I recently posted a question to Jim Boykin’s recent “Ask Jim” post, where he requested SEO related question from his readers.  I posted simply “content, or links” to his request.  He gave a concise reply today, which you can find here.

He writes “I’d have to say both. and I’ll add – Equally both. Often in my past I used to say “90% links”…but ya know, today it’s so much both that I’d say it’s equal…with only 1 (content or links) you’ll get nowhere. I might have once said things like “Content is King, and Links are Queen”…but again – you need them both to survive today.”
It’s an important discussion, I think.  As Jim points out, it’s a changing landscape.  You used to be able to do more with just links, and crap for content.  I think it’s great that SEOs are getting back to the mantra of building quality content.  I hope the search engines can keep up, it would be great to see them giving us just quality content in their results too.  Slowly maybe?  One can hope.

Well, ok, not exactly new, he started blogging in February according to his archives.  But, I was looking at it for the first time today, so it’s new to me.  Mashhoor Al Dubayan, has some interesting commentary on web development from an Arabic perspective.  He’s a regular at Sitepoint, and I’ve noticed interesting posts from him in the past, and decided to give his blog a look today.  You should too.

At least three or four times a week I go through the SEO blogs, just to read what people are saying. You’re welcome to have a look at all what I read, it’s listed here at Bloglines.

BUT, my favorite, is Loren Bakers Search Engine Journal. If you only read one, I’d suggest it be this one, as Loren generally points out all of the interesting discussions and news in the SEO world.

What’s your favorite?

Everybody and his brother has a bit of SEO advice these days.  A bit of this magic powder, or that snake oil, and instant rankings.  It doesn’t take long before the rumor becomes “fact” after enough people have repeated it.  I’m here to say, just don’t believe any of it.

Even the people who watch the search engines most closely, don’t always know what it is they’re seeing.  Matt Cutts recently spoke about the “IP Watchers” and said “The other reason why it’s not worth watching data centers is because there’s an entire set of IP addresses, if you’re a super-duper gungho SEO, you’ll know 72.2.14.whatever.  But that IP address will typically go to one datacenter.  But that’s not guaranteed.  If that one datacenter comes out of rotation, we’re going to do something else to it, we’re going to change the hardware infrastructure . . . So if you take that datacenter out of rotation for some reason, that IP address can point to a completely different datacenter.  So, the currency, the ability to really compare changes and talk to a fellow datacenter watcher and say ‘what do you see at 72.2.14.whatever?’ is really pretty limited.”

Obviously, this inhibits the ability of the datacenter watchers to be able to determine for sure that what they’re seeing is really on the datacenter they think it’s on.  Of course, Matt has a better idea for what they should do with their time.  “So, I would definately encourage you to spend more time worrying about the results you rank for, increasing the quality of your content, looking for high-quality people that you think should be linking to you and letting them know about that, and stuff like that.”  I agree.

Making money on the web is becoming a bigger topic.  Every day, I see more people talking about how to do it, or how much they’re making.  For the person who hasn’t even dipped a toe in yet, where to start?  I wanted to offer this list, as a part of Darren’s Group Writing Project, and as a way of helping inexperienced people take their first step into building money-making websites.

This is a non-exclusive list.  It’s meant to cover the main categories, and most of what’s not listed can be considered either a sub-category or a hybrid of what’s listed here.  It’s meant to get you thinking, to get you pointed in the right direction.  The most important thing, in my opinion, for the person ready to start a website is to take action.  Use this list as a way to get you one step closer to taking action.

1. Forums: I put this first as it’s where the bulk of my experience lies, not because I think it’s the most profitible.  My favorite tool for building a forum is vBulletin.   It’s also the only commercial software I’ll list in this post.  There are tons of resources about how to build a forum, and it’s a topic I’ve written on in my blog too.  In a nutshell, you need to choose a topic, selecting the niche is a key here, and assemble a group of people to help you get forum discussions going (a Launch Team), and promote.

2. Content: A news site, or a magazine type site.  This is where you publish articles, or information in other forms, that people will find useful.  Drupal is a good tool for building a content site.  You can write the content yourself, or commission others to write for you.  I do not recommend using free content, it’s ok for experimenting with, but if you want to build a sound business you should rely on quality content that cannot be found elsewhere.  Regularly add new content and promote.

