I thought I'd take a look at one of my websites and chart its progress as a website, from its initial design stage through to today, and how I've monetised it in that time. It thought it would be a useful exercise for me to go back over one of my more successful sites and see if there's any lessons I can get from it which I forgot, and I thought some of you might be interested. I'll even say how much the site has made, and I'm usually coy about that.

So tonight, What-Process.com, This Is Your Life....

The story of the site goes way back to a previous job where I wrote a small application for terminating Windows processes on remote computers to help me deal with a particular IT support issue. A year or so later I found myself sitting in the office for my new startup company twiddling my thumbs and decided to make use of my time by rewriting the application. Then it occurred to me that as well being able to list and terminate Windows processes, it would be cool if the tool could look up information about the process from some kind of website. Spyware was a major issue at the time and knowing what your computer was doing seemed like a useful thing to help with.

So after a bit of brainstorming, the idea evolved and I decided to create a process reference library online and link it to a desktop application. And in August 2004, I registered the domain name, What-Process.com.

Because I was giving the application away and it contained no adverts, I was able to quickly and easily get it listed on freeware sites. Next thing I knew, it was getting massively downloaded, my bandwidth limit exploded and it was getting reviewed around the world.

Observation: People love free stuff.

Everytime someone downloaded the application and ran it, they would get a list of the processes on their machine and if they clicked "what's this?", it would take them to the website. If information on the process it existed, it would be displayed. If it didn't exist in the database, it would automatically add it in. The site would never ever have a situation where it appeared not to know a process. If the application requested info, the page would be created immediately but with the warning "awaiting info on this process". This is where I fell in love with user generated content. I provided the tools and the users built the content. Before I knew it, I had a huge database of process names and comments from users explaining what many of them were. It became my first site to get a decent amount of traffic every day. With spyware and viruses so prevalent, my tool enabled my site to often be the first place that mentioned specific new rogue processes online purely from the fact that my users had attempted to find out what it was and added it to the site in doing so.

Observation: User generated content rules.

So things were ticking along nicely and I was seeing impressive (relative to my other sites) traffic. I had deployed Adsense around the rather crude looking site and it was the first concrete evidence that the internet money making avenue I was pursuing could definitely bear fruit.

Then one day, out of the blue, I got an email from an affiliate manager at a software company that make a product called WinTasks Pro. He suggested that my site would be an ideal match for the software and he asked me to sign up with Regnow affiliate network and start linking to the program. I did, and the sales quickly came in. This guy had gone to town in trying to persuade me to join up. He had sent me creenshots of all my key pages and had photoshopped them to include his adverts and showed me exactly where to place them for best results. Honestly, the approach he took to his affiliates puts a lot of affiliate managers in the shade.

Observation: There are some great affiliate managers out there and there are some pretty ordinary ones. If you're not working with the great ones, you're missing out.

It was staggering to see the kind of commissions that these software sales could generate. I had up until then been purely Adsense focused and now I was seeing commissions for $15-$20 per transaction and it was mind blowing. So things plodded along with my new income stream and the amount that had seemed amazing now seemed ordinary but I was happy with the site. Then one weekend, starting on the Friday, my Adsense money shot through the roof. Everytime I checked my stats and it had jumped significantly. Added to that, sales on Regnow were coming through at an almost scary rate. I had that kind of moment when you suddenly think yes, I've made it, my financial future is secure and I will probably never have to work again. Unfortunately I came back down to Earth within a few days and my earnings returned to "normal". But what caused that monster weekend? The website had featured on the BBC's Click Online program - shown worldwide - and had a recommendation from the host.

Observation: Exposing your website to a huge worldwide audience may lead to an increase in traffic and profits.

Sometimes, it would be fair to say, I've enjoyed the fact it reliably makes money and tried to squeeze too much out of it with a few too many ads. Maybe got a bit greedy and put money before the site's main purpose. When that happens, I usually find that the comments on the site start to turn hostile. I don't like to hear it but I generally respect that the users mostly made the site, and if they start to notice too many ads, I try and respond positively.

Observation: Your users don't mind you making money from the site, but they can get mighty ticked off if they think you're only in it for the money. Use them as a barometer. They'll let you know if they don't like what you're doing.

Since then, the site has carried on being a very solid performer. I've tried a few other things, such as placing Dell banners in the sidebar. Frankly, it got an appalling click through rate and no sales. I guess my thinking was that, these users are interested in computers, right? They're using a reference website to find out about their computer so they're into all that and they will surely buy loads of new PCs through Dell? No, I got it wrong. My users weren't looking for new computers at all and I was thinking too broadly to expect those banners to work. Only with the affiliate marketing that was very tight with the context of the specific page did I see decent conversions.

Observation: Where possible, adverts are absolutely in context and almost an extension of your content page perform great.

So, since then, the site has carried on working for me every day since and worked in a way which makes me love what I do. For the purposes of this case study, I just checked the Adsense stats for the related Channel over "all time". Total Adsense for earnings for the site have been $5,885.03. Affiliate software sales account for about £$200-$400 a month.

How it looked - Now and Then


(Aug 04) This snap shows the site shortly after it was born


(Jan 05) This was the site after it's first little revamp.


(June 07) This is the site as it is today. Heck, I think I preferred it how it was.

Labels: case study