52 Week Challenge Using College Students
Hi all,
Ive been dabbling in IM here and there over the past year, and have experience in web development, eccommerce and operations management. In fact, I do web design, logo design, and social media design/consulting as a side business. Recently, I have been trying to setup streams of passive income for myself in addition to taking on more client work, and I have seen one of my niche website's traffic double and almost triple in the last 2 months. I have also seen my earnings grow as well! A slow start, however, I am now starting to gain momentum...
To do this, I have been writing content, publishing it and adding a wealth of FAQ's to one of my niche websites. I am now receiving over 100+ visits a day to this one site, and it seems to be growing weekly. As it continues to grow, I am also seeing Adsense earnings grow and finally have received a commission for an AMAZON.com sale! Although I am only earning $1-3.00 per day right now on this site (between amazon and adsense), I am hoping to create more and more earnings over time that will help me continue to grow and prosper and will be reinvesting both the income from my niche sites and the income from my "side" business of developing websites into these other niche sites and marketing efforts (hiring a VA).
As I look to the new year and the future, I am looking to bring on a VA to help me with a 52 week long challenge project. My goal is to plan and setup 52 separate niche websites over the course of the 52 weeks of 2012 - that is one niche website a week - a very lofty goal I know!
To help me accomplish this, I am planning to incorporate a "service learning" piece into my Computer Technology course that I teach at a local university - basically the service learning piece is to help local business in some way, shape or form. My course is an introduction to MS office applications and the internet. Being that I teach 3 courses over the course of the year and that my enrollment is approximately 20-25 students PER class, I estimate that I can have a virtual "factory" of college student workers who can help me with niche site content writing, powerpoint design, and other such tasks that utilize the MS Office and the internet. - A virtual sweatshop if you will!
I will be incorporating a number of different tasks in my course, and will focus on the students creating content using MS office, Powerpoint, Excel blog postings, discussion boards and journal entries. However, I need help with structuring the content and course in a way that I can help them learn about MS office applications, writing, and internet research to fulfill learning objectives while incorporating this "service learning" piece.
My question to all of you would how can I make use of the students for help with developing my NICHE sites but also to fulfill learning objectives?
A few of my thoughts are:
1. Select 20-25 topics for long tail niche websites (assign one individual topic per student)
2. MS Word assignments: Have several 1 page word assignments focused on the long tail keyword or niche. Assignments will get progressively harder from week to week. Incorporating font styles, color, embedding pictures, embedding hyperlinks, etc... I plan to have them develop approx 5-7 WORD writing assignments through the course - which translates to 5-7 blog postings or pages for the niche website.
3. Powerpoint Assignments: Have students develop 1-3 powerpoint presentations that deal with the niche website topic - incorporating the same skills in the word assignments (font styles, adding graphics, animations etc...) These can then be used to create simple youtube videos and can be uploaded to other PPT filesharing sites to link back to the niche site with relevant content.
4. Discussion Boards/Journals/Blog Entries: Weekly entries by the students. I can have them vary the tasks by week. For example, one week I can have each student pose FAQ in their niche to other students to answer. Students would then scour the internet for answers, and reply to the questions. What other things can I have them do with this?
5. Excel assignment - Have no clue how to incorporate excel, unless I have them analyze the topic at hand and scour the internet for data to analyze - producing some graphs/charts on the topic at hand or specific business or industry focus/area. I can also have them do a competitive analysis, tracking such information in excel. Data such as website URL, years in business, etc... Not sure what else I can have them do for excel?
6. Research Paper or White Paper on Niche Topic: Have students develop a 6-10 page report in word on the Niche topic at hand, incorporating all previous skills (formatting, bullets, numbering, incorporating excel into word etc...) Then, this paper can be separated and incorporated into a niche site and/or published as a report on the site. HINT: It can be used as a "giveaway" to help build a list!
These are some of my preliminary ideas. Without having researched specific website NICHE areas yet, I have yet to define exactly what the assignments can be. I would like any advice on what other types of assignments I may be able to incorporate into the class that will help with these "niche" sites. My goal is to have all of the backend work to delegate to the students developed within the next month (for a class that begins in Mid February)
In addition, do you think 52 niche's in a year is a lofty goal? Would it be better for me to instead focus 3-6 students on each niche and really develop out the content? Of note: my current Niche website has over 70+ unique pages of content that I created plus hundreds of blog postings, FAQ's etc...
Should I follow the same rule when developing these new sites and become an "information warehouse" on the specific topic at hand? My thought is that if I develop 52 smaller niche sites, I can over time have my VA help fill in the gaps and continue to add information here and there on the topic - eventually helping to develop the site and incorporating more monetization strategies as the individual site's begin to earn some income.
Your thoughts and help would really be appreciated - I want to make sure that not only my students learn but can also help me in learning more about IM and business management/delegation. I truly believe that the students are more than capable in developing great content, and all parties would know that the work they are doing will be utilized to help a small business (the service piece).
