What do newbies really want? Or need?

[Kay]

Crabfoot, why are you so interested in domain parking? Given the small amount of time it takes to get a one-pager up, why not do that instead? You can use it to link to your other sites and even stick AdSense on it if you want. Chances are that you'll make more out of that than simply parking at Sedo or wherever.

[Slowdive]

@Crabfoot I have no idea but as I am apparently divinely sent, I shall endeavour to make a guess when I have time to look at this matter. Honestly I do not have a clue, but you raise an interesting point that deserves discussion and to partake I shall have to educate myself.

@Clinton I have begun work on a how to of sorts, detailing how I usually start out and how to locate a market and associated terms that has accessible traffic to send your way. Get it up soon and I wont even be asking $5

[Graven29]

Just discovered this post. Here is what I want - I want to put in whatever work is necessary, up front, to bring in passive income (I realize the work doesn't "end", but I wouldn't mind if it went down). I am looking for information that helps me eliminate some of the learning curve associated with the method I have chosen, which comes with a giant learning curve, Jumping Right In. It is not that I am impatient, it is just that I believe that the best way to learn is by doing. So, what I desire is a point in the direction where I can acquire good materials to read, or good people to talk to, or the best products out there on the subject.
On a side note - there seems to be something else out there, another force, let's call it the "dark side." As a noob, it is hard to know what is what. I am not being thick - I am serious. Is article marketing considered black hat? How about article spinning? There are plenty of people who say spamming the web with crap is bad, but plenty of people saying if you don't you won't get visitors. So what to do? What I need is guidance. I want to stay on the up and up, but I don't know what is what.

[Clinton]

Is article marketing considered black hat? How about article spinning? There are plenty of people who say spamming the web with crap is bad... What I need is guidance.

May I suggest you drop the idea that SEO is important, drop the idea that you need search engine traffic. Dump any "guru" or product that even mildly suggests that SEO is the key to success.

For goodness sake, build an "online business", not some crap site desperately reliant on Google for its existence. Create an app. Sell a product through affiliates. Sell a service through PPC advertising, Build a community or mailing list. There are a million things that can be done. Stop. Chasing. SE. Traffic.

[Graven29]

I like that idea Clinton. And I intend to offer a good "product" even if all I am doing is ranting and raving. In fact, I already am putting quality stuff out there. I just want to be noticed and get comments and have discussions and, well, you get the point. So I am doing all this research on how to make that happen, and everyone says "SEO" and "article marketing" so I think - well, I guess that's how you have to do it. But I like the idea of not doing it, and focusing on the product. And if it gets good enough, to where it should be noticed, maybe it will be? Is that what you mean?

[babyrats]

Newbie here! *wave*

I would like to just explain why I am here and what I hope, when visiting this forum, to get out of it.

I am here to help me discover my niche, I am currently struggling to find the balance between subjects that I am passionate about which don't have 100000s of other websites offering the same, and much better quality material. I am looking to find how other people have carved their notch into Google and successfully keep at a good rank. I am not looking at tricking people into buying stuff or making a site just to make money, I want to enjoy my first site and feel the pride of people going there because they enjoy my subject, not because I have tricked them.

So what content would I like to see more of? I guess users saying how they first found their niche, I am expecting most people just to write "write about whatever you are passionate about" well now days, there are 1000s of people that have being doing that for years and the only way you can compete is finding a new spin on it. I guess I would also like to see how people have done this.

I also want the experts to keep on discussing the more complicated aspects of earning money through websites, its always a very interesting read, so thanks to everyone that has contributed to this board, because I have read it!

Sorry if this doesn't make too much sense, I am very, very tired. Too long have I spent trying to think up ideas.

[crabfoot]

Forgive me for moving your comments into an order which follows my thought processes.

I am looking to find how other people have carved their notch into Google and successfully keep at a good rank.

There have been profound changes over the last fifteen months or so. Most of the sites that have retained or improved their income from Google traffic appear to have done so because they haven't tried to please Google - their message is attractive to people, the ads which monetize them are secondary to their purpose.


