Andy Coates Blog

A good friend of mine runs an amateur theater company who have been going for 2 years now and have decided it was about time to get their own website! So one night in the local pub over a couple of pints I was asked if I could help put Spotlight North East (thats the name of the theater company) on-line. Being a good friend and having had a couple of drinks bought for me already I immediately said I'd help! After discussing what was needed I suggested a Worpress based website due to the ease of getting it up and running and because you don't need to be an internet wizard to update it and ad pictures etc! To keep the costs down i used a sneaky trick when we signed up for the hosting and name, I got Jon (Spotlight North East) to use my affiliate code when signing up and I have donated the fee I received beck to him, in effect giving a 10% discount. I chose Streamline for the hosting as I have been with them for over a year now and have had great service and quick replies to any queries I have had!

The Plan

Spotlight North East rely on donations, ticket sales from shows and good will to raise funds to rehearse and produce their shows, the plan is to use the new website to generate an extra (much needed) income for the theater group! Currently the site only contains a brief introduction to the next show but after i give Jon a quick lesson on how to use Wordpress, it will be updated with all content written by Spotlight North East. I will be using my knowledge to tweak posts here and there, build back links from other like sites and grow this site into a self sufficient money making site which will generate cash for Spotlight North East. One of the first things I will do after the site has a reasonable amount of content is apply to money4banners who pays £5 every month for displaying 3 of their banners on your site, this will cover the hosting and them some! Every now and then I will be running an update here to let you all know how it is going and what techniques I have been implementing to monetize this site!