Personally, I am struck somewhere in 'almost got it' land

[jazzy]

Dink- thanks for the suggestion to make this a separate thread.

I have been tinkering with IM for a few years. I’ve purchased a few ebooks, read forums etc.

Finally in the last year I decided to actually see if I it was possible to earn income on the net. I joined a number of forums, purchased more ebooks and read a number of threads. 

I was mostly in what I learned were whitehat sites. They recommended the same methods: find your passion, build a website or blog, and send traffic to it. There were numerous discussions of how to do all the above, article marketing or bum marketing seemed to be the one most suggested.

However the more I read the threads it was quite evident that traffic was the main problem most people were having.  So I searched the web and came across sites that were deemed to be blackhat, mainly because of the methods used for generating traffic. I even learned there were bluehat methods.

Anyway I decided to learn traffic methods first; white, black and blue with gray thrown in for good measure. Of course all this took a while, too long I believe. There was too much information so I became bogged down in study and not application.

I believe I know enough to drive traffic to a site. However since I started from the end of the learning cycle, generating traffic, rather than the beginning, make a website, I am stuck.

I know the answer is just make a site right, well what kind of site. Should it be a wordpress blog, blogger blog or a website? Should it have static pages or not? Should I first build up an infrastructure, basement before that or just use article marketing?

So I have knowledge, my tech skills are not sufficient for a number of the methods mentioned on some of the forums. So should I learn php perl etc. that I do not want to do. So outsource? Well whom to, elance or get a recommendation?

That’s the trouble with too much study and not doing. I wind up with no website or blog to drive traffic to from the info I’ve learned how to drive traffic.

So here I am ‘almost got it”

So what do I do now, any thoughts guys. Be gentle.

Jazzy

[dink]

Hey Jazzy.

You're miles ahead of the guys that know how to build a site but can't do anything else.

I'm no guru.  I think if I were in your position I'd start blog.  WordPress is very popular
so that may be a good place to start.

The topic of the blog isn't so very important.  At least not right yet.  Make a few posts
introduce yourself to the world.  Just write like you talk or think.  When you finish a post
the software will ping some places that will bring the spiders.

The spiders will report back to base and you will be indexed.  Somewhere.

After a few posts, like maybe once or twice per day, the spiders will come by to make
sure they haven't missed any up-to-the-minute-breaking-news.  Then you can start to
introduce some marketing into the mix.

Pick an affiliate program that has products or services that you know something about.
Talk about them on your blog.  Not high pressure sales stuff, just talk.  Then, toward
the end of you post, insert your aff link with some good anchor text and a suggestion
that it is the very best at whatever it is.  Post it. 

Bingo you've got your first potential money machine live on the net.

Next, go looking around the blogosphere for blogs with similar, but not the exact same,
products/services.  Make a note of the url of the blog post.  Go back to your new blog
and write up a short note that tells your viewers that you found this neat site and
place their url in the post.  Note here that you should use anchor text that is at least
close to your product.  Post it.

The WP software will ping the url and inform them that a trackback has occurred.  The
other webmaster will see the trackback and come to investigate.  If your site isn't a
pile of rubbish, the webmaster will leave your trackback up on his site.  Whoomango.
Your first backlink.

Rinse and repeat.  The more posts about your products, the more chances of getting
trafic.  Keep after the backlinks.  Explore more ways to keep the traffic flowing.
Good content plus backlinks will (eventually) earn you a living.

After you have four or five of these blog type marketing sites set up you'll be ready
to branch out to a stand-alone niche site.

Questions will be answered by our panel of xperts.  Maybe.

<<edit>> Some fishwit has modified the software so that anything with the letters "p i e" in it
will be changed to mongoloide fruit.  Your rascal.

Dink

[morphy]

Very good post dink

@ the op: man I had exactly the same problem, I spent too much time learning and reading I never acted and when I wanted too I was stuck.
When I just started (6 months ago) I wanted to go the whitehat long term, I was reading a couple of whitehat forums. Sooo many ideas, so many threads and too much bullshit. Then I heard about Syndk8 I joined and I started lurking for a while. I learned how to ACT and how to JUST FISHING DO IT!! I stopped asking people if this or that works (well, cuz I knew I'll get flamed if I post such bullshit on Syndk8  ) I started experimenting by myself and I learned much more by experimenting than asking or reading people posts, I had failures, so many of them but OTOH I found some stuff that worked.

