How to go about this?

Hi Ewan,

To be honest I think you're going to struggle on a few fronts here.

I don't really know your specific idea but you are right that getting external investment is probably a non starter, mainly due to your age and lack of business experience.

Likewise, if you have no money for a designer or developer and you have no skills of your own then this is also a bit of a problem.

Finally you mention generating money through advertising and affiliate promotions further down the line, the problem is that advertising is not really a viable income source for the majority of sites out there, you have to generate so much traffic (visitors) into a site to make money from online advertising that very few sites actually manage it.

I like your enthusiasm and well done for thinking about business, it's never to early to get started. I wish I'd started in business much sooner than I actually did.

My advice to you would be to finish your education and learn some skills alongside it, if online business interests you then it can never hurt to be proficient in some kind of programming / scripting language, even if you don't fancy doing it full time, having the knowledge of what is going to be needed for a potential project before approaching developers is going to serve you well.

I'd also look at online marketing as well, you could start a blog pretty cheaply, Wordpress is free and hosting is cheap now a days. It's could be a good way to get started online by creating content and going out and marketing it, you could even then drop in some affiliate offers to see if you could generate some income.

One thing I used to have when I was younger but don't have now is time, time to learn stuff and experiment with things. There are loads of things that interest me in business and online ventures which I simply don't have the spare time to progress further.

I hope this has helped you a bit, even if it was probably not what you were asking.

Good luck.

Darren

Ewan-1 said:

Thanks for the reply!

I'm currently working on some niche blog sites to generate some extra income. I might actually look into learning some programming skills then after all, and come back to the idea later when I can approach it with more knowledge.

Click to expand...

Sounds likes great plan Ewan.

I've had a plan for a project on the back burner for literally years and am only just getting to the stage of making it live. A great idea will always be a great idea, the only real risk in putting it off is if somebody else comes in and starts up using it, but even that can give you valuable insights to help with your own efforts.

Like you say, keep it on the back burner for now and just develop and refine it in your mind, keep a file going for ideas so that when you do get round to it the idea will look much more like a real opportunity than it may do now.

You can pick up a ready made website that should do almost all you want and have it adapted with your design for very little. Probably a couple of hundred max.

The big problem is to get the information and members on it. Crack that and you will be able to afford a more bespoke option.