Thanks,
Daryn
Ive been dabbling in IM here and there over the past year, and have experience in web development, eccommerce and operations management. In fact, I do web design, logo design, and social media design/consulting as a side business. Recently, I have been trying to setup streams of passive income for myself in addition to taking on more client work, and I have seen one of my niche website's traffic double and almost triple in the last 2 months. I have also seen my earnings grow as well! A slow start, however, I am now starting to gain momentum...
To do this, I have been writing content, publishing it and adding a wealth of FAQ's to one of my niche websites. I am now receiving over 100+ visits a day to this one site, and it seems to be growing weekly. As it continues to grow, I am also seeing Adsense earnings grow and finally have received a commission for an AMAZON.com sale! Although I am only earning $1-3.00 per day right now on this site (between amazon and adsense), I am hoping to create more and more earnings over time that will help me continue to grow and prosper and will be reinvesting both the income from my niche sites and the income from my "side" business of developing websites into these other niche sites and marketing efforts (hiring a VA).
As I look to the new year and the future, I am looking to bring on a VA to help me with a 52 week long challenge project. My goal is to plan and setup 52 separate niche websites over the course of the 52 weeks of 2012 - that is one niche website a week - a very lofty goal I know!
To help me accomplish this, I am planning to incorporate a "service learning" piece into my Computer Technology course that I teach at a local university - basically the service learning piece is to help local business in some way, shape or form. My course is an introduction to MS office applications and the internet. Being that I teach 3 courses over the course of the year and that my enrollment is approximately 20-25 students PER class, I estimate that I can have a virtual "factory" of college student workers who can help me with niche site content writing, powerpoint design, and other such tasks that utilize the MS Office and the internet. - A virtual sweatshop if you will!
I will be incorporating a number of different tasks in my course, and will focus on the students creating content using MS office, Powerpoint, Excel blog postings, discussion boards and journal entries. However, I need help with structuring the content and course in a way that I can help them learn about MS office applications, writing, and internet research to fulfill learning objectives while incorporating this "service learning" piece.
My question to all of you would how can I make use of the students for help with developing my NICHE sites but also to fulfill learning objectives?
A few of my thoughts are:
1. Select 20-25 topics for long tail niche websites (assign one individual topic per student)
2. MS Word assignments: Have several 1 page word assignments focused on the long tail keyword or niche. Assignments will get progressively harder from week to week. Incorporating font styles, color, embedding pictures, embedding hyperlinks, etc... I plan to have them develop approx 5-7 WORD writing assignments through the course - which translates to 5-7 blog postings or pages for the niche website.
3. Powerpoint Assignments: Have students develop 1-3 powerpoint presentations that deal with the niche website topic - incorporating the same skills in the word assignments (font styles, adding graphics, animations etc...) These can then be used to create simple youtube videos and can be uploaded to other PPT filesharing sites to link back to the niche site with relevant content.
4. Discussion Boards/Journals/Blog Entries: Weekly entries by the students. I can have them vary the tasks by week. For example, one week I can have each student pose FAQ in their niche to other students to answer. Students would then scour the internet for answers, and reply to the questions. What other things can I have them do with this?
5. Excel assignment - Have no clue how to incorporate excel, unless I have them analyze the topic at hand and scour the internet for data to analyze - producing some graphs/charts on the topic at hand or specific business or industry focus/area. I can also have them do a competitive analysis, tracking such information in excel. Data such as website URL, years in business, etc... Not sure what else I can have them do for excel?
6. Research Paper or White Paper on Niche Topic: Have students develop a 6-10 page report in word on the Niche topic at hand, incorporating all previous skills (formatting, bullets, numbering, incorporating excel into word etc...) Then, this paper can be separated and incorporated into a niche site and/or published as a report on the site. HINT: It can be used as a "giveaway" to help build a list!
These are some of my preliminary ideas. Without having researched specific website NICHE areas yet, I have yet to define exactly what the assignments can be. I would like any advice on what other types of assignments I may be able to incorporate into the class that will help with these "niche" sites. My goal is to have all of the backend work to delegate to the students developed within the next month (for a class that begins in Mid February)
In addition, do you think 52 niche's in a year is a lofty goal? Would it be better for me to instead focus 3-6 students on each niche and really develop out the content? Of note: my current Niche website has over 70+ unique pages of content that I created plus hundreds of blog postings, FAQ's etc...
Should I follow the same rule when developing these new sites and become an "information warehouse" on the specific topic at hand? My thought is that if I develop 52 smaller niche sites, I can over time have my VA help fill in the gaps and continue to add information here and there on the topic - eventually helping to develop the site and incorporating more monetization strategies as the individual site's begin to earn some income.
Your thoughts and help would really be appreciated - I want to make sure that not only my students learn but can also help me in learning more about IM and business management/delegation. I truly believe that the students are more than capable in developing great content, and all parties would know that the work they are doing will be utilized to help a small business (the service piece).
Thanks,
Daryn