3. Ecommerce: You need to have something to sell.  osCommerce is a good tool to use for an ecommerce site.  You need to have something to sell.  It works best when you have a product that many people need, that you can produce or have produced for you, and sell for a tidy profit.  A lot of people who talk about making money on websites say ebooks are a great way to go, but I think ebooks are a tough sell unless you are breaking new ground.  If you don’t have a product idea, try finding a drop ship company that hasn’t been exploited terribly.  Or, a local company that produces a great product but has no website, make a deal to be their exclusive distributor on the web.

4. Blogs: Last but not least.  Blogging for money works best when you’re writing on a topic that you’re both knowledgeable and passionate about.  I think that choosing the right niche is also the first important decision you need to make when starting a blog.  Blogs can be slow to ramp up, so be sure you’re starting something you care about in the long-term.  WordPress is my favorite blogging platform.   Make good, regular, blog posts, and network with other bloggers on your topic.

This subject is coming up more and more with me.  I’ve touched on it before.  I spoke about it on a podcast recently.  I discuss it in forum threads too.  Everyone has an opinion on the topic, and whether they’ve bought or sold a forum doesn’t seem to prevent them from offering it up.   I’ve bought and sold over a dozen active forums (and am always in the market to buy more, contact me if you have something to sell), so hope my experience can be of help to others.

From your first steps in researching how to value a forum, you’ll see people mentioning a specific multiple of monthly earnings.  This measure is of limited use, and can as often be a way of someone getting you to sell your forum too cheaply as a way to get too high a price on a forum sale.  When you’re buying a car, would you pay more for a car because it gets higher gas milage than another?  Of course not.  A forum’s revenue is very important, as is the gas milage of a car, but you don’t set the value based on that alone.

What else is there?  Well, the most important factors are traffic, topic, members, and content.  I’d sooner pay more for a forum getting loads of traffic than one that’s maximized its revenues.  Why?  A forum that has already maximzed its revenues leaves little room for improving, while a forum that gets loads of traffic leaves me room for improving the revenues on my own.  Thus, given the choice between a forum with lots of traffic and little revenue against one with lots of revenue and little traffic, I’d go for the one with traffic assuming all other factors near equal.

Why is topic important?  Well, you don’t want to end up owning a forum on a topic you hate, right?  That’s obvious.  But, you also want to have a forum that has a topic that will appeal to advertisers, if you’re looking at it as an investment.  If you’re getting into forums out of a passion for a specific topic, then it’s probably obvious to you which forum you want to buy, but when you get into it as an investment, you want to be sure that you’re getting a forum that will attract advertisers.  So, two forums equal in all other factors, you want to buy the one that attracts advertisers.  So, you’d pay more for that one.  The other side of the coin, if you’re selling a forum that is on a topic that advertisers won’t touch, you might not attract as high a sales price.

Members and content go hand in hand.  One of the most attractive aspects of owning a forum is that it attracts members, and the members generate the content.  In fact, it’s the whole concept behind a forum.  Great content on a forum is self-propagating.  Good members, make good discussions, and good discussions encourage more new members to join in and make more good discussions.  So, a forum that is active, well moderated, and has loads of quality discussions, adds value.

So, where do you get the price?  That’s difficult.  Look at some recent sales.  I’ve posted before on places where you can find sales.  Go in the past sales and find out what sold for how much.  Find something similar to yours.  Take into consideration the factors that I’ve mentioned.  Adjust your pricing accordingly.  If your selling a forum, come into it with a price in mind, that’s going to make you happy.  Ask for maybe 25% more than that price.  If you get into negotiations, you can adjust down and find a happy middle ground where both buyer and seller feel good about the deal.  If your’e buying, ask the seller what they want to get for the forum.  If they don’t know, point them to this post.

Anyone who blogs should keep an eye on what new blogs are starting, and be generous with links. Whether you’re a well established blogger, or the newest blog on the block, link out. I believe that linking out is just as important as linking in. I’ve gotten as many readers from linking to people’s blogs as I have from getting links from other blogs, and a lot of those inbound links I get are a result of linking to other people.

Here’s a few new blogs I’ve looked at this week.  Dave Turnbull’s blog, he’s writing about internet marketing. And, Ten SEO Tips for WordPress by SEO Portal.

So, with that, I’ve gotten the attention of three bloggers, who hadn’t previously been reading my blog. Now, they at least know the address. Maybe they’ll become regular readers. Maybe occasional readers. The links help too. Link out, and link often.

I saw this post on the Inside Adsense blog today. It just grates on my nerves. So, I posted this letter off to the email listed on their blog.

