Your Available Capital

Before proceeding, it’s important to ask yourself how much time and experience you’re bringing to the table. While people make websites seem straightforward, there are many things you’ll need to learn — things that require hours of your time to become proficient.

First, think about your experience.

Have you worked in a relevant field?

Ecommerce, digital marketing, lead gen, and digital project management are some extremely relevant areas that will translate well to your project and require less time to get comfortable with everything.

Sales, writing, or even corporate jobs with a lot of systems and processes in place can help you get a leg-up, too.

The more relevant experience you have, the less time you’ll likely need to become proficient with your websites.

Now, ask yourself how much time you have to invest.

For me, when I was just getting started on creating content sites, I would spend several hours per day learning and working. This would be for at least 5 days a week, and this schedule went on for nearly 2 years!

Approximately 30 hours per week seems grueling, but I loved what I was doing, and it was necessary to become proficient enough.

Everyone’s situation will be different, so be realistic with yourself. In general, here are my time guidelines for somebody with a baseline of experience:

< 5 hours/week – Not really recommended. You’ll struggle to find time to both learn and grow your website.

5-10 hours/week – You’re starting pretty slowly. I’d recommend learning content strategies and SEO before buying a website so that you aren’t spread too thin.

11-15 hours/week – You can dedicate a healthy amount of time to learning and growing.

15+ hours/week – This is optimal. You should be able to become proficient in the various aspects of running a website while also growing your new property.