I spent the better part of today on reading all the information I could on the bans member forum. I learned so much valuable information today, it makes my head spin. Here is a list of all the valuable information I acquired.
Most importantly I was surprised to learn that two of my domain names that I chose for my bans site may potentially cause a trademark problem. The words in question were pantonchair and Nissangtrblog. I personally don't think this would be a problem however if others think it may be a problem, they might be right. From now on I will never choose a domain name with the company name in it or any other potentially trademarked phrase or word.
Another very valuable thing I learned was that you should have a privacy policy in any website that uses cookies. I was given a link to website that automatically generated this code for me with my website name and e-mail address in it. This was extremely helpful and I don't want to take any chances so I quickly added this code to all my bans sites. If you visit my stores you can see the page devoted to this section.
Another very important thing I learned was that you should not post on Craig's list because it is against their terms of service. They say you may not link to any affiliate marketing program in the classified section. So I won't do this anymore and instead I will use this other website called Kijiji. Apparently Kijiji is owned by eBay and therefore they don't have any problem with you posting their affiliate links on their site. Craig's list and eBay apparently do not have a good relationship now. Kijiji is competing with Craig's list and trying to steal their thunder.
Then I learned more about things I thought were good but now I realize may not be as effective as I originally hoped. It seems that stumble and digg are not that effective at bringing the right kind of traffic to your band site. When members on these social bookmarking site discover that your website is simply a type of affiliate marketing website, they will quickly bury your story and the hits will die down quickly. And initially, the type of hits you get are only recreational visitors and they rarely have any intention to buy anything.
Anyway I was impressed how vibrant and alive the bans form really is. Many topics for the forum were quickly viewed, and a lot of responses to my questions were instantly posted up. What I learned today radically alters some of my ideas about promotion. The only thing that truly remains consistent is my devotion to generating new content. Creating new content seems to be the only fool proof way of generating consistent and steady traffic to your website.
The whole content issue brings me to my last concern. If content is king then one must think about ways to generate content quickly. On the band's forum a lot of people are trying to promote these websites that source out article writing to other writers. They claim to be able to write you an article for as little as five dollars. I have to admit this is very tempting however, how do I know if they are not just selling me an older article they wrote, or if they just turn around and sell the same article to multiple people. Anyway I will have to look into this more and see what I can find out.
So at the end of the day I am neither inspired nor uninspired. I just feel very neutral about all these things I discovered. Making money on the Internet perhaps is never easy but like any job thats worth doing, you have to try your best, and perhaps you will succeed. And if you fail, well at least you tried your best. That's all you can do at the end of the day. I will keep you abreast of my new discoveries every day.
