Before you spend a
single penny on your new project, you must
consider a few salient points. Proper planning
at this stage will give you some goals to aim
at, and may prevent costly mistakes.
Do You Have the Time
to Run It?
In the early days, there
will not be that much to do after the initial
set-up. Your site will be a part-time business
by default, until the members and advertising
orders start to arrive in significant numbers.
If you start off on the
right foot, your website can switch from being a hobby
to a full-blown business very quickly,
so you must be prepared to devote an increasing
amount of time to doing the daily site housekeeping.
That said, it is nothing too strenuous, and can
be completed in an hour or two each day.
You will not need to
slave over a hot keyboard all day, every day,
even when the site is popular. That's the
beauty of e-mail; you can respond to orders and
answer queries whenever you are ready, as long
as you do it in a timely manner. Just think - no more
deference to the dreaded telephone!
Will There be a
Restricted Membership?
There are certain
benefits with restricted membership. Your
members will see only ads originating from their
own territory, meaning advertisers will pay well
for advertisements that they know will be targeted to
their chosen demographic. In addition, you can
concentrate on choosing affiliate ads from a
local affiliate network, instead of having to
trawl through pages of international ads for
ones that you think might have universal appeal.
For a small extra
charge, the script supplier can convert the
entire script to operate on your local currency
if you wish. However, by restricting your member
base to one country only, you may be missing out
on a large amount of advertising revenue, so
consider your options carefully before deciding
on your course of action.
Because I operate in
merry England, I chose to follow the restricted
membership route with UK Pounds as the operating
currency, but if you opt for international membership, you should stick to
dollars as the preferred currency.
Point or Cash
Rewards?
There is the option to
award members cash or points in their account,
for clicking on links and engaging in other
activities. I would recommend that you opt for
cash, as it has far more appeal to members, and
they can see at a glance exactly how much money
they have earned. There is also no need to
convert points into cash when payout time
arrives.
Look at it this way; if
you were a member, what would you rather see in
your earning statistics two hundred points,
or $10 cold hard cash?
The only time you might
find points useful is when you are running some
of the plug-in "pay-to-play" games. Some
countries have strict gambling laws that
prohibit online lotteries, sweepstakes etc. in
which participants place cash bets. If you
use points instead the problem is solved,
because no cash is wagered on the games.
What Will the Theme
Be?
PTRs are enormously
popular in the US (less so in the UK, where they
have yet to take off in the same way - hence my
eagerness to get a site up and running in
England!), but if you take a look at some of the
American and Canadian sites, you will see some great examples
of themed artwork.
Site owners take
inspiration for their graphics from such diverse
areas as favorite pets, TV shows, movies,
books, anime if you have a passion, you can
probably theme your website around it.
Cash Crusader is
supplied with a standard template that is light
on graphics for fast loading, but if you have a
flair for graphic design, there is no reason why
you cannot show off your special skills by
adding your own personal artistic touch.
Remember to keep graphics small in terms of file
size, so they do not slow down the loading of
the site (see the Graphics section).
You will be
submitting your site URL to the search
engines for indexing, so to maximize ranking in the search results, your
domain name should contain the name of your
site (for example, www.archerfish.co.uk,
the one I run at the moment). Your choice
will be limited by which domain names are
available, so dont set your heart on a
particular name until you are sure that it has
not been taken. A quick check on a prospective
host's domain name search facility will
resolve the issue.
Are You Prepared to
Stick With It?
This final question is
probably the most important of them all if
you are thinking of setting up a site, with the
intention of closing it down without notice as
soon as the payment requests start rolling in,
think again.
You must be in the game
for the right reasons to run a quality site
for the benefit of advertisers and members, and
to make an honest buck for yourself. If you plan
the site carefully, spend time on maintaining
it, pay your members on time, and keep
everything running smoothly as it should, you
will soon build a good reputation that will keep
bringing in members, and money, for years to
come.
