Making Crap Websites for Ad Profit?

[gggmork]

I'm slowly researching how to make money with ads on websites, the single point being profit, not content (I have very little website knowledge; never owned one).

An example ad-ish site I 'studied' makes $3.80 a day (according to websiteoutlook), despite the lameness and simplicity:
http://www.howtocookcornonthecob.com/
and it somehow shows up as the very 1st google link for 'how cook corn' (maybe because those words are explicitly in its domain title, or it has more backlinks than competitors).

Wouldn't it be easy to slap together a hundred such sites for $3.80 x 100 = $380 daily profit (some of that person's other sites apparently make $70ish/day)? If its that easy to put text on the internet then collect basically free money, I want in on this whole adsense/etc racket (I'm an intern00b).

'corn' is probably a pretty lame keyword to target compared to more profitable ones, perhaps honing in on more specific phrases and 'keyword modifiers' to up page rank if there's too much search competition for a broad word.

Assuming this is even a good/easy way to make money, what is the easiest/best way for a n00b to slap up sites with ads like that? I only recently learned how to make a basic html file with notepad, or is some other tool better? And then whats the best way to put the site on the internet. Or would it be better to just use blogger.com or something, keeping in mind the whole purpose would be easy ad profit. Or any basic advise/whatever?

I'm thinking each domain probably costs more money. So maybe have myDomain.com and then myDomain.com/these-stupid-keywords and myDomain.com/these-other-stupid-keywords, etc. since putting the words in the title apparently increases page rank.

My guess is something like a forum wouldn't be very ad profitable because there'd be the same repeat visitors who don't click ads, or they're in a 'reading' mode instead of a clicking/finding mode. For all I know it might even be better to purposely have crap content so users get frustrated and click on ads instead of read. Also maybe its a good strategy to target users who aren't web savvy (less likely to have ad block plus, heh).

Not sure if I'll try anytime soon but kinda researching its potential.

[Technician]

Is it worth your time?

[Creaphis]

The problem is that whenever a source of easy money exists, a lot of people try to get it, and the possible income gets split into so many shares that no one person is making especially much money for their effort. If you tried, you might manage to get a few sites to show up in Google's search results, but many more would languish in obscurity and just cost you money (domain name registration, hosting) and time (finding advertisers, producing crap content).

[Technician]

Is it worth your time?

[Creaphis]

The problem is that whenever a source of easy money exists, a lot of people try to get it, and the possible income gets split into so many shares that no one person is making especially much money for their effort. If you tried, you might manage to get a few sites to show up in Google's search results, but many more would languish in obscurity and just cost you money (domain name registration, hosting) and time (finding advertisers, producing crap content).

[RestlessRodent]

You'd probably lose money if your site sucks.

[DuckReconMajor]

Hey guys ima post this twice.

[Technician]

Workin' on my post count. Don't know what Creaphis' objective is.

[DuckReconMajor]

Hey guys ima post this twice.

[Jodwin]

Finding advertisers is the easiest part: You could, just for starters, use Google's ads until your sites get some momentum for you to get better deals. Of course there might be online stores related to your site's subject that are offering affiliate programs, so looking out for those would be useful also...

But the biggest problem is, and always will be, getting people to your website. You need to make the sites better and more known than any other site on that subject (well, not necessarily better than all, but that would help in getting it more known :P ), so that other people start posting links to it all over the place. Of course, to get other people see it in the first place you yourself need to do some undercover marketing on the net, posting links in appropriate places without getting yourself banned for website pimping and stuff.

Having multiple domains costs more (unless you can get a nice hosting contract), but it's a better choice if you're going to host multiple websites linking to each other. A lot of search engines (or all of them?) ignore links from page A to page B within the same domain when calculating how good results they are, so linking your own pages for more Google cookies is pointless if you have only one domain.

Two things you should also avoid: Making your page have no informative content, but only ads, and using techniques that are targeted at screwing up the search engines, such as using keywords that have nothing to do with the website. Although it might be a losing battle, a lot of search engines are working to get such results removed from their listings.

[Technician]

What'd you do gggmork? We're all posting twice.

[Maes]

What I always liked is the universal value and result-oriented philosophy of "smart advertising" techniques: even if you google for "rotten corpses with Ebola", "the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk", "miniscule penis" you will get "related ads" results saying "Click HERE to get the best offers on Rotten Corpses with Ebola", "Click HERE to buy The Rotten Asshole of Roadkill Skunk" and "Get Miniscule Penis with International Shipping Here".

