12個月打造估值上千萬的公司,只需要這9步!
你當然想過,我也想過。但我很懶,而且我還總是很自私地希望有人教我如何開始——最好再傳授我一套按部就班走向成功的訣竅。我還幻想過得到某種能幫我獲得巨大財富的路線圖。 然而,這些年我開始認識到,根本沒有這樣的路線圖,也不存在成功創業的模式。 不過,那些都只是我之前的想法,一周前我認識了威廉,他是我見過最有意思的企業家。 威廉創辦的是我們都知道卻又不承認用過的——吸引大量點擊的高訪問量網站。實際上,他手上有很多這種網站。 他經營最成功一些網站已經價值上百萬美元,而啟動資金只需要5000美元,花費時間也只用幾個月,而且他用的都是同樣的模式。 順便說一下,威廉不是他的真實姓名。他要我對姓名保守秘密。不過,除了姓名之外我都會如實轉述。 我會從我收到他的第一封電郵開始介紹,這樣大家就會明白我是為什么會驚訝的…… 電郵內容 寄件人:一個我們之前從未見過的很隨意的電郵地址 你好, 我這幾個月一直在看貴網站The Hustle,真的很喜歡你們的工作。既然你們還在擴大業務,或許我能提供一些幫助? 我創辦過很多網站,其中不少市值上百萬美元。我對數字媒體幾乎沒什么經驗,也沒有為自己的網站生產任何內容。我創造了一種嚴重依賴Facebook的模式,幫助我確認應該成立什么樣的網站,并且在網站上線開始運營后導入大量流量。 舉個例子,我最成功的網站之一大概一年前上線。 上線以來,網站的頁面瀏覽量累計超過1億次, 獨立訪問用戶1300萬,僅上月就有350萬獨立用戶。我沒有市場團隊和銷售團隊,也沒有外部投資。這個網站的全職員工總共就兩人,一個是編輯,另一個是我的助手。我信賴你們的產品,想幫一幫你們。你們有沒有社交團隊,想不想聽聽建議? 我就住在貴司附近,我樂意親自上門和社交團隊交流。你們干得很棒,希望保持下去。 祝好, 威廉 好吧,這封郵件看起來明顯是胡說八道。 寫信的人碰巧住在“附近”,而且還有一套能賺百萬美元的秘訣。最重要的是,他提到的數字高得要命。 有些人可能不熟悉網站流量指標,我來說明一下,一家成立才一年的網站能破億網頁瀏覽量,每月用戶350萬人,這簡直是逆天的成績,更何況還沒有外部投資。 比較一下,美國知名科技財經網站Business Insider花了一年時間才首次達到月度100萬訪客的水平,而威廉的網站上個月就有350萬獨立訪客了。 Business Insider目前有7000萬月度用戶,300多名員工,最近以接近5億美元的價格出售了。 大家聽說過網站BuzzFeed嗎? 上線兩年后,BuzzFeed月均用戶也不過70萬,眼下市值將近20億美元。 雖然懷疑威廉的說辭有假,但他確實吸引了我的注意。假如他郵件中說的并非虛言,我不但想要他提供建議,還想了解他創業的故事。 于是,我回復郵件約他見面。 會面 威廉幾天后造訪我們的辦公室。他挺和善,講話帶著濃重的荷蘭口音,留著一頭沖浪者風格的發型。 我們聊了幾分鐘威廉的童年(他15歲在阿姆斯特丹上高中時輟學,做了一名音樂主持人和工作經歷(有段時間他專門操辦組織派對),以及他怎么聽說我們網站(去年他參加了我們為非科技業初創公司舉辦的會議Hustle Con)。 短暫的寒暄和了解結束后,我沒有浪費什么時間,直奔重點。 看看流量數字到底真的假的! 威廉登陸了谷歌的網站流量分析工具Google Analytics,立即證明了之前我以為不可能實現、或者至少是夸大其辭的數字并非虛報。 破億的頁面瀏覽量?看看下圖是不是。 網站上線一年后擁有350萬月度訪客?查一查就知道。 威廉用Excel表格做了這張月活躍用戶數據表給我看。 然后我們開始談起營業收入。和我期待的一樣,威廉相當坦誠。他每月投入3萬美元,盈利22萬美元。由于廣告是主要收入來源,從網站流量來看,這說得通。 22萬美元一個月的利潤看上去有點高,但只要用簡單的數學運算就能證明并不夸張。 2015年,該網站展示廣告的平均CPM(每千人成本)為2.8美元。用戶突破1億之后,每條廣告的年度CPM超過了28萬美元(折算月均23美元)。 而且威廉在每個頁面都投入了多個廣告,還在用電郵發布的通訊里出售廣告空間(這么做利潤高得多),又只有兩名全職員工,威廉的盈利無疑很高。 秘訣 我問威廉的最后一個問題是“秘訣”。他起初在自己的電郵里提到過,此后又提到幾次,可我需要更多的細節。 他說,賺錢的秘訣是他剛開始成立幾個網站之后創造的,稱得上是無心插柳。剛開始,他對數字媒體知之甚少,完全依靠對Facebook的了解起步。 威廉堅信摸索出的秘訣有效,自稱成立的所有價值百萬美元網站都運用了這一模式。 可他也一直認為,自己取得成功靠的是辛苦工作,就算將秘訣公之于眾也不太擔心別人山寨。 于是,我問他愿不愿意和大家分享模式。 女士們先生們……以下就是威廉創造百萬美元生意的奇跡模式: 第一步:選十個小眾市場 這些市場必須面向有激情、愿意投入的客戶群。威廉列舉了一些有這類特征的客戶群,比如綜合格斗的粉絲、電子競技迷,以及熱門美劇《權力的游戲》的觀眾。 威廉過去嘗試過針對某些群體但最終失敗,包括摔跤比賽愛好者、說唱樂迷和熱心政治的人。失敗的原因包括用戶參與度不夠,市面上同質化網站太多等等。 第二步:給每個市場做一個Facebook粉絲主頁 打廣告買Facebook點贊數。 比方說,你選擇綜合格斗的粉絲作為目標客戶,主頁就應該起名為“MMA粉絲”或者比較通用一些名稱。 威廉對每個小眾市場都投入約200美元,但具體投入多少資金不是重點,只要保證對各市場持續投入就行。 為什么?因為在這個過程里你要只需要找出“贏家”,也就是找到某個用戶參與度最高、獲取點贊成本最少的市場。威廉說,如果不超過5美分就能買到點贊,這個市場就很可能有利可圖。而他獲利最多的網站只需要1美分就能贏得點贊。 第三步:把別人的內容轉貼到自己的網頁 既然還屬于“實驗階段”,也就沒必要放上什么有突破性的內容。事實上,只要把類似網頁的內容直接盜用過來即可。威廉一開始就是這么做的。 “剛開始做網站的Facebook主頁時,我的英語還不夠好,沒法自己寫說明。更大的問題是,我并不真正了解目標客戶群。所以,我會照類似的Facebook粉絲專頁,看哪些帖子受歡迎,然后直接拷貝過來,貼在我的主頁上?!?/p> 第四步:選一個市場“贏家”,買下域名,通過博客平臺WordPress創建網站 這一步要讓創業開始成型。你已經能選定市場,現在需要的只是一個網站,把文章都貼在上面。 威廉對搭建網站不是很在行。幸運的是,這也有模式可循?!艾F如今,成立并經營一家網站再簡單不過。登陸域名注冊網站GoDaddy買一個域名,那里的域名支持WordPress的主機空間。主機空間服務每月要花5美元。GoDaddy會提供支持WordPress網站的環境。” “然后就去交易網站主題的平臺www.themeforest.net,選一個喜歡的‘主題’,費用在40到60美元不等。我通常會去自由職業者服務的市場Upwork或者Elance,請一位收費較低的開發者幫我安裝主題,做好網站上線的準備工作。” 第五步:請一位編輯,開始每天貼兩三篇文章 威廉在Upwork上聘請了一位編輯。 這是一個全職崗位,但可以遠程工作(在他最新成立的網站,那位全職編輯本人住在紐約。)。 網站運營之初,要做的只是尋找能盡量吸引最多點擊的內容。 “我之前通過觀察其他Facebook粉絲專頁找出那些內容做得好。和這種做法類似,我會搜索其他網站,挑出其中點擊量最高的文章,然后把鏈接發給編輯,讓他寫一篇同樣題材的文章。編輯有時會親自操刀,也可能把分派給在Upwork網站找活的自由撰稿人?!?/p> 初步計劃是每天發布兩三篇文章,所有文章都要在Facebook粉絲專頁分享。 “一開始生產內容,你就要保證安裝了Google Analytics,這樣能查看各篇文章的點擊量。不要只看某個頁面的點擊量,要留意訪客在該頁面逗留多久,以及瀏覽內容以后是直接關閉網站頁面,還是點擊其他文章的鏈接。數據會告訴你讀者喜歡什么內容?!?/p> 第六步:創建(如果這類頁面不存在)或者購買(如果有現成頁面出售)更有針對性的Facebook粉絲專頁 這無疑是最重要的一步。走到這一步意味著,地基已經打好,要建房了。 “我說‘更有針對性的’Facebook粉絲專頁,意思是在你服務的整個市場之中更細分的小眾市場。