Not sure about wordpress, but pretty much any site that also allows php will work. I'm doing something very similar with Joomla (it mines stock data and performs various statistical metrics on it to act as a reverse stock screener).

You are building a custom TV and Wordpress helps you build a house to store it in. These 'extensions' are like small pieces of furniture and in some cases entire rooms of the house (like a membership registration system).

The advantage of using Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla is that you don't have to learn all the nonsense related to your house, like learning how to get your bathroom working when all you want to do is get people to come in and watch the amazing TV you just built.

To get your information into a database, you're likely going to want to go through phpmyadmin to connect to a MySQL database. If these terms are unfamiliar start with google.

Using wordpress, joomla, or drupal can remove some mundane stuff from your project. For example, these CMSs all have user login built in and lots of plugins available that provide additional functions for these users. If you want user logins on your football site, you would only need to add the football functionality as a page or plugin while the CMS handles the users.

Mango/Max,

We were arguing whether Wordpress "can do everything" which it obviously can't. Nobody is saying using a CMS/or framework to do a lot of the boilerplate work for you is a bad idea.

Dude, my point was that the people in this thread who are looking to make some money from sites are much better off learning WordPress then starting out learning to code in HTML, PHP or CSS. If you think it's a better use of time for a new person to learn to code those by hand as opposed to something like WP which can do nearly anything they would be looking to do with HTML and CSS and ****, then you are a goofball.

You're taking small bits of my longer posts out of context. Like I was seriously suggesting WordPress can do EVERYTHING web based in the world? Yeah, if you guys want an email account, don't bother with gmail, I think WordPress will do that too. No.

It was my belief that this thread is comprised of many new people who are just now looking into making money with sites. Which is why people were asking about learning how to code HTML and CSS, which are very basic forms of coding. I am saying that it's much easier to just learn how to make a site with WordPress, which is more than adequate for what they are likely looking for. It's a much better use of time and likely has all of the customizable options they are looking for.

And again, if you want something out of the ordinary like TC, then no, a simple WordPress install isn't going to cut it. I said that already. I was aiming at new people who want to learn HTML for some reason. Hand coding a site with HTML will take years off your life and is pointless when you can customize professional looking WP designs.

I'm done with this discussion. I'm late for my HTML class. </html>

If you had made this post first instead of the two you did, nobody would have disagreed and we wouldn't be having this argument. Instead you chose:

You can see why I/others might have been confused.

Uhh no.

Good luck quitting for real this time!

Anyone know any other sites besides flippa? Digitalpoint forums seem like mostly crap.

http://www.freshdrop.net

Has anyone experience in online browser games?
It looks like you can get a decent one scripted for 3k at freelance.com(I am thinking off a manger game for some niche sport).
How much tech knowledge would I have to have in order to maintain a game with a good admin backend?
How much would you make with approx 1k active users?

For those of you looking to learn about affiliate marketing, check out this sales listing. Read the post+comments and you should get a good idea of how to start an affiliate marketing campaign. It seems like a lot of work, but this guy made $1million.

http://flippa.com/auctions/96355/Net...---5-figure-pm

TVB - I have been using HTML since the CERN HTTPD days in the early 90's. I wrote entire web sites in HTML using emacs. It was easy for me due to previous experience with markup languages (DSR-Runoff). If you can think logically and draw some flow charts, it is not hard at all. I have kept up and am now looking for some HTTP5 training info.

Appreciate the thread but I have to say this or my OCD will kill me:



So did the guy who invented the pet rock.

If you're going to use lots of jargon to convince people on some random internet board think you know what you are talking about, at least use the right jargon. (hint: HTTP 5 doesn't exist)

Hum, this is exactly what I was thinking about doing a year ago. I didn't go anywhere with it for various reasons (but I haven't been completely useless, working on a Cal-ISO database...). I wanted to implement screens based on Journal of Finance type research. Basic technical and fundamental screens and rankings. One thing I was unsure of was whether I could get enough fundamental data for free. I wasn't sure if Yahoo and google could cover me. Are you planning on making a commercial site? Made progress?

awesome thread

of course he meant html 5

max....are u still actively doing this...buying and investing in websites?

