To create a website that will generate money for charity requires time, effort and money.
- Time – I am working in my spare time – so basically less TV (that’s a good thing, right?).
- Effort – Being productive is key so I don’t waste any time. So I have come up with a few ideas which I am now sticking to. I have been using rapid development techniques to create a website as quickly as possible but something that is still robust enough to support many members and visitors.
- Money – I have now paid for the domain name, hosting and various bits of software totalling about £500.00 so if this fails, I will have wasted money that I could have just given to charity instead!
The key factors for my solution revolve around:
- Content is king
- Viral Marketing is essential
Viral marketing happens when people have a reason to use the features on the website and share them with others. Creating enough content myself would not be possible, so the members of the site need to create and own the content. Mixing these up, I need a solution where members create the content that they then want to tell others about – Hmmm I seriously doubt it is that simple, but that is what I am going to do for the first beta version!
