Site Development

Of all the search engine optimization techniques out there none is more fundamental than rewriting URLs to be more human and search engine spider friendly. URL rewriting is useful for removing ambiguous querystring parameters that have no meaning to your visitors but are required to drive the content presentation of your data driven website. For example if I were searching for Kung Fu movies and saw the following URLs, http://www.dvdstore.com/categoryid=7 and http://www.dvdstore.com/kungfu-movies.html I would be more likely to follow the second link as I know exactly where I am going, not so with the first ambiguous, albeit functionally identical, URL.

Continued

Popularity: 100% [?]

There is a difference between having an idea for a single site that you want to truly breakout from the pack and those that you see as low maintenance, low risk, yet still dependable revenue generators. If you are looking to build a breakout site the choice of development language is pretty much up to you and your team, .NET, PHP, RoR, they all have their pros and cons and you can make a case for any of them. But if you are looking to establish many small streams of revenue spread out over different markets and monetization schemes YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE PHP. Believe me I hated coming to this realization, I’ve spent the last 6 years as a .NET developer, I love the scalability, that it’s strongly typed, and the development environment is world class, but when you are trying to scale a niche operation the sheer breadth of open source scripts that you can leverage that are all built in PHP dwarf every other development language. Wordpress for blogs, mcjiffy for ePN or domaining,  OpenX for ad serving, and the list goes on, 95% of all code you need to build any type of niche site is available via an Open Source PHP script.

The sooner you learn PHP and to a lesser extent MySQL/Apache the less reliant you will be on other support entities to get your next endeavour going. I just purchased an arcade script ditribution site, 2goware.com, and I am at the mercy of the current owner’s support staff to transfer the code and get it all working on my dreamhost.com (af) account since I am not nearly as strong with PHP as I am in .NET. If you aren’t prepared to learn at least a modicrum of PHP so you can either do things yourself or outsource in an itelligent manner what you can’t this IS NOT the business for you.

Popularity: 27% [?]

The competition on I was running over on 99designs.com to get a new logo was wrapped up last week. You can see the logo I chose to the left. I like it, the two tone text is somewhat common, there is only so much you can do with text coloring. I really like the targets on the left, playing into the “target niche” that fits nicely with the goals of this site. I ended up with 25 entries, this one and another with green/black theme being the strongest but there were several quality submissions to choose from. The prize was $150 and the contest submission fee was $39, so I ened up with very nice logo for $189.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Popularity: 19% [?]

I’ve already discussed crowdsourcing creative work such as logo design, but I also needed more development oriented work. For programming type items I decided to turn to oDesk for a contractor/company. Why oDesk and not 99Designs? 99Designs is good for design related work, it kind of says so in the name no? I have several projects in mind that will all require some outsourcing of JavaScript and/or PHP so I wanted to transition to an outsourcing site that catered more towards developer needs as opposed to designer needs.

The first project I posted on oDesk is really just to dip a toe in and see what kind of results I get. I need a new menu system for a pending redesign of gamersmark.com. If the initial project goes well I can see offloading a lot of work to developers on this site. As a programmer myself, my first instinct is to do the work myself, but that requires a large time investment, especially since my strengths aren’t in PHP. Learning when you should hire somebody as opposed to sinking your own time into something is important.

Popularity: 19% [?]

WordPress is a near ubiquitous blogging and content management systems out there. Not only do some of the biggest blogs out there like techcrunch utilize it but so do small niche sites that end up with a few pages before whithering into the ether, and everything in between, including NicheBuilder.net. But while ubiquitey makes WordPress platform a reliable proven choice it also means there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of sites that look just like yours. If you want to spend the money or you have the time and expertise you can contract out or develop a custom one off theme yourself. Since my expertise isn’t in PHP/CSS but rather .NET I decided I would purchase a theme. Why didn’t hire a developer to create a custom theme for me so the site would really stand out? Three reasons. One, I could still get a very clean, professional looking theme without spending a few thousand dollars. Two, if I want to start other niche WordPress sites, I would need a theme that I could use over and over as a starting point. Three, the theme developer I settled on offered an affiliate program (af).

Why was an affiliate program a factor in where I purchase my theme from? Simple, were I to ignore a potential revenue stream through the referral of new customers to the theme developer would be contrary to the whole point of this blog. Affilates programs are what are referred to as PPA/CPA programs, Pay Per Action or Cost Per Action depending on whether you are the publisher (affilate) or the advertiser (seller). I’ll be discussing affiliate programs and CPAs in great depth in future articles.

I settled on a theme from solostream (af), specifically, the Solostream 3-Column theme. Solostream utilizes e-junkie.com for their affiliate program. The sign up was easy but they don’t offer creatives for their various sellers which puts additional work on the affilate if they want to use more than text links, it’s not a huge issue but it would be nice and it highlights the differences between e-junkie and some of the big boys like Commission Junction. Regardless of where you get your theme from, search google there are numerous sources, take the time to get a good theme as the base for your site, you won’t regret it.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Finding a logo for your site, blog, or whatever has always been somewhat of a crap shoot, articulating exactly what you are envisioning can be difficult. Once you start working with an artist or design firm you were usually committed to following the process through and paying regardless of the results. To minimize risk you would usually be given X number of initial concepts from which to have the artist develop further. Crowd sourcing has emerged as viable alternative, you increase your odds of achieving success for a given problem by spreading the possible source of a solution amongst a large pool. Addressing the graphic design space in this way is a site called 99designs.com, which helps connect you with graphic and website designers. The process is very simple, register a competition, it costs $39 to do so, give a title, summary, and list of “wants” and “don’t wants”, and set the prize amount. Then the competition is live for a predetermined number of days. Artists will submit their take on what you are looking for, you can then rate each submission and provide feedback for further tweaking if desired. Once the competition ends you determine the winning entry, arrange payment, and you get your new logo. You can check out the
competition I arranged for a new logo here.

My only reservation is that the one size fits all price of $39 per competition may limit the sites usefulness for getting quality work for your niche sites. And it would be prohibitively expensive if you wanted to outsource creation of more frequently needed lower dollar items such as banner ads. It would be nice if there was a sliding scale, the bigger the price the more the competition posting fee.

Popularity: 18% [?]