Start a Site, a Microenterprise

Define your Niche & Brand

For starters think about what your niche is and define a business plan.  You do not have to be perfect; just get down some ideas on what your vision at least.  You’ll never realize what writing down your thoughts will do to give breath to your ideas.   These recorded ideas will professionalize your venture (because what venture starts without a business plan?) and lead to brand creation.  Your brand should be a small subset slogan of your niche combined with an image. Try to use an image that elevates your brand and is not copyrighted.  The worse thing would be for you to push your brand and then be told to stop using it.

There are a variety of free resources for writing a plan on the internet:

• ScribD : Business Plan Template
• SBA : Write a Business Plan
• BPlans : 500 Sample Business Plans
• BPlans : How to Write a Business Plan

Blog, blog, blog

I would say the best way to start a web site for free would be a blog.  A web site is always defined by its users and a blog is a good way to identify your user.  There are many free blog sites and it is an easy way to connect with the user.  This allows you to at least establish something to build from.   It is always harder to save money when you have no money in the bank.  Creating a starting point will lead to more work which in turn will lead to more content and help shape your vision beyond the blog phase.

As online blogging services go, I personally recommend WordPress for a variety of reasons.  I work as a Microsoft Consultant and have not seen better interfaces than WordPress. When a Microsoft consultant recommends a PHP product, you know it has to pass muster. WordPress has many extensions out of the box (such as twitter integration and other mini application modules) and is ready for Search Engine optimization.  It also offers the ability to link your branding URL easily to your site and gives good stats on your users.  I am truly underestimating the power of WordPress and it deserves the books it has received for its social dominance.  It was just yesterday that I saw they had processed their 200,000,000^th comment.

Content, content, content

The next step would be content generation.  Start with one blog entry on your subject matter a week or a month but stick to your plan.  Plan your blog entries on a calendar including title and small notes of your ideas.  Create a series based on interesting topics from your site’s niche that break up in to three to four parts and explain ideas over time.  Content is the single hardest part of a new site and by far one of the most important.  In the end, what are you creating a site for if not for a user’s integration with your content?

Promotion

Choose 25 of your friends and place their emails on a Newsletter (you can use Google Groups for this).  You can use this newsletter to broadcast about your updated blog posts.  This also allows you to send to one email and not show all your friends emails within your newsletter.  Google Groups records messages as conversations where you can always refer to them ala Gmail.  Tell your friends through the powerful use of word of mouth and don’t be afraid of negative feedback as this will help you refine your vision.

Create your Social Image

After you have generated content with promotion (and I do mean after), you should then create your social image.  Take a look at your stats and make sure you are getting at least 25-50 users every blog post.  You should then create a facebook fan page, a twitter account and be active on your Newsletter with information other than just your blog post updates.  You should also include this social image in all of your distributions (such as your twitter on your email, facebook, etc).

Analyze your results

Once your social image is created the next step would be to analyze the user.  The user, along with content, is the most important to shape your vision not to mention your site as a whole.  You should look at your WordPress stats and also install Google analytics on your site to really get reports of your user. Grow your site by responding to what your users love and avoid what they despise.

Expansion

Finally, you should grow your site and expand when your traffic demands it.  I would say having 1,000 users a month in a year from launch would be a modest target for expansion.  Ask your friends or use your social network to find other writers to add more content.  Form partnerships without other sites (twitter) that fit or expand your niche and allow them to link into your domain.  Respond to comments on all your distributions ( blog, email,twitter) and build your creditability.  You should think about applications on your site that build from your niche.  You don’t have to be a software developer to come up with ideas and your niche is most likely an application within itself.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have recommended this to many of my friends and they have had fun success with it.  Some of my friends have reached the 1,000 unique visitors a month and are on their way to expansion.  A friend and I are started this site to promote the creation of micro-enterprises.  We are using all the ideas within this blog entry as the standard for our business sites and recommendations.