Part Four: Building Revenue Streams

For any community to be self-sustaining it will need to have some type of revenue stream(s). Even volunteer based communities require funding to keep relevance and growth. There are always tradeoffs with how to approach this since visitors do not want to be blasted with more ads than content and advertisers want to have the best possible exposure. With the same token not everyone that adds value to your community is willing to pay to be a member. Picking the right model and strategy can significantly affect your success or failure.

• How do I plan to build my membership model and how does it fit with my base user?   
• How much would members be willing to pay for each tier of benefits?   
• Where would I place advertising or sponsorship?   
• Are there limitations on or conflicts with certain types of advertisers?   
• How will I manage the transactions?   
• What disclosures or legal disclaimers are required?
• Will I have affiliate, partner or reseller programs?   
• Where does my community add value to an advertiser?

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Photos add visual interest to your website. Most visitors will look at the pictures to determine the content before they read even one word. Sites like Pinterest and Flickr have made images even more important since they are increasingly easy to share.

If you have multiple images, a photo gallery presents your photos in a user friendly manner, allowing your visitor to browse through at their leisure. It's also easier on the website administrator's side, as uploading and resizing are batched.

Note: All are compatible with Joomla 1.5, 1.7, and 2.5

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Joomla! CMS project Mistake Number Three: Having bigger ideas than your budget, resources and time will allow or than what is actually needed to provide the intended solution.

Often times we get a client with a relatively small budget and limited web experience that wants us to do all of the work and expects a fully functional Amazon type of ecommerce web portal system. Needless to say this is rather unrealistic. Robust features and capabilities are abundant with few limitations when building a portal system using Joomla! CMS. This platform is built on open source code and you can leverage over 7500+ 3^rd party extensions. However, where you do have limitations is in the skill level and resources available from the principle instigator as it relates to the scope or vision they want to implement.

 Avoid Scope Creep

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Joomla! CMS Project Mistake Number Two: Not staying focused on what is important or maintaining priorities

When a typical Joomla! CMS web project begins someone usually writes a big laundry list of all the features they want. Most often this has not yet been reviewed in depth by a developer whom can provide detailed specifications for the project tasking. At http://www.cnpintegrations.com/ and most consulting firms like ours, we call this the discovery phase of the project where we go through this list and map it to either business processes or available extensions for the Joomla! CMS.

In this discovery phase we try to bridge the gaps between what is already available or requires custom coding, how the client could alter their business processes to be more effective or reduce costs and to assess the training required for the client’s users and stakeholders to be effective.

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Mistake Number One: The Client thinking that they do not need to be involved in the process.

Joomla! CMS for simple sites with prepared content and well defined design specs on a site that does not change could be handed off to a team to “just build this” but sites with any type of dynamic and changing content requires a very hands on approach from the client to be effective.

Since the shift from static web sites through the introduction of the dynamic website revolution there has been a battle between where and when a client should be actively involved in the process of developing their site and where they can or should hand off aspects of the development. This is highly contrasted by the size of the budget and diversity of the stakeholders. The client almost always has superior subject matter expertise on their content while the Joomla! CMS support team has theirs in the framework, project execution and technology. We have found that every project is unique in these areas and there is not a one size fits all that works for any project.

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