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Looking for info on feasability of starting a tech web site

Prime2515103

Prime2515103

Member
I'm doing a research project for school about whether or not somebody can actually make a living starting and running a tech related web site (hardware reviews, etc.). The question being, go work for some web development company or an existing site perhaps (or a company with in-house web dev) after school or jump right in and start my own site.

Or is there no chance? Like, is this Anand's hobby and he's got a day job?

I'm trying to find out what the actual chances of success are, average time before a site becomes profitable, that kind of thing...

I was just wondering if there is anywhere I can go to find statistics on such things. Anybody know? I see there's lots of stats on the net for such things, but I'm not finding anything specific to this type of site.

Should I start sending emails to site owners and ask them? Not sure sure I'd get a response from anybody, or if I did, if it would be in time (I only have 2 weeks for this).

Any suggestions would be appreciated 🙂
 
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I doubt anyone keeps statistics. It's already a saturated market however and it's difficult-to-impossible for new sites to get hardware sent to them, so I can't imagine most people would be able to make a living doing this. That said your best bet for legitimately sourced information would be to talk to the owners; throw Anand an email and see if he replies.
 
i think you'd need some expertise and good capital to get it going. better to try it as a hobby assuming you already make a lot of disposable income to buy the products, high risk otherwise.
 
Prime2515103 said:
The question being, go work for some web development company or an existing site perhaps (or a company with in-house web dev) after school or jump right in and start my own site.
Click to expand...

Why would you need to work for a web development company first?

I run several websites (forums and a blog), and have never worked for a web development company.

Take what you have a passion for, install wordpress, and get after it. Go what you have first hand experience with, or a passion for. Anything else and you will lose interest after a few months.

The thing with tech sites and gaming sites, the market is flooded. How do you expect to compete with wired, slashdot, rock paper nuke, pc gamer, pc magazine,,,,, with only a few months experience? Its going to take you years to establish your site as an authority, and I means YEARS.

If you want to start a site, I suggest you start with a free blogger account, post for a few months and see if its something you "really" want to do. If you get bored, just walk away and it not going to cost you anything.

gophins72 said:
i think you'd need some expertise and good capital to get it going.
Click to expand...

To build a good quality site, all you need is a hosting account, and a good quality video camera for youtube videos.

I started my main website with a $200 investment, which is what the software cost.
 
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DixyCrat said:
https://itswadesh.wordpress.com/tag/billionaires/

based on that Anand makes, gross, 1.5 mill/ year; I'm sure it nets out to "good enough that he can do whatever else he loves"
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wow... I had no idea... Actually, I wasn't even thinking that big. When I say "make a living" what I really mean is, could I do this instead of working as a stock boy at Walmart lol (I don't work at Walmart but you get my point).


Texashiker said:
The thing with tech sites and gaming sites, the market is flooded. How do you expect to compete with wired, slashdot, rock paper nuke, pc gamer, pc magazine,,,,, with only a few months experience? Its going to take you years to establish your site as an authority, and I means YEARS.
Click to expand...

This brings up part of the problem with finding useful information also. Those sites you mentioned (aside from rock paper nuke, which I've never heard of so I don't know) are really mainstream. I think I'm more of a hardocp.com kind of person--more of things like overclocking and trying to get things to blow up than content for the masses. It's really hard to find information specific to these kinds of sites.

I'm going to go ahead and email some of the owners as was suggested and see if they can remember their early days. Maybe track down some relatively newer sites and see how they're doing.

A couple good suggestions here about starting with a blog and the youtube thing. I've been pondering both of these. I just bought a Corsair Carbide 500R and I was thinking of doing a writeup on it too. Right now (while in school) I might not have the opportunity to have the "latest and greatest" at my disposal very often so it might be a good opportunity to get my feet wet (I've written reviews before but they never made it to the web).

Thanks 🙂
 
I did a lot of research about HTPC on avsforum and there is this one guy assasin, who has paid guide for HTPC, he also has blogs and everything, I have read in his posts that please donate/pay, what I get is simply not enough to do any kind or research or buy any new hardware to test them out and stuff like that. Now i am not sure if he is really cash strapped or just trying to motivate people. But I feel there are a lot of people out there like him. Unless you have a reputation like AT or Tom's, companies will not give you stuff for free to test and review, and unless you get that I am not sure you should quit your day job..
 
You missed the boat. It left port in the 90s.

There is no way you can compete with the large sites who staff multiple specialists and get all the latest gear for free.
Also, people like Anand make this site their life. It's not just a job; its a passion.
To be successful at anything, you need to work harder than the competition or be a genius or both.
 
edro said:
To be successful at anything, you need to work harder than the competition
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I disagree with that statement.

If you want to make progress, you have to work smarter, not harder. Hard work can only take you so far, from there you have to work smarter.

Its one thing to build a website and post content, its another thing to tap into social media outlets - twitter, youtube, facebook, social bookmarking,,, to attract traffic. With todays internet you have to be able to write and article, and stay with current trends.

