5 ms·

Wow, there is money in this? Why am I wasting time working on legitimate and difficult products? I'm a fantastic frontend web developer, and this seems like som

by rfnslyr 13y ago

Wow, there is money in this? Why am I wasting time working on legitimate and difficult products? I'm a fantastic frontend web developer, and this seems like something slapped together very easily. Definitely want to try my hand in this. I don't know anything about SEO and marketing though. Where could one learn?

stevesearer 13y ago
The difficult thing isn't really putting a site like this together, but rather keeping up with it for a (sometimes long) while when it is making no money.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Sounds like a lot of tech startups.
  - wangarific 13y ago
    Sounds like any business really.
eurokc98 13y ago
Google's SEO Starter Guide is a good place to start: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... Another is their SEO Report Card from a different angle: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-s... Moz (SEOmoz) provides another good source of info here: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Awesome thanks!
munger 13y ago
I tried my hand at a couple affiliate marketing style blogs thinking the same thing - I'm a web dev. Never made more than a couple hundred dollars over the course of months of occasional fiddling. You have to love writing, what you are writing about, self/product promotion and project management like outsourcing tedious SEO things for cheap otherwise it will rarely amount to much. If you are a developer and love these things, then sure it would be great if you could spend an extra hour or two for some months to make $36k in addition to a regular income, but I would say the kind of effort and results achieved by OP is an outlier. YMMV even if you have all the skills.
300bps 13y ago
Where could one learn? Just look for someone posting this comment on HN and partner up: Wow, there is money in this? Why am I wasting time working on legitimate and difficult products? I'm a fantastic Internet marketer, and this seems like something slapped together very easily.
Segmentation 13y ago
Meh, I firmly believe mobile apps are the best passive income generators available today, and it's only going to get better. SEO and blogging is just a pain. If you want to go the blogging route, try to game Pinterest instead. A lot of money to be made there.
- chc 13y ago
  > Meh, I firmly believe mobile apps are the best passive income generators available today, and it's only going to get better. This seems harder — making apps is more time-consuming and a less common skill than copy-pasting pictures of cupcakes. It also seems less straightforward — the concept of "figure out what lots of people are talking about, make blog on topic, stick ads on it and let Google bring in visitors" is pretty simple, whereas I have no idea what the equivalent is for apps.
  - umsm 13y ago
    > This seems harder I think that's why it's easier to generate passive income.
    - chc 13y ago
      I am not sure what this means. It's easier because it's harder?
      - umsm 13y ago
        You say that "This seems harder — making apps is more time-consuming". Which is true, making apps is harder. Because of that, it's probably easier to generate income from apps because the market is not as saturated as niche-wordpress-blogs.
        chc 13y ago
        I am somewhat skeptical of this hypothesis. The market may be less saturated, but AFAIK also more competitive. A cupcake aficionado may read ten blogs on the topic, and Google can send lots of super-niche long-tail traffic if you rack up enough posts — but it's unlikely that many people will buy more than one or two fertility calculators in their lifetime, and they'll most likely just buy the first one they see that looks OK.
joelle 13y ago
There are success stories like this for sure, but I wouldn't advise you to go quitting your job just yet :) It's INCREDIBLY hard to get a blog to a profitable state, despite the fact that many people make it sound like a walk in the park. In fact, most successful bloggers will tell you it takes years of doing everything right to really get there. Not trying to be discouraging, just a little more realistic than this article. If you really have the passion to start and stick with a blog, I'd definitely recommend these two books: Blog Inc: http://www.amazon.com/Blog-Inc-Blogging-Passion-Community/dp/1452107203 http://www.amazon.com/Blog-Inc-Blogging-Passion-Community/dp... and Pro Blogger, Blogging Your way to a 6-Figure Income: http://www.amazon.com/ProBlogger-Secrets-Blogging-Six-Figure-Income/dp/1118199553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384886953&sr=1-1&keywords=pro+blogger http://www.amazon.com/ProBlogger-Secrets-Blogging-Six-Figure...
harvestmoon 13y ago
I have reached millions of people using SEO. From my perspective, it's not that hard. I'd be glad to teach you what you need to know in a short phone conversation. If interested, email me at dgurevich5@gmail.com
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Looking at the site in question, it has been affected by Google's Panda, so our algorithms don't think it's a very high-quality site and that has affected the site's rankings in Google's index, at least. Personally, I would look to add more value than the article described. And of course if you're looking to buy a site, whether on Flippa or elsewhere, you'll want to ask about any recent webspam action notifications from Google, as well as ask about any traffic trends in case the traffic to the site has gone down recently.
- rhizome 13y ago
  The first thing I noticed is that it's just reposted posts from other blogs, even using the other blogs' picture. I'm glad that sort of thing is downranked.
- mastersat 13y ago
  how could i contact with you matt ? as i read at seroundtable that u have a tool to check if site has been impacted by panda or Penguin ?

