Here at Envato we’re pretty famous for building a lot of successful blogs, like this one! We’ve done quite a few now, so last year I decided other people might find our techniques and systems useful. Today I’m really happy to announce my new book How to Build a Successful Blog Business which is a step by step guide to doing what we do, and it comes packed with case studies for our blogs including Psdtuts!
The book covers everything from picking a niche to hiring staff, monetizing to building traffic. Like all my books it’s very practical, but I think the best part is the case studies because they include things like our income and expense graphs, detailed backstories about how our sites came to be, and much more. To give you a taste of what the book is like, I thought you might like to read a little part of the case study about Tuts:
Extract The Tuts Case Study
…While the official launch of Psdtuts+ was in August, the real beginnings of the site date back to late February. At that time I was fascinated to learn that there were entrepreneurs out there who bought websites, gave them a makeover and resold them for a profit. This practice, known as ‘flipping’, was particularly common on a site called the Sitepoint Marketplace (which has since been rebranded as Flippa).
So I decided to try this out for myself, and began searching through the marketplace for a good site to purchase. Because I knew a lot about Photoshop and had written a few tutorials some years prior, I was very excited to find a listing for a basic Photoshop tutorial site called Psdtuts.com. It had some very average tutorials on it, was plastered with ads, and was selling for the grand sum of $1200. While this may not sound like a lot of money, it sure was for me back then. Money was very tight and we were meant to be focusing on our nascent startup Envato, not buying websites to do up. Still, in a moment of wild abandon, I bought the site anyway!
 Fig 10-1: The original Psdtuts.com site that I bought
When I told my wife Cyan about the purchase she was horrified. It must be said, the site really was not much to look at, and though the listing claimed it made a good amount of money from text ads, it turned out those numbers had been inflated. In fact during the following three months the site earned less than $100 and even those monthly returns were steadily declining!
It also turned out that I wasn’t very good at giving sites a once-over. I tried with a quick and dirty design overhaul, but the result was just another not-worth-visiting tutorial site, and the statistics showed. They didn’t go anywhere, in fact they continued to slide downhill.
This incident taught me a valuable lesson in web entrepreneurship. You have to really add value if you want to get anywhere. There’s no such thing as a quick buck – at least not for me …
Extracted from How to Build a Successful Blog Business, by Collis Ta’eed
Read More Extracts
You can read more extracts from the other case studies over on FreelanceSwitch, Nettuts+ and Mac.AppStorm (the other sites covered in the case studies). You can also read a sample chapter by heading to our sales page for the book.
Get the Book!
You can learn more about the book, as well as find out what top100 bloggers like Darren Rowse from Problogger and Daniel Scocco from DailyBlogTips are saying about it over on the epic sales page that we’ve constructed! Get Blog Business!
Also Envato Birthday Bundle 2010!
And while I’m here with news about my book, I thought I’d also mention that next month we’re running our annual Envato Birthday Bundle for 2010 and it’s going to be EVEN bigger than last year with over $400 of value selling for just $20! Find Out about Envato Birthday Bundle 2010.
So watch out, it’s going to be a big August!
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Thanks for the extract, I discovered this new book via your email newsletter and will look forward to getting my copy in the post soon – great to see how you built envato from one site to this huge network
This snippet was enough to whet my appetite, thanks Collis – really looking forward to reading this and meeting you next Tuesday at the ProBlogger Training Day!
I remember that site way back , but forgot it was named psdtuts
.
Nice extract, nice to know that there was struggle and heartache at the beginning and that, there is hope for those that want to make a business out of blogging.
i have a question. i was trying to add to the mailing list for the bundle, but when i clicked the link in my email for the confirmation, it says i’m not a member of newsletter. does that mean i’m not on the mailing list? then what do i do to get on the list?
Nice…..
Saw the extract and had to order it.
Received the book this morning. Had a quick read so far and really like the case studies. It’s nice to get an idea of how this site came about and how it got to where it is now.
Thanks Collis
Please please offer up afew copies of this as a competition!
I cannot afford it right now but it looks awesome!
Congratulations…. !!!!
(and, I want it ; )
Regards
Fron Chile
Very nice.
The book will definately be on my bookshelf very soon.
One issue is though is that I need to spend alot of money getting both the e-book and the physical copy. Its easier, after you’ve read the hard copy to search/navigate the ebook version. To get both costs a lot. To get one is compromise. Is there a package deal for buying both together?
Congratulations for the book…
Very nice, have to buy and read it asap
Can PSD Tuts make a tutorial how you created that site to sell this book?
I am writing on a book aswell and would like to sell it. That site looks great!
Thanks for consideration.
For those wondering, the book is superb.