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From one of the Google Update Threads:
If my site was a year old, and had been in Google all that time, I would be much more likely to focus on getting users to return to my site. But that is not the case for me. They can't return - because they haven't been there yet!
All I can say is this takes time. To be "sane" in this business I believe people need to understand and accept that. Traffic from google is a gift, not a God given right, and should be thought of as such. It took me a over 2 months to get decent traffic from Google for my current best performing site (@3k visits/day) when I brought it up. That was during normal update cycles. I have come to expect that. I have two sites I brought up in January which are only now starting to getting any real ammount of traffic.
This takes time (2 month minimum). When people accept that, expect that, and plan for that, they are much better off.
Although I have many years of (mostly intranet) web development experience, I started running public sites of my own about a year ago with one site. I currently have five. Base on my limited experience, I consider a 6 month to 1 year timeframe for a quality site to be up before there is considerable traffic (or income) from it.
Start a new quality site with expecations of 6 month to 1 year until good traffic will be hitting it. Any amount of time shorter than that is just a blessing. Go in with that mindset, and your expectations are reasonable.
What do others think who have been at this for a while? This may help set expectations for the dance "sky is falling" and "google sucks" folks filling the update threads.
-Pete
