Starting from nothing - The Weed journy

[T J Tutor]

Appreciate that, you got me exited with those names! thats the plan, get the user base and get the bigger guys over later, I'm setting it up to get some beta users over to help build the content of the site, I'm giving them some branded goodies plus a life time membership (t-shirt, grinder and some other things i'm not quiet sure on).

For the component i use, i use Joomla 3.x for the CMS i don't have one plugin for the memberships, its based on the components i've chosen, so for example the Social platform is Jomsocial, the recipe management is Yoorecipe, the reveiws section is Jreviews, the e-learning platform is Guru from Ijoomla, each component allows you to have a paid access level to certain aspects and they each have there payement system.

How have your continuity Sites treated you?

thanks again for the advice

I had a love affair with Joomla a few years back. I did a couple of continuity sites with it and loved the flexibility. Joomla can be demanding and it was overkill for the sites I had it on. I switched to WP with S2Member in 2010 and have been pleased. My niches are small and exclusive to professionals in several different fields at the moment. If I was in bigger niches I would likely re-evaluate my platform and look to something more robust.

On average, continuity sites are very evergreen when groomed and nurtured on a daily basis with new content, guests, featured products and syndication. I have found these four elements to be a strong foundation. I have three new continuity sites launching New Years week.

I've considered the pot industry. It has a great deal of merit, and in Spain, the U.S., Canada, and many parts of Europe, the field is exploding.

Sounds like you have a good handle, except the disturbing statement you've made about no end goal to your plan. Honestly, before you take another step, take a few days and design a plan with specific goals and dates they must be completed. You have to have a plan, a schedule, and expect to modify them as you progress. This is extremely important. If you don't know where you are going, you can't get there!

 

[storytellingmedia]

Man you are on the right track. This industry is extremely profitable and only from advertising contracts you could earn a lot.

I have some experience with Joomla, let me know if you need help on the tech side.

Appreciate the kind words, I'm trying to take over the MJ niche ;-) but going up against Leafly and Weedmaps or 420careers ain't gonna be a walk in the park ^^. appreciate the hand, but I have a team of developers thanks. Yeah advertisement is a no brainier hope to be able to test a few things with some affiliates to make sure targeting and stuff are working correctly, not quiet there yet, but its in the pipe line concentrating on content and usability at the moment which as you know, with joomla is a freaking nightmare with so many things to think about, publishing what module on what page, making the menus groups and items, taking me for ever ha. so yeah hopefully soon i'll be asking for a helping hand but more on the advertisement and testing of the site.

best

 

[storytellingmedia]

I had a love affair with Joomla a few years back. I did a couple of continuity sites with it and loved the flexibility. Joomla can be demanding and it was overkill for the sites I had it on. I switched to WP with S2Member in 2010 and have been pleased. My niches are small and exclusive to professionals in several different fields at the moment. If I was in bigger niches I would likely re-evaluate my platform and look to something more robust.

On average, continuity sites are very evergreen when groomed and nurtured on a daily basis with new content, guests, featured products and syndication. I have found these four elements to be a strong foundation. I have three new continuity sites launching New Years week.

I've considered the pot industry. It has a great deal of merit, and in Spain, the U.S., Canada, and many parts of Europe, the field is exploding.

Sounds like you have a good handle, except the disturbing statement you've made about no end goal to your plan. Honestly, before you take another step, take a few days and design a plan with specific goals and dates they must be completed. You have to have a plan, a schedule, and expect to modify them as you progress. This is extremely important. If you don't know where you are going, you can't get there!

Yeah i've always been a Joomla guy, i always see things in big, and Joomla for expansion and a solid foundation is great, I use it for all my clients.

Yeah content at the moment is what i'm getting behind on i've got the news hub posting automatically for me but, i need to put more of a priority on it and start filling up the reviews area.