Google's message from their actions is that they are losing interest in those sites which are so boring that the users click on an ad in search of their goals. Some of those sites are getting along because they have SOME high quality pages that account for a large lump of their traffic.

I am here to help me discover my niche.
I am currently struggling to find the balance between subjects that I am passionate about which don't have 100000s of other websites offering the same, and much better quality material.

I am currently struggling to breathe life into domains which paid out money before being attacked by Google's black and white strategy.


What survives of the previous "wisdom" regarding Google?


The first point of wisdom is "don't rely on Google traffic". Not one for the beginner, as the best "ways that pay" are to build a mailing list or sell links. Social marketing is still worth plugging, but it is hard work. Be sure to build a mailing list on the way. Hard to see how a beginner could benefit, without established sites - but you have to work on those principles and believe that you will benefit in the long run. In the short term you will make doodly squat, but if you get discouraged you will be able to watch the "big boys" make money in the future and you haven't taken that step towards joining them.


My second point of wisdom regards the way that a lot of authority sites have been put together.


In one market that I was (vaguely) competing in, the material on the No1 Google search "authority site" was plugged together from at least three separate sites, which did not compliment each other. The site ranked on sheer quantity of info - there was no clear path forward for users, even if they absorbed the info.


I don't want to say much about my latest ideas, because they are unproven, but a LOT of "authority sites" are vulnerable to competition because they don't show their users a clear path to their goals, or don't provide the key to finding that path on their site. There are ways of spinning their content to form a clear path to those user goals, and I believe the people that do the spinning could show those sites a clean pair of heels as they supplant them in the G ratings. Don't look at those massive sites and say "how can I do that", look hard and say "where can I improve on their efforts?".


My third point of wisdom regards multiple sites, and links between them. Accepted wisdom around here is that it is better to use your own links wherever possible - which means you need to have more than one site, several is a good idea.


Set out a link subject strategy across the areas that interest you. Make the sites you create fit into that strategy. I've just turned my head to look at mine, less than six steps from "garden design" to "faith healing", "beauty advice", "fitness", "weight loss","auto mechanics", or "teak furniture". Clinton has talents in this field, I'm sure that he's found them useful...


You don't want to link between sites on the same hosting - Gargyl is nasty about that, so you put the intermediate sites on free hosting, if you don't think they will make money.


These days you don't find "your niche" like in the past. You need to go outside that box and make your own network of sites. Build to a planned link strategy, find ways to attack the "authority sites" if they are vulnerable, and I hope you (and I) will succeed.

Whatever, I'm still interested in parking strategies. There is no question that those Schlund (Snapnames) people are still aggressively catching lots of dropping domains, as Fish and I have both observed, and there has to be a business model behind it.

[succor]

A list of pitfalls, things to avoid, simple avoidable mistakes, etc.

After coming back and reading this thread to catch back up I remember a, I want to say horrible here but that doesn't quite feel right, mistake with one of the first sites my partner and I created. We had a goal of making money for a while and then selling it in the end, hopefully for a profit. We were new, new, new (did I say new) to this process and we inadvertently made a simple avoidable mistake. Yes, I know the mistake was avoidable, if we had done our research; but we were eager to get started and we just jumped in without looking, so to speak.

Here is what happened basically... we bought the wrong domain name and Amazon wouldn't let us be an affiliate and POOF! there went what we were hoping was going to be our main revenue stream. We managed to get the site to the number five slot on the first page of Google and we made a little bit of money from adsense. Oh yea, we learned a lot too. By the time it came to sell it we had pretty much just given up on it, which was probably a mistake. We should have taken the time to go through the auctioning process to get a better understanding of it, if nothing else.

Anyhow, what other newbies can learn from this:
1) Don't buy a domain name with the name of a company or product in it if you want to be an Amazon affiliate.
2) Don't give up on your mistakes, ride it out, learn what you can and then move on.