What does it take to be lucrative in the freesite game nowadays?

Bill · 2005-10-17, 01:25 AM

Ahhh, I think we might be having some confusion about terms that I'm using.

When I say "a straight line of decline" for certain type of freesites, that is, build and forget freesites, what I mean is that a certain type of freesite is most likely to make sales when it is first listed, and is getting the most traffic it will ever get from new listings. Then, as time goes on, it's probability of making sales drops in roughly a straight line. It becomes stale, all the biggest linklists drop the listing after a certain number of months, and surfers have seen the site before.

Such a site is likely to make a total average of, lets say, two and a half sales during it's active lifetime. So, lets say it's worth 30+30+15=$75.

Lots of niches are lucky to see a sale per site. Lots of niches only make a sale every two sites. Some niches make 6-8 sales per site. But you get an average.

If you put that site into a complete system, where you link to it again and again from new hub pages, and use it as a listing in a fake linklist, and so on, you can extend it's value. But even in that case sites tend to go slowly stale. Sponsors get overused, content gets seen too many times.

This is another type of decline, but it's not what I meant when I talked about a straight line decline. A straight line decline happens with _unsupported_ freesites and galleries.

People will tell you about "That old site I built years ago just made another sale...", and that is a very real phenomenon, but this is a type of selective perception - they forget about the dozens and hundreds of other old sites that are making fewer sale sthan they used to make.

In the search engines, pages are constantly being forced further and further back in the serps, and you have to work steadily to keep your pages alive. Unless you are using a centralized strategy - basically, unless you have a sucessful linklist or tgp with a steady flow of thousands of incoming links, your freesites will tend to dissappear. This isn't an absolute for every site, but it is pretty much an absolute for your 'average' site. On the average , all pages are falling out of the serps.

A hard worker, who is constantly exploring and exploiting new traffic sources, can slowly increase their average traffic pretty consistently - but this is substantially harder that it sounds in theory, becuase everyone else is also trying to hold and increase their pool of traffic.

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2005-10-17, 01:25 AM	#11
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Ahhh, I think we might be having some confusion about terms that I'm using. When I say "a straight line of decline" for certain type of freesites, that is, build and forget freesites, what I mean is that a certain type of freesite is most likely to make sales when it is first listed, and is getting the most traffic it will ever get from new listings. Then, as time goes on, it's probability of making sales drops in roughly a straight line. It becomes stale, all the biggest linklists drop the listing after a certain number of months, and surfers have seen the site before. Such a site is likely to make a total average of, lets say, two and a half sales during it's active lifetime. So, lets say it's worth 30+30+15=$75. Lots of niches are lucky to see a sale per site. Lots of niches only make a sale every two sites. Some niches make 6-8 sales per site. But you get an average. If you put that site into a complete system, where you link to it again and again from new hub pages, and use it as a listing in a fake linklist, and so on, you can extend it's value. But even in that case sites tend to go slowly stale. Sponsors get overused, content gets seen too many times. This is another type of decline, but it's not what I meant when I talked about a straight line decline. A straight line decline happens with _unsupported_ freesites and galleries. People will tell you about "That old site I built years ago just made another sale...", and that is a very real phenomenon, but this is a type of selective perception - they forget about the dozens and hundreds of other old sites that are making fewer sale sthan they used to make. In the search engines, pages are constantly being forced further and further back in the serps, and you have to work steadily to keep your pages alive. Unless you are using a centralized strategy - basically, unless you have a sucessful linklist or tgp with a steady flow of thousands of incoming links, your freesites will tend to dissappear. This isn't an absolute for every site, but it is pretty much an absolute for your 'average' site. On the average , all pages are falling out of the serps. A hard worker, who is constantly exploring and exploiting new traffic sources, can slowly increase their average traffic pretty consistently - but this is substantially harder that it sounds in theory, becuase everyone else is also trying to hold and increase their pool of traffic.