A visitor built website receives two types of traffic.

- People who submit content. - People who consume content.

The content producers must have an incentive to contribute. That incentive can be opportunity to promote themselves; for example, a "resource box" at bottom of each article that they submit, or an "about artist" page for each account. Some visitor built websites provide an incentive based upon a share of website's revenue.

In most cases, content itself will be incentive enough for content consumers. But in case of a "free classifieds" website, reality is that few people seek advertising. In this case, your website's audience will consist soley of producers. In order to get repeat visits, you'll have to cause their ads to expire after a certain interval.

The most important part of a visitor built website is content management. The content must be subdivided into sections or categories. Let your visitors choose category for their contribution. In direct posting, website visitors will abuse posting process by posting an item under several or all categories. You need to decide if posting an item under more than one category is to be allowed.

Examples: www.epinions.com members earn money by writing and submitting reviews of consumer products. www.site-reporter.com members earn money by reviewing websites and completing questionnaires.

A visitor built website lets you focus on tasks more directly related to generating revenue, like advertising and promotion, while relieving you of most of chores of content creation. Which type of visitor built website will you start?

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Not surprisingly, ninety-six percent of virtual professionals were based in home offices. This is not unusual for small businesses; for some this is a stepping stone and for others, a permanent lifestyle. Many had home offices already set up and found transition easy once Internet technology became available. Some, like Janice Byer at Docu-Type Administrative & Web Design Services, had both corporate and entrepreneurial experience working for her dad but "didn't want to 'go out' to work when he retired." The majority of virtual professionals are solo entrepreneurs without any employees.

Thirty percent of virtual professionals said that child care was major factor in starting their business, and for sixty percent, their business provides their sole income. Women working at home with small children in background have their own unique challenges, but imagine education their children will get about entrepreneurship. Renae Bolton, owner of Triple J WordProcessing Co., left office to fix her son a snack and he called out "Mom - one of your clients is blinking you!" when an Instant Message came in.

A virtual professional can be anywhere on planet, again assuming technology is available, and for that reason, survey purposefully did not collect geographic information from respondents. However, survey respondents came from global networking environments online in order to get a diverse response. Although United States was a leader, a significant number of virtual professionals were from Australia and Canada.

Working virtually can be a challenge, and without right technology, it can be downright impossible. In next two articles of this series, we will look at perks and perils of working this way, and later, what tools and technologies are popular amongst virtual professionals in 2003.

### © Eileen Parzek, SOHO It Goes! 2003