Again I learned something on Syndk8, the numbers and volume game. I took whatever worked and I kept doing it till I kill it or I make a killing out of it. As for sites and ideas, I stopped thinking. I take any niche (I hate the idea of doing or writing about what you like  , do people who make money building loans sites like loans?)
whatever this niche is, all it takes is a quick search on G00gle to see if there are affiliate programs out there, if you find one just fire up a site. I'd go for Wordpress cuz I'm not a designer nor a programmer and WP will allow me to do so much stuff easily.

I just build sites, I don't look back and I don't care about what people think about this niche or that, if there are PPC advertisers or aff programs for that market, there is money to be made. And you can even use the WIKI to find some profitable niches   /profitable_niches_in_under_10_minutes  .

It's easy to get content, if you are producing it yourself you can learn as much as you want about a specific product/market easily. You can just scrape articles based on Y! or G answers there is an answer for pretty much anything you'll need. If you will get writers I can't recommend any services atm cuz I had a very bad experience and the only thing I can advice you is WHATEVER YOU DO DON"T GET YOUR WRITERS FROM DP.

Now I don't know if you are going the long term or the quick buck route, but whatever you do just fire up sites whatever they are and however you are building them. My point is JUST DO IT man stop thinking and you'll find something that will work for you.

Of course the above is based on my 6 months experience in IM, I guess there is some BS in it but whatever...this is what I think.

[Ekim]

yeah 

[morphy]

yeah 

yeah what ? 

[dink]

Yeah yer kool.  That's what   

[SEOidiot]

Great Thread Gents!

This is the sort of discussion we can have over here i think - this would have turned into a gayjacked flamfest in Syndk8 by now! (Personally i blame dirtdog - not for that just for everything really )

The real secret is deffo to actually do something. For what its worth heres my 

Learn PHP - it will serve you well
Make sure you know how to make a site
Make sure you know how to at least lay the site out so that it can get indexed easily
 - My tips here very basically - make sure you make every page very easy for the se to understand what the page is about - clear titles - subject in H1 - make sure the site is crawlable using text links only please

Learn to go after niches where you have a chance to start with
I would suggest some really long tail stuff mixed with a few more competitive terms

If your strapped for cash just start creating wordpress.com blogs for free on a subject - it is really amazing to me how easy it is to write some ok content by hand 200 words or so and your good to go
(if you want a leg up ill give you another place to create a blog if you im me - not telling anyone who hasnt already posted above sorry)

rule with monetizing i stick with is - watch the traffic - if its got decent traffic use aff ads on it - lower traffic just sell your clicks to adsense

if your after long tail youll be pleasantly surprised how few links you need to rank and you can watch the serps and see what needs pumping up

oh and the world is absolutley full of places to erm 'leave' links lying around and as you build youll be building your own network you can abuse too (dont get too paranoid about interlinking imo)

but in the end there really really isnt any substitute for building to learn....

[dd1960to]

(Personally i blame dirtdog - not for that just for everything really )

My Kaptain knows not that I am here in the bowels of his epileptic    mortal enemy.  Taunt me not foul fruit pleb, or I shall notify him post haste to dismiss you with a barrage of truly tasty confectioned wrath.

[jazzy]

dink, morphy, ekim and SEOidiot 

I guess I needed to hear what I already knew - 'just do it'.

Thanks for all the suggestions but especially for making me feel comfortable enough to actually post for help.

[dink]

Speaking only for myself here.  You're part of our 'family'.  You can tell us anything and we won't beat you up.  Well not too much.

Now.  Tell me what your paypal login info is.   

[SEOidiot]

SOmeone say paypal? I came as fast as i could ..... 

[jazzy]

thanks dink

By the way what's paypal? 

[perkiset]

FDLFUPP.

[jazzy]

ok perkiset

FDLFUPP.

What does this mean? I googled etc even went to syndk8's acronyms thread but no luck.

PS I just learned how to use the quote function. 

PPS How about having an acronym thread here.

[dink]

Not being the Perk, I can't speak for him.

That said....Perk really, really, absolutely, thinks paypal is the neatest thing ever invented.

So?  The last part of his acro  (PP) refers to paypal.  The first part is up to you to finger out.