比如你創建了一個罪案類電視劇粉絲的網站,你就會想推出或者(從現有網頁所有者手中)買下頁面,專門面向《犯罪現場調查》、《法律與秩序》等大熱劇的劇迷。” 雖然我不能透露威廉最成功的那些網站到底叫什么名字,也不能告訴大家針對哪些市場,但我可以說那些網站相當于不僅擁有《犯罪現場調查》和《法律與秩序》粉絲頁面,還囊括其他每部罪案電視劇的粉絲頁面。 以下是威廉所做的更有“針對性”的一個粉絲專頁。 這個客戶群分享的所有鏈接都將用戶導向威廉的網站,而這只是小眾市場里多個頁面之一,所以威廉的網站吸引巨大的流量的潛力就顯而易見了。 別忘了,最初的測試已經證明這些粉絲很有激情,參與度高。那么應該相信他們會點擊這些鏈接。 我問威廉,能不能看一下實時流量,以便了解這種Facebook模式有多大的威力。 如下圖所示,在網站的2224名訪客之中,有1673人由Facebook引導而來(占比約75%)。 全年的流量來源看來也和實時來源相似。 第七步:聘請自由職業者加快生產內容 “有了我自己控制的Facebook粉絲專頁之后,最重要的就是提供足夠的內容滿足用戶的需求。” 為此,威廉聘請了自由職業撰稿人。 撰稿人寫每篇文章收10美元,單篇文章的篇幅必須不少于350字,目標是每天發布30篇文章。 第八步:培養自給自足的系統,開始將網站的盈利用于自身發展。 將網站展示廣告獲得的收入用于購買Facebook的廣告。通過廣告吸引更多客戶加入Facebook粉絲專頁,為網站帶來更多的流量,進一步提高廣告收入,然后再用將廣告收入買Facebook的廣告。 第九步:離開Facebook之后如何成長 “沒有模式能一成不變,這種策略也不例外。就像谷歌按點擊付費的在線廣告Google Adwords一樣,Facebook廣告的成本也會上升到一定水平,屆時這種策略就沒法盈利了。因此,要創建一個電郵發件名錄,并且在生產內容時考慮到SEO(搜索引擎優化)。當現有模式不能持續時,這兩種方法還是能保證盈利。否則更簡單,在模式失效賣掉網站?!?/p> “一般等到Facebook模式無法帶來增長時,我的網站已經很值錢了。” 經驗教訓 Facebook剛剛修改了動態消息的演算法,這已經不是秘密??赡芙窈筮€會改。此舉說明,像威廉那樣依靠外部平臺推動流量存在風險,很可能這種模式的好日子已經過去了。 但這篇文章討論的不是賺錢模式,不是嗎?核心是威廉。 這篇文章的重點是一個人創建了大多數人都覺得很低級,一點也不重要的網站。而他卻憑借這種網站累積了巨大財富。我發現他的職業道德和思維方式很吸引人。我甚至有些希望過那種生活。 同時,機械地開拓業務不太像我喜歡創業方式。也許我更喜歡有創意的創業方式,總是執行沒法給我帶來想出新點子的快感。又或者我只是討厭一味吸引點擊量的網站。 且不論我喜不喜歡,至少威廉的故事已經證明,賺百萬美元未必需要多么天才的創意。有時,你需要的只是一個可操作的流程。一切都從邁出第一步開始。(財富中文網) 譯者:Pessy 校對:夏林 |
Of course you have. Me too. But I’m lazy. And selfishly, I’ve always hoped someone would give me the formula for getting started — a recipe to follow, step-by-step. I’ve dreamed of being shown some kind of a roadmap to millions. However, over the years I began to realize that there is no roadmap. The formula for building a successful business doesn’t exist. That is, until a week ago, when I was introduced to William, one of the most interesting business owners I’ve ever met. William is the founder of something we all know about but refuse to admit we use: a clickbait website. In fact, he’s started multiple. His most successful sites are worth millions of dollars, they only require $5k (and a couple months of William’s time) to launch, and are built using the same exact formula. William isn’t his real name, by the way. He asked that I keep that a secret. But everything else he told me, I’m telling you. I’ll begin with the first email I received from him, which as you will see, took me by surprise… The email From: A totally random email we had never seen before Hello, I’ve been reading The Hustle for months and really love what you guys are doing. As you continue to grow your business, perhaps I could be of assistance? I’ve started numerous websites, many of which are worth millions of dollars. I have very little experience in digital media and produce none of the content on my websites myself. Instead, I have developed a formula, which relies heavily on Facebook, that helps me identify the right types of websites to build and drives lots of traffic to them once they’re up and running. As an example, one of my most successful websites was launched approximately a year ago. Since then, I’ve had over 100 million pageviews and 13 million unique users. Last month I had 3.5 million uniques alone. I have no marketing team, no sales team, and no investment money. A total of two people are employed full-time for this site. One is an editor and the other is my assistant. I really believe in your product and would love to help you guys. Do you have a social team that would want some advice? I live nearby so I’d love to come in and meet the team. Keep up the great work. Best, William Alright, so obviously this reeked of