Stock Advise Website?

[kiddokid]

Hello Friends:
This is my first day and first post on this forum...

I am thinking of starting a paid membership stock advisory website which will also contain a forum and stock idea contests etc...

I don't know any programming and technical things and will definitely ask someone to make the whole website for me.
But what kind of things I might encounter on day to day basis ? what kind of costs I have to keep in mind once the website is launched?
I will be highly thankful to you if you can educate me in this regard. I have seen some books on amazon but nothing specific to this type of website. Any book you can recommend will also be highly appreciated.
Hope to hear soon from you
Thanks a million:):):)

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum kiddokid. Do you mind describing a little more what you're planning for the site. The technical details will come out of what your plan is. I think I know what you're trying to do, but more detail could be helpful. If I'm understanding right you'll be creating articles to give out advice as well as having a forum where members can post and interact with you and each other.

If it were me I'd set that up using WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), which will work to publish your articles. Technically they'd be published as blog posts. There are a series of membership plugins that can be installed to keep some or all of your content behind the paywall. You can also set things up so some of the content is public with the rest on the membership side. There are also forum plugins that can be installed that work with both WordPress and the membership plugin. People will be able to login once and have access to the paid content as well as the forum.

There are other content management systems that will also be able to do the same either built in or through additional plugins. Drupal (http://drupal.org/) is another that comes to mind. WordPress will likely be the easiest to use, though you may end up preferring one of the other systems.

As far as cost is concerned you'll need.

1. Domain - about $10 a year
2. Hosting - $5-10 a month for shared hosting, $50 - $100 a month for a virtual private server, and say $200 a month and up for a dedicated server. You'll probably be fine on shared hosting at first, though you'll want to move up as your membership increases.
3. Software - WordPress is free as are the forum plugins. Most membership plugins will run about $100 as a one time fee
4. Web design/development - Sounds like you're looking to hire someone to do all the technical work. Prices will vary based on who you hire and what you ultimately need done. I wouldn't choose someone by price though. Choose someone you trust and think you'll be able to work well with as this person will be responsible for much of the success of the site.

There will also be costs to market the site. Marketing is an ongoing costs and how much will depend on a number of factors. Again I wouldn't hire someone here based on price alone.

I'm assuming you'll be the one creating content for the site, though you could also hire that out. You'll want someone (probably you at first) to moderate your forums.

Anything specific you want to know in addition to the above?

[billbenson]

There are several aspects to a website:

Is it pretty
Will landing pages create a sale (you didn't say how you want to use the site to create revenue)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Getting you good search engine placement on Google and other search engines
Marketing and Sales - this is partially included in the above, but a business site frequently is for the purpose of making you money
Graphics; Videos...
Custom Stuff: lets say every time an event happens on the stock market you want a pop up to show on your screen, or something else unique. That means custom programming.
Knowledge of your industry
Do you want to use a standard CMS as Vangogh suggested in WordPress above or do you need a custom website.



You won't find a web designer that can provide you all of the above. There are things I'm sure I didn't mention as well. IMO marketing is the most important thing for a website. I have an ugly website, but it sells a lot. There are a lot of pretty sites that don't make any money.

Unfortunately it takes time and research to come up with what you really need. I frequently suggest people make a hobby site and try to get it into the top 5 on google as a learning process. That takes time though.What works best for most people is a CMS site like WordPress. Beyond that is somone that can modify the code so it does what you need. The web designer may have the skills to modify the code or he may have programmers he uses for such tasks. After that, quality content that sells the client ie "call to action". That could again be another person the designer knows.

A web based business isn't usually cheap, quick, or easy. Just about everything that you might try that will make you money will take time to learn and perfect. A web site is no different.

[kiddokid]

Thanks a lot vangogh and billbenson for your precious advice.
I have a few more questions here.
once the website is done and launched, the technical expenses to maintain it will increase according to the number of paid members OR according to the number of visitors(and I guess there will be many unpaid visitors)

If I want to tell my paid members about particular stocks to buy, what is the right way to go: send them in email to paid members or show them on my website?

Is it a good idea to keep the forum to be read by any visitor, while posting something for only paid members OR hide the forum completely and keep everything for paid members only?

If I want to give an online newsletter to anyone who registers(lets say if they register they can read few articles free), then what type of newsletter can be sent to these free visitors?

Thanks a lot once again ...

[Business Attorney]

My own feeling is that your website itself should be open to as many people as possible. It is part of your marketing strategy. As for the information for paid members, I think if you are recommending timely investments, members will expect emails as well as a member-only area of the site. People will not want to have to log in daily or even more often to make sure they don't miss an investment recommendation that they are paying for.

[vangogh]

I agree with David. Your site is going to be a great marketing tool so you want to keep some things free. Not everything, but definitely some things. You may want to search for other sites doing similar things to what you're doing and see how they go about it. Until you've shown over time that stocks you recommend are worth buying it's unlikely people are going to pay to find out who you recommend. Running a free blog will probably help you market the site and attract and audience, some of whom would go on to become members of the pay site.

As you grow there will likely be some added expense. For one you're going to want to upgrade the hosting as I mentioned in my post above. When you'd need to do that isn't something we can tell you in advance, however I'd say buy the best hosting you can afford. Also as you have more members and non-members they're going to expect the site to be working. Everyone will accept some problems here and there, but if the site is always having issues people aren't going to want to pay to members. You won't necessarily need to spend more to maintain the site, but you'll probably want to spend more to make sure the site is running well at all times.

[merlot105]

I think with something like this you need to establish trust from the get-go. I invest in stocks, too, but why should i truly believe that you know more about stocks than I do. For this reason, I suggest a big part of your site needs to be examples of what you've done for other people, reviews & testimonials. Show us that you have a proven track record. It's not so much that you have a nice site (although, that wouldn't hurt), it's more about establishing trust and proving that you are an authority in your field.

[vangogh]

Yep, trust will be huge. People will probably need to seem some kind of experience and examples that you know what you're doing. You'll probably need something like a blog that talks about the market and over time people will be able to follow and see if you're right more than your wrong.

[billbenson]

Yep, trust will be huge. People will probably need to seem some kind of experience and examples that you know what you're doing. You'll probably need something like a blog that talks about the market and over time people will be able to follow and see if you're right more than your wrong.

Well depends. If its a one stop shopping site for information that is available elsewhere it will have credibility because the only value added is convenience. As time goes on and you get frequent visitors, you can add your own unique content.

Is it a copyright violation to put another site in an iframe on your site - cnn finance for example?

[vangogh]

I don't think you automatically get credibility just because you have the same information available everywhere else. If everyone offers the same thing I would think most people would choose based on brand recognition. In this case it sounds like the plan is to put most everything behind a paywall. I can't imagine many people handing over their money to find out if what's behind the paywall is useful. I think it would be important upfront to offer some free content and then that content would need to display some expertise on the subject.


Is it a copyright violation to put another site in an iframe on your site - cnn finance for example?

Good question. I would think it would be, though you see it done all the time. I'm pretty sure if you're doing it the site in question could force you to stop. Regardless it's easy to prevent with a single line of javascript so I wouldn't recommend anyone build a business around putting other people's content in an iframe