Creating A Well Known Website

Ladywriter1968

I had an idea to try and create a website so that it could become as famous as Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, You Tube etc with the basis or running on those lines where people can comment and people can advertise on as well, as thats where they get their money from.

I have never created a website so would be a beginner and know I would need a structure as well.

I just wondered what you all thought, whether you would think its just a pipe dream since there are so many running already or whether it could be done?

notanewuser

Pipe dream unless you have a new concept that people in their millions will want.

Ladywriter1968

notanewuser wrote: »

Pipe dream unless you have a new concept that people in their millions will want.

ok thanks for answer, you made me think..

notanewuser

Ladywriter1968 wrote: »

ok thanks for answer, you made me think..

If it were that easy everybody would be doing it.

paddyrg

It is not impossible, after all each of those sites started relatively small and solved a need nobody knew they had. They did, however, have bottomless pocketed backers, and some of them still lose money hand over fist (youtube, twitter for instance).

Last time is was published a few years ago, youtube cost Google (who own it) half a billion dollars a year in running costs.

So it is not at all impossible, just somewhat unlikely. Fortunes have been made and lost online though, if you have the right idea and can find the right backing to get it to a stable/growing and popular state, it *could* be you...

InsideInsurance

It is possible to create the "next facebook" but the chances of you doing it is evidently very small.

To play devils advocate..... other than a basic idea, what do you bring to the party? Evidently your skills arent either in programming or web marketing.

The challenge you'll have is without these skills you are going to have to hire them in. Whilst you can get budget providers for a few hundred quid the solutions you'll get predominately will be worth little more than that and therefore will not be scalable. There is an online story (official) about MySpace and the terrible problems they had trying to get the site to work reliably with the volume of users they had at their peak which is a fairly interesting read if your into tech.

Unless you can find a few uber geeks that are convinced enough by your business plan to do it for shares then the likelihood is your going to need very deep pockets to be able to fund the dream. Unfortunately most good programmers get approached with JV ideas on a weekly basis and most prefer to get £X for programming it than possibly earning >£X by running it (as they may well earn not only "nothing" but lose the opportunity of earning money with other clients)

paddyrg

Just for background, the 'uber-geeks' that II refers to above - if you don't have any skills to bring, you will probably need a Business Analyst, Technical Architect, and a modest development team at a bare minimum. As employees allow circa £5k/week for wages, as contractors allow £10k/week for a small team.

I would not advise offshoring, it appears cheaper in terms of headline figures but when I worked for (huge software company) I saw the whole cycle of offshoring, problems, and re-onshoring which worked out cheaper overall as you keep better control and have fewer 'phantom' employees.

Just a bit of background really. Also as an estimator, no worthwhile bit of commercial software/functionality ever cost under £10k, and that is something fairly basic. A lot of people underestimate this, but when you consider the value of experience (that an inexperienced developer would never even realise they don't have!) and rigorous development frameworks it adds up. Or you get some buggy rubbish which just will not scale and will barely work, then it costs even more for someone to clear up the mess and re-do things right!

vyle

It is possible to make a well known, successful website on a budget, with a small team, but you have to be very committed and ridiculously talented.

My ex runs a website that makes 60k profit a year, solely through advertising, but he's running it and developing for it all day, every day.

If he's not developing new server-side tools from scratch, or optimising some code, he's dealing with forum disputes, server load, DDOS attempts, UI updates, and new site features.

It's more than a full time job, because if he's on holiday, he can't be switched off to the site, because if it goes down, he's got to get it back up again because it's him alone who is responsible for it, and it's his only source of income.

To supplement it if/when the bubble bursts though, because he's made everything from scratch (the web templates, registration, signup, user management system, CMS, forum script, server load distribution....not one piece of off the shelf platform at all) he's developing the engines into a sellable form which he can license for forums and startup websites, like proboards and v-bulletin, but not stuck in the 90s.

So it IS possible to do, and don't give up, but if the stuff I've mentioned means nothing to you, you've got a few years of learning ahead of you before your website will be ready, and even then, it's a case of having the right site at the right time.

tonyh66

Ladywriter1968 wrote: »

I had an idea to try and create a website so that it could become as famous as Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, You Tube etc with the basis or running on those lines where people can comment and people can advertise on as well, as thats where they get their money from.

I have never created a website so would be a beginner and know I would need a structure as well.

I just wondered what you all thought, whether you would think its just a pipe dream since there are so many running already or whether it could be done?

Obama says 'yes you can' (well technically he says 'yes we can', but don't let that put you off)

WilliamO

NOT ALL the big players are/were backed by shed loads of money/backers. If you look at many big companies on the internet who develop software either in the form of true software or online service run by php/java/etc you will notice their copyrights. Many of them were what we used to call Bedsit Programmers. Meaning, it took some of them 10+ years to get off the ground. Hence why you see (c) 1996 - 2012 for example.

Also, you don't need the whole idea or array of features in one go. Again, these companies added features that they perhaps never thought of before, or thought of but knew the market wasn't ready for their "crazy idea/feature", much later in their success. Google is an example of the just said.....they did not bring out Maps and Google Docs until much later in their success.

So if you do have a great idea, OP, please be kind to the forum and tell us what it is!!!.....so we can all say "so and so is doing that already" and "that's a stupid idea"!!!

WilliamO

Owain_Moneysaver

Ladywriter1968 wrote: »

I had an idea to try and create a website so that it could become as famous as Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, You Tube etc with the basis or running on those lines where people can comment and people can advertise on as well, as thats where they get their money from.

Very few sites even cover their costs through advertising, let alone earn profit.

To get ad revenue you need not just visitors and click-throughs but high-quality click-throughs who actually buy stuff.

That means your site has to attract people away from just visiting the retailer's site, by providing high quality content (MSE, Tripadvisor, etc), with click-throughs to sites with appreciatble transaction value. MSE might gets as much as £10 for a car insurance policy sold trhough one of its affiliate links.