This quote, which went viral 2 months ago and that Steinbeck probably never said, has stuck with me:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ~Maybe not Steinbeck, but it’s cool and it’s true.
As temporarily embarrassed millionaire programmers I feel we sometimes don’t pursue projects that could be buying awesome toys every month, making up for that underwater mortgage or adding valuable incremental income. Projects in this space aren’t the next Facebook or Twitter so they don’t pass the knock-it-out-the-park test.
There are so many ideas in this neglected space that have worked and continue to work. Here’s a start:
- Do a site:.gov search on Google for downloadable government data.
- Come up with a range of data that you can republish in directory form. Spend a good few hours doing this and create a healthy collection of options.
- You might try a site:.edu search too and see if universities have anything interesting.
- site:.ac.uk site:.ac.za – you get the idea.
- Experiment with Google’s Keyword Tool.
- Make sure you’re signed in.
- Click Traffic Estimator on the left.
- Enter keywords that describe the data sets you’ve come up with. Enter a few to get a good indication each category or sector’s potential
- Look at search volume to find sectors that are getting high search volumes.
- Look at CPC to find busy sectors that also have advertisers that are paying top dollar for clicks.
- Finally, look at the Competition column to get an idea of how many advertisers are competing in the sector.
- First prize is high search volume, high CPC, high competition. Sometimes you can’t have it all, but get as close as you can.
- Now that you’ve chosen a lucrative sector with lots of spendy advertisers and have government or academic data you can republish, figure out a way to generate thousands of pages of content out of that data and solve someone’s problem. The problem could be “Why can’t I find a good site about XYZ when I google for such-and-such.”
- Give the site a good solid SEO link structure with breadcrumbs and cross-linking. Emphasize relevant keywords with the correct html tags and avoid duplicate content. Make sure the site performance is wicked fast or you’ll get penalized. Nginx reverse-proxying Apache is always a good bet.
- Tell the right people about your site and tell them regularly via great blog entries, insightful tweets, and networking in your site’s category.
- Keep monitoring Googlebot crawl activity, how your site is being indexed and tweak it for 6 months until it’s all indexed, ranking and getting around 50K visits per month (1666 visits per day).
- That’s 150,000 page views per month at 3 pages per visit average.
- At a 1.6% CTR with 0.85c CPC from Adsense you’re earning $2040 per month.
Update: To clarify, “competition” above refers to competition among advertisers paying for clicks in a sector. More competition is a good thing for publishers because it means higher CPC and more ad inventory i.e. a higher likelihood an ad will be available for a specific page with specific subject matter in your space. [Thanks Bill!]
Update2: My very good mate Joe Heitzeberg runs MediaPiston which is a great way to connect with high quality authors of original content. If you do have a moderate budget and are looking for useful and unique content to get started, give Joe and his crew a shout! They have great authors and have really nailed the QA and feedback process with their platform.
Oh so that’s all?… 😛
Commented on May 27, 2011 at 2:57 pm
socialism never took root in america because America is founded as a Republic … how about that instead?
A republic where individuals are sovereign entities and where individual freedom is valued more than anything else. Socialism is a form of collectivism where individual freedom is much less important.
Commented on May 27, 2011 at 3:39 pm
@daniel:
You’re confusing an economic system with a governmental system. Like most Americans. Socialism is an economic system where the means of production are publicly held (e.g.: by the people. sometimes by the government).
Individual freedom need not be penalized for socialism. See: all of the western European countries that have better education and healthcare than the US. Which is.. almost all of them.
Commented on May 27, 2011 at 4:14 pm
You should meet Eli Alosi if you haven’t already — he used to really be into this kind of stuff but now he runs an affiliate network. Check in with him.
Commented on May 27, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Jon: “Socialism is an economic system where the means of production are publicly held (e.g.: by the people. sometimes by the government).”
You then go on to say that individual freedom need not be penalized for socialism. Please explain. If my business is manufacturing or production or farming of some sort, how are you not impacting my freedom to do so if you’re forcing my service/production/business to be owned by “the people” or the government?
Commented on May 27, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Because it is not YOUR busines.. It is the people’s business and you are running it.
Your mentality is exactly what is wrong with people.
Commented on March 29, 2012 at 11:09 am
Good stuff. Can you give us an idea on
>figure out a way to generate thousands of pages of content out of that data…
Because that’s the donkey work of any online presence.
Commented on May 28, 2011 at 2:41 am
Well… interesting. But honestly, even though this seems do-able ‘on the side’ of a full time job and side projects, it sounds like a lot of very unfulfilling work that I would be embarrassed to tell people about. Feels unsettlingly like a spam-ring/content-farm scheme. So, pass :/
Commented on May 28, 2011 at 5:38 am
America not socialist? So how do you call a country that uses people’s money to help banks?
Commented on May 29, 2011 at 4:02 am
Thank you so much.
That site gov FTP search tip is worth the price of admission! Actually, much more.
Okay, off to build more niche sites…
Commented on May 29, 2011 at 8:14 am
“America not socialist? So how do you call a country that uses people’s money to help banks?”
an oligarchy.
Commented on May 29, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Basically what you are saying is true (except a little bit optimistic on CTR/CPM/Page per visit – but not too far away from the real world figures) – but I just wonder if you can have this result in only 6 months.
Commented on June 3, 2011 at 9:32 am