How can I monetize my website early on?
Hi IndieHacker Community!
I've recently started investing in real estate. I have a single investment property nearby, but since my market is so expensive, I'd like to expand my investments out-of-state as I know many other investors in similar situations have done.
This led me to buy and start building propertyautomated.com, which will eventually be a whole suite of tools to help retail investors like myself with real estate investing. At that point it'll make sense to do a monthly subscription service.
However, my first iteration will just be a single page that pulls in data from places like the US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics - to help investors figure out the best cities to invest in (based on metrics like population growth, income, average rent prices, etc.).
I'd like to monetize this first iteration, but it seems like something investors would use before choosing a city to invest in, and not too much more after that - so the monthly subscription model doesn't seem to fit. I was thinking just ads initially, but wanted to get a more experienced community's opinion.
If you HAD to try and monetize this tool, how would you do it?
*I realize the "build-it-and-they-will-come" mentality isn't great, but I wanted to practice using newer technologies, have this tool to use myself, and add a side project to my resume - so even if it generates no money, I'm ok with it :)
Charge a one time fee for access to the one tool.
As you add tools, create a checkout to purchase more.
Use gumroad or buymeacoffee's coffeelinks. or shopify.
You can create a $10 per month package once you have say 3 tools, each selling for $10 each.
Hi Andrew, that's really interesting - tbh I had no idea gumroad could be used to charge for things other than ebooks, learned something new!
This idea makes a lot of sense with how I see people using the tool. Plus it would allow me to monetize from the start and at least handle site maintenance fees. Very cool, thanks!
You could focus on distributing the tool to as many people as you can, and then generate revenue via affiliate links to other resources that can help them once they pick a city they want to invest in. Eg: local brokers, websites to browse homes, architects, etc. You can be generating leads from them and earn from referral fees after people use your product.
You could have them browse your tool for limited data and then charge for either more detailed information, or offer some other personalized benefits (1-on-1 time/advice from you, helping them make a decision, etc).
Definitely agree that you should start building out an email list from the get go — maybe just add a quick sign-up for people to access the tool once you feel that it's providing initial value.
Man I'm really glad I posted this question here - those are great suggestions! I hadn't thought of using affiliate marketing to keep the site free at first, but still generate revenue. That makes a ton of sense. I like the coaching idea as well. I think I'd want to be further along in my journey before giving out paid advice, but that'd definitely a cool feature I can see myself adding in a year or two.
I'll definitely start building out that email list then - seems fair to trade an email for a free tool. Thanks, this was really helpful!
Glad to hear! Keep us posted with your progress 😊
I will!
I would honestly release it for free. If this is a problem (and I can personally see this tool used a lot) you can get some substantial traffic and then offer additional tools that are subscription worthy per se and cross-sell them into it.
Just my two sense!
Hey Joe - thanks for the feedback! I was leaning in the same direction. Sounds like I'd need to figure out a way to collect emails from users of my first iteration in order to cross sell?
Also just read through some of your Generation ZEO posts - very cool idea, I'm curious to see where the startups end up!
Exactly! I would get them to sign up somehow to receive the email. Once you build that list you can then find problems and issues directly from your target market and cross-sell them into the solution to those problems.
Great, thank you! Glad to hear that. I am excited to see where it goes as well!
Nice - I like it! Thanks, I'm feeling better about my path forward now.
Real estate agents currently pay a lot of money for leads. The people using your site will be looking to invest in a new area right? So they will probably either want an agent who knows that area (a buying agent) or will want to look at properties in that area to buy. So you can show properties in each area by pulling them in and get paid for leads for sending people to the agents listing them.
Love the entrepreneurial spirit on this site - who knew there could be so many ways to monetize a simple site like mine? I'll definitely have to look into trying to pull properties from a site like Zillow and how I could get paid for referring users to a particular agent. Sounds like it could be a more direct approach to affiliate marketing. Thanks, I appreciate the ideas!
Site doesn't load at the moment.
Can have free and pro mode where you dig into neighbourhoods
Hi Volkan - thanks yeah I'm currently still in the process of building out the UI.
And that's a great idea, I'll have to see what APIs are available for neighborhood data but I could definitely see that being valuable to investors more frequently than city data.