I’m sit­ting at the “Turn­ing Projects Into Rev­enue Gen­er­at­ing Busi­nesses” with Jere­miah Owyang, Brian Oberkirch, Adam Darowski, and Lionel Men­chaca.

Jere­miah is live blog­ging this event as well here.

The speak­ers are:

Ted Rheingold, Top Dog, Dogster Inc, panel moderator

Tara Hunt  , CoFounder & CMO,  Citizen Agency

Gabe Rivera, CEO,  Techmeme

Shanalyn Victor, Owner/Designer,  Pixelgirl Shop

Ryan Carson , Dir,  Carson Systems

Ted gave a 5-minute walk-through of the many ways peo­ple are mak­ing money online. Microspon­sor­ship stands out as one of the truly new ways for peo­ple to cover costs and start mak­ing money online.

Ted: did you all plan to make money or how did it happen?

Shana­lyn started Pix­el­girl Shop as a free site but had to start a shop in order to pay for the host­ing fees, that were explod­ing. For Tara and Chris, they needed to sup­port their pas­sion, the work that were doing, because rent is def­i­nitely not cheap in San Fran­cisco.

Ted: did any­one study busi­ness before run­ning a business?

Ryan encour­ages every­one to keep try­ing to get fund­ing for side projects, it is doable.

Ted: how much can you find out on the inter­net or do you need to seek mentors?

Tara and Chris seek men­tors to get new per­spec­tives and may even­tu­ally hire a CEO to run the busi­ness. Shana­lyn found that the “men­tors” she found were think­ing too small and she was shoot­ing higher. Before your site is pop­u­lar, peo­ple wlll for­get about you, so it’s a con­stant effort to get top of mind. Ted’s men­tor urged him to spend 50% of time sell­ing, if not, “you’re going to fail”. Tara agreed: every­time you post to a blog, when you post pic­tures, when you travel and meet peo­ple, all these things keep you top of mind in the com­mu­nity.
In fact, you have to be part of the com­mu­nity you serve, and luck­ily it comes nat­u­rally to some. But you need to find ways to get involved, not really in a “sell­ing” way, but in a “learn­ing” way, with your peers.

Ted: how do you deter­mine the pric­ing of what you’re selling?

For Ryan, the only way to know is when you see peo­ple buy­ing the stuff. The worst thing to do is to offer too much for free, because peo­ple will take it and not pay. So there needs to be a bal­ance. Tara: do your research to see what the mar­ket will bear. Shana­lyn had to raise the pric­ing of every­thing to lighten the amount of work she was doing ful­fill­ing the orders. For Ted, it was about get­ting a first good spon­sor. Once you have that, you under­stand where the floor is, and it makes it eas­ier to get the next spon­sor. But he’s got­ten the price point wrong many times and has had to adapt and experiment.

Essentially, the best pricing model is to open an excel sheet and figure out how much you need to make to quit your day job. 

Tech­no­rati Tags: sxsw, projects, prof­its, rev­enue, ted rhein­gold, dog­ster, tara hunt, cit­i­zen agency, ryan car­son, shana­lyn vic­tor, pix­el­girl

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