25 replies to this topic

[Nameless_]

Hi people...

Just realised why there aren't that many news blogs around. The reason is, the actual news channels have their own blogs themselves, so people go and subscribe to them instead...

SO, I've just wasted a few weeks of my life working on a useless project!!! I'm seriously having serious doubts about myself right now... So I'm deciding to ditch the money making thing once and for all and just work on my psychic phenomena site... I can't believe I stupid I was... At least the local webserver's working!!! That's good, though I don't even know whether this psychic phenomena site will go on the internet or not in the first place...

But I intend to use all my credits, thank you very much...

Can someone suggest a name and stuff for me? And tell me what should be in it? Because I feel like my life is in a wreck and I just really don't know what to work on now... and it feels like all this time that I was on Trap17 is just a waste of time...

Someone help me, please... thanks...

[rayzoredge]

Don't look at it as a waste of time. Look at it as a learning experience and some exposure to certain things. I'm sure you picked up quite a few things along the way whether it was from here or from self-discovery, and if you didn't embark on certain endeavors, would you have asked the questions you did? Learned from mistakes? Have the experience you have now?

Money-making things are too hyped up and people have too much hope in them, in my opinion. You have to put in the effort and time into developing them AND put the time into letting it work for you, which most people aren't really willing to be patient enough for.

Look at what I'm doing. I'm still developing marketing strategy and already having put myself out there on here, Craigslist, signing my e-mails... I'm getting some attention, which is good, but I haven't made any sales or gotten anyone to jump on board with me. Is it discouraging? Yes. But it's only been a month or so for me. These kinds of things take time. Keep that in mind with the next venture with supplementary income. You can never depend on it to rake in thousands, or even hundreds. But that's when you'll be pleasantly surprised, with years of hard work and years of being persistent with it, that it actually is working for you. The possibility of making lots of money in such little time IS fathomable and people have made it work, but one size does not fit all. Some people have more time, more money to invest, more effort available to put into their projects, less responsibilities... you get the idea.

If you are really looking into something to do, I don't know what to tell you as far as subject matter goes... but if you have the time, take a look into learning more, training more, and getting randomly inspired. Create your portfolio online. Play around with design ideas. Look at what others are doing and learn what makes them work. UNDERSTAND why they work and apply those concepts to your design(s). The idea(s) will come to you when it comes to you. Don't pressure yourself into trying to do something that you're probably not ready for.

[Baniboy]

No you didn't waste your time! Never say that! AGAIN!!!
Let's take a look at what you've learned:

How to work with your local server.
How to install, use wordpress and how to install plug-ins and themes to it.

Small pieces of information you've learned, for example when you asked me what server-side scripts mean and stuff like that.
I wouldn't call all this a waste of time?!

"Now what?", you say. Well, you're smart and quick learner, so why don't you study XHTML and CSS. Then move to Javascript and after that to PHP. When you have a basic knowledge of these, you can do many things. *Like make a whole site about me, how great I am and how helpful I've been to everyone, and how everyone should worship me... hey you! outta my dream! ahhh...*

[BCD]

Well said rayzoredge.

First of all, if something is taking too much of your time, "take a break" for a week or so. When you return to it, you will see it in a new way. And each day you were away from it, you will feel not wanting for it and when you return to it after some days you feel that you are starting it afresh with clear mind to focus on.

If you are taking internet projects as a hobby, then don't have any intention of making money at first. Proceed doing it with your full interest. And to do so, choose a niche area which you are very well or an expert with. As you mentioned there are tons of news blogs churning out constant news 24x7. So you know now that you cant compete them alone. This doesnt mean you shouldn't make a news blog. Choose a particular category/area of news which you think the people will be interested in. Produce the content in such a way that the people will be interested in coming to your site for more. News sites geneally give only the gist of the news. Research on that and give more information about that on your site.

All this way keep yourself updated with latest buzz and news. For example if you are learning web design or photoshop, subscribe to some excellent sites like smashing magazine, abduzeedo tutsplus, etc.

[mahesh2k]

@Nameless_, i don't think you've learned from this. So far i've followed your actions in this news blog project. Some of my observations are in one sentence : You didn't put much into it. First you started well with blogger. But then you moved your focus to wordpress installation and themes. In between, newstack on blogger was still there but you didn't put much in there. Do you ? Honestly. It would have been much better blog, even on blogspot domain. There are plenty of good blogs in news domain with and working fine even on blogspot domain. Some ad networks like kontera, infolinks are keeping those blogs alive for years as far as i know. Correct me if i'm wrong.

I've seen you distracted from your goal of building better blog. You distracted from your blog's content and moved to wordpress blog design thing. Which was not necessary until your blog gets hit and demands itself redesign. But you got engaged to it anyway. Damn, i'm giving too much of advice to teens these days . Sorry for that. I never had someone to guide me during my journey on blogging and forum development. So i thought giving few pointers to you. I know teens don't like advice especially from person who is 5-6 years elder to them . I know i didn't like it in my time.

