People feel it is nearly impossible to build and grow a successful media empire from home. I’d once shared in this opinion that at least you must have a corporate office where people can have access or relate physically with your business especially your staff/news reporters. But technological advancement have changed the way we do business, creating myriad opportunities for intelligent people who can think out of the box.

One of such business you can do leveraging technology is setting up a media business from the comfort of your home even from your bedroom.

I guess you’re trying to figure out how possible this can be. Before I go into how it can be done, let me make references to people who started this way and are still growing their business.

Successful media empire business owner

– Linda Ikeji is a lady that is making tremendous impact in the media industry in Nigeria today. She has grown her business to multimillion naira level.
– Oluwaseun Osewa, the owner of Nairaland was so creative with his news forum website that he earns good living from it.
– We also have Jide Ogunsanya of Ogbonge blog; Noble Igwe of 360nobs; Uche Eze of Bella Naija; Ovie of NotJustOk, and so on.

Then, we have international media blog owners like Lisa Barone of Out spoken media, Lisa Sharp of Retro housewife goes green, Sarah Austin of Pop 17, Ree Drummond of The pioneer woman, Charlotte Hilton Andersen of The great fitness experiment. Then, the likes of Mashable, Huffington Post, TMZ, Tech Crunch, etc.

The list is really endless. These are renowned blogs that have become an empire in terms of worth, impact on audience and growth.

These people make so much money from their website that you keep wondering if it’s really possible. The real question is how do they do it?

Maybe you do not know that website has capacity for multiple streams of income. That is, you can generate money from website in several ways. It could be through affiliate product, banner display, Adsense, product sale, public speaking contract, etc. It all depends on you and what works well for your website and audience.

However, before they started to make money with their website, they ensure they got three basic things that guaranteed their success.

Three basic things you must get

1. Website: You need a website. That is the platform you’ll publish your content for your audience to access. This is the first thing you need to get after you have pin down the niche you want to explore. You just don’t create a website without identifying what you want to do with it.

For maximum understanding about developing a niche, I suggest you read ‘Why start a blog‘.

Your niche in the media circle could be general news, business news, sport news, love tips, lovers guide, tech news, etc. Don’t forget to decide on what kind of website will work for your niche, whether blog or forum. Then, you’ll have to choose between free or paid website.

To be successful in media business, your website should be attractive, usable and functional. Above all, the type-face must be readable and the navigation path should be clear, direct and intuitive. These are the attributes of a good website that converts.

2. Laptop and Internet connection: This should have come first, but you can still find a way around it especially when you’re just starting and low in cash. You may go to cafe to update your website with content. All you need is to pay for certain number of hours. It’s better to start like this when you do not have enough money to buy a laptop and internet connection.

However, it will get to a point where you may not want to go to cafe to update your website because of some inherent problems associated with cafe for this kind of business. For instance, your password may be compromised, virus infection, poor time management, etc.

It is great to include a mobile phone that can browse effectively so that you can quickly get news and publish them on the go.

One thing you might have to keep sacrificing is the cost of monthly internet subscription. You’ll have to keep paying for this until the site will start generating money to pay for it’s over-head cost.

It may shock you to know that it takes quite some time to generate tangible income from website. So, it is expedient to have a paid job from which proceed you can keep financing the website until it gets to maturity stage.

3. Traffic: The term traffic means the total number of people that visit your website or the influx of people to your website par time. This is very crucial to the success of a website. Afterall, the site was setup or created to serve your targeted audience. Of what use therefore is a website that people don’t visit.

New or intended website owners think all that matters is to flaunt a website and probably update it with content and people will start coming for it. Little do they know that they also have to market the website to people (i.e marketing the market). That is what majority of these successful bloggers did.

There are so many ways you can make people visit your site depending on your targeted audience.

– It could be through SERP (Search Engine Result Table) like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Read: Think Like Google And Get More Customer ; Why SEO is Important ; SEO Checklist: My 15 Most Striking Strategies .

– On social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, etc. Read: 10 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic through Social Media Marketing ; Why Facebook Business Page is Important ; Free Facebook Advertising Made Easy ; Top 10 Tricks to Get More Twitter Followers .

– Advert placement both online & offline. Read: How to Increase Blog Traffic Offline

– YouTube video.

– Email campaign and so on.

Before you use any of these channels of marketing, you must determine how your targeted audience source for information and where they congregates. This is important for optimum advert performance base on ROI.

Monetize your website

Blog or website is the only business instrument that has the capacity for multiple streams of income as earlier said. You can earn from it in different ways depending on the class of your audience and the type of your website.

You may need to study your audience and test available income generating options. You can do this by installing tracking software like Google Analytics. With this, you can determine your website conversion rate by gauging the number of visitor or page view against income generated within a given time.

Before you can earn tangible income from your website, you need traffic. But most importantly, you have to make your audience trust you deep enough that they believe in what you recommend.

One sure way to do this is to sincerely have passion in adding value to them within the service you offer. Build authority around your niche. That is, make it a go to destination.

Conclusion

The difference between website that is growing and making money and the one that is struggling to survive is in the number of traffic it commands and converts. You have to be more creative with your website to be successful. Make your content resonate value in your audience deep enough to spur them to trust you, trust your judgement and recommendations.

One major skill you need to develop is the ability to promptly publish fresh, value added content with eye catching title within your niche continually.

This calls for focus and consistency. No business is easy to run including the ones that are developed and run from home. What do you think?