OK, some ad engines are actually smart enough not to display results based on a single keyword or, worse yet, just redirecting any search as-is to a generic e-shop (amazon.com ads were notorious for hooking up to just about anything, including the above). Of course, tasteless results like e.g. advertising coffins on a page talking about the death of a loved one or cell phones on a news page talking about a terrorist setting off a bomb via a cell phone are still possible.

[GreyGhost]

Google asked - "Did you mean: rotting corpses with ebola"

gggmork said:

An example ad-ish site I 'studied' makes $3.80 a day (according to websiteoutlook), despite the lameness and simplicity:
http://www.howtocookcornonthecob.com/
and it somehow shows up as the very 1st google link for 'how cook corn' (maybe because those words are explicitly in its domain title, or it has more backlinks than competitors).

The home page has the following five meta tags embedded in it - "how to cook corn on the cob, how to boil corn on the cob, boiling corn on the cob, cooking corn on the cob, boiled corn on the cob" which have probably been scanned and indexed by dozens of search engines. Phrase repetition and occupying what's likely to be a rather small niche market would help push that site up the search result rankings.

Assuming this is even a good/easy way to make money, what is the easiest/best way for a n00b to slap up sites with ads like that? I only recently learned how to make a basic html file with notepad, or is some other tool better? And then whats the best way to put the site on the internet. Or would it be better to just use blogger.com or something, keeping in mind the whole purpose would be easy ad profit. Or any basic advise/whatever?

Some people swear by FrontPage, others swear at it because of the IE-centric pages it generates. I'm using a freebie called HTML Kit.
Advertising through a free service like blogger.com - or "free" hosting services that rely on embedded advertising to pay their bills could result in a bunfight for a share of your advertising income or cancellation of the service. You'd be better off with a $5 per month hosting package that permits (practically) unlimited hosted domains.

I'm thinking each domain probably costs more money.

Yes - each domain name costs money to register and renew, with 100+ sites you'll either want to shop around for a cheap and reliable registrar and/or do as many spammers do and sign up as a bulk user to get a volume discount.

For all I know it might even be better to purposely have crap content so users get frustrated and click on ads instead of read.

Crap content means you'll have few repeat visitors and very little by way of word-of-mouth referrals, apart from "OMFG - that site's so god-awful I laughed till I spewed". As for the adverts, it'll help if they relate in some way to the site's content.

To sum up - I agree with Creaphis and Technician. Setting up and maintaining 100+ websites is a lot of work for what might be a pitifully small return.

[exl]

Try to come up with something that people want to read. Just think about it for a while, stranger things have happened. Remember http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ ?

[RestlessRodent]

exl said:

Try to come up with something that people want to read. Just think about it for a while, stranger things have happened. Remember http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ ?

The million dollar homepage just CRASHED X! I lost all my open documents and my one song playlist. I guess I shouldn't have hovered over those bunny icons to see if they are really that desparate to get money.

[Torn]

gggmork said:

Wouldn't it be easy to slap together a hundred such sites for $3.80 x 100 = $380 daily profit (some of that person's other sites apparently make $70ish/day)? If its that easy to put text on the internet then collect basically free money, I want in on this whole adsense/etc racket (I'm an intern00b).

...

Assuming this is even a good/easy way to make money, what is the easiest/best way for a n00b to slap up sites with ads like that? I only recently learned how to make a basic html file with notepad, or is some other tool better? And then whats the best way to put the site on the internet. Or would it be better to just use blogger.com or something, keeping in mind the whole purpose would be easy ad profit. Or any basic advise/whatever?

WordPress. It is easy to set up and you can get quite alot of plugins for it. Plus there is many layouts / theme that is adsense ready (just google adsense ready wordpress theme) and normal banners.

But you do need some kind of domain and a web hotel. I am not sure what to advice you. Find something that is cheap. I personally use B-one, but that one is Europa. You need a website with free traffic and various other useful stuff like mysql database, etc... I guess that is pretty much standard today.

gggmork said:
I'm thinking each domain probably costs more money. So maybe have myDomain.com and then myDomain.com/these-stupid-keywords and myDomain.com/these-other-stupid-keywords, etc. since putting the words in the title apparently increases page rank.

[/B]

Well, I am not sure if it works still, I read it a long time ago. But if you had a link on domain 1 to domain 2 and a link on domain 2 to domain 1, you would fool google into thinking alot more is linking to you. Google: goes to domain 1, then goes to domain 2, back to domain 1, then back to domain 2, etc... But as I said I am not sure if it works still.

