I should begin with a disclaimer here. I was in the Navy for four years and there learned the art of profanation from the best of them. I can string together an unprompted series of epithets with nary a thought to their meaning or consequence. I even indulge in this practice when occasion warrants.

However, just because I have a talent for it, does not mean that it is wise to engage in it, especially on the web. There are very few people who can get away with using foul language in a video or in writing, especially if they are trying to sell or explain something. The only one I can think of is Jeremy Shoemaker. When anyone else tries it, it comes off low class. Indeed, replacing explanatory adjectives with expletives generally reveals a lack of knowledge about a subject. It is rather like using ad hominem attacks in debate. It seems rather desperate.

What got me thinking about this was a passage in volume one of Mark Twain’s autobiography. He explains how he gave up cursing when he married. That is, he gave it up in his wife’s presence. One day she caught him using words calculated to bring on hellfire and damnation and she reproved him by using the words herself. He made an honest effort to curb himself after that.

A decade or so ago, I was riding in the Seattle to Portland. A classic bike ride of about 200 miles. A gentleman who happened to be riding directly in front of me took a spill into a ditch.  He came up spewing profanity. I stopped to help him. He seemed like a decent fellow, but his inability to control his language struck me as revealing a certain lack of class. Interestingly enough, I probably would have reacted just as he did.

Now, whenever I  read a blog entry, comment, or political statement that contains bad language, I immediately dismiss the author and his statements. I think this is because I realize that this individual is exhibiting a lack of respect for his reader. He (or she) clearly is adjectively challenged. I am pretty sure that I am not the only person who disdains such writing. My question to the author would be, why alienate half your audience? So when you write, leave out the foul language, gosh darn it.

One nice thing about having websites is that people write to me to tell me what a bad writer I am. Most often my grammar is criticized, but occasionally I will forget to run some text by a spell checker (in fact, I seldom spellcheck this blog).

Honestly, they are usually polite. Here is one I got yesterday along with my response:

My response:

Ironically, I just got a question from someone about buying websites on Flippa:

G’Day Mate,

I noticed that you purchased this iraq insurgency website on Flippa, I am new to that website would appreciate it if you could spare a few moments to help me out with a question i have regarding it.

I am just starting out in website flipping and am doing some research and was just wondering how did you find the estimated or claimed revenue to hold up after you purchased the site and had it transfered to you ? Was it accurate ? Did it increase after you added more content or did it decrease ?

At the moment im not sure how to go about veryfing if what people claim is accurate, so though i would get in touch with some people and see what there experiances were like.

Once again i would be very appreciative for a response.

Thanking you in advance !

Best Regards,
Name withheld

This was my response:

Interesting you should ask me that question just now. I have been thinking about Flippa lately and actually wrote a blog entry on it. As for IraqiInsurgency.com the claims by the previous owner bordered on fraudulent. The amount of traffic was zero and is still pretty low. However, I more or less had figured that out before I bought the domain, which I bought to develop into a whole new site. I have other sites on the Iraq war, and this domain tied in well with them. Ultimately, on the whole, it was worth the money I spent on it. However, it would not have been had I been relying on the previous owner’s claimed stats, which are very easy to falsify, by the way.

Having said that, I have bought websites on Flippa (or its previous incarnation Sitepoint) that far exceeded my expectations. Usually, they were in niche areas. I wouldn’t buy a site that had anything to do with very competitive keywords like “credit card”, “forex” or “pet training”. You’ll NEVER be able to compete with the established sites in these areas as their SEO machines are in constant motion trying to bump each other off the top seat.

Truthfully, I still skim Flippa now and again. Once in a great while I find something worth bidding on. But usually there is a lot of competition when a real, quality site shows up there.

My advice to someone just starting out would be to build your own sites. That way you at least get something close to what you want. If you do this, build sites that are related. I have several sites on home improvement that do fairly well because they have a certain amount of synergy. http://www.drywallhowto.com, http://www.homehumor.com, http://www.toilethowto.com, etc.

For anything other than a blog (of which I have three), I hack together my own html because I don’t think wordpress themes rank all that well for informational websites. They also take up a lot of space, and ultimately mean you end up maintaining them more because people are always commenting. The worst thing about them is that the site’s linking structures never end up pointing consistently at your best pages because the main page changes every time you make a new post.

Remember the old saying…content, content, content.

Well, all this is probably way more than you wanted to know.

Good luck in your endeavors.

Will

Okay. Disclaimer right here up front. I have never flipped a website, that is in the sense that I have never sold one. I have, however, purchased a few. On the whole I made money on the ones I did buy. I lost on some, and still do on a yearly basis when I pay the fee to maintain the domain. Yet I don’t consider these sites as a dead loss as they are aging and I sometimes grow them to be no longer losers.

