Welcome TIMEOCers!
We are really moving ahead on the blog now. We have our first attempt to go to Level 5 (Monetization) for TIMEOC with the launch of the Amazon Affiliates banners on the home page. It is one way to get money from the traffic on your website, blog etc. Just go to Amazon.com and click on “Become an Affiliate” at the bottom of the page. Its easy to sign up and once you are a member of the affiliates program you can talk about specific products or Amazon.com in general and when a visitor clicks the banner and buys something, you get paid. About 3%-7% or so on the purchases.
Another monetization tactic is to use a site like Cafe Press or Zazzle to make promotional items with your company or blog’s name. We talked about t-shirts, mugs, keychains, etc. and the group seemed to like mugs the best. Please comment below if you have a preference. The items would have the TIMEOC logo and “Level __” with a number from 0-10 for what TIMEOC Level your startup is. The big advantage of these sites is there is no upfront fee to make products and sell them. It works like this: Sign up on the site, pick a product, then customize. Add your logo and post. Let’s say you were doing a t-shirt. It may list the cost at $20. Let’s say you set your price at $30. If a customer buys your shirt, the website handles everything from taking the money to shipping to returns. At the end of each month they send you a check with how much you made (in this case $10/shirt). As you sell more you even get better pricing!
New announcement: TIMEOC now has 10 levels of a startup! It used to be 5 levels that went from idea to making your first dollar, but now we go further to your business exit (selling the business to someone else) at level 10. Keep an eye our for a future post on this.
We did want to clarify that although WordPress is a great platform for making your website, there are lots of other ways to make websites that are great too. You need to find what works for you.
A new way to present a website or idea to the group was also tested for the first time. You get 5 minutes to talk about your idea then 15 minutes of answering questions about it. It seemed to work well for our first TIMEOCer you use it, ZeroTier.
ZeroTier is a new app that lets you set up ad-hoc networks with your friends from anywhere, anytime. It is free for up to 10 nodes on your network the costs money per node after that. Check it out!
See you at the next meeting!
