Section Two – The Types Of Fan Websites You Can Build
Daily News & Information Website
There are a number of website types you could build to profit from your celebrity. The most basic is a daily news website or blog. You daily put the latest news on the website. You build up content day by day.
Your aim is to have more content than any other website on your celebrity. List every news item, album track, acting part, TV appearance and anything else you can find. Be comprehensive. This is easier to do for emerging stars as there is little information about them. See examples later on in this report.
List Building Website/Newsletter Approach
When you promote your website you can send people to a sign up squeeze page. Fans will serve you a very high sign up rate if you offer them the latest news about their star. You can also offer a free report about the star as well.
This list building will ultimately provide a good stream of income when you announce by email the latest products connected to your star. You can also run a full weekly newsletter for your fan subscribers. The open rate from fans will always be high. You need to have well thought out subject lines for your emails. You can send out a mix of information and product offers.
Fan Forum
Once you have a good number of subscribers you can launch a forum. Announce it to your list and you can then send the subsequent sign up people to the forum. Topics could include:-
Tour Dates
Where In The World Is “Eric” Today
Online Store
Episode Discussion
Rumours
plus General discussion
With a forum you open up a huge wealth of opportunities for making money with the website.
Membership Website
Once your list and forum is really getting business then you can offer a membership to your subscribers. Being a fan club membership site is so well suited to online marketing because you can send digital goods for free. Not like the old days when you had to send out badges, certificates and goodies by post. You can structure the whole thing around digital products.
Section Three – The Different Type of Celebrities
Classic Celebrity
There are people who are true artists in their field. They have been around for years and have a huge worldwide following. Their output is always good quality and their fans appreciate them for what they do. These are not so easy to start a fansite with unless no one else has thought of it. The fans are more circumspect and will not run around in circles shouting “sell me a poster” or whatever. I would generally not try to run a website on a classic celebrity unless it was for love rather than money.
“One Day Of Fame” Celebrity
There are people who suddenly appear on the scene and have a moment of fame. The problem is that many of them disappear just as quickly. From the marketing point of view they are worthless unless they have numerous “Days of Fame” These Days are usually forgettable and not worth a fan site.
The Latest Thing
These are the newest stars to hit the headlines and capture the hearts of a group of fans. You need to be quick to recognise up coming stars. A Current hot example is Justin Bieber. (December 2010) See example Justin Beiber fansite later.
The Big Opportunity – Next Years Star
The best website to set up is for people who are not yet famous. They will become household names within 12 months but at the moment they have not appeared. The problem is that you do not know who they are yet. But you can predict who they are.
Predicting The Next Celebrity
There is a group of people who are going to be famous by the end of next year that you can predict. They might not be celebrities in the true sense of the word but they will bring many visitors to your website if you are ahead of the game. You can build a website ready and full of content for them. Then when people start searching for them you will be ready with a website to satisfy their need for knowledge for these new stars. See later in this report to learn more.
Making Money With A Fan Website
The Money making side of a fan site will vary from one celebrity to the next. Some will have a host of DVD’s, Blu-ray, MP3 downloads, posters and books you can link to as an affiliate.
These people will have associated products that can be affiliated to. You can also make good money as a “Fadsense” website. That is a fan website dedicated to getting adsense clicks. Make sure to check that there are advertisers paying good money to advertise your chosen celebrity.
Look at the examples given later on to see how you can set up fan websites and make money from them.
You can also monetise your website by writing an “unofficial” biography or other information product. It can be a download ebook, a book in print with createspace.com. The other format to consider is the Kindle format.
The Lifetime Of A Fan Site
Most sites run with the popularity of the star. If they fall out of the front pages for a while that is no reason to stop your site. Movie stars will always have new films in the pipeline which will be your subject matter for the website. When the film is released you will see another burst of traffic. The same goes for music artists and album releases.
There is another type of site that is very seasonal. At the same time these are very profitable for a period of 3 months of the year. See later in this report to learn more.
The main key to succeeding with this type of website is knowing what is happening and being one of the first to report it. A second key is enthusiasm for your subject. If not a fan you at least need to have some interest.
Section Four – Promoting Your Fan Website
Your main promotion will actually be your constantly updated content. This content will be added on a regular basis and will give you a huge base of writing, videos and pictures to attract search engine traffic.
Facebook – Your Top Source Of Targeted Traffic
There are many ways to promote a fan site but Facebook ads lend themselves perfectly to a fan site. This is because you can choose to have your ads only appear to people who have said they are fans. This demographic selection process is what make Facebook the ideal place to promote your site. Send facebook visitor clicks to your squeeze page to get sign ups to your list.
Search Engine Traffic
If you are building a site for a new star then you will get a good amount of search engine traffic simply because you were first to get relevant content indexed.
Use video to report newsworthy items. For example you could list the latest tour dates in a video. Post the video to youtube with the title “(Your Star) Tour Dates” and put a link to your website in the description.
Note about adwords.
You could use adwords for traffic but I don’t use the adwords system as it is stacked against you. A good profitable keyword can disappear on you at the whim of an algorithm. It just is not reliable enough for me. But if you are an adwords wizard you could get traffic that way.
Note about article directories.
You want all your unique content in one place and one place only – your website. If you want to use article directories for backlinks then that’s fine. I usually rewrite my articles myself. If I am pushed for time I occasionally use The Best Spinner to spin my articles before submitting to GoArticles and other directories. I do not worry about ezinearticles as their rules are too stringent for spun articles.
