I own AmuseLine.com domain name for about 6-8 months now. It is time to add a website to the home page that is online all these months.

I have not started new websites for the last 10-12 months. Now I have (I hope) a much better understanding and knowledge of website publishing and industry in general compared to what I had a year back when I started my websites every month. As a result of this, I am very careful with starting new projects: competition, Sandbox, Trustbox, etc. I try to use some failure proof algorithm and cut my costs to minimum otherwise I will not be able to compete with other website publishers.

I am not sure if it works, but here is the sequence of my actions with starting new websites at this point in time. I make use of these articles and tools:

Marketing niche for a new website
Website types
18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website – it is a great step by step guide what to do starting a new website
Effective online marketing: what works?

Another approach to start new projects is based on six points:

IDEA
DESIGN
CODE
CONTENT
MARKETING
MONETIZATION

Summary: Yes, I think this is the way to start new websites nowadays. Keep your costs down, get to know the industry of your new website, network, use social websites, search for ideas that will help to position your website differently from your competitors (I guess it is the hardest part).

And also be prepared that will take months (if not years) to build an established website.

[tags]online project, website publisher, design, marketing, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

Secrets on beating sandbox is a good reading. But the ideas are quite mediocre:

1. make a good site
2. get trusted links

- Ultra-trusted directories – They charge for an editorial review, not a listing (meaning they can legitimately be trusted). One is specifically recommended in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines; I’d bet my [insert valuable appendage here] that the other two are highly trusted, too… Yahoo! Directory, MSN bCentral and Business.com.- Parasitic link sources — You can leverage the trust of older authority sites if they allow user-generated content. OK, in plain English please? Squidoo and Wikipedia are trusted domains.
- A few rented trusted links — I really, really like the bloggers in TLA’s inventory that currently have zero or one link sold… why not get in there and gobble up the lion’s share of that link pop?
- Your existing sites

3. link bait like crazy

These are not secrets. And the question is: does it work? Will these steps take your website to the top of Google? And I think this is the goal of the article: to show how new websites can do well in Google.

For one of my websites I have nearly all ‘those trusted links’. The website is one year old, but it is visible in search engines just for some low volume search keywords (I talk about Google Top 10 results).

Linkbaiting does work. It brings you viral traffic, good for branding and links, but does not improve search engine rankings considerably (probably I am doing it not long enough, but if a technique starts working in a year or so – it does not sound attractive).

Summary: Google Sandbox, Google Trustbox. They are likely to exist. But I think what we should admit is that competitors in our niches have a much better position (first come first served) and it is really hard to beat them. We try to catch up with them, but they are at an advantage that is hard to beat using the above steps. And they also progress.

Time is a missing point from the list. It takes now years to get an established website to Google top in a competitive niche.

[tags]google sandbox, google trustbox, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

As a music lover I started a rock music website about a year back. Nothing special – forums, reviews, news. A couple of months later I realized that this ‘nothing special’ website has no future. It is the time of MySpace, Pandora, LastFM and other music focused websites. And my website was an echo from the late 90’s.

Once I realized the truth of life I made a research looking for the ideas and directions to go. As a result of this research I have come across a few really great ideas to invade the online music scene. I hope that this might be helpful for web publishers looking for inspiration in the music industry (most posts come via techcrunch).

Personally, I have been more involved with other types of online projects recently and have lost interest to this industry due to the lack of time (or probably due to the lack of good ideas to work at? I guess this is the sad truth):

How To Find MP3’s with Google

Sellaband to crowdsource free music

Last.fm

Universal to try ad driven music downloads through SpiralFrog

YouTube and Google seek to monetize music

SayNow helps musicians call their fans

Amie Street: Awesome New Music Model

New Features at MusicStrands

TuneFeed Music Widget for Blogs

lalalalalala…Another Way to Steal Music

Get Concert Info + Music at Podbop

Magnatune’s Answer to the Music Problem

TagWorld Launches Music. The War Begins

Dig into the Music Long Tail – Pandora

MySpace To Sell Music Through Snocap

Summary: Music industry is crowded with many web publishers, but it is true with any other sector online nowadays.

At the age of downloadable music I guess it should become the core for a new music website.

Added to that, music industry has its own specifics: copyrights. It does not matter if your website deals with ring tones or mp3 or video concerts – you should be careful with what you publish online.

With the emergence of MySpace the music industry has got an online leader – it is a good place to promote your music related website.

[tags]music website, pandora, lastfm, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]