. Google maps were just starting at that time and it was completely new thing for visitors. Also as we didn’t need to pay a 3rd party developer to do the programming, so yes, it was a certain value, but it was not that expensive to develop it either. After all, we consider being it a successful project. It was generating revenue for us (and it still is) but the most important part is that we’ve learned a lot of new things while running this portal.

Q: This continues to be a very interesting case study. Which of your themes would be best suited for a similar project nowadays?

A: Thanks a lot for your questions, Julien! This is, however, THE question of our case study. However, I invite you – and everyone else – to read our final part of our case study and you’ll get the idea 🙂

In previous blogposts, we talked about our side project that earned us passively more than $90.000. We’ve talked about Google AdSense being one of the best option to monetize your popular websites. But lets provide you with some rock-solid examples.

Check out some of our Google Analytics and AdSense examples below. Who knows, maybe you’ll get inspired.

Google Analytics and AdSense from 2008 to 2015

 

Google Analytics and AdSense for 2010

However, there’s one catch: you need to build a website that will attract people, a website that generates enough traffic. How to do that? Well, the best way of doing that is to find a weak spot on the market and make use of it, just like we did it with campingcompass.com. We admit, this is not so easy anymore thanks to a massive competition driven market.

Nowadays, it’s far more easier to create various product websites. Although the competition is high, you don’t have to spent unimaginable amount of hours creating a complex website that provides users with pin-point information about camps in your county – or about anything else. We’ve created City Guide WordPress theme for that – and it’s very popular.

“Nowadays, it’s far more easier to create various product websites.”

We’ve already talked about how we’ve managed to utilize the brand new technology blooming years ago, Google Maps, to create a unique product on a non-existent market. To survive the competition, to strive and to prosper for years you must find something that’s totally unique. Something that brings new dimensions to the market you’re in.

You need to look for various ways to distinguish yourself from your competition. Maybe you can provide new and critical added value for your users, just like we’ve done it, by making our website multilingual over the years. Would you like to have your local business’ website in 12 languages? Well, that’s not such a big deal anymore. You can thank us later 🙂

“How to distinguish? Maybe you can provide a new and critical added value for your users, just like we’ve made our website multilingual over the years.”

As we said in our previous blogposts, we want to give you an opportunity to create your own business that could one day provide you with a passive income far more higher than ours. We would like to present you our brand new WordPress theme: Event Guide.

Event Guide is much more than just another shiny new WordPress theme, it’s a chance to make your own business. It shares all the sheer amount of functionality from our City Guide theme, yet it’s packed with even more unique features. Let’s get into it, shall we?

I think that we might be as bold as to generalize: people love events. Concerts, workshops, gatherings, openings, festivals, street art and so many more. But it’s often not easy to find events you’re looking for. Just think about it, we’re pretty sure that you’ve experienced it. Well, why not start a business that can solve this problem? Again, I’m going to repeat myself: people love events, whether they are locals or tourists.

Of course, we know that there are so many world-wide portals and website and apps that do exactly this. Well, wait a second… They don’t. And now it gets interesting.

“I think that we might be as bold as to generalize: people love events.”

Let’s begin with the most simplest of features you need in order to get a good event guide website. Indeed, you have to provide visitors with the most basic information: who or what, when, where and for how much with a promo picture or two. But you can do much more than just provide the information. You can make your visitor’s experience simple and fluid, and that’s how we designed the user interface. Why shouldn’t you couple the event’s place with a cool interactive map that allows users to display all ongoing events in the selected area? Or make it possible for your visitor to select the nearest event to their position?

Before we dive deeper, let’s address the elephant in the room: so how can you make a business of it? Make it unique, original and innovative. Yes, this is easier said than done, but it’s possible. We want to present you with an opportunity to take tools we’ve been working on for quite a long time and to use it, to create your own business.

“You can make your visitor’s experience simple and fluid, and that’s how we designed the user interface.”

Event Guide provides you with several key features that are unique and exclusive to it. These features can easily distinguish you from any competition on the web, Google included. Let’s say you’re staying in Budapest for an overdue business trip and you’re in mood for some jazz. You might find it difficult to find a good jazz concert in the city – this is me speaking from my own experience, not only in Budapest – so you try to google something up. But how long does it take to keep googling, looking for a jazz concert going on right now and checking all the places and pubs to see if there’s something going on? What if you could just press one button to find out the nearest jazz concert from your position? It might be just near the end of Rákóczi Utca, but you might have never found it. This is one of the top features included in our brand new Event Guide: a fully interactive map that allows users to select, filter and look for nearby events to their position. Of course, this requires somebody who creates such web and maintains it.

“But how long does it take to keep googling, looking for a jazz concert going on right now and checking all the places and pubs to see if there’s something going on?”

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Honestly, it’s always about good idea and solid business plan. And a little bit of luck. So let’s say you utilize our Event Guide and you create this complex event portal for your city – or any city at all. You have several options that can turn profit. We’ve already talked about various adverts, so I won’t be going into details, you can read about it in our previous blogposts. However, you can offer your users to upgrade their accounts. Let’s say you’re going to charge single, monthly or annual fee that will allow your users to setup their own business accounts and to manage their own events. With a single click, users pouring into your portal will be able to select any business page and they’ll immediately see all events tied to this business. With a single click. Pretty effective, if you don’t mind me saying so.

Nowdays, it’s not enough to create any usual directory website. This is something that uncle Google is already good at. And in general, it might be enough. But imagine information that’s just one click away. It’s quite impressive added value, don’t you think? This is our interactive map that allows you to find the closest event of your liking. We didn’t update our campingcompass.com portal with any new technology or features. That’s why we’re loosing a lot of traffic from Google. There are far more advanced and more informative portals out there now and that’s O.K. We’ve earned some passive money, but we’ve learned far, far more.

And you don’t have to manage a bar or any kind of event venue to take advantage of our event guide. Imagine you’re running an estate agency and you have several houses you want to sell. In order to sell them, you need to put a lot of information about them on the web. Each house could potentially represent one business account and you could utilize our interactive map to make it super easy to navigate and see any and all open house days. There are many people who are looking for their new homes in certain parts of the city, on a certain street or around the corner. You can make it super simple for such people. So, this is just another example of the opportunity to create your own business.

“With a single click, users pouring into your portal will be able to select any business page and they’ll immediately see all events tied to this business.”

But I don’t want to get all technical about Event Guide. I’m here to let you know that we would like to make it easier for you. You don’t have to spend insane hours developing new and interesting features in order to be able to distinguish yourself from the competition. And just one such feature won’t be enough. That’s why we’ve created a massive bundle available at a discounted price.

This is, however, a very special bundle offer that’s going to last for 5 days only. This is your opportunity to create your very own local or even global business. With our Event Guide, you have everything you need at your fingertips.

So, don’t waste your chance of making your very own business. If you wait too long, someone else might take it from you.

As always, don’t hesitate to leave your feedback and questions below. I’m ready to provide you with answers.

Best, Martin

Related posts:
Case study Part 1: How we turned our side project into a business and earned passively more than $90.000
Case study Part 2: How to monetize your side project and turn it into a business