I may not have made my self clear, i do have a plan, i have many plans for the site from branded hemp clothing and smoking accessories to advertisement, affiliate links in the reviews area and a mobile app on the way. my question was more of a should the site information be freely available to members or should it be on lock down? with a membership. if any one has experience with either what worked best for them Free or membership

For the time being every thing will be free and open, I'm thinking 12-18 months down the line, Its two different audiences that i need to figure out so i can attack it hard. I don't want to start having teenagers on here because its free and they can click the I'm 21 button. on the other hand free might allow the movement to move quicker

 

[storytellingmedia]

Quick new update on how i plan on making some money,

I've been looking at Udemy E-learning platform, they offer there instructors 50% of the value of their course, my e-learning platform allows me to set commissions for the teachers so i'm going to add that to a way of making some cash.

I think the site will be free for all to sign up, and then make money off the different sections of the site, like the careers section you will need to buy credits or a package to post for 30 days or whats ever then for the Reviews/recipes area, you can pay to get things featured.

lander are coming along, hardest is actually having an idea to start with for the landing page guys to work with, but they are awesome and nice and patient with me, just got the first draft for each profile type lander made it easier for me to visualise some thing to work on working on modifying them.

Got myself an x-mas present Macbook pro 15 inch 2.2 Sufficient for the time being, trying to get use to apple but i like so far ;-) any how... mmm what else, oh yeah hemp textile supplier got back to me with some prices, so as i'm asking them to produce the t-shirt for me, (no way i'm sowing my own t-shirts from 1000 yards of fibre or what ever the min is) Min order for the custom t-shirts are 1200 pieces dived up into the 3 colours and 5 sizes it works out to be about 8$ a t-shirt... if i had a capital and i had my E-shop up i would defiantly buy but as i don't have the cash and my e-commerce isn't up yet i'm Not sure right now how i'm gonna do this i can by 150 t-shirts with out design for 9$ a piece and then see if its worth investing in a tee printer.

well i think thats it for the time being

Keep blazing, and never forget, your mind is the only limitation to the goals you want to accomplish there is always a way to where you want to go, either presented as a shortcut or as a long way round, either way you get to the end at some point. Failure is only a fallen tree in the road its up to you to clear it and carry on going.

 

[chazten]

YEP! If you are doing memberships or any other type of continuity site, then offer a free lifetime membership for the level 0 membership and start asking them what they want. Try out their recommendations.Tell them they are the BETA Team and you will reward the first #XX X with an upgrade top level 2 or 3 for their input when you go live with the official launch. This works like magic. They will be a cornerstone for you. You can do this several times over the years as you add new paid levels. Remember, you are doing this for them, not the other way around. They must believe this!

Continuity sites are awesome when they spring into action for you. You continue to build audience and expansiveness and depth to these sites over time. Remember that syndication of your content in this field of MJ is a great and open field. Once you get a decent audience (membership), then the guys like Big Mike at Advanced Nutrients the authors at 420 Magazine, et al, will gladly help you with interviews and content.

BTW, which platform are you using? I've put S2Member on WP with a VPS for most of my continuity sites.

This Big Mike guy, does he run an affiliate program with his nutrients? I checked the site but didnt see anything. I have a site in this niche and if he has nutrient affiliate products that would help me out greatly.

 

[T J Tutor]

This Big Mike guy, does he run an affiliate program with his nutrients? I checked the site but didnt see anything. I have a site in this niche and if he has nutrient affiliate products that would help me out greatly.

At this time Advanced Nutrients only has authorized retailers as far as I know. However, he does guest posting, guest appearances, and has been a guest on several pod casts in the past. He isn't the only one. It may be beneficial for you to contact him, and the many others in the field, once you have your site up as these guys are in the middle of a "full charge" to legalize MJ world wide and they love well informed and well positioned individuals and companies to join them in the charge on legalization.