Let me give you few last pointers. You don't need to start big to expand yourself big. Start small, keep up with your news site. If psychic niche is not working for you. Then break into other news items and work on it. Don't measure success of your blog in 1-2 months. Your perception about news blog is wrong. There are plenty of news blog in various domains are up and running, it just depends on the content writer. It takes 1 year or more for some blogs and forums to get up and running. So relax, keep working on content. and all the best with site.

[The Simpleton]

Hmm it's too bad that you got discouraged so soon, but like the members above me mentioned, don't expect results in a day or two, or even in a month. It does take a lot of time to reach a certain level. Take a good look at what companies like Google, Yahoo, Twitter did. Their initial strategy was not to earn money but to build a user base. In the beginning, Yahoo was puzzled at how on earth they could make money with their site which was gaining popularity day-by-day. But for the first year or so, they concentrated only on making their site better and the effort paid off. When Yahoo put in their first ads, they were scared that they might lose their visitors. But by that time people had gotten so used to using Yahoo that they didn't mind the ads at all, and thus began Yahoo's success story.

Similar is the case with the later participants - Google and Yahoo. The only thing they did when they entered the internet scene was to maintain their site's quality and build a good user base. They didn't put ads on their site right away. Also, they didn't get discouraged at any point of time and went on with their efforts. You should do the same as well. I know there's heavy competition in the field you've chosen, but you put some more effort into it I think it'll pay off in the long run. Anyway I'll leave that decision to you since it's your site after all!

If you're planning to start another site based on psychic phenomena then I suggest that you build your site before launching it. I committed the mistake of launching my site even before it was ready and am now left with an empty site. What's irritating is that the domain is getting quite a few clicks since I placed the link in my profile page. But all those visitors are just being greeted with an "Under Construction" page and I guess most of them won't go there again! So whatever you plan to do next, make sure you've done enough research and preparation to support your site. Take a good decision and all the best

[Nameless_]

Woohoo!!! Well, thanks guys... No, I'm not discouraged from building a website... it's a misconception.
What I'm saying is that I still want to build one, but I don't know what to build it on now... if you get what I mean... no news blog, then what blog? I found a successful psychic blog and if possible, I want to make something like that... but with a community. (Yes, they've got forums, but it's not very active, and the layout should be like Trap17. But as you can see, even if it's successful, no one wants to advertise on it, and that means that I won't be able to keep up with the domain hosting (.com) after a while, as well as the hosting package...

I think, like BCD said rayzoredge did sum it up pretty neatly, and well, Baniboy is right. ( I still can't say enough thanks for all you've done for me... I did learn some things during all this. And after reading all your posts I'm kinda regretting posting this post up in the first place.

To mahesh2k: Yeah, I'm a person that gets distracted easily... It's not the first time. I've been on lots of different projects, and I have so far succeeded in none of them.

But this doesn't mean I still won't succeed in this one. I'm still determined in it. It's just that I now realised that I have wasted used up a lot of my time working on a news blog, where I kinda already knew that it wouldn't be successful at all, because I will not be able to compete with the actual news channel.

And haha, I'm actually asking for advice, not pushing it away. That's the reason for this blog...

To Simpleton: Like I said, I'm not discouraged from building a site. I still want to, it's just that I don't really know what to work on now. Psychic? Or news? Or something else? (Which, by the way, I still probably won't do because it's not going to be successful at all...)

[The Simpleton]

At this point of time, I'd recommend a break to you. You're obviously tired (not physically, but mentally) of doing a lot of work online all these weeks. And after getting through a project like newstack, you're gonna have to relax for a while before you're fully ready to deal with the next one. That way, you'll feel fresh and full of spirit when moving onto the new project.

So think about it and all the best for your new project

[Nameless_]

Maybe... yes. I am tired from posting on Trap17... but I haven't even started the newstack project completely, let along finish it. I might actually keep posting on it though, but on blogspot, as Adsense is already approved on the site. Or I might start something completely different with the same posts... but maybe not. It's easy to find content on a newsblog.

[mahesh2k]

Yeah. It looks like your activity on trap17 is bit slowed down. I can't wait to see your more questions coming. . I just wish one question at time,please. . This will help us to answer you better.

In between, why not read good news blog. There are plenty of good tech blogs out there. And don't just stick to the one type of news blog. Try and read multiple niches. You can start with blog like techcrunch. This blog is more focused on technology and social media. Also ars-technica is one good news blog that covers lot of topic like open source, apple, science, programming, social media etc. Don't just stick one-two types of blog.Discover more news sites from Digg, Yahoo Buzz. More you learn about their writing style the better. From that you can break news on your blog. Also take a look at site like slashdot. You can find very interesting news stuff on that site. Contributors/commentators on that site are good as of now.

BTW, good to hear that your adsense account is accepted. Good luck with blog.