Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> On May 5, 10:44 am, "Mark T.B. Carroll" <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
(snip)
>> there are extremely many sites I use that once they became more
>> `commercial' I didn't use that part or I went elsewhere.
>
> I find that most intriguing. Why did you leave? I can understand if
> they became those silly Made-for-Adsense (MFA) sites, with a
> tremendous content-to-advertising imbalance, but why did you leave, if
> they were useful, simply on account of "commercialization"??
A bit of commercial stuff per se I don't mind, it's more when some of
the useful content is either withheld or there's an impenetrable barrier
to it arising for free, where if I sup****t some other site I can either
get access to that stuff or at least give it a bit more traffic so that
others see that it might be worth contributing. Of course, some
commercial things are very frustrating: you get so far in your query and
you get to, "yes, we have the answer to your query, now pay us $5 if you
want to see it".
> After all, you still buy newspapers and magazines, even if only
> occasionally, right?
Ha, well, normally I subscribe using about-to-expire airmiles. (-: I do
enjoy some ads - for instance, I find the job vacancies in The Economist
quite a fascinating window into the advertisers.
> You still tune into the nightly news sometimes, right, despite the
> commercial breaks, don't you?
The up-to-date news I get is from places like bbcnews.com or through AP,
Reuters, TASS, etc. which get little worse than banner ads that I don't
see because of software like AdBlock. Or, for radio, I normally use
stations like NPR; commercial radio has to be very good for me to stay
past the start of an ad break. For television I TiVo /everything/ and
then skip through ads: if I take the time to make a cup of tea or
whatever at the start of the show, I can normally have finished watching
it not long after it actually finished. I also now avoid BP gas stations
a little more since they started playing commercial stuff at me by
audio. Given the actual cost in production and distribution of
television shows, I am very much one of the people where they'd make
much more by just selling me the thing directly instead of filling it
with ads and getting money from the advertisers too, because I really
will go some way out of my way (in time or money) not to be advertised
at, and they don't usually make more out of advertisers per-viewer than
I'd be willing to pay. Though this is getting close to getting me on my
big-media rant where I predict much of their current business models
will in coming years disappear up their own backside, and good riddance
too. (-:
(snip)
> I also use the free part of IMDB, but I've always assumed that people
> in this day and age are fairly "ad-blind" and thus could at least
> tolerate advertising. I'm really surprised that you even forgo
> something like dictionary.com simply on account of it hosting ads!
Oh, I do use both of those. I'm not /that/ oversensitive. (Though, as I
said, through AdBlock, etc., I don't see most of the ads anyway.)
(snip)
> Okay, I probably should wait for more responses to this thread, but
> I'm really tempted to engage your ideas ASAP, so here's an opinion
> from me: at least one of them will be "difficult" -- most likely
> content-creation and, really, producing popular content. There's an
> intriguing case of an SBI! site that's ranked 40,000 on alexa.com -- a
> low-res metric, to be sure, but about as accurate as things can be I
> think -- and it's nothing but photos of scantily-clad female
> celebrities! (Moreover, I just doubt the guy pays any royalty
> fees....)
And, also, where you can be in soon enough and good enough and
comprehensively enough so that you can make the most of your lead and
become the entrenched competitor, or where you can fill an unexploited
niche pretty well. A lot of basic market analysis tenets still apply
perfectly well in the information age. One of the concerns I'd have with
respect to scantily-clad female celebrities is, what's my competitive
advantage against the zillion other ones? Perhaps I'm too cautious.
(snip)
> Yes, I'm thinking of sticking with this service just to see what I can
> learn -- but what prompted this post was my feeling that I'm fast
> approaching their technical limits...given how their data structures
> are organized as a consequence of the kind of service they provide
> ("beyond webhosting," as they like to say), there are certain rather
> standard (to this newbie's sensibility, anyway) website features which
> are difficult with them if not outright prohibited, from not
> sup****ting the .ani, .bmp, and .cur file formats to needing another
> webhost altogether for site forums and blogs!
Ah, that's a shame. Unfortunately the state of software today is that
it's most profitable to sell low-quality stuff so, to get your own
server together that you more actively run, requires a fair bit of
technical know-how and time, because if you have clear ideas of what you
want, then whatever comes out of the box plug-and-play is going to be
somehow disappointing. As an example: I thought I'd look in on a setup
of Mac OS X Server Leopard recently to see what I could learn from
Apple's very good usability hassle-free reputation, and I was shocked at
what a confusing and buggy pile of rubbish it turned out to be. Maybe
most of the rest of the stuff is better - I hope so - but I fear that it
really is going to take a fair bit of effort for you to end up with
something you're happy with. Most of the software I see, I really wonder
how it got past quality assurance, and I suspect that inviolable and
unrealistic ****p-by dates are to blame - either that, or vendors not
really caring.
> Their private forums are great for business and marketing ideas,
> though...it's a rather "less academic" version of MEM! For example,
> there's a NYC company that presses *and* drop-****ps copies of your
> self-made DVDs for $2.00 each, with no minimum order -- in case you
> want to sell a how-to video on your how-to site!
Mmm, that sort of networking is useful. (-:
(snip)
> I share your suspicion that what they offer is common-sensical, but
> I'm curiously what else you think would be involved...content is king,
> but SEO is queen...and SBI! claims to handle the SEO part if you
> follow their "formula"...which is common-sensical (and, according to
> at least one SEOer I know, out of date -- namely, "keyword hooks" in
> the content for search engines)...but it's a secret how they do the
> SEO part, naturally enough, and they do have enough success stories to
> make you wonder whether they really have something or whether it's
> really common-sense and technical know-how....
I don't know much about the feasibility of SEO, I'm afraid. Though, I
have noticed that if your site is actually genuinely unusually good, it
doesn't take a lot of advertising because word of mouth spreads fast.
And, frankly, you probably don't want to grow too fast anyway, so that
you can learn lessons from your mistakes before you've annoyed too many
customers in making them. So, personally, I've tried to rely on either
being unusually good, or in using the website more as a second step in
sales rather than a first.
(snip)
> I hope others will also lend their insights, because I'm really
> committed to an online non-hard-goods (save something like the
> aforementioned self-produced DVD) business...low start-up costs and
> easy accessibility (work from home -- or on the [day] job!)...but I'm
> very tempted to do a second site on another webhost, just to compare
> results, in terms of SEO, which is what SBI! claims to handle...you
> see, having content is necessary, but not sufficient -- the search
> engines have to find you and list you high enough that folks see you
> with ten to thirty seconds of skimming the SERP! SBI! really offers
> no help WRT content, despite their advertising, I now see, but I don't
> know about the SEO part, their other claim to fame, as it were....
Do please feel to keep us posted. Someday I plan to get into a similar
non-hard-goods hosted business venture, but for a couple of years I have
a lot of groundwork to lay and research to do before I attempt anything
approaching a launch. I'm working on reducing my income requirements at
the moment so I can free up enough time to put into figuring out what to
do and doing it.
Mark
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