 

[storytellingmedia]

Quick update on the Landers... SEXY AS FUCK... Scuse mon Français ^^

Still got the content to be written (yeah you can ignore the text and crap it just design and images that count ^^ but here is the first glimpse of the Education lander (attached ^^)

hahaha I'm loving moving along with this! Getting so excited just the Damn details are taking forever to sort out before i actually send traffic to the site

any how got 4 others to work on but thats the first one, what do ya guys think??

PEACE

 

[K]

Landers turned out REAL nice man congrats!

You're going to make this a BIG success I know!

 

[storytellingmedia]

Landers turned out REAL nice man congrats!

You're going to make this a BIG success I know!

Dude, With out the Landing page guys It wouldn't be three quarters of where it is, even if i'm still right at the bottom of this long route! Appreciate the Motivational words tho can't wait to get the show on the road!

 

[storytellingmedia]

Ok New feature i'm spending some money on, Video presentation of each section, I've finally made the step and headed over to Fiverr and am getting some scripts made with some animations, well at the moment Script i can't make my mind up on the style of the video, Whiteboard, commercial etc, i really like animations as you can get a way with quiet a lot if your smart about it.

but what do you guys think any one got experience with Video presentations of products or sites?

 

[storytellingmedia]

Leafly just got a 75millions$ round in funding -_- One day one day

 

[storytellingmedia]

Ok so last night i got some inspiration and wrote a new follow along in the Entrepeneurfix Network you can see it here: A Medical Marijuana Website biz journey | Entrepreneur Forum | EntrepreneurFix Its basically going to be the business side of things and how i will hopefully build it up to a company.

Its sets the environment i'm starting from, and hopefully will turn out to be a nice chunky thread that will hopefully inspire some one to stick to what they believe no matter what.

Any how, Latest on The MMJ Nation

Got some more custom images made for the Home page and things to replace the original image used in the Network. Run out of cash so have limited it to simply having.

Found a Medical marijuana traffic Network got in touch with them to see how they price. Might be the starting place for advertising the site. got some time last night to send over the comments for the last 2 landers so they are being worked on.

I've finally got a recipe management system that works. Still needs a bit of work on the design side but at least its working with the template and the rest of the site.

My next steps are to start adding Amazon products in the review area, to hope fully start making some money. but of course first things First

Tracking.

I've always used Prosper but never really liked for some reason.

What do you guys suggest for tracking, i've seen a lot of people talk about some thing called Vacuum or some thing like that can't remember right now? i need thinking about how i'm going to track every thing.

The site its self, i'll use Google analytics but for actual incoming traffic i need to get a better way of organising my self. as its going to turn out to be an absolutely massive site, i may have gone a bit to big for some thing by my self but hey, but to have to much then to little AM I Right.. ;-)

 

[storytellingmedia]

GOT MY FIRST SIGN UP!!! WOOOT WOOOOOT been outsouricing my social media stuff and it's starting to pay off traffic is increasing.

any how made some cool touches to the site, i've always thought that the details make all the difference. Had the Default images for the groups and events customised looks like this now

SEXY huh ^^

shit its gonna be a sleepless weekend to freaking excited!!! any how thats the latest landers are moving on to being coded

 

[storytellingmedia]

Ok so this is where Being alone gets hard again, I'm getting Emotional about the site, I've been living of bread and pasta for a long time investing what should be a food money or insurance money into the site, making sure it looks and has the best features possible, at least to what i think it should as you can imagine I need this to work. Any how, its hard keeping track of every thing and the amount of work there is left is huge, and the only thing i can think about is making money of it now. Its the wrong path to be going down as ok of course the whole point of the site is to make money, but LONG TERM, if i wanted to make a reputation or at least make a dent in the MMJ industry i need every thing to be perfect. Functionality wise and styling, it must be spotless. People can sign up but i'm not promoting any thing and if some one does sign up i explain to them that i'm in the final touches of the site and if they could give me some feedback it would be great.