If you are going to have a website, you need to stay on top of current trends. You need to create all of your own content, and I mean "all". This means you need to write articles, take pictures, watermark your pics, and make videos.

OP, if you want to open a site, I suggest you buy a domain name and do not do anything with it. Open a free blogger account, put a link in the sidebar to the domain name you bought, and post content on the blog.

Back in the 1990s there was a site called sharkyextreme.com. The site is still there, but it was bought and abandoned by the new owners. A lot of the old articles have been taken down,,,, but sharkyextreme was the "go to" place of the late 1990s.

To establish his site, sharky dedicated his life to the project. OP, you will have to do the same.

Some of the articles for my blog take 3, 4,,, sometimes 6 hours to write. Sometimes I will spend a whole weekend filming videos, only to end up with a 5 minute youtube video. I take somewhere around 10,000 pictures a year, and a lot of those pics are stock images for my site.

But there is no promise that your site will become popular. I have seen sites that have been around for years, and have very little traffic.
 
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edro said:
You missed the boat. It left port in the 90s.

There is no way you can compete with the large sites who staff multiple specialists and get all the latest gear for free.
Also, people like Anand make this site their life. It's not just a job; its a passion.
To be successful at anything, you need to work harder than the competition or be a genius or both.
Click to expand...

or have really big boobs.

Take the OP for instance... he had really big attractive boobs he could go to trade shows and talk the intel reps into sending the latest hardware.
 
Prime2515103 said:
I'm doing a research project for school about whether or not somebody can actually make a living starting and running a tech related web site (hardware reviews, etc.). The question being, go work for some web development company or an existing site perhaps (or a company with in-house web dev) after school or jump right in and start my own site.

Or is there no chance? Like, is this Anand's hobby and he's got a day job?

I'm trying to find out what the actual chances of success are, average time before a site becomes profitable, that kind of thing...

I was just wondering if there is anywhere I can go to find statistics on such things. Anybody know? I see there's lots of stats on the net for such things, but I'm not finding anything specific to this type of site.

Should I start sending emails to site owners and ask them? Not sure sure I'd get a response from anybody, or if I did, if it would be in time (I only have 2 weeks for this).

Any suggestions would be appreciated 🙂
Click to expand...

In a market like this, where there is an enormous amount of competition out there, you have to think about what is going to make you different than everyone else. You are NOT going to be able to eek out a living simply posting reviews of stuff. There are already too many big sites that do that. What are you going to add to the world?

To paraphrase my father (he was talking about research), if you're going to do something a lot of other people are already doing, you're either going to have to be better at it than everyone else (which is unlikely), or you're going to have to figure out what rule to break that everyone else is following.
 
computer hardware, not so much. maybe phones but i think that's pretty well saturated too.
 
www.SilentPCReview.com is a major tech site, but they still needed to sell vendor samples to help fund operations.

So: Unless your name is Anand, probably not. Expect to buy all of your own hardware at first, and possibly for a long time until you have a large enough readership to get loans of hardware for reviews. Even then your banner ads and Google adwords might not do much more than pay your web hosting costs.
 
Well, the impression I'm getting so far is that it's just north of crazy to attempt such a thing. I've never done anything in my life the easy way so this sounds good to me!

There's still people in the world that run out to try to be a rock star and actually succeed, so who knows. I'm not saying I'm a rock star of the tech world, but there are people that end up doing shows in bars, don't starve to death, and have a great time doing it. But, I guess I'll have to see where I end up.

I still have a lot of time before I'm done with school so there's plenty of time to come up with something unique (although I do have an idea or two rattling around in my noggin already).

One thing have going for me is that I'm a pretty good writer and I've been getting better at it since I started school (a lot faster than expected actually). I don't really bother in places like forums so don't use these posts to validate that statement (lol).

Another would be that I absolutely love this stuff. All I've done for the last 15 years is build, benchmark, overclock, and read about building, benchmarking and overclocking computers. It's been an all-consuming passion for me. I'm told that can go a long way.

If I end up attempting this and it doesn't pan out financially I'm pretty sure I'll have a great time doing it anyway. Wouldn't be the first time I've started a business and failed, but I'm told failure is the best teacher. I've certainly learned a lot from it, that's for damn sure.

Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
 
DixyCrat said:
https://itswadesh.wordpress.com/tag/billionaires/

based on that Anand makes, gross, 1.5 mill/ year; I'm sure it nets out to "good enough that he can do whatever else he loves"
Click to expand...

Taking the article with a HUGE grain of salt, I wonder what's left over when all the contributing staff are paid and all the other site expenses. Aside from the contributing editors I have a feeling Anand keeps a pretty spartan staff for everything else. Bandwidth is pretty cheap nowadays too. So yeah I can imagine having a very nice income left over. But I can also image there being lots of hidden costs I'm not thinking off that would nibble away at that. Either way I'd KILL to be making any kind of living doing what he does. : jealous:
 
I had a friend that had one of those hardware review sites. He didnt make any money but he got a lot of free stuff to review. Companies send him stuff so he can write a review on it, pros and cons...
 
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