Review Website

Aruffell

Back in October i started a website where i post the latest news, press releases and review articles about computers and their hardware.

I'm starting to get a lot of products sent to me by companies and im reviewing them.

I know that companies like hexus.net (UK) and 3dgameman.com (Canada) make money from this as a living.

Just wondering how? Just from google ads etc...?

Thanks,

Andy

Aruffell

Also, how would i set this up as a limited company?

Could i get a grant to help me start things? I want to do review videos instead of written reviews. Would anyone help fund me to get a camcorder?

Andy

paulwf

A lot of review sites have links to price comparison sites for the product they are buying - they make revenue from affiliate links. Google ads and other ads also help, and bear in mind many sites only make enough money to cover their costs (and don't pay wages).

Can't you just ask one of the companies for a webcam or camcorder to review? Not all companies expect review products back, or should be able to give you a good deal on what is then an ex-demo product.

Atelier

Unless you have a very novel idea, I think you have missed the boat for making money from a review site.

I know someone who makes $1000s per month but that it only because he started a specialised forum back when the web was shiny and new. You need millions of hits to make that sort of money.

Do you have any statistics of home many hits you get per month?

Aruffell wrote: »

Back in October i started a website where i post the latest news, press releases and review articles about computers and their hardware.

I'm starting to get a lot of products sent to me by companies and im reviewing them.

I know that companies like hexus.net (UK) and 3dgameman.com (Canada) make money from this as a living.

Just wondering how? Just from google ads etc...?

Thanks,

Andy

Aruffell

Some typical statistics of the site are:

Unique Visitors – 11,635
Number of visits – 13,254
Pages – 331862
Hits – 884,244
Bandwidth – 46.22Gb


I'm running google ads and a few affiliate schemes and making about £60 a month at the moment which isn't fantastic but it's a start.


Andy

paulwf

Check out the Business Link website as there is lots of useful info there. They also have a section on applicable grants ( http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1073866776 ), and if you need any more advice from them you can call them. Perhaps if you post here your age and circumstances forum users can advise if any grants are likely to be available. Business Link also run free courses in all areas, the one on writing a business plan might be useful as a good plan will help focus you on what path to take.

I guess the big question is whether you can scale your business up, i.e. if you were to treat it as a proper part time job dedicating 20 hours a week to it could you increase revenue 10 fold to earn £600 p/m from it? There is certainly lots that can be done by networking with all the bloggers out there, and by deciding on the focus of your site you may be able to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. Starting a site small and doing it because you love it is a good basis to build on - as in my previous post though there are lots of sites like yours currently that barely break even (when you factor in time spent on it).

If you are going to expand make sure you have everything in place. This may include hosting your website on a server with dedicated support rather than a free hosting site, getting a professional designer to come up with a good logo and site design, buying up similar domain names and registering trademarks. If you haven't already make sure you inform HMRC you are self employed now.

newbienewbison

Keep building on conent until you get to the 100,000+ mark then think about the money side.