Also how much do you think or guess a site like this makes - just of ad revenue...not book deals etc.

http://1000awesomethings.com/

I am still doing this. It is impossible for me to tell how much the site is worth just by looking at it. I think it is worth a lot more with the book than with ads. The humor niche is not very good for advertising because it caters to such a general audience. It makes it hard to advertise something specific. Compare to 2+2. If a guy want to advertise something poker related he knows its worthwhile to advertise here.

cool...yeah I always wondered how much these random humor blogs make, money wise.

If you have a free blog hosted w/ wordpress is there anything to gain SEO-wise by buying a domain for it i.e. "XYZ.com" vs just listing "xyz.wordpress.com"?

I think google does some IP checking with links to prevent people from starting 100 sites on their own server all linking to each other giving link juice. So it might be an advantage to have your own hosting if you expect many links from other wordpress blogs.

The short answer is that it probably doesn't make a big difference.

max,

Those are called link farms and Google definitely screens for them. The more natural your link profile is (appears), the more Google respects and trusts it.

vetiver,

I'm not exactly sure how much more Google values a .com Vs. a free blog, but people have been able to dominate very saturated niches with free blogs before. I also don't think you can use plugins with a standalone yoursite.wordpress.com configuration either, which definitely hinders some SEO performance.

While not strictly SEO, the added benefit of maintaining full control of your site is huge. You also have the ability to sell it at a later date. It's also worth having your own .com to bargain with link trades in the future.

Charlie,

The majority of the posts are not targeted for any specific type of product that people would be likely to click an ad for. For instance, one of their pages was about a piece of green cauliflower. There won't be any ads at all for that, regardless of user interest. Their best bet is to advertise a product, such as the book they have.

If they had a page about a product in the humor niche, say whoopy cushions, they could get some search traffic that would show up on that page, realize it's not selling whoopy cushions and click an ad to get off the page.

The majority of the users on the site are there to read funny stuff and not search driven visitors looking to buy stuff. Due to the lack of people actively looking to click ads, they'd do horrible % wise. Their CTR (click-through rate) would be bad. However, due to their sheer numbers, they might making a profit. Still, the book is the best bet to monetize that site.

Did anybody on 2+2 every start a webmaster group through this thread or others? I'm interested in talking with anybody that owns or develops websites. If you buy/sell websites that is even better . PM me!

Join #am on efnet.

What are some great like websites or readings/books etc to learn all about SEO/SEM, Social Media Marketing etc? Besides Wikipedia obv.

SEO really isn't that bad.

Follow the guide lines by Google and do some homework if you're going to outsource content writers to make sure they are not ******ed.

SEO is pretty much auto-pilot if you follow the rules. That old saying of content is king holds the ultimate truth here.

Start here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=35291

Edit:
Here's some info about a site I recently put up. It's in a market that's semi-saturated but not really. Some common search terms range from having 800,000 to 150,000,000 results.

I did no advertising, no sites linked to me, I was invisible on the web. Google noticed my site existed about 2 weeks after I put it up. Roughly a week after that it indexed around 50 of the 150 pages on the site. The site itself only has 5 pages that contain actual content, the rest are PDF files that have information that's relevant to the content we cover but contain no common search terms.

The site (not the PDFs) occasionally is on the 3rd-4th page for some of the terms in the regular search results and the URL of the site is not contained in the keywords. It's a massive uphill battle because other sites in this niche do have multiple common keywords in the URL (huge advantage).

If I type my url out as a search term (with spaces, no .com, etc.) it comes up first with 300,000 results. Only problem is it's something that's kind of interesting but no one in their right mind would actually think of typing it.

I tweaked the content we have slightly towards certain keywords but it didn't go beyond common sense. The original content was not written with SEO in mind, and it has pretty technical content in the legal field. There is a blog now, but it's still really small (5 posts) so there's still a ton of room for improvement and I'm pretty confident 1st page results will happen once there are enough blog posts.

Did I do anything special? Nope.

- I just made sure I used friendly URLs (none of this index.php?module=page3&param=s76cj3h4 stuff).
- I used relevant information in the meta title/descriptions (this actually doesn't help Google give you a higher rating but it does convince users to possibly click your link if it has good info and Google will attempt to use these tags if it sees fit when displaying your snippet).
- I didn't stuff in keywords but sprinkled it around the site.
- The code validates to w3 strict on every page.
- I tried to provide good content in the niche (much room to grow here).