Elsewhere on these boards there's a lot of discussion on what constitutes a "quality site". Much of the discussion is driven by regular buyers who are on to their 10th or maybe 100th site. Their requirements are considerably different to the first time player's. What's quality to them may not be quality to you.
Why?
A seasoned buyer is looking for a site that's established, well developed and showing consistent profit. For that he's willing to pay a significantly higher price. He has confidence in his ability to evaluate the business proposition and risks before making the investment. If the site is not a smoothly oiled machine regularly churning out profit, he doesn't see it as a "quality site".
A first time buyer, on the other hand, is a lot more cautious. He's highly likely to lose money on a lemon so the advice here and elsewhere is that he starts with a small gamble. Instead of buying a going concern that just needs steering he's buying a concept/an idea that he's got to build into a business. A "quality site" to him is something that, though it's new, has all the key components in place to allow him to focus on the business rather than on technical matters like learning HTML or CSS.
Two different markets. Two different types of "quality sites".
I come across a lot of people who'd like to do what I do: work from the comfort of my home, work to my own schedule, take time off whenever I want and plan to retire only when I'm bored. I can do that because, like others on here, I own a portfolio of sites that earns money day in and day out even when I'm asleep and when I'm holiday. But it wasn't always so. I started small, added site after site to my portfolio and gradually built it up. Along the way I got burnt, leant a few things, got distracted a lot, met interesting people, had fun, took chances, made friends, made enemies, created employment for others and shared a lot of what I learnt on my Work From Home site. It's been a great ride. But I had to start somewhere. And you need to as well.
While there are ways of starting without actually owning a site, a blog or even your own domain name, most people tend to start with a site or a blog of some description. And there are two ways of doing that.
1. You can come up with the concept yourself, teach yourself some webmaster basics and learn the hard way.
2. You can keep an eye out for a package of concept + domain name + website template that you could use to hit the ground running.
3. You can sign up with one of the "gurus" who'll teach you the secrets on how to make big money on the internet.
I've always been very sceptical of #3. For starters, if someone is that good at a particular way of making money online, he'll make more money practising his art rather than teaching it to someone else and building competition for himself. The very fact that he's teaching suggests he's not doing so well in the day job. These people sometimes counter with the argument that their business is doing so well on auto-pilot that they have the time to earn even more money teaching. Maybe I'm too cynical or I've read too many long sales letters, but I'll leave it to you to decide the merits of individual ebooks/courses/seminars.
#2 is what I'm a little less sceptical about. And I must emphasise the "little". With so many people wanting to start their own web business you'd think there must be someone out there willing to cater for the demand. Yes. And that's the problem. There are too many of them and it's very, very, very commercial. They churn out copycats sites in large numbers most of which are more sizzle than steak. They're smooth and convincing. They know the buttons to press to get you to part with your money. It's not till much later that you realize the road to profit wasn't as clear as they made out. And because it's become such a spammy market you're more likely to end up with a piece of junk. You won't lose much, maybe just a couple of hundred dollars but lose you likely will. Unless you know what you're doing. Square one.
The best option then appears the DIY route. Learning the nuts and bolts of websites puts you in a better position to fix things that go wrong. Just the exercise of finding solutions to the numerous little problems is an educational experience in itself.
Yet, if I were to start today, I wouldn't bother with DIY.
Looking back, I've wasted too much of time learning how the engine works when that time could have been more enjoyably spent tearing up the motorway with the hood down. I've spent too much of time changing tires when it could have been more profitably used making pizza deliveries.
Richard Branson, Warren Buffet etc. did get to where they are by being able to execute every clerical job within their empires. They concentrate on the bigger picture - the business - and leave the operational end to people who are better qualified to operate. And that's what I suggest you do. It's great to learn a bit about the inner workings, but leave working on the inner workings to workers whose work works. Concentrate on the big picture. You want to get to a position where you can let the programmers sort out issues with your code, get a good designer when your site needs a new look and employ a trusted SEO when your site needs more links.
In the beginning, however, you need to know a little bit about everytihing. In the next post, we'll start with what type of template site to buy.
And it's not what you think.
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