by rfnslyr 13y ago

stevesearer 13y ago

The difficult thing isn't really putting a site like this together, but rather keeping up with it for a (sometimes long) while when it is making no money.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
Sounds like a lot of tech startups.
- wangarific 13y ago
  Sounds like any business really.

eurokc98 13y ago

Google's SEO Starter Guide is a good place to start: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... Another is their SEO Report Card from a different angle: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-s... Moz (SEOmoz) provides another good source of info here: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

rfnslyr 13y ago
Awesome thanks!

munger 13y ago

I tried my hand at a couple affiliate marketing style blogs thinking the same thing - I'm a web dev. Never made more than a couple hundred dollars over the course of months of occasional fiddling. You have to love writing, what you are writing about, self/product promotion and project management like outsourcing tedious SEO things for cheap otherwise it will rarely amount to much. If you are a developer and love these things, then sure it would be great if you could spend an extra hour or two for some months to make $36k in addition to a regular income, but I would say the kind of effort and results achieved by OP is an outlier. YMMV even if you have all the skills.

300bps 13y ago

Where could one learn? Just look for someone posting this comment on HN and partner up: Wow, there is money in this? Why am I wasting time working on legitimate and difficult products? I'm a fantastic Internet marketer, and this seems like something slapped together very easily.

Segmentation 13y ago

Meh, I firmly believe mobile apps are the best passive income generators available today, and it's only going to get better. SEO and blogging is just a pain. If you want to go the blogging route, try to game Pinterest instead. A lot of money to be made there.

chc 13y ago
> Meh, I firmly believe mobile apps are the best passive income generators available today, and it's only going to get better. This seems harder — making apps is more time-consuming and a less common skill than copy-pasting pictures of cupcakes. It also seems less straightforward — the concept of "figure out what lots of people are talking about, make blog on topic, stick ads on it and let Google bring in visitors" is pretty simple, whereas I have no idea what the equivalent is for apps.
- umsm 13y ago
  > This seems harder I think that's why it's easier to generate passive income.
  - chc 13y ago
    I am not sure what this means. It's easier because it's harder?
    - umsm 13y ago
      You say that "This seems harder — making apps is more time-consuming". Which is true, making apps is harder. Because of that, it's probably easier to generate income from apps because the market is not as saturated as niche-wordpress-blogs.
      - chc 13y ago
        I am somewhat skeptical of this hypothesis. The market may be less saturated, but AFAIK also more competitive. A cupcake aficionado may read ten blogs on the topic, and Google can send lots of super-niche long-tail traffic if you rack up enough posts — but it's unlikely that many people will buy more than one or two fertility calculators in their lifetime, and they'll most likely just buy the first one they see that looks OK.

joelle 13y ago

There are success stories like this for sure, but I wouldn't advise you to go quitting your job just yet :) It's INCREDIBLY hard to get a blog to a profitable state, despite the fact that many people make it sound like a walk in the park. In fact, most successful bloggers will tell you it takes years of doing everything right to really get there. Not trying to be discouraging, just a little more realistic than this article. If you really have the passion to start and stick with a blog, I'd definitely recommend these two books: Blog Inc: http://www.amazon.com/Blog-Inc-Blogging-Passion-Community/dp/1452107203 http://www.amazon.com/Blog-Inc-Blogging-Passion-Community/dp... and Pro Blogger, Blogging Your way to a 6-Figure Income: http://www.amazon.com/ProBlogger-Secrets-Blogging-Six-Figure-Income/dp/1118199553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384886953&sr=1-1&keywords=pro+blogger http://www.amazon.com/ProBlogger-Secrets-Blogging-Six-Figure...

harvestmoon 13y ago

I have reached millions of people using SEO. From my perspective, it's not that hard. I'd be glad to teach you what you need to know in a short phone conversation. If interested, email me at dgurevich5@gmail.com

Matt_Cutts 13y ago

Looking at the site in question, it has been affected by Google's Panda, so our algorithms don't think it's a very high-quality site and that has affected the site's rankings in Google's index, at least. Personally, I would look to add more value than the article described. And of course if you're looking to buy a site, whether on Flippa or elsewhere, you'll want to ask about any recent webspam action notifications from Google, as well as ask about any traffic trends in case the traffic to the site has gone down recently.

rhizome 13y ago
The first thing I noticed is that it's just reposted posts from other blogs, even using the other blogs' picture. I'm glad that sort of thing is downranked.
mastersat 13y ago
how could i contact with you matt ? as i read at seroundtable that u have a tool to check if site has been impacted by panda or Penguin ?