New Member Introductions

**ergophobe** · 08-31-2006, 05:11 PM

Some forum junkies might recognize the nick from WebmasterWorld where I was a moderator of the PHP forum for a few years. I've basically broken my forum addiction and don't spend a lot of time in forums, but am looking to learn some new tricks.

I've been building websites as part of my job, volunteering for non-profits, and on contract since about 1997. Last year I pretty much decided that I would only build sites for fun, not for pay and pretty much quit moderating, coding and visiting forums and have just plugged away on some sites as a spare-time thing.

For a long time, most of my effort went into (and a fair bit still does) an esoteric academic research site, open for free but by invitation only to historians who actually care about such things (sixteenth century history). Since it is really just a sort of wide intranet for our research group, I never really cared about SERPs and promotion and things like that.

In recent months, I've built a few sites that are also things that just happen to interest me and that hopefully have a slightly broader appeal, but nothing I would have built if money were the motivation, nor do I ever expect to get much money off them. I have some ads running on them, but given the completely insignificant income they bring in, I have thought about just getting rid of the ads anyway. One is mostly just my political rants, whose main purpose is to create an outlet that spares my wife from having to hear them over and over again. Lately, though, I've been going more for satire which lightens up the mood a bit. I also live in a national park and the other site that I use for diversion is devoted to hiking and rock climbing and such

Like I say, neither of these sites really tries to make any money and neither actually does, but I hope that the latter will become an excellent resource a few years down the road as I add to it. There's no point in having a resource that nobody can find, so wanting them findable by the wide world and that got me studying up (though often struggling to find time to implement) SEO and getting out of the pure probramming forums. That has just started to open my eyes to the possibilities out there for sites that serve a useful purpose and bring in a little income.

So here I am with a head full of ideas, looking to learn some new tricks, figure out what earners know that I don't and thinking to branch out from hobby sites into earning sites if I can piece the puzzle together. That's pretty much it.

**ergophobe** · 08-31-2006, 05:14 PM

Oh yeah, let me add, I was reading the intro post from Lee and that sums up where I hope to be

Quote:

In everything I do, I always aim to do it the right way, to do nothing "under the table" or shady, and provide something legitimate to the user / visitor. This is and will continue to be my take on doing web business successfully and LONGTERM.

You don't need to do the following to be successful on the web:
~ Beat the system
~ Lie to your visitors
~ Use shady SEO tactics
~ Get involved in a questionable web industry
~ SPAM

I think you get the idea here. If you want to talk about shady techniques, the adult industry, or blackhat SEO, you will find this isn't the place. If you want to learn how to do business the "right" way, then this is and will continue to develop into the ultimate place to be.

**breakpoint** · 08-31-2006, 06:29 PM

Welcome man. I wish I had your PHP knowledge.

**ergophobe** · 08-31-2006, 07:50 PM

Thanks for the welcome.

As for knowledge of PHP, it's pretty easy to dive into. I only learned it because I'm lazy (and I had a programming background from way back - FORTRAN, C++, Scheme). when I started building sites I just couldn't stand the thought of keeping my site navigation and template and so forth up to date manually. Uggh!

Now that there are so many great options like Drupal, Wordpress and whatnot, though, I spend less time programming and more time writing and taking pictures, which ultimately I find more fun. Though a good programming project can be a kick too.

**LeeD** · 09-01-2006, 10:05 AM

Welcome to EF!

**imported_jacksmith** · 09-01-2006, 10:28 AM

hi there, welcome to EF. who said you can't teach new tricks to old dog

**Guaner** · 09-01-2006, 01:25 PM

Good to have you here! I wish you success in your future projects!

**Sandram75** · 09-01-2006, 08:35 PM

I'm learning from SiteSell's program SiteBuildIt
about getting traffic to a niche site. But I am
very inexperienced so it is probably just right
for me :yes:

**earnsomecoin** · 09-01-2006, 11:03 PM

Welcome to EF ergophobe

**ergophobe** · 09-02-2006, 07:25 PM

Sandram75,

Whatever gets you to build sites a good thing. I have been surprised at how relatively easy it is to get traffic for some things (and hard for others). I put up a site as a proof of concept and sandbox. I had no links pointing to it, but I did have about 2-3 good articles up there just to play with and had several broken links, empty pages, flawed layout and so forth. Unreadable, but it was just meant to play around with until I had the framework how I wanted.

I finally got around to putting some tracking on it after a few weeks and was shocked to learn that I was getting about 30 visitors a day (I guess the search engines discovered me from the WHOIS record) and the visitors discovered me from the search engines. So I added another dozen or so articles and within a couple of months was over 2000 visitors and 12,000 page views per month. Still practically nothing, but surprising to me given that the site was absolute crap (embarrassing really) and I had done nothing to get it noticed. Finally I noticed that it had a PR4 so I checked the backlinks - it was in DMOZ and listed on a couple of blogs and so forth.

Anyway, that just made me realize that if you have any good idea in your head, even relatively obscure, and you have something not even all that original to say about it, that you can get small drips of traffic. Now I'm trying to figure out how to do the same in some potentially higher earning niches, but it seems like it's a matter of setting down to do it... instead of cruising forums all the time!

**pcdoc** · 09-02-2006, 07:35 PM

Welcome ergophobe, "where comfort is an obsession".

**Benjamin Scott** · 09-02-2006, 09:24 PM

Welcome to the forum ergophobe! This a great place to share and learn
information. Feel free to share some knowledge and ask questions.
Many of the members here are very helpful and friendly.

**oneolpro** · 09-06-2006, 02:30 PM

Hello,
After 40 years of successful but old fashioned sales and marketing across the United States, I'm new . In a few weeks I've gone from a world of outhouses and crank-phones to a world overwhelmed by hyper-active electrons. Lots of salt, but tough to find the meat. I'm here after a slow but meaningful start with "Ethos" (Ethos-4eNews.biz). I hope I can contribute sensibly when it's appropriate.
Fred