Create a Business Web Site in One Night: Part One
Source: mesq at flickr
Part of the process of preparing to spend 6 months a year travelling, I need to establish some type of residual income that won’t take too many hours to manage while I’m away.
Can it be done? Can an idea strike you for a new business at 6pm, and by the end of the night you have something up and running?
We’ll see. I’m confident it can. Once it’s up and running, the job of marketing begins. Things can be tweaked and improved with the site once some sales come in and the business concept is proven.
Step One: The Idea
I’m one of those people who are always having ideas for starting web sites or businesses. When the same idea keeps coming back to me again and again, I feel it is probably good enough to register a domain name for. That’s only a fraction of the total number of ideas at this point. And a fraction of those domain names are good enough to spend time and money developing. That means for every 100 ideas, I might register 10 domain names and end up with 1 web site.
Bu what if I tweak that formula a little. Made it quicker and easier to get a web site up and running, therefore being able to get something going for 5 or 7 of the 10 domains I register. I would be able to see right away if the idea is worth investing additional time and money in. The faster something gets up, the cheaper it is, and the more of them I can do in a year. The cream rises to the top, and the winning business will show itself.
My idea this time around is a simple one: funny t-shirts. Yes it’s been done before. Selling t-shirts on the Internet is as old as dirt. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make some money on it. People will continue buying t-shirts, and buying t-shirts on the Internet is easier than almost any other type of clothing. In fact, buying t-shirts online is in some ways better than buying in a store, because regular retail stores rarely have an extensive selection of funny t-shirts. Gap, Hollister, Abecrombie… might have one or two clever shirts and the rest are plain.
I’ve come up with a pretty clever concept I think. I have a target market in mind. And I’d like to take a chance on it. And I’d like to do that start to finish in one night.
My idea is called Your Mom T-Shirts. The target market is high-schoolers, and college kids. 16-21 years old. Male. “Your Mom Helped Me With My Homework“, “Your Mom Made Me Breakfast“, “Your Mom Says Hi“, stupid sayings like that.
Step Two: The Design
Well, I’m tempted to jump right into web development, but the better way to start is to design my first shirt. Once I have the design in my pocket, I can figure out how to sell it.
The t-shirt designs are going to be simple. Perhaps a little too simple some might say. But the t-shirts are meant to be read, and hopefully will be funny with just words and no real graphics on there. I’m going to try it like that, and can always add some flair once things get going.
So I open up Photoshop, pick a nice stencil font, and whip something up.
There. Nothing too amazing. But the goal here is to get a product out the door and see what people think.
In part two, we’ll figure out how to turn this into a t-shirt and sell it.
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