The cost of developing a sucessful content site...

increasing? or is it just me?

[jasonlambert]

Is anyone else noticing an increase in costs when it comes to building content sites these days?

The time needed to build a site these days is increasing (for me at least), with more competition you need to provide more content, more features, and be more innovative when it comes to increasing "stickyness" of the site.

Marketing your site, making it a leader in its niche takes more time, because you have more competition than you would have 5 years ago.

Apart from the time you invest building and marketing your site, there are issues with available (or should I say shortage of?) domain names, so you often end up paying thousands for a half decent domain name.

After all these things are people finding that its just not financially viable to build content sites these days, when the source of revenue is online advertising and affiliate sales?
Or do you think that content sites are still a good long term investment?

What are your thoughts & opinions on this issue?

[Essex_boy]

Your almost certainly right on all points, very low barriers to entry.