Long term readers may recall an interview I did with Markus Frind, owner of the free dating site PlentyofFish.com, a little over a year ago. Markus created some controversy at the time because he was claiming to make $10,000 a day. The controversy is long gone as PlentyofFish is recognized as one of the largest dating sites in the US & Canada.

Yesterday Markus hinted that it may time for him to move beyond the dating site model and venture into, or beyond, social networking. Why? Because dating sites are limiting. Unlike social networking, there is a high churn rate.

Markus has been quite outspoken about his feelings of internet business. Adsense checks are something players small and large can relate very much to. By single handedly creating and running a massive internet property out of his apartment he has certainly become a role model for a lot of internet publishers. Whether you agree with his viewpoints or not, they are influencing the direction companies and entrepreneurs are headed.

Was PlentyofFish just a fluke? Should we even care until we actually see a finished product? One thing is for certain: unless he can keep this under wraps for a while there are going to be a lot of copycats.

So, you’ve already read how to create a content site the quick and dirty way. So, what do you do when you want a web site thats not embarrassing to own?

Whether you are an independent entrepreneur or billion dollar corporation this is the path to take — as I see it. This is based on my own experience and observing the success of others. The concepts are simple. In reality, this is very hard work. Even if you can pay people to do some of the tasks, there will be issues that require your attention sometimes daily. You may be looking at a solid 6 months or even a year of work. Worse, you could end up with a site that makes under $100 a day.

Best case scenario, you have a multi-million dollar internet property that is considered a real asset.

Here is what you need to start with. Unless you already are an experienced publisher I do not suggest spending the money on custom solutions until after your site is live and has an audience:

1. A premium dot com domain name (cost: 4-7 figures.) Preferably no more than two words. You can go the Web 2.0 made up word route, but its not recommended.
2. A copy of vBulletin (cost: $160)
3. Wordpress (free)
4. A web host (No need to start with a dedicated server, a $15 account usually will work in the beginning.

Now you have several steps to take.

1. Content articles. You can pay Phd’s to write high quality articles, you can pay offshore workers. Thats a decision thats up to you. What is important is that your web site have content. Once the search engines see your site as valuable, there has to be some content for people to find! Is it the chicken or the egg? Who cares, unless you have an army assembled to use your forum you site needs content the day it launches.

2. Daily Updated Blog. Be active. Link to other bloggers and blog posts. You may even want to integrate the blog with your front page. A blog can help to rapidly build your sites links and content. Additionally blogs make it a lot easier to react to timely events. See a crazy news story? You can pound out 3 paragraphs and publish it, no problem. Articles can tend to take more time and effort.

3. Launch a forum. I like to wait until there is some search engine traffic volume before starting a forum. This way, there is an instant user base. Like a blog, a forum also builds content, links, and gets visitors to return to your site over and over again. Forums are hard work. Sit & forget and you’ll find you own a nice collection of viagra and cialis spam posts. You will need admins and moderators. It may take time before you see an agreeable return on your time and dollar investment.

4. An e-mail newsletter. What happens if someone forgets about your web site? Having an e-mail newsletter is a great reminder and tool to drive targeted traffic without relying on text links or organic SE traffic. If you are having a contest, launching a new forum, or even a new website, having an e-mail newsletter makes it incredibly easy to guarantee you will get results. If you are concerned about the extra workload, you can just re-use some of the site’s new content since many of the subscribers will miss 80% of it.

5. Public Relations. The reason content sites are so profitable is because you do not need to buy advertising for them. You have content, its free. Take advantage of print media and television, as well as the internet. Get your domain name repeated over and over again (this is why a premium name matters so much; oops, you bought .net instead of .com and now that .com domain owners is recieving thousands of type-ins a day!)

Here is the difference between a crappy content website and a good one:

1. A good web sites brings its audience back over and over again (users come back to read new articles, blog posts, and participate in forum.)
2. A good web site builds backlinks automatically (active users link to fresh articles, blog posts, and forum threads)
3. A good web site builds content automatically (users post comments and threads on blog and forum)

Between a good web site and a crappy one there are few comparisons.

Coming up next I will drill down the details of the 5 parts of a good web site (and I will probably think of a few more along the way.)

What are the dividing lines between failure, modest success, and blockbuster success? Yeah, cashflow, and all that technical stuff matters, but lets forget that for now.

There is one common thread between all “blockbuster success” business — mass appeal. Google, Myspace, oil, Microsoft Windows, Wal-Mart, even American Idol share this.

