Business Opportunities Weblog

October 31, 2007 by Dane Carlson | 1 Comment

While other 22 year old college students are swimming in debt and working minimum wage jobs, Matthew Peschong is running his own web design company and flipping websites on the side. This Minnesota State University Marketing major has recently taken a $350 costume website and turned it into a $2,000 a day venture. While others are working long shifts at local eateries and the like, Peschong works a few hours on his costume site each night.

As a young college student, this self-taught web designer began working for another costume company doing maintenance on their websites. While working these jobs, Peschong picked up the skills and techniques required to become a professional web designer. He then quit these jobs to start his own web design company, Mankato Web Design. The company services various cities in Minnesota and has completed multiple website projects. It has also served as a launching pad for Peschong’s current website flip project, the costume website PoliticalMasks.com.

After working briefly for another online costume shop, Peschong decided to take his acquired skills and begin his own online costume store. To do this, he used the website auction site Sitepoint.com. Here he purchased an existing costume website for $350 dollars. He also purchased several domain names for $9 each. The purchase of the website, PoliticalMasks.com , included an existing relationship with a costume drop shipper and other information about the costume business.

The website Peschong purchased was fairly undeveloped and offered only a few political masks and costume types. To begin the flipping process, he started to add new pages and categories of a wide range of costumes. This included costumes and other accessories which are not directly related to political masks or political costumes. The addition of these items helped add to the sites profits as well as offer more year products.

To add to the site’s popularity, Peschong used SEO, or search engine optimization. To do this, he added a uniquely written description and keywords to every costume category page and costume page. With each page optimized, the site went from less than 5,000 page loads a month to more to nearly 250,000. The use of SEO on each page of the website also reduced the amount of advertising needed as popular search engines have indexed hundreds of his costume pages.

Other tactics Peschong used to create a successful site included finding unique costumes that many other sites do not carry. This includes a wide range of character costumes, such as the Geico Caveman mask, as well as other niche costumes. To increase interest in costumes which are known to be popular, Peschong has created links on his costume homepage to allow customers to quickly find the must have costume of the season.

While creating and updating the website, Peschong has stressed the importance of content over design. Although he is not currently extremely pleased with the aesthetics of his costume website, Peschong recognizes that the content of each page is well maintained and optimized for the most sales possible. This realization has become extremely important in running the costume website. Working alone on this project, Peschong often has to choose one area to focus his time while updating the site. By placing the informational and optimization aspects of site before the perfection of the lay out Peschong has prevented himself from becoming overwhelmed.

Aside from the creation and optimization of new costume pages, PoliticalMasks.com also requires routine maintenance. This includes submitting orders to the drop shipper each day and managing the site’s fiancés. Peschong also handles customer inquires and problems on his own, and these must be handled on a daily basis. Other maintenance items include checking on the availability of popular costumes and marking them as out of stock if it is necessary to do so. Depending on the time of year, this process can take any where from a few moments each day to an hour or more.

After owning the site for less than three months, Peschong has more than multiplied his average daily sales. As pages continue to be updated with unique descriptions and keywords the number of unique visits increases. Each day the site gains in popularity and profit. Peschong’s website has also gained attention from impressive media sources such as the New York Daily News. The website was recently featured in an article about political costumes and masks for this Halloween season.

With his incredible success over the past few months, Peschong has received offers for his website for nearly one thousand times what he originally paid for it. He has also increased the profits of the costume website to a level where he is making thousands of dollars each month in sales, especially during peak season. This Halloween season Peschong is experiencing more costume orders than ever. By dedicating time, effort, and detail to PoliticalMasks.com he has been able to flip a $350 website into a solid, online, business.

By Asia Ferro for Business Opportunities Weblog.

In Profiles, Students | 1 Comment