Generating Revenue for Design Inspiration Site
I've been working on a project called UI Gems off and on for the last 7 months. Here is a link to the site in it's current state (https://vibrant-kilby-16ba96.netlify.com/). I feel it's very close to ready for launch, I just need to fill in a bit more content.
This has been a great side project for me to continue learning and growing as a developer. It's also been very time consuming to compile all of these screenshots, and I'm starting to wonder if there is a way for me to be compensated for that time.
As I look around at other similar sites (ex. pages.xyz, lapa.ninja) I notice they use affiliate links, which seems like a good option for this project. Any help on how to set that up, in fact any information at all around affiliate links would be helpful.
Also, if you have another idea for how I could generate some revenue from this site, I'm all ears and would greatly appreciate the help!
Hey Dillon, site looks pretty cool!
There are some things I would potentially change regarding the UX, not sure if you want design feedback at all?
Revenue ideas
Ads/Promotions - As for generating revenue, I think one way you could approach it is with ads in a similar way to that of https://nomadlist.com/ notice how they do promotions. Once you get enough traffic you could start doing paid promotions for the site.
Paid community - You could create a community. If you had a Slack group for designers you could charge these say £5 a month to be a member? It ensures that people won't spam your Slack channel.
Job listings - Seeing as everyone does this nowadays, have some job listings on your site?
Paywall content - You can lock certain content behind a paywall. If there is enough free content you can start to hide more options behind a small payment.
Merch - Because who doesn't want a t-shirt? But really, you could try and find some creative merchandise that would be worthwhile for your users.
Create a book - With all your content, if you wrote up what is good/bad for each of these designs you could start to comprise enough content for a physical and digital book. Check out https://www.fiveideasaday.com/ for inspiration.
Paid articles - Some sites want to highlight how they've done design, and it's also a potentially good way to drive some traffic. So finding these companies will help.
Training sessions - You could have paid for UI/UX training that is 1:1 with your users.
Courses - Record tutorial sessions on each of the areas of UI design in your site, and sell a course cheap (could be expensive I just think cheap sells better imho).
Design critique service - Have people pay for you to critique your service.
I'm sure I could think of a shed load of other ideas, but I think I've probably listed enough haha... Either way I think there is a lot of opportunity to get some revenue. You just need to get the traffic in the first place to start driving that revenue.
Good luck either way, please send a link when it's live! :)
Hey Callum. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a thoughtful response.
I'm super open to any design feedback.
All of these revenue ideas are great. It really has me inspired to go for it and try to make a little side money off of this, or at least get more visibility and visitors.
Hey no problem, we're all here to help each other out!
Okay I'll have another look soon and get back to you.
Glad you liked the revenue ideas, just find one that works for you. Good luck with it all mate.
Hey Dillon !
Very nice project right here.
Are you going to launch on PH ?
Regarding affiliates ?
I had Treehouse before and I had no clicks.
Without traffic , if you want ads is just google ads. I had them a month on my site and they generated 5 euros...........
After a while my traffic became 4 times bigger, I already did 5...
But I wouldn't use ads on your site, more than anything because you charge for your services.
Have a good day