What is mass appeal and what core qualities surround it?

Case study: two sites, Myspace and PlentyofFish.com. What grades would you give them on design, features, and branding? Would either win an honerable mention let alone first place for much of anything? Doubtfully.

As I see it, both sites did one specific thing, more or less. All the fluff and disconnect that comes from over-polished and commerical internet ventures was nowhere to be seen. With mass media, simplicity and delivery (of what the customer wants) beats complexity and gloss every single time.

Yes, to succeed you still have to get everything else right. You still need money to pay the bills. You still need to enter the market at the right time. Your audience still needs to be able to find you.

A good place to learn about mass appeal is computer and video games. Consider Will Wright’s The Sims. It was an obnxiously simple concept. Yet, there was resistance to let even a proven successful game designer create it.

The mass appeal paid off. The Sims and its countless expansion packs went on to annihilate all PC game sales records. To this day its the #1 top selling computer game in history (short as that may be.) In retrospect, wasn’t it and obvious hit? Hmm, may be there really where millions of computer users, male and female, who wanted to play something other than the same old shoot-em-up action games?

Reaching your audience and giving them exactly what they want is critical to both mass market and niche market business success. Take a critical look at what pieces of the puzzle are missing or incomplete. Once you understand this you can execute your business plan with total confidence.

Warning: this article is for newbies! What you need:

1) NVU (WYSIWYG HTML editor)
2) SmartFTP
3) A domain name
4) A web host

Total Estimated cost: $18.00

First, you need a niche. Pick a specific topic — a hobby, industry, or market. The most important thing right now, if this is your first site, pick a topic that you can write about off the top of your head. If you like the topic, even better.

Keyword research must be done before you start writing articles. I used to use Overture’s free Keyword Selector Tool. Now I prefer the pay service, Wordze.

What you want to do is look at the top keywords and make sure you have a specific page for each. Also, try to branch out beyond your main keyword if possible.

Take a list of the top 15 keywords and write 15 articles, roughly 5-6 paragraphs for each. Repeat the keyword or keyphrase several times in the article, but don’t go overboard.

Now open NVU and create an HTML template. I’m not going to turn this into a basic tutorial for making a website, you can find that on thousands of other web sites. Create a table roughly 700 pixels wide, add a 160 pixel column to the right side.

Now paste the articles you wrote into the left, wider, column. Save each file as key-phrase.htm. In the right column link to all the articles you wrote.

Its time to find a domain name. You want your main topic in the name. One tool you can use for ideas is DomainsBot Search Cloud. Personally, I seem to get the best names out of my head now. {keyphrase} + {wierd word} tends to work well, and you’ll get the dot com.

You need a web host. At this stage you are looking for a virtual hosting account. This would typically be priced between $6-$10 a month. The files will be uploaded with your FTP program. Make sure the front page is named index.htm, and any index.html or index.php files are deleted.

You do not need to pay anyone to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. What you need is backlinks pointing to your new site! If you are a good writer and your articles aren’t garbage this won’t be too difficult. Wikipedia is a first shot (if its a big topic your link will probably be deleted), you can try DMOZ (don’t expect much). Directory submissions can push you past the 12 hour mark, but check out Directory Critic for one of the best lists online of free directories.

The newest way to get backlinks is from blogs. You can do a search on Technorati for blog posts on your topics. Write something unique for every post, at least 2 paragraphs. “Great blog!” isn’t going to cut it; I delete those all the time. If it looks like a poster actually bothered to write something insightful and the link doesn’t point to cheap viagra, I usually approve the comment.

This is the quick and dirty way to building a web site. The point is not to have a good website — the point is to have a website. This is precisely how I started in the business. Drive-by content sites tend to not make a whole lot of money. In high value markets you are going to have a tough time competing with the guys spending $10,000 a month on paid text backlinks. With the type of site I just described, $300 a month is reasonable expectation. This is your starting point. You need to get familiar with rapidly building and deploying sites. You need to learn to allocate your time to the elements responsible for bringing in the money.

In the following days or weeks I will write about how to create a good content site. This includes — user submitted content, cheap content, forums, blogs, and e-mail newsletters. I have been drifting away from the content side of the business and I am now comfortable sharing my “secrets.” If you can’t wait, then check out WebsitePublisher.net.

Sorry Jon and Shoemoney — Diorex’s “Random Musings About Making $$$ on the Net” gets my vote. If you are tired of vague and off-topic posts elsewhere, give these posts a read: white websites and granular tracking.

