wyweb - 2:32 pm on Aug 23, 2009 (gmt 0)

You make a good point anand84 and I really wasn't trying to generalize that broadly. I was basically speaking about my own experience with internet marketing and how it came to be and the fact that I have repeatedly seen longevity as a key metric in snagging search traffic. I've never bought traffic. I am wholly dependent on search and if it ever dries up I'm going to have to find a real job.

Getting started today would be impossible for me. StoutFiles wrote about luck. Luck has been huge in what little success I've managed to obtain. I got some .edu links way back when. I had PR7 on a junk site that was poorly coded and probably an eyesore to most people yet consistently knocked back 25 - 30K page views a day. It wasn't because I knew what I was doing. It was because I was already in place in a niche that would later become extremely competetive. I was rewarded because I was one of the first, not because I was particularly good at what I was doing. I just happened to get there before most of the others did.

And that was it. There was nothing else. I'm not a good coder, my graphic skills are weak and I didn't even know what SEO meant until 4 or 5 years ago. Nothing I have intentionally done has earned me this position.

My site is older than yours and some idiots years ago felt it was worth linking to, and yes, it is that simple.

I couldn't do it today. It would be absolutely impossible for me to break into this niche without an enormous advertising budget. I'd need the slickest design, the most user-friendly interface, the fastest, friendliest checkout. I'd need SEO skills that I don't have and would probably have to pay for. I'd need a host that was faster than the one I've got now. I'd need a friggin' miracle if I was just starting today. Or two.

With me that's all it was. Luck. My web education started after the traffic started rolling in. The money only came later.

In summary, if I had a day job right now I'd dang sure hang onto it.