The fact that i'm getting emotional about the site, i'm losing the ability to view the site from, lol i'll say my third eye, what i mean is viewing it as if you don't own the site and that no emotion is attached to the site, i'v always been good at putting emotions or feelings to the side. But right now i've found my self being blinded be a bit of emotion. Emotions can stop you from seeing details that pop out to other users, you know when some one asks you to look at some thing they created and you point out some thing they hadn't seen or hadn't thought about, and they say "oh yeah, well i don't think it would fit or look good" when they really hate you for seeing some thing they hadn't. its that what i mean. Once you start being able to view some thing with out thinking about the sweat and tears you've put in to some thing you'll be able to see a lot more than just the tip of the Iceberg. Believe me when i say you should have an emotion about what your creating otherwise you not doing some thing right, but i'm talking about when your critisizing your own work. Take an out side view on ever thing you do and turn your emotion, rage, fear or what ever into the motivation and push you need to get to the end of what you start.

Any how.

Now that i've understood that i am being blinded, I've being working on look at the site. The structure of how people get to things is way to complex for example the e-learning platform has two sides to it the Teaches and the Students, both are to different markets and need to be treated as such. This means re-thinking the menu structure, making sure the presentation pages each have a sign up, a link to each market (i.e. Teachers and students or employers and job seekers.) It will also help with my SEO, as it will be clear for the bots to navigate the site.

The Page architecture is still a bit messed up on the home page i've got no call to action at the moment, the spacing is not uses to its best.


I've started making a Exel spread sheet with the products and amazon affiliate links that i'll be adding to the Review section over the coming weeks months.

hmmm lol as always take this follow along with a pinch of salt its basically allowing me to take some time off and to organise my self. if none of this makes any sense i apologies.

Any how Keep medicating... that being said i need to roll one.

Take care

 

[storytellingmedia]

Got google analytics at last to work. Got to add a few 0's to the numbers now ^^

 

[storytellingmedia]

Been making a Mind map of the site...

just finished the structure of the reviews area, starting to think i'm tackling mount Everest. i'm not sure how to structure the strains at the moment, i've set it up so i have all the seed banks... and yes that's a shiit load to be adding. I've been thinking that if i use the Seeds banks as the sub categories to the main Category Strains, i'll be able to brand each category to the potential brand then having a Get your product featured on the right hand side or some thing.

Any how, added a main place for the Careers section in the top menu to present it better, so that the URL is now /careers what ever instead of /resources/mmj-careers i think its better to have it as a main item as it could have a lot of potential if done right.

what else...

thats about it really lots of details being worked on at the moment so a bit lost.

Any how keep blazing'

Alex

 

[crysper]

Man, you've done an awesome job so far. The most impressing thing is that you are still really motivated which is the key to success.
This industry will explode in 2015 and you'll ride the wave.

I see you put a lot of emotions into it, which mostly is a very good thing, but it may hurt if the things don't go as expected(been there). I'm not saying detach from the project emotionally, just have in mind that things don't always go as expected and you'll be fine.

As far as your design goes, it's very good, fits very well with the industry and content.

The only thing concerns me after seeing your mindmap is that you might start to complicate things too early. I know that you want content to attract users and build the social platform, but try to keep it minimal at smart. I know the platform has many features, but if I were you, I will just start traditionally with a blog and focus ALL RESOURCES on that. Why? Because having so many features, people may get confused, and if those features are not backed up by content it won't matter for the user. Even if you built content first, if you don't have a solid audience and good credibility, people won't even pay attention to extra stuff. It's much easier to add features, one by one, over time, while building traffic and audience. You don't have the money to invest and buy xx,xxx of visitors daily.

Briefly, I want to say, keep it simple. I've been in your shoes. I had a daily deals website for software, just when groupon hit off, I had lot's of features on it, memberships for higher discounts, sharing system with referral points, referral system, vendors platform and so on(same made on Joomla). I had some traffic, a very few sales, but nothing to keep vendors happy. All the features I had almost no one used them, even on paper looked perfect. After I got more experience I figured it out what the problem was...people told me before but I didn't listen. The biggest problem was that it was too complex, too confusing, too many features that were not critical. What I should have done is just put a big email box and built the audience by email. A few months after, AppSumo appeared, which did exactly that. Now they are running on a few millions a year.

