Before you start a paysite, it's wise to have some cash and a couple of very good free sites. The more traffic you can send to your paysite, the more content you can offer in your membersection
Sometimes it's hard reading stuff and trying to work out whetherg the author is biased one way or the other.
It seems to me that a lot of webmasters on certain boards (probably not this one) are geared towards dicouraging new startups and wanting the traffic sent to themselves.
I send traffic to other sites, and in Jan of 2000, I finally took the plunge and set up my own site.
There are many many advantages of running your own site. Like eventually you start getting traffic outta "nowhere" because some (strange?) people link to your site because the like what you offer. And you can sometimes do better in search engines. ANd you can do recurring billing. There's other good stuff too.
On the other site, there really is just 1 thing that matters in anything you do... How much traffic you have control over. Traffic is about 10-20 times (if not more) as important as the site itself. If you wanna spend some effort, then find yourself a large amount of traffic. Then you can send it wherever you like. To the "highest bidder" of you like. (i.e. the best converting site you can find. Which could be your own).
I should add: I have very good traffic. A lot of people do. but noone's gonna tell you where to get it. All you will ever hear is "do the TGPs" and "link to as many sites that you can" and "do the CJs and top lists" etc. The *real* secrets will never be shared.
deluxe: You are totally right. My paysite is not like that, so I don't have to worry about it so much, but still.
Interestingly, there are HUGE differences (in recurring) in the various sites I promote. I don't know what the "magic" ingredients are, but I'd say a lot of new content and a lot of work has to be part of it.
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