Dear Ms. Taing (and the rest of the Adsense team),
I just wonder if you realize that the people you’ll be meeting at SES are SEO professionals, not real webmasters. Sure, you might find the odd few genuine publishers at the conference, but in general you’re meeting the SEO crowd. These are the guys who’s idea of quality content is the results of the new ArticleBot tweak they learned at the private party the night before. Or, a new way to auto-generate blog posts. Link spammers. Yea, teaching them ways to optimize Adsense sure sounds like a great idea. Yea.

I’ve said this to Matt Cutts before, and I think I got his attention. The video series he’s made recently is super! But, then, he is supposed to be working in spam. I really find the efforts the Adsense team makes to reach out to spammers very frustrating. I feel that it really devalues the honest websites that are using Adsense to generate revenue. I see it more and more. People are becoming prejudice against sites that use Adsense, because so many spam websites use it.

How about spending less time with SEO people at SES, Webmasterworld, etc, and more time with quality publishers? Wouldn’t hurt you would it? There are some great web communities that are full of genuine publishers, and hardly any search engine spammers. Sitepoint, for example. Why does the Adsense team ignore them? I really just don’t understand why you reach out so much to the SEO crowd, and not to decent webmasters.

One of the things I told Matt was that I believed he could be far more effective in combating spam if he spent some time helping webmasters of quality sites to raise their rankings, rather than just trying to beat down the spammers. I think his video series is a great first step in that direction. Couldn’t the Adsense team benefit from that line of thinking as well? Do splogs and scraper sites really present such a promising future to Adsense?

Oh, yea, I got a quick reply. lol

Hello,

Thank you for writing in about Inside AdSense. Though we may not get to
respond to you personally, we are reading through every email that we
receive. So keep visiting the site.
If you have questions about your AdSense account, please visit the help
center at https://www.google.com/support/adsense. The AdSense Help Center
provides the answers to a wide variety of questions. If you are unable to
find the information you need, you can contact the AdSense Team through
our online contact form.

Thank you,
The Inside AdSense Team

Heck, Matt Cutts replied when I posted him a similar question. Who knows, maybe the Adsense team will show up on my blog, and see what I really think Adsense is becoming. I doubt my question was what lead him to do the video series, but I hope it did get his attention for more than just a moment. I have done my best to make sure the members at Sitepoint find out about Matt’s video series.

What would I do if I was starting my blog all over again? My blog is almost three years old, there’s a nearly endless list of things that I could do better, with 20-20 hindsight. But, the honest answer is that I’d do some things the same, and some better.

I’m not displeased at the progress my blog has made. I never started out to become a pro-blogger, and still don’t have that goal in mind. Some of the things I know I could do better, I probably wouldn’t. For example, I could post more. Certainly I’d be more successful as a blogger if I posted once a day or more. Keep up the pace of two or three insightful posts every single day is nearly a guaranteed recipe for success, but I won’t do it. Not to pah-pah at anyone who’s been a success as a blogger, but I just have other things that interest me more.

I could put up a better design, and integrate ads and bring in some income. I have a few hundred people visiting per day, and a nice PageRank. Certainly I could monitize that. Perhaps I will some day. But, I’m glad I didn’t have that as a goal when I started out. I think I would have disappointed myself, and given up long ago. Not that it’s impossible, or even difficult to make good money off a blog, it’s just as websites go I know of many other ways to produce that are far easier than blogging. If I had gone into this as a point of making money, I would have realized this at least as soon, and been disappointed and abandoned the project. So, this is another thing I would not have changed.

Ok, I can hear you asking, what would I have changed? Sure, lots. I’d be more of a link hound. I’ve been doing that more this year than in past years, and met with some success. I’d have started that earlier. I’d do more networking with bloggers who are interested in the same topics. I’m not an island. I’ve been making far more efforts this year to reach out and make connections with other blogges than ever in the past. I enjoy that part of blogging.

I’d stay more with the unique stuff. Blogging about what everyone else blogs about isn’t interesting. Well, this topic is, but I feel I have something unique to say about it, and that it’s worth saying. I rely heavily on Bloglines to read my most favorite blogs. I gets rather tiresome when I see everyone writing the same topic. I’ve been guilty of that too. My goal is to only post something if it seems remarkable and if I think the people reading this blog will find it useful and haven’t already found it on another source. Sure, that makes it more difficult to come up with interesting posts, but I’d rather stick to my couple of posts a week and make them count than be a “me too” blogger.

