Buy an Established Website vs. Start a New Website from Scratch

An interesting question was posed by a Yahoo Answers user -- which is a better path to getting into internet marketing: buy a small, established website that has a monthly cash flow or start from scratch and learn-as-you-go?

In my view, the established site has the advantage of being already set up. The site has been in existence so there must be some content, and that means lesser work for you. (Of course, whether you will keep the content depends on the quality as well as your goals for the site so you may still need to scrap the whole content and replace it.). Check out Archives.org for a cursory check of the history of the site and its contents.

The main benefit, however, is the aging of the domain name, the number of links the site already got, some established traffic, and possibly a steady revenue stream. Instead of waiting for a year for solid income to come in, you can have income on your day 1 after purchasing the site. Plus, the site may already be ranking well in many (or at least some) of its keywords.

The problem with the established site is that you don't really know what the previous owners did, and whether the site got penalties from the search engines. The worst thing you can do is buy an established site, and then find out the site has been slapped with penalties with Google ad other search engines and even delisted from their databases. Or you can't monetize the site because it has been kicked out of Google Adsense and other ad programs (once kicked out, you can't reapply).

With a new site, you have the full control of what you do with it and you'll be responsible for charting its growth. No penalties, nothing. BUT -- most new sites land in the sandbox so it takes time for it to be visible in the search engines (sometimes as long as 6 months to 1 year). That means you'll work overtime to get traffic to the site, even spend more in terms of PPC for lack of organic traffic.

Buying an established site vs. creating your own site has its pros and cons. But if there's an opportunity to buy a clean, good site with a reasonable price, then it has a lot of advantages. Choose unique sites that have been around for at least a year. Avoid the dime-a-dozen copy cat junk template sites for sale that uses the same content as hundreds of similar sites for sale. Check their present customer base, liabilities if any, average sales of last six month, profit and loss account if possible and overall judge the profit making ability of that site.

And don't ever believe the hype. If a seller is claiming the site is earning $10,000 a month or so, why is the selling offering the site only for $200? Verify the information yourself(even screenshots of their accounts such as Google Adsense revenues as those screenshots can easily be faked). Request the login information and verify the information yourself, even the traffic (check the log files or access their web traffic software).

Like any other business purchase, investigate and do due diligence carefully when buying a website

Starting a Website: Build a Broad Authority or Niche Site?

Someone posted a very interesting question in Yahoo Answers: when you start a website, should you build a broad authority site, or a smaller niche site? The asker wants to know the impact of the size of the website in terms of search engine optimization as well as potential revenues.

Personally, I would go for a broad authority site, as it has the best potential for huge traffic as well as higher revenues. But there are a number of pros and cons for each approach, and here are some of them:

BUILD AN UMBRELLA SITE

Pros:

• can grow to become an authority site, which means great search engine rankings for a wide variety of keywords
• can be a one-stop destination of target audience where everything they need is on one site
• if you lose some keywords, the site still has hundreds of other keywords
• huge traffic potential
• faster to get links as other sites are more likely to link to this big site
• depending on the business model, a broad authority site would be easier to monetize and can give potentially higher revenues

Cons:

• requires more resources to create, develop, and grow
• when you get hit with a search engine penalty, your entire business falls

NICHE SITE

Pros:

• easier to create, develop as it has a smaller scope
• allows you to dominate a segment, especially if the field is hard to crack with lots of authority sites

Cons:

• limited traffic
• hard to grow and get traffic
• to earn more, you need to have more of these smaller sites

For years, we've followed the broad authority website approach, and it works great for our business model (advertising). It is easier to attract advertisers to the site, and even using third party ad programs such as Adsense yields extremely good results because it is harder to be smartpriced, it has more diverse keywords, and traffic is better.

BUT -- we got hit by a Google penalty 3 year ago, and lost 80% of Google traffic. That hurt big time, so we are adding other smaller niche sites to at least provide some backups for the main site. So while it is good to have a broad authority site, never put all your eggs in one basket!

What Should be the Topic of Your Website?

I meet a lot of folks who want to start their own websites, but are stumped with the very basic question: "What should be the topic of my website?"

The topic and focus of your website is a result of a number of factors:

What is your objective for creating the website? A website for personal expression is vastly different from a website created to change the way people do things. A website where you are happy to communicate to others your thoughts is different from a website where you aim to earn a million dollars (or more). A website where you share your knowledge is different from a website where you want to see people connect to each other. Your focus and goal will dictate the topic of your website.

What are your interests? After defining your objectives, you can use your interests as a way to narrow and select the topic for your site. If you want to earn money on the Web and you have an interest in pets, you can start an online pet accessory store or advertising-based pet care information site. If you want to attract a huge number of users and you love networking, then you can create the next-generation social networking website.

What are your skills and resources? The level of complexity of your website will depend on your skills as well as the size of your pocket. If you want a social networking site that can earn millions for you, yet you have no tech skills to program and design the website, and you've got no money to hire programmers and designers, then your website will remain just a pipe dream. If you can't do it yourself, you need to have creativity to find the resources to enlist the help of experts to create and design your website.

What is your business model? If your goal with your website is to earn money, then the topic needs to lend itself to earning money for you. If you plan to monetize your website via contextual advertising such as Google Adsense, then you need to choose a high paying topic that attracts users that are responsive to ads.

You can gain more insights on how to decide on the topic of your website from the article "7 Steps to Successful Web Site Development"

What Makes a Good Service Business Web Site?

The Web has become a very important marketing and commercial tool in recent years. Though there are still many small business owners whose businesses are offline -- e.g. landscape designer, house cleaners, etc. -- that still need convincing with regards to having a presence on the Web. Since their businesses do not involve the Internet, they don't see the point of spending resources creating their own websites.

They couldn't be more wrong. The Web can help boost the ability of businesses, even those operating offline, to reach their target customers.

If you are a service business owner and looking to create a presence on the Web, the first step is to clarify what you want your website to do and who your customers are. Will your website act as a brochure that's easily available to people on the Web? Will it serve as your way to communicate with your customers?

Here are things you need to consider to create a good service business website:

1. Your web site needs to contain all the information about your business

• what services do you provide
• why should they go to you instead of your competitors: give a list of BENEFITS you can provide to the customer
• who are you
• where are you located
• what is your pricing or if you choose not to post your pricing, how can the visitor get information on your pricing

2. Your website must be able to elicit the trust of your visitors

• clear way to contact you preferably with a toll free phone number
• your picture or that of your staff so visitors will know that you are a real person
• testimonials from previous clients

3. Provide an easy way to order your services

• think of the best way you can best provide services, considering that most of your services may be local
• for existing clients, how can they use the website to contact you?

4. Your website must be functioning optimally

• good and simple web design
• fast loading time
• well optimized for the search engines
• easy to navigate