If you didn’t bring away more value from those two posts than any $97 ebook, you are probably attached to a feeding tube right now.

Registerflies is reporting that the judge in the Registerfly case is returning control over to alleged con artist Kevin Medina. ICANN has suspended deletions for .org’s and is attempted to do the same for .com’s and .net’s. The sky isn’t falling — it has fallen. Game over.

I’m hearing recommendations that users log into their Registerfly accounts and delete all credit card information. With the allegations flying, this guy is basically a criminal who is going to be facing prison time anyways. Registerflies.com reports Registerfly is recieving a 55%+ chargeback rate. If true, they will be toast very soon, if not within days. Of course that doesn’t really matter since Registerfly is about to get the boot from ICANN.

I still have a handful of valuable domain names which I have been unable to extract from Registerfly. The best stuff is out, so we’ll just see what happens. The good news is my personal damages should remain under $10,000 from this disaster.

WickedFire’s rival, Earners Forum, recently recieved a major update. Lee has added new sections: articles, blogs, updated marketplace, new tools, keyword/backlink checker, and more.

I also noticed the interview section includes an interview with yours truely (It might sound a little rehearsed, I spent two hours writing the answers, and then they asked me to do a phone interview!)

There is also another contest giving away a bunch of stuff totalling $10,000 — Affiliate Summit East Miami passes, SEO Book, t-shirts, PS3/XBox360/PC (take your pick.)

Check it out and tell me if I sound as dorky as I did on the Affiliate Summit West panel.

I’d be lieing if I said I did not enjoy making fun of The Secret two weeks ago. It got me a backlink on ABCNews.com besides attracting some really wacky comments (e.g. I avoided laser eye surgery and healed my own vision)

If you are a member of WickedFire.com you’ll know I’m not the only person who looks down on get-rich-selling-this-product-to-your-friends-after-you-buy-it-from us schemes. You know, those 10 page sales letters full of earnings screenshots that are suspiciously all from clickbank. These seedy products give the entire legitimate ebook industry a bad name. Simply offering an internet marketing informational product for sale causes your audience to question your credibility — even if you have a damn good product.

I was quite suprised today to find the company behind one of my favorite blogs, mindvalleylabs, is launching an affiliate program for this sleezy self-help “Secret” (read my old post if you are wondering why its sleezy.) I can accept an affiliate program for a product I think is rubbish. What bothered me was the video the included for recruiting affiliates.

The introduction video on the blog has a women who makes the following statements — “Its taken me 2 minutes to set up my very own Secret Science of Getting Rich website” — “There are many tools here that I haven’t tried out like.. something called the pay per click ads” — “My friend recently joined the Secret Science of Getting Rich through my website and now she gets her own website as well..”

From the mouth of MindValley’s own co-founder — “Your not going to need any knowledge of the internet, or websites, or programming, leave that to us.”

I think The Rich Jerk made it sound harder than this!

If I want to learn how to be rich, I’ll listen to Warren Buffet, not some self-proclaimed philosopy gurus. If I want to be rich, I’m going to avoid, at all costs, the people who say I just need to buy their product and promise smooth sailing. Enough said.

Here is another Adsense alternative — AuctionAds. Basically what it does is display eBay auctions as affiliate ad units on your site. If someone wins a bid, or joins eBay, you make money.

I tested an older version of the system last year on one of my sites, the results weren’t very impressive for me, but I heard good reports from other publishers. f you are working in a product based niche, definately give it a shot. I do not know about compatability, but AuctionAds could go well with RMX Direct.

Thank God that ICANN finally took notice of Registerfly. This has pushed the story to the front pages of many web sites, and perhaps sometime soon, newspapers and other print publications.

Its no secret, the domain industry is relatively free from regulation. This is not a bad thing. The last thing we as internet entrepreneurs need is licences to own domain names. Unfortunately this has left the doors wide open for domain name exploitation and theft.

I sincerely hope that this results in lawsuits against not only Registerfly but also other domain registrars involved in questionable practices. Domain names are property. Registrars should be held to strict standards and not simply be farms to harvest their customer’s assets.

Well before Registerfly was given the boot by Enom I sent out e-mail alerts that Registerfly was approaching critical mass as a historical disaster. I got minimal response. This story still deserves a serious journalistic investigation. Me, I am just a business developer and casual blogger. I can only point you in the right direction. Make no mistake, big changes are underway because money does talk.