Here’s the newsflash of the century, people continue to look for an easy way to make money online. Here’s the cold hard truth, most of the people making money online are making it by selling stuff to those who are looking for an easy way to make money online. Shocking huh.
People are Lazy
I don’t know what it is about people that they always want to shortcut or think that their is a way to easily make money on the internet. Heed this advice, as soon as it gets easy, every Tom, Dick and Larry will jump into the mix as well creating competition. Once you have competition it gets much more difficult than before. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts, the easier something is – the more competition it generates. The more competition their is, then the more difficult it becomes.
This is something that most of the BANS world seems to have not been able to pick up on just yet. They are convinced they can just throw up 300 stores and start making money online easily. Here’s a newsflash, it isn’t going to happen, at least not for long. Google will make sure that if you produce a host of garbage thin affiliate sites that they will soon either be buried deeply in the SERPS or removed from the index altogether.
Would You Buy?
Most of us that try to make money online, also often shop online and surf the internet regularly so you are aware of what sites look like and how you react when you first click onto one. An easy question to ask yourself is “Would YOU buy from your own site?”
If you are anything like me, when I click onto a site for the first time, I make some assumptions about that site. One glimpse at it is usually enough to either inspire me to look around and see what they have or to hit the back button and try another search. So what would people say about your site? What would YOU say about your site.
Let’s say for instance you were a Star Wars fan and you wanted to buy little Johnny a Stormtrooper helmet for Christmas. Let’s say that you were to do a Google search and come across say this site what does that site say to you? Does it inspire you to look around? Does it make you want to stay? If you are like me, absolutely not. It’s an out of the box garbage BANS site with no content, no modifications of any kind and really no hope of making any money. If it does even show up in the SERPS it is probably ONLY because it is new and Google for some reason, ranks new BANS sites pretty high for a few weeks but they quickly disappear.
Now let’s say you hit the back button and land on another Stormtrooper Helmets site. Does it inspire a different feeling than the other site on first glance? Are you not a bit more inclined to check it out and look deeper for that helmet for little Johnny? I would hope so, considering the second site is mine. It is far from done as I still want to jazz up the front page and add a lot of content to the blog portion.
My strategy is usually to get a decent looking site up and see how it produces over the first few months, if it does reasonably well then I will invest a LOT more time into it producing content and try to build it into a content rich site that will stand the test of both time and a Google human review if it ever were to come.
WordPress + BANS
As you can see by the Stormtrooper site it is a WordPress blog with a BANS store integrated into it. This is a hot trend as of late and I am experimenting with it as well. I will say this, it is getting a lot of credit from a lot of BANS sites lately but to be honest, I don’t see it as all that necessary. It is just as easy to build a quality content laden site using a BANS template as it is with WP.
Many members are running around the BANS forums crying about Google hating BANS sites and that the sky is falling and if you don’t change now you are screwed blah blah blah. It’s pretty stupid if you ask me, because Google has NOTHING against BANS sites. What they do not want in their index are thin affiliate sites. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a BANS site or one of the other hundreds of Ebay affiliate store scripts out there that exist.
If your site offers nothing for users other than auctions then Google is going to punt it. Plain and simple. I want to repeat, you can build a very high quality BANS site as easily as you can build a high quality WP/BANS site too. It just requires one thing……work.
Conclusion
I know a number of well known bloggers and so called black hat sites promote a number of shortcut ways to make money. Put up 100 sites that make a dollar a day and you’ll become rich overnight. It’s a crock of crap, because what they don’t tell you is those first 100 domains will probably be de-indexed and then you need to put up another 100 sites.
Domains aren’t cheap, especially now that Google is punting anything e-commerce that exists on a .info domain. I used to subscribe that theory of building a bunch of sites that could produce a few bucks a week but it wasn’t for me and fortunately I very quickly modified my strategy. I would rather have 20 sites that produce a few thousand a month than 100 sites that produce a giant pain in the ass.
I am considering starting to develop sites for people who aren’t quite sure how to go about building their own. I don’t know if that is even something that would be in demand but it’s something I am thinking about. My BANS store mentoring process is proceeding nicely and Kel has tackled the hardest parts of building a BANS site and is in the home stretch. I will post an update on that soon.
So in conclusion, do you think people would want to have sites built for them or are they going to continue to look for the easy way out? Also let me know what you think of my Stormtrooper site….bear in mind that it is far from done and I would expect to have 30 or 40 content rich articles on it within the next 60 days.
Stormtroopers Rule!
72 Responses to “Ugly Sites Make No Money”
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I have numerous ugly sites and they rake in the cash. What you have to realize is that people are addicted to clicking. Ideally, they want to double click. So we web masters need to provide a solution for their hunger to click.
So, the ugly site that doesn’t waste any time getting rid of ugly visitors via an Adsense or whatever click is a model of excellence that we need to embrace as a business model in my humble opinion. Of course, I could be entirely wrong.
