I've got what I believe to be an awesome idea for a website...I'm going to just list some of the ideas/"problems" in list form to keep my thoughts more organized: - It's a borderline "adult" site. The niche is actually pretty tame and you could find plenty of it on non-adult related sites such as YouTube (my site won't be a video site, YouTube is just an example), but I'm thinking as far as advertising and affiliates go I'd want to aim for adult oriented products...if that makes sense at all. - The theme is a monthly contest for $1,000, the top submissions are voted upon by the user community and then the finalist is chosen by a group of judges. - I can get the site designed and coded on my own, but I will need sponsorship for at least the first cycle's prize money and also I plan on getting the word out by creating a (hopefully) viral video. I think I will need to pay a couple people to "act" in the video, I'm thinking $50-$100 per person should be enough incentive. I don't have much more money to put into it at this moment other than the cost of the domain and hosting. I'm pretty sure after the first monthly contest I will have enough through advertising to pay the prizes of future winners. Now then, that being said... I think this idea is good enough to interest advertisers enough to sponsor, but I'm wondering if I'm being too ambitious to hope they'd be willing to sponsor before launch. I'm just wondering how I should go about this: - Should I just ask around and see who's interested? - Should I be a little more professional about it and draft up some sort of "business plan" to show how I plan to bring traffic to the website? - It is ridiculous to think that advertisers will sponsor before a site owned by a small time webmaster launches? - Should I put up the site without sponsors and HOPE and pray that I get enough in profits to cover the prize money? - Or should I scrap the sponsorship idea altogether and put the site on a back burner until I've got all of the start-up cost out of my own pocket? Other thoughts? Ideas? Feedback? This is my first authored post at DP, be kind
Why don't you just finish the site and bring it here to show us, then ask for sponsorships. You will most likely not get a large amount of traffic on the first day of launch, especially if you do not market it. Just finish the site, then ask for sponsorships and then start the monthly contest! Just an idea!