This is in response to Darren’s call for people to discuss this topic. I really like the idea, and the subject, and decided to participate. Here are a few other blogs posts that I read who jumped into the discussion.

• Re-Knitting My Podcast and Blogs by Rhonda
• There is only one thing I’d change by Eric
• Starting Over by Tony
• Regrets, I’ve had a Few by Debra
• My wabisabi Blog by ricemutt
• The vision for this blog… would I do it again? by Thom
• 3 changes I would make and 3 I would not by Joe
• Ready, Fire, Aim that Blog! by Brad
• I should have thought bigger by Danae
• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by Damien
• Regrets… I have a few… but then again, too few to mention (almost!) by Adrian
• Fix This Blog! by Alan
• RobZazueta.com – Regrets, I’ve had a few…. by Rob
• Why this Blog isn’t perfect by Lisa
• Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda by Christina
• If I had to start my blog Again by Costa
• I’m Not a ProBlogger, But… by Andrew
• My Vision Was Too Cloudy by George
• If I could Turn Back Time…. by Retrospector
• If I had to Start My Blog All Over Again by Adam
• Blogging to Infinity and Beyond by Ken
• Discover the Fun of Blogging by Stefan
• B4B Reincarnation by Jack
• blogging takes two…. by dcypl
• Gee, That’s a Funny Domain Name by Ella
• Look more forward than back, two million in the distance by TDavid
• An Even Bigger Chorizo by Matthew
• If I could turn back time, if I could find a way by Vincent
• If I had to Strt My Blog Again – I will be frustrated… not anymore by Anthony
• Hindsight is 20/20 by Ian
• If I had to Start My Blog Again by Hanneng
• Things I would do different if I started my blog again by Darren
• Eight Mistakes a Blog Newbie made: Did you make the same Mistakes? by Razib
• Throw Away my blog. I’m Starting Over by Aaron
• Five Blogging Tips I could have Done Better by Hendry
• Been There Done That by Chris
• Wanted: DeLorean – If I had to start my blog again by Leon
• More bloggers blogging on my Blog! by Trisha
• Three months of Getting Rich Slowly by J.D. Roth
• Rip it up and Start Again by Ian
• Lessons I’ve learned while blogging by Bill
• Turn Back your ‘bloggy’ clock by Paul
• If I could Turn Back Time… on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity by Jim
• What I would do if I had to start Free Money Finance Again by John
• Biggest Mistake: Pressing the “Sign-Up” Button on Blogger by Jon
• Is it a Blog… Or is it a Column? by Caryn
• Would I Want Today to be Different? by Tricia
• Memories of the Way It Was by Robert
• The vision thang by OmegaMom
• Which earlier nuts should have been added to my bolts? by Catherine
• Bake it, Taste it and Savor it by Renee
• 3 Things I would Change as a Weblog Starter by Conn
• WordPress and Typepad and Blogger, oh my! by Kelly
• Don’t Let Your Boss See Your Posting Times by Todd
• Darren Rowse’s Group Blogging Project by Melissa
• If I had to Start a Blog Again by Laurie
• Poor Old Michael Finnigan, Begin Again by Thatedeguy
• How I Screwed Up My Blog by James
• Blog Reconstruction Dreams of Time by Paul
• One Small Step for Blogkind by Jersey Girl
• Kill Fifty Birds with One Stone by Curt
• Learning from Experience in Blogging by Brem
• Do Over by Chris
• Digg me Out of This Mess by Darnell
• If I had to Start My Blog Again by Angusman
• How Palm Discovery may have been if I started out today by May
• But Don’t Look Back in Anger by Jan

I find this hilariously funny.  Seth, who brands himself as the guy with the bald head, gets asked by the receptionist at a “spa/place” whether he’s there for a haircut.  When you get passed being amused at the bald man being asked if he needs a haircut, there’s an important problem that most entrepreneurs face.

How do we hire good people?  Seth chastens us against “hiring the cheapest person,” but I don’t think it’s necessarily about the money.  I’ve known people who are paid oodles of dough, yet do things that could be categorized along with what Seth experienced.  Conversely, I’ve known very lowly paid people who excel.

So, back to the question, how do we hire good people?  Pay more?  I don’t think so, I’ve tried that.  Is it in the hiring, or in the quality of your leadership?  Probably both, but if you don’t hire well you have a higher wall to climb to lead the person.  Do I have the answer to this question?  No.  Do you Seth?