I used to periodically buy websites on Sitepoint now called Flippa. However, it has been a long time since I found anything worth buying there. It used to be that you could find a gem among the hype. But the last thing I found worth the money was the howtowriteaspeech.net. It’s not a great site, but it was well positioned and I could grow it.

Now the only thing I find on Flippa are sites calculated to draw in the newbie. Stuff like Forex sites, acne sites, credit card sites, directories, and sundry topics where there is so much competition for keywords that they could not possibly ever get any traffic in a million years without some serious long term work by a professional.

The good thing is that this market is sure to discourage competition. I wonder how many people buy a couple of these sites, get so discouraged because they can’t generate any traffic, that they look for some other line of work. But by the same token, I find it extremely difficult to find any sites that I would feel are a worthwhile investment. And when one does show up on the Flippa radar the price gets so far out of whack that it isn’t worth even bidding on.

I guess my solution is to just keep working on my own little internet Empire and keep making the best websites that I know how to make.

Trying to figure out what my next project will be is usually not too difficult. The answer comes jumping out at me off the computer screen. My latest project is called Nasunin. Now don’t feel bad if you have never heard of nasunin. I had not either before a week or so ago. I had one of my writers peel off a series of articles about eggplants for InDepthInfo. In the course of editing the articles I was struck by a substance found in the peel of eggplant called nasunin.

Nasunin is an antioxidant. But it has amazing properties beyond just controlling free radicals. It also helps inhibit cancer by slowing or stopping the growth of new blood vessels. This makes it “anti-angiogenic”. (Some of these words are a lot to wrap your lips around – it took me a while just to remember the word “nasunin”. I kept wanting to call it after the automobile…”nisan-nin”.)

I was sure that it would make a good article for InDepthInfo, but just on the off-chance, I checked in with whois and found out the name was available in .com. I was shocked! I didn’t hesitate. I bought the name and didn’t look back. After a week or so, I put together a website.

You are probably asking, “Will he ever get out of that site the value of the time and effort expended. After all, nasunin is pretty obscure.”

Maybe you are right and nasunin will never take off the way resveratrol has. But, truthfully, I seldom pick my projects based on how much ROI is likely. I generally write about what I am interested in and passionate about. Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time, it helps pay the heat bill.

The hardest thing in building websites is to get things the way I want them. Even when I do all of the work myself, websites often do not live up to my expectations. How much less do they live up to expectations when I hire someone to do the work? Well, much less.

I have always done most of the writing for my websites myself. I have hired writers in the past, but often I spend so much time rewriting articles that I may as well have written them myself in the first place. I am not a perfectionist (ask my wife). Yet, I keep trying out a writer here and a writer there.

There are two new writers I have contracted to do a couple of food websites for me. A couple of them are done, blueberries and eggplants. I found that I spent quite a lot of time in rewriting. Part of the problem was style. I don’t like contractions in formal writing, and you must know that I abhore use of the second person. Much of InDepthInfo is howto. This means giving a lot of instruction. People have a tendency to use the second person when telling someone to do something. Many copywriters now-a-days write the way they speak, colloquially. To me it sounds unprofessional, but there seems to be no way to correct them. They even see it as a positive thing. I guess now that I have passed the mid-century mark my notions are becoming old-fashioned.

The question is, should I even be hiring writers? The answer is, “yes”. Why, because having something to work with to begin with motivates me and lends a bit of initial structure. I may end up entirely rewriting the original articles, but I produce more articles on a weekly basis. So on the bottom-line criteria it has been worth the investment.

I just released InDepthInfo on Modern European History: A Homeschool Course. It was about a year in the making. I mainly wrote the book because I said that I would, but it all more or less fell together naturally. The chapters are all based on web pages I built to supplement lectures that I gave to homeschool students over the last year or so. What makes it a good course is that I have included not just text, but study questions, chapter quizzes, and a comprehensive exam at the end of the book. Parents need not worry about making assignments, making up tests, etcetera. There is also a pile of supplementary material on-line.

Anyone who has read this blog over the long-haul knows that I have been worried that my format is anchored too far in the past. I have experimented with video, but I have not been completely happy with the result. I have published several books in the past. I have a degree in history, so coming up with a survey history of modern Europe seemed almost a good step in the direction of expanding the InDepthInfo format and brand.

The question is, how to market it. So far – few sales. But then it has only been out for about five days. I have tried ads on Facebook and Google, however, the response has been minimal to feeble. That may be the fault of the ad or the fact that homeschool parents are not quite buying courses for their kids yet.

I must say that I feel I have come up with a quality, useful product. The only thing I am not completely happy with is the art work. But then, I have no one to blame on that score buy the artist. Myself.