After testing and validating, it’s time to build your own website
The key here is to start off with a ‘good enough’ website that captures your visitors’ email addresses and displays the benefits of your products and services. Do enable your website with HTTPS so that you can receive secure payment information and earn money online via your website. It also builds trust and confidence.
Your website will have limited features, to start with. Don’t worry, for now. You can continuously improve your own website as you accumulate more knowledge and experience on what it takes to develop a website and promote it. Build upon your experience from using established marketplaces and their processes.
The danger is that you can spend countless time, effort, and money on your website without any additional return on investment. Do invest in website features that will enhance your profitability.
The beautiful part of the test and validate strategy is that you can now specifically design your website to suit your customers’ requirements and your product or service features. As you know more about your customers, products, and services, you can now design a fit-for-purpose website that will take all these requirements into consideration. You will no longer need to build a generic website. Instead, you can build a custom website that is appealing to your customer preferences, requirements, and taste.
You will also know how to emotionally connect with your customers through your website.
Your own website will let you nurture your own leads, from cold leads to hot leads, by constantly interacting with them using valuable content. When you have another product or service to sell, you can quickly convert these hot leads into paying customers because they are ready to buy from you.
Be aware that the journey from attracting your own website visitors to converting them into valuable hot leads and paying customers is a very long one. There are countless tactics to adopt and challenges to overcome along the way.
Don’t forget that there are countless Internet experts and gurus who will try to sell you tactics. Unless you have lots of money to spend and time to waste, you may need to educate yourself first before hiring these folks or buying their products and services. Don’t be fooled by their slick sales letter and promises of instant results or money.
Select one or two tactics that fit your monetisation strategy, time commitment, and personality. Work hard on them over time. Results will only follow when there are long term commitment and effort. Give your chosen tactics time to prove themselves. Constantly switching from one tactic to another is not helpful.
At this stage of your money-making journey, it’s advisable to focus on developing your monetisation strategy. This strategy should include how you can effectively monetise your website to generate long-term sustainable revenue streams, until a point that you can quit your 9-to-5 job (if that’s your goal).
Visit websites like Flippa for inspiration of what your monetisation strategy could look like.
Don’t forget about your contractual agreement with your current employer
A word of caution about moonlighting.
If you are working in a job or working for someone else, before proceeding further, it’s best to check your contract of employment with your current employer.
Employers are usually sticky with their employees moonlighting in a side business, especially when there are:
- Actual or perceived conflicts of interest with their activities, products, services, or customers. For example, selling children’s toys on eBay may not represent a conflict of interest, or a breach of an exclusivity condition in a contract of employment, for an employee who is working for a biopharmaceutical company. But if that employee works in a company that manufactures or markets toys, then it would certainly be a breach of that employee’s contract of employment.
- When your employer’s intellectual property is compromised or copied by you for personal gain. If a designer uses his employer’s designs and modifies them for his moonlighting job that is performed over the weekend to make money for himself, then that employee will most likely be in breach of his contract of employment.
If you have an existing intellectual property that you will bring to a new employer as part of a new job, then it’s very wise to get a separate written agreement outlining the use of that specific intellectual property before you start work. With your own intellectual property, you are free to use it for your own moonlighting activity and shared with your employer (if you want to).
If an intellectual property is created in your current employment (i.e., you did not have your own intellectual property before entering into a contract of employment with your current employer), you cannot use your employer’s intellectual property for your personal use to generate income for yourself. In most cases, any intellectual property generated whilst in employment is legally owned by your employer and not you.
Technically, you cannot use your employer’s computers, office equipment, etc. for your own business or for personal gain.
Perhaps you may want to start out with a pen name or alias to avoid your employer or manager finding out about your moonlighting activity. Established online marketplaces may not require you to fully reveal your true identity, at least in public.
You have to decide whether to tell your manager about your moonlighting activities. Both options have consequences including the expressed prohibition to moonlight.
If you do decide to inform your manager about your moonlighting activity, he or she may verbally acknowledge this. They will not give you a formal approval letter from the company. This is a gray area of employment law that needs to be handled appropriately.
If your manager verbally disagrees, then you have a problem!