bullshit. The guy happened to live “nearby” and had a formula for making millions of dollars. Worst of all, the numbers were outlandishly high. For those unfamiliar with web traffic metrics, 100+ million total pageviews and 3.5 million monthly users a year after launching is insane, especially with no investment. As a comparison, it took Business Insider over a year to reach its first one million monthly users (again, last month William had 3.5 million). Business Insider now has 70 million users a month, 300+ employees, and recently sold for close to $500 million. Ever heard of BuzzFeed? Two years after launching, BuzzFeed was averaging just700k monthly users. Now it’s worth close to $2 billion. So, despite being suspicious of William’s claims, he had certainly caught my attention. If this guy was telling the truth, not only did I want his advice, but also his story. I wrote back, telling him I’d love to meet. The meeting William came to our office a few days later. He was a nice guy, with a thick Dutch accent and great surfer-style hair. We talked for a few minutes about William’s childhood (he dropped out of high school in Amsterdam at 15 to become a DJ), his past work experience (he was a party planner for years), and how he had heard about us (he attended Hustle Con last year). After the small talk ended, I wasted very little time in getting to the good stuff. Let’s see those traffic numbers! William logged into Google Analytics and instantly confirmed what I thought was impossible, or at least an exaggeration. 100+ million pageviews? Check. 3.5 million monthly users a year after launch? Check. William converted MAU data from Excel to create this graph for me Then we started talking about revenue. As I’d come to expect, William was incredibly transparent. Each month, he invests $30k into the business and makes $220k in profit. Advertisements are his main revenue stream, which would make sense considering the traffic numbers. And while $220k a month seemed a little high at first, some simple math proved it was actually quite realistic. The average CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) for display ads in 2015 was $2.80. With 100+ million users, that’s over $280k annually from one ad alone (and $23k per month). Considering he features multiple ads on each page, sells ad space on his email newsletter (which is much more lucrative), and only has two full-time employees to pay, William’s numbers add up. The formula The final question I had for William was about “the formula.” He had initially mentioned it in his email and it had come up a few times since, but I needed more details. He said this formula was something he had created, almost unintentionally, after starting his first few websites. He knew very little about digital media in those early days, relying entirely on his understanding of Facebook FB -0.14% instead. He was adamant about its effectiveness and said that every million-dollar website he had created was started using the formula. But he also maintained that it was his own hard work that led to his success and that he wasn’t too worried about copycats if he were to divulge the recipe. So, I asked him if he would. Ladies and gentlemen… the pathway to millions: Step 1: Select 10 niche markets The groups of people must be passionate and engaged. Some examples William gave were MMA fans, eSports fans, and people who watch Game of Thrones. A few that he had tried in the past that hadn’t ended up