Andys last blog post..How I make some money online for free
Firstly, I just *love* the design of your blog..
I have a couple of really ugly sites that make money, I think people click on the ads to get away from the ugliness of my site, it’s the only thing I can think of..
I definitely prefer to have really nice looking sites, and would love it if I were more gifted in this area
Penny Butlers last blog post..Your PageRank can DIE with WordPress – 17 Ways to Optimize SEO
Great tips man. This will be really helpful for me to earn more money. I am subscribing to your posts right away.
Solid Bloggers last blog post..Top Blogging Secrets To Success
Quite a controversial title. However, Plentyoffish.com is one of the ugliest sites I’ve seen and it made over 10 million dollars last year.
Looks aren’t everything
Cheers,
Glen
Glen Allsopps last blog post..3 Stories That’ll Make You Think Twice
Im not in total disagreement but I know of some real ugly sites that make quite a bit of money. Im sure if those sites were more well optimized or looked better they could probably raise their profits. But you are right…most of them are lazy!
Matt Helphreys last blog post..Develop a Link Building Strategy
Hi Bill,
With respect to the question that you posed, “would you buy from your own site” – all I can say is OUCH!. That’s a total “in your face” reality check kind of a question.
It is, however, a very great question to ask. I am going to keep asking this “hard truth” question everytime that I tweak my own site.
Online Marketing Promotions last blog post..Pros And Cons Of Buying An Internet Business Instead Of Building One From Scratch
Most of my adsense only sites are VERYYYYYYYY ugly.
I am considering changing them… but I would need some sort of Geo-IP for ebay or phpbay, because ebay is the ONLY thing other than adsense I could use… and then I don’t even know if it would make any money. One in particular I am speaking of does $30/day in Adsense with 1500 or so uniques daily.
Great post. To answer your question, yes. I do think that many people would pay to have sites made for them.
I think this will become even truer in the next couple of years. Only the very successful of the past will survive (drudge, for example).
Gennaros last blog post..8 Presidential Inauguration Locations To Visit
Yeah you are right, people are lazy.
But with platforms like wordpress and bans, there’s no excuse for building ugly sites
Rob
Hard way to get some cash online LOL
Probably get informations online to get some cash more have chance to run
Damn.. posting 100 sites per week or so are a lot of work. By the way, I didn’t know what BANS was until I went to look it up. You might want to write “Build A Niche Store (BANS)” when you first discussed about BANS up top.
Kai Los last blog post..Should You Write Long or Short Blog Posts
Very good Post about Usability.
A Product sells only and if only it has a good wrapper.
I have also a site made with smartappsportal.com and I focus on its design for creating new leads easily.
They provide nice tech support and it is easy to use also. But I tweak their design for better first Impression.
Nice Post, I liked it.
Thanks
Don’t judge a book by its cover and so they say. Sometimes, I have to agree that ugly sites doesn’t make money, but sometimes this concept is wrong. I mean you don;t go after a site just because it has a pretty lay-out, you go to a site because of the quality content it brings to you. But then again, first impressions do tend to last, so why not try making your site attractive yet professional for your readers?
Hi,
Thanks for the tip.
I will try change my blog and try to make better and more attractive.
Best regards,
Felipe
Felipes last blog post..Grandes Jardins em pequenos espaços
I must agree with Tryrone Shum. Some people do not go for one site just because it has a cool lay-out but because of the content and services it offers. However, as we all know, a perfect dish needs all the complete ingredients to acquire the perfect taste. In Business we must recognize all factors that will entice people to be customers.
Hi! Your Star Wars Trooper Galaxy site looks wonderful. I’d also like to start using the Revolution theme for my websites. I was using BANS for a while but switched back to Phpbay Pro. Is the process of integrating WP & BANS easy to learn or am I better off just sticking to WP? Thanks, David
.-= David @Discount Website Hosting´s last blog ..Hostgator Review =-.
I think there are many people who would like a site built for them. Heck, if I could afford it I would outsource the majority of tasks for my site, and the design would definitely be one of those things.
My website is ugly, that’s why I only get $1/day on the average. I’ll improve it once I have the money.
What do you think of my answer to your question?
(My apologies if this has been said already)
“So in conclusion, do you think people would want to have sites built for them or are they going to continue to look for the easy way out?”
Isn’t this kind of the same thing? People looking for the easy way out would probably love to have sites built for them. I also think a lot of other hard-working people would too. But really the people looking for the easy way out will have a hard time no matter who builds their site.
Whereas people working hard to really help people (like you with your great posts here) will succeed regardless of who builds their site.
But I think you really made a lot of great points in this article about people looking for the easy way out. I also think a lot of people would want sites built for them. Thanks for the great article!
Peace,
Darren L Carter
yes I agree with you at all of them but sometimes If you earn just money from adsense,you can earn money with ugly one because customer cannot find which he searchs and clicks ads.