[gggmork]

Helpful info, I'll research html-kit and wordpress more, even though this apparently isn't very profitable. Well one lame question that's easier to ask here than search google.. I assume:

mySite.com/crap-text-about-wii
and
mySite.com/crap-text-about-spaghetti-or-something
etc.

are all just bought as 1 single domain (where I can make as many '/'s as I want for extra 'pseudo domains')?

Not even sure if you have to worry about copyrightish words like 'wii'/album titles/celebrity names etc.
being in your domain title like that (well there is wikipedia.org/wii etc. so I guess not).

Also not sure how google wields its power, like if you click on your own ads or post backlinks on wikis etc. or whatever naughty behavior, whether they outright ban you completely from adsense, or just ban your single site or lower its rank etc.

I don't know if its worth my time yet, but as far as I can tell you only have to invest time at the beginning, then the site just sits there collecting money without having to do anything else.

I hope we reach a post scarcity society soon, then people could actually do interesting things with their time without dealing with spiraling economic arms race bullshit or giant corporate parasites.

[GreyGhost]

You might be thinking of subdomains - such as "crap.mySite.com" or "warez.mySite.com" - which don't have to be registered separately since they resolve to the parent domain "mySite.com".

Product and celebrity names can be a major headache, depending on how determined the other party is to protect their name. If ICANN conclude that your domain name "infringed upon or otherwise violated the rights of any third party" they can re-assign it to the complainant, which could leave your advertising empire in limbo or ruins.

I haven't spent much time researching adsense but I think they're using both domain name and IP address matching to filter out internal back-links. The best way around that is to have your site/s split up between (at least a few) geographically diverse hosts.

[deathbringer]

Meh, a lot of porn sites do it without any content at all, just a list of "top links" and then 100 or so banners that probably earn them money for signups. As it's porn it will get a zillion visitors even if it is crap, and of those a decent number will sign up and the site owner will pocket a little bit of money. Doubt it's much more than thier hosting costs though.

Or you could try it on some free host like tripod, though it won't last long it will still get quite a few hits just by having porn on.

[SYS]

GreyGhost said:

Yes - each domain name costs money to register and renew, with 100+ sites you'll either want to shop around for a cheap and reliable registrar and/or do as many spammers do and sign up as a bulk user to get a volume discount.

Crap content means you'll have few repeat visitors and very little by way of word-of-mouth referrals, apart from "OMFG - that site's so god-awful I laughed till I spewed". As for the adverts, it'll help if they relate in some way to the site's content.

If it's porn, all you have is porn, and all you link to is porn it's a license to print money. There are people whose sole income is updating porn links on their sites at 3:00AM everyday.

[gggmork]

Really (about porn)? Well I read that adsense puts public service announcements in their ads when there's any 'naughty' material/keywords/ mature content etc... so I guess you'd have to use some sort of ads other than adsense?
Also.. since porn is so popular wouldn't it be really hard to get anyone to see YOUR page due to too many competitors with higher page rank?
Also.. like say when you embed someone else's youtube video on your site.. is that legal without 'stealing their copyrighted work'? Also if you do that, does it cost you bandwidth or them?
Not sure if I meant 'subdomain'.. those have '.' in them, I meant '/'. Like doomworld SLASH vb. My guess is you can make any page like mysite/anyCopyRightedTermIWant but maybe a domain is more risky (like mysite.anyCopyRightedTermIWant).
So I should maybe make 3 sites, each hosted in a different country? That's what alex jones seems to do with his multiple viral sites.
You also need backlinks to rank.. I was thinking file hosting sites have a great business model for that.. think of how many links there are to sendspace etc from this forum alone (though I suppose it evens out given their competitors also have similar backlinks).
Also basing everything on memes is quite smart given their viral nature (encyDramatica). I wonder how much (bandwitch etc) it costs to run a wiki of that size (website outlook says ED makes 700$ a day... how much of that is profit, god damn).

[Torn]

gggmork said:

Also not sure how google wields its power, like if you click on your own ads or post backlinks on wikis etc. or whatever naughty behavior, whether they outright ban you completely from adsense, or just ban your single site or lower its rank etc.

So far I have figured out, they are pretty stict about that. Do not even try to do that or else you will never be able to get registered at adsense again. Btw, I think you would need to buy two domains, not just one.