I make small amounts of cash via affiliate marketing on my main site
http://www.TipsCostaRica.com. Shortly, I'm going to be converting this into a full service tour company, which I will also outsource customer service.
Your biggest problem will be finding targeted traffic. IE... people who come to your site and want to buy whatever product or service you are offering.
There are tons of BS ideas about SEO which is how you get targeted traffic. Anyone can buy a domain and put up a crappy wordpress site with a few pages. Then, apply some blackhat SEO tricks and get nowhere.
The only way to get traffic is to write good, creative and unique content that engages your customer. You don't just need a few pages or posts. You need thousands and with proper tagging and keyword optimization. For example, at minimum, you need to write 5, 500 word posts per day to get started.
This gets exhausting after a while. At this point, I have hired writers that do that for me.
You need to target a minimum of 1,000 unique visitors per day. So you know how much time this takes, it took me 1 year to get 1,000 visitors per month.
Now, I have 15,000 visitors per month, and my target is 30,000 by June 30. On July 1, 2014, TipsCostaRica.com will be open for a business as a tourism business, with highly targeted traffic about visiting Costa Rica.
My first year goal is $2,000 per month in gross revenues. I will need to pay someone about $500 per month to continue writing content and answering phones. I will also place advertising banners on the site and do sponsored articles for $$$. I earn commissions on all hotel and tour bookings.
Does this sound easy? Hell NO! I have a full-time job, and this project consumes all of my spare time. Once I open, I assume that I will be screwed, as there will be so many problems.
Monthly Startup Costs?
Hosting - $12
Content Writing and Customer Service - $500
Voip Line with 800 number - $10
My time (my normal bill rate x hours) - $2,500
If the business doesn't work out, the plan is to sell the site on Ebay or Flippa.
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http://TipsCostaRica.com for pratical advice on living in Costa Rica.
In order to write about life, first you must live it! - E. Hemingway.