Online Success Story:
Andrew Makar
www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com
Tactical Project Management is my blog for promoting real world best practices in the project management field. I provide Microsoft Project training (a popular project management scheduling tool) and tactical approaches to successfully deliver projects.
1. When did you set up your website?
The site launched in 2008 built off a Joomla content management platform.
2. What gave you the idea for this particular niche & website?
In addition to my day job as a program/project manager in the IT industry, I'm a freelance writer for several technology and project management magazines and blogs. For several years, my articles received good feedback and questions on how project management in the "real world" gets done.
There are a lot of training providers, certification organizations and tons of books on the project management topics. Very few of them took a focused approach to simply telling people what works vs. educating project managers on every single tool or technique. A colleague and I collaborated on the first eBook that teaches project managers how to easily build a project schedule. By testing the market and validating there was an interest, the blog and products began to grow.
3. Did you have any experience with online business prior to creating this website?
Being in IT, I had experience building websites but this was my first venture into marketing and selling a product online.
4. What did you do for work prior to setting up an online business?
I still work full time in my career in IT management. The online business is just one of my entrepreneurial ventures.
5. How did you initially promote your website, and if different - how do you promote it now?
Promotion for the blog was driven by an About the Author section from the various professional web-based magazines and blogs. I get page rank 6 and page rank 9 backlinks all the time by providing relevant target to a market of readers who are interested in the topic. I also get compensated as a freelance writer so its a win-win for my clients, my blog and my own product sales.
As I continued to develop the site, email marketing and social media marketing also began to grow as vehicles to promote traffic. In my niche, YouTube is very helpful because I'm demonstrating how to do specific tasks in software tools.
6. Is your website profitable? Can you share some basic traffic & profit stats with us?
This is my 4th year of running the site and it was profitable the first year. The start up costs are very low considering all the costs were an inexpensive hosting company, open-source content management tools, open source shopping cart and a $39 template.The majority of my traffic comes from search, long tail SEO and referrals from websites, Twitter and LinkedIn.
I average approximately 30,000 page views per month and generate a profitable side income. All the products I deliver are electronically based - PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, etc so there is no major overhead costs. Every time I get a sale, its nearly 100% pure profit.
7. What are your plans for the site going forward?
I need to refresh my current products to the latest version of the software, add more evergreen tutorials, expand into video training, Amazon.com product integration and built a future membership site promoting tactical project management best practices.
8. What ONE piece of advice would you give someone interested in starting their own niche site or blog?
Don't wait for everything to be perfect. Jump in. Get started and learn as you go. You and your business will be better off for it.
Andrew Makar
http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com
-Thank you, Andrew and congratulations on your success!
About Lynn Terry
Number 8 is a really great piece of advice. Getting your feet wet and making mistakes is going to happen no matter how long you take to get started. The main thing is to just get started.
Personally, I have made many mistakes and I am sure there will be more.
But, it is encouraging to see others admitting the same.
Another great interview Lynn.
Congratulations on your success Andrew. BTW, you gave me an idea...;)
Mark
Thanks for the write up. It has definitely been a fun project that has opened up a lot of new opportunities. Information marketing isn't limited to "Internet Marketing". With the increase in eLearning, podcasting and video tutorials, there is a lot of opportunity for all businesses.
Thanks again!
Andy Makar
100% pure profit sounds nice! From these interviews, it sounds like creating your own product is the way go...not trying to market someone else's.
Andrew - thank you for sharing your story (and to Lynn for bringing it to us.) 30,000 page views a month makes my site seem tiny!
hello, I'm from the Netherlands. My english is very bad. But by translation programs such as Google I come very far. Your Article has intrigued me. Your writing style is easy to understand. Keep it up. Thank you for your article.
Hi Andrew,
Nice article - I'm also of the opinion that getting started is the first stage of failing, learning and improving. Talking about it gets you nowhere.
Your site looks like you've done a good job - how is it going now? I see you have a very reasonable Alexa ranking, so I'm assuming that things are going well for you?
One thing that I am interested in, is how effective you think Microsoft Project is as the tool of choice for project management, particularly in a project where changes happen often, and the schedule needs to stay up to date? I'm heading across to your site for a better read now.