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Originally Posted by Geppetto
A few questions for anyone who knows:
-What does one need to know to avoid getting scammed?
-It would seem that sending as much as possible on one site would maximize the effectivness of each hour you spend working on the site and likely maximize the $ per hour earned....at the same time this lack of diversification would increase the risk of failure...what is the best number of sites to own so as to not get bogged down?
-What % of your net worth would you feel comfortable investing in websites?
-In your opinion what type of websites have the highest profit margins, and which are the easiest to improve the margins on?
-What type of websites are the easiest to run (in terms of complexity and hours) ?
thanks in advance to anyone who answers
I can answer some of these - I hope OP doesn't mind me joining in here.
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-If one knows nothing about managing/ coding websites, where is the most efficient place to learn the basics (does anyone know of an online class or a good book)?
-Approx how many hours of study would it take to become proficient enough to run a standard website.
This very much depends on how technical a site you want. I would break down the basics into 6 main things you need to learn though:
1.
Presentation and layout - You'll need to know HTML and CSS
2.
Design - unless you're naturally talented, just hire a graphics designer. They'll make something way nicer tha you can make in 1/10th the time. You'll then need to convert this into a web-friendly format (HTML/CSS). If you want you can find someone that will do both, but the good people tend to be very expensive. From what I've seen - User Interface types are the best
3.
Server-side scripting - you'll need this to run your dynamic web pages and pull data from your database. The most common ones used are PHP and ASP/.net
4.
Database - you need a way to store your data and handle users. mySQL, SQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc are common examples. What you choose depends on your needs.
5.
Server management - you'll need to be able to upload your files (FTP), CHMOD files for permissions, and if you're doing things right, use mod_rewrite for dynamic URL rewriting. Apache or IIS are the common servers used.
6.
Web analytics - you need to know how your site is performing. Google analytics is free and quite powerful. If you need to scale, Omniture is pretty much your only choice but it's a monopoly and ridiculously expensive.
Obviously you don't need to know ALL of this, but if you want to be a one-man show you need to. If you have a programming background, most of this will come very easily to you.
You can learn the basics of HTML/CSS/PHP/mySQL in about a month. Will it look great or be super optimized? No, but once the site is up you can always touch it up.
From my time struggling with web stuff, here is my best advice:
- Hire a designer. As a techy guy, you probably suck at design. Or, at least use a template.
- Focus on a really solid database structure and site organization. Even if everything else is
messy and amateur, having this in place will make it easy to update in the future
- Figure out how you're going to get traffic. This will be the most challenging part of your site. SEO/Paid SEM/Affiliates/Social Media are all options
- Test, test, test! You have no idea what users want or what landing pages work. Trust me. I've found some ugly-ass forms/landing pages built in the mid 90's that still convert better than a shiny new design because it feels less 'spammy' to people
- Get out of a tech mindset. You'll notice that almost everything listed above is strictly a support role. DO use your data to drive business decisions, but overall you should be focused on
getting more traffic and making sure your traffic is converting