Why I Started Pollyticks.com
February 11, 2007 by Blue Steel
Eight months ago I was looking for a way to earn a little extra money. I knew what I ultimately wanted was a way to earn a decent living working from home. I'd heard it said many times before that the best business ventures are ones in which you can do what you love. That got me thinking -- what do I love to do? I started a list.First thing at the top of my list was talking about politics. I absolutely loved discussing national politics. I can't tell you how many hours I spent in online forums and with emails to friends and family about American politics, so that went up at the top of my list.
Next on my list was browsing the web. I know, sounds silly, but I was trying to be honest with myself. I spent hours each day just browsing the web, reading articles about politics, news, computer gadgets, business -- you name it.
Some of the other things on my list were spending more time with my wife, being creative, being able to sleep in, traveling, and exercising in the mornings (when I usually have more energy).
Putting two and two together and this time coming up with four, I had a Eureka! moment. Talking about politics and browsing the web? Hmm... I know! What if I start a political website?
Then I recalled how some of the most fun I'd ever had discussing politics with people online started with a series of simple photo political cartoons I made a couple years ago using ComicLife, a program that came free with my last Apple Macintosh (Mac) computer. It was a comic book-style political cartoon parody made using images of political figures.
I pasted the images into comic panels (the boxes which house illustrations on a comic book page) and added dialogue bubbles using the tools provided in ComicLife. It was fun and easy to do, and the positive feedback I received for the cartoon, even from people I normally disagreed with politically, is something I'll never forget. I wish I still had a copy of that first political cartoon, but I deleted it out of my email sent folder after it was sent.
Recalling the fun I'd had making that first political cartoon, my idea for a political website evolved. Now, my site was going to feature my own daily political cartoons. Nevermind that I was never much good at drawing or art in general. It was fun and that's why I intended to do it.
Having started a few unsuccessful home-based businesses before (a pyramid scheme 11 years ago when I was 23, a freelance writing career, and a paid research service), I knew I didn't want to risk a lot of money in my next venture. It had to be something with very low up-front costs because then, way I saw it, any money earned would be profit. Of course, I didn't consider the cost of my time because ... I just didn't. In retrospect, perhaps I should have.
By no means a great artist, I immediately got to work trying to improve my artistic skills. I knew I wanted to use a computer for political cartoons, so I focussed my training on what I knew to be the industry standard image editing application, Adobe Photoshop. Not wanting to spend a dime, I settled on Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, a trimmed down version of the full Photoshop software. Elements normally runs about $70 from places like Best Buy and CompUSA but was free in my case as a copy was included with a $99 Graphire digital drawing tablet I'd purchased a few months earlier (with high hopes even then to learn how to draw).
I bought a couple mediocre Photoshop Elements books, ran through the tutorials included with the program and borrowed books from the library, but in the end the best instruction came from the first couple weeks using the program. Let me say this, though, I wholeheartedly recommend that people take advantage of any and all tutorials when they attempt to learn how to use a new piece of software. I'm a huge fan of tutorials. Most people don't enjoy reading manuals or printed instructions, but experience has taught me that some lessons are darn near impossible to figure out on your own. Sure, play around with the program, but don't completely ignore the documentation. A few minutes reading or running through a tutorial can and will save you many hours.
Right away, once I'd purchased a three-month web hosting plan through GoDaddy.com and installed the Nucleus content management system for the site, I started posting semi-daily entries. They started out as brief, semi-humorous observations about politics coupled with my political cartoons. Since then I've progressed to slightly longer semi-humorous observations about politics coupled with my political cartoons. I've come a long way.
Since I wanted to monetize my site, I found out that Google's Adsense program offered a great combination of simplicity and earnings potential. Every time a visitor clicked one of the Google text advertisements on the site, I'd earn a staggering 4-5 cents. At that rate, I knew I'd have that Ferrari in no time, give or take 20 years. I also tried out a few different affiliate programs, like Amazon.com and Linkshare, that let me place ads for companies like Netflix and Magazines.com and offer books and other items for sale through Amazon, right on Pollyticks.com.
I also intended to sell branded merchandise -- printed t-shirts, sweaters, coffee mugs, magnets, etc. -- so I looked into CafePress.com, a leading provider of on-demand printed merchandise, and created an account with them. CafePress is a lot of fun, free (unless you create a "pro" site, which offers more variety for $49/year), and a great way to sell branded merchandise if you're on a tight budget.
If you're thinking about starting your own political blog or site, let me give you one word of advice: patience. There's a reason it's a virtue. I've learned that it takes time to build a successful political website business, at least one heavily reliant on advertising revenue. I went into this trying to think of all the ways I could accelerate the process to fame and fortune. But, alas, it takes time, months -- no, years to build a successful web business. Understanding how the major search engines like Google and Yahoo work is a huge challenge, but through applying what I've learned so far, traffic to the site (and advertising revenue) has steadily climbed by between 10-20 percent per month. It's still not a lot, but it's rising, steadily.
How much can you expect to earn from your political blog or site? Well, that depends. What's your idea? Is there a large enough market for it? Who are your customers? Will you sell merchandise of some kind, a service, advertising, or a combination of all three? Just as important is how you promote your site. I spend almost as much time promoting pollyticks -- asking for link exchanges with other website owners, posting links to the site on related forums and blogs, and any paid advertising if you have the budget for it -- than I spend on content and political cartoons. In total it's 2-3 hours per day. In my case, I'm earning about $100/month from the site (as of Feb. 11, 2007), still a far cry from being able to retire from my day job, but I'm confident now that if I continue my efforts, that amount should continue to grow by the same 10-20 percent per month I've seen since last May.
And the idea is only part of the puzzle. In my case, it was even less than I thought it would be. The old "If you build it, they will come" idea does work for websites, but here's the catch: they won't come overnight. Sure, they'll come, but odds are it'll take months and months of hard work before they find you.
In other words, it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. Drat!