Definitely you know better the target market and if you are sure that will work go for it, but I'm just saying that when you keep it simple(at least when starting up) it's usually much much better, you are more flexible, you can measure interaction, traffic, user engagement 100x much easier and make the next decisions based on strong data.

 

[Tanner]

VERY cool man and alot of money in weed the best of luck to you

 

[storytellingmedia]

Man, you've done an awesome job so far. The most impressing thing is that you are still really motivated which is the key to success.
This industry will explode in 2015 and you'll ride the wave.

I see you put a lot of emotions into it, which mostly is a very good thing, but it may hurt if the things don't go as expected(been there). I'm not saying detach from the project emotionally, just have in mind that things don't always go as expected and you'll be fine.

As far as your design goes, it's very good, fits very well with the industry and content.

The only thing concerns me after seeing your mindmap is that you might start to complicate things too early. I know that you want content to attract users and build the social platform, but try to keep it minimal at smart. I know the platform has many features, but if I were you, I will just start traditionally with a blog and focus ALL RESOURCES on that. Why? Because having so many features, people may get confused, and if those features are not backed up by content it won't matter for the user. Even if you built content first, if you don't have a solid audience and good credibility, people won't even pay attention to extra stuff. It's much easier to add features, one by one, over time, while building traffic and audience. You don't have the money to invest and buy xx,xxx of visitors daily.

Briefly, I want to say, keep it simple. I've been in your shoes. I had a daily deals website for software, just when groupon hit off, I had lot's of features on it, memberships for higher discounts, sharing system with referral points, referral system, vendors platform and so on(same made on Joomla). I had some traffic, a very few sales, but nothing to keep vendors happy. All the features I had almost no one used them, even on paper looked perfect. After I got more experience I figured it out what the problem was...people told me before but I didn't listen. The biggest problem was that it was too complex, too confusing, too many features that were not critical. What I should have done is just put a big email box and built the audience by email. A few months after, AppSumo appeared, which did exactly that. Now they are running on a few millions a year.

Definitely you know better the target market and if you are sure that will work go for it, but I'm just saying that when you keep it simple(at least when starting up) it's usually much much better, you are more flexible, you can measure interaction, traffic, user engagement 100x much easier and make the next decisions based on strong data.

Hey man, Yeah i see what you mean, you know how it is when you've been struggling to meet ends because of late contracts or whats not and you realise you have an actual chance of making some passive income from a project you kinda get emotional about things.

But yeah like i said in my last post, i realised that i was getting to emotional about it and expectation was like, well its gonna work its simple. Now, I've managed to get that out my head and just take it how it comes, don't get me wrong i'm still as motivated as the beginning and that'll never change until i flip the site for a couple hundred million $ lol. but i'm now looking at it as a business that always needs improving i'm looking at things i wasn't looking at before like the tracking of % of the exit pages.

Yeah the mind map does look complicated but i've only really got 5 functionalities, the sub things are the category structures of every thing. Yeah i see what you mean by its easier to release things over time than to remove, I maybe should have started looking into having the Network Released, build content up for review section, release that, build content for recipes, release that. Etc, but hopefully i can come up with a good marketing strategy to release it as a complete solution. If not i'll analyse every thing and improve I'm not worried about failure as much as i was. it will beat me up a bit but i've been through enough to be able to put it a side and rethink.

Much appreciate your reply it's made me even more motivated and put me into a better mind set. all the best

VERY cool man and alot of money in weed the best of luck to you

Thanks appreciate it means a lot

 

[storytellingmedia]

found a cool tool to use for free to gather information from a website pretty awesome really it's basically a crawler, extractor and a few other things works like a charm making my life incredibly easy getting all the strains and sees from the seed finder! Boya

import.io | Web Data Platform & Free Web Scraping Tool

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