How much is your advertisement income? What other income resources do you have etc.?
I run an online retail site with a buddy of mine that sells High quality tailgating gear for outdoor sporting events, parties, etc. It's a seasonal niche and we do most of our sales from September to January. When we started over a year ago we anxiously waited nearly a month before our first sale came though. We now average close to $10,000/m. This is before marketing, web hosting, and general operation costs are removed. It may not seem like much profit, but then again, we're still relatively new and have very little month to month overhead. All content, graphics, and daily operations are handled by either myself or my partner, while still working our 9-5 jobs. Our motivation is to obviously do this full time one day.
I'm a web designer by trade, having worked on various e-commerce projects in the past, and admit most of my experience has been put to good use in developing our business. The tough part is the actual day to day "business" side to it. These are areas that many may find either boring or difficult and most would rather avoid. These daily tasks are not very exciting and sometimes tedious, but very necessary for any business to succeed. We also had a tough time figuring out our marketing budget and how to put it to good use. We currently spend only 10% of our Net income on marketing. This is mostly google PLS/PPC but we've dabbled on others in the past. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you can easily blow your entire bank account on google and not see any real return on your investment if you're not careful. It takes much planning and a consistent strategy to maneuver the treacherous waters of PPC.
Although our experience has been anything but easy, it was definitely worth it and we are even planning on opening a second retail site within the next few months. Unless you have major funding on hand to hire a team of developers and sink most of it into marketing, things are going to take some time. In retrospect, I'm glad we decided to bootstrap this venture ourselves because it forced us to have laser beam focus and be purposeful in all our decisions.
I run an online retail site with a buddy of mine that sells High quality tailgating gear for outdoor sporting events, parties, etc. It's a seasonal niche and we do most of our sales from September to January. When we started over a year ago we anxiously waited nearly a month before our first sale came though. We now average close to $10,000/m. This is before marketing, web hosting, and general operation costs are removed. It may not seem like much profit, but then again, we're still relatively new and have very little month to month overhead. All content, graphics, and daily operations are handled by either myself or my partner, while still working our 9-5 jobs. Our motivation is to obviously do this full time one day.
I'm a web designer by trade, having worked on various e-commerce projects in the past, and admit most of my experience has been put to good use in developing our business. The tough part is the actual day to day "business" side to it. These are areas that many may find either boring or difficult and most would rather avoid. These daily tasks are not very exciting and sometimes tedious, but very necessary for any business to succeed. We also had a tough time figuring out our marketing budget and how to put it to good use. We currently spend only 10% of our Net income on marketing. This is mostly google PLS/PPC but we've dabbled on others in the past. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you can easily blow your entire bank account on google and not see any real return on your investment if you're not careful. It takes much planning and a consistent strategy to maneuver the treacherous waters of PPC.
Although our experience has been anything but easy, it was definitely worth it and we are even planning on opening a second retail site within the next few months. Unless you have major funding on hand to hire a team of developers and sink most of it into marketing, things are going to take some time. In retrospect, I'm glad we decided to bootstrap this venture ourselves because it forced us to have laser beam focus and be purposeful in all our decisions.
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