working out included wrestling fans, hip-hop fans, and politics. Reasons for failure included lack of engagement and too many existing websites serving the same purpose. Step 2: Create a Facebook Fan Page for each market Start advertising in order to buy Facebook likes. For instance, if you chose MMA fans as your target demographic, the page should be called, “Fans of MMA” or something just as non-specific. William spends around $200 on each niche market, but the number doesn’t matter so long as you keep it consistent across the board. Why? Because all you’re doing here is trying to identify your “winner,” which is whatever niche market produces the highest engagement and lowest cost of likes. William said that it’s a great sign if you’re able to buy likes for under five cents. However, his most profitable site was able to buy likes for a penny. Step 3: Post other people’s content on your pages Since this is still the “testing phase,” your content doesn’t need to be groundbreaking. In fact, feel free to straight up steal it from similar pages if you want. That’s what William did initially. “When I first started doing this, I didn’t speak English well enough to make my own captions. On top of that, it wasn’t like I really knew anything about the groups of fans I was targeting. So, I would find similar Facebook Fan Pages, see which posts were doing well, copy them exactly, and post them in mine.” Step 4: Pick a winner, buy a domain, and build the WordPress site Here’s where things start to take shape. You’ve selected the market you’re going to create content for, now all you need is the website where you’ll be posting your articles. William doesn’t know much about building websites. Thankfully, there’s a formula for that, too. “Getting a website up and running is incredibly easy nowadays – and cheap. Go to GoDaddy and buy a domain name, which comes with WordPress hosting. It’s like $5 a month. GoDaddy installs WordPress for you.” “Then, go to a site like www.themeforest.net and pick out a ‘theme’ that you like. These cost anywhere from $40 to $60. I’ll usually hire a developer for cheap on Upwork or Elance to install the theme and get the site ready for launch.” Step 5: Hire an editor and start posting 2-3 articles per day William uses Upwork to hire an editor. This is a full-time position but can be done remotely (the editor for his newest site is based out of New York). In the beginning, it’s all about finding the type of content that gets the most clicks. “Similarly to the way I look at other Facebook Fan Pages to see what content is doing well, I’ll research other websites and pick their best-performing articles. Then I send the links to my editor and tell them to write an article on the same exact topic. She’ll write the article, or she’ll assign it to one of her Upwork writers.” The expectation is 2-3 articles per day to start, all shared on the Facebook Fan Page. “Once you start producing content, make sure you have Google Analytics installed so you can see how certain articles are performing. Don’t just look at the number of clicks to a specific page. Look at how long users are on the page and whether or not they click to another page or leave the site. Let the data speak to what the readers like.” Step 6: Create (if they don’t exist) or buy (if they do) more targeted Facebook Fan Pages This is, without a doubt, the most crucial step. The foundation has been laid, now it’s time to build the house. “When I say ‘more targeted’ Facebook Fan Pages, I mean more specific niches within the overall market you’re serving. For example, if you’ve created a website for fans of crime TV shows, you want to start creating or buying (from current owners) the pages for fans of CSI, Law & Order, etc.” Though I can’t divulge the name of William’s most successful website or the market it caters to, I can tell you that it’s comparable to someone owning the fan pages for not only CSI and Law & Order fans, but of every single crime show on television. Here’s an example of one of William’s more “targeted” fan pages: Every link shared in this group leads back to William’s site. It’s also one of many within this niche market, so the potential for huge traffic numbers is abundantly clear. And remember, the original test was to prove that these fans are passionate and engaged. So, you better believe they’re clicking on the links. I asked if we could take a look at real-time traffic to see just how powerful this Facebook model was. As you can see, 1,673 out of the 2,224 people on the site had arrived via Facebook (roughly 75%). The traffic sources over the course of a full year looked similar: Step 7: Hire freelancers to ramp up content production “Once I have the Facebook Fan Pages under my control, the most important thing is to provide enough content to satisfy people’s needs.” To do this, William hires freelance writers. Each writer is paid $10 per article and each article must be at least 350 words. The goal is 30 articles per day in total. Step 8: Start investing money back into the business in order to build a self-sustaining ecosystem Invest money from display ads on the website into buying Facebook advertisements. As more people join the Facebook Fan Pages via these ads, more traffic comes to the site and more ad revenue is generated, which is then invested back into Facebook advertisements. Step 9: Life after Facebook “Nothing lasts forever and this strategy is no exception. Just like with Google Adwords, the cost of Facebook Ads will increase to a point where this strategy simply does not work anymore. So building an email list and thinking about SEO when crafting content is important, and both will be beneficial when that day arrives. Or you could always sell your site before that happens.” “By the time this Facebook model becomes ineffective for growth, my websites are normally worth a good deal of money.” Takeaway It’s no secret that Facebook just changed its News Feed algorithm — and probably will again in the future. This illustrates the danger in relying on an outside platform to drive traffic like William does, and most likely means that this formula has already seen its best days. But this story isn’t about the formula, is it? It’s about William. It’s about a guy who creates websites that most of us ignore because they look sleazy and aren’t something to be proud of. However, he is making massive amounts of money doing it and I find his work ethic and mindset to be fascinating. Part of me wants to live that life. At the same time, building businesses in machine-like fashion just doesn’t seem like something I’d enjoy doing. Perhaps I’m more of the creative type and just don’t get the same thrill out of execution that I do from generating new ideas. Or maybe I just hate clickbait sites. Regardless, William’s story proves that you don’t need some genius idea to make millions of dollars. Sometimes, all you need is a process. And it all starts with Step #1. |