I totally dig yard sales. I love to find treasure in throwaway items. I like old things. I like old buildings. I like old furniture. I like old jewelry. I like things that survive age and wear. To me, something that holds up over time is better. I believe that we throw away too many things before they’ve been used up. Some of the things we throw away never really disappear. They exist in spite of our neglect. They continue on and sometimes they’ll be around long after we are.
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"Your neglected sites, no matter their domain name or content inventory or age can always work for you." |
Websites can do that. As long as the space is paid for and the servers are up, a web page can go on forever. I bet you’ve got an old site or twelve floating around cyberspace. I imagine you’re like me. You’ve got a couple of those old sites hanging around that you made when you were a stupid newbie. You don’t really update them but you just haven’t the heart to pull the plug on them. They may not be perfect but they continue to hold a fond spot in your heart.
Remember all the work you put into those first sites? Do you recall the days you spent getting the layout to look right? Maybe you consumed hours and hours promoting the thing and submitting it to search engines. Did you ever get it indexed? Were you thrilled as hell with every trick you figured out? Do you mark the day that old site made you your initial sale? These first sites were the ones that taught you everything. For whatever reasons you let them go -be it disinterest or disillusionment- if they’re still online they’re worth reevaluation.
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Everyone knows the drill. You make the first site. You tweak it. You polish it. You put all your hopes and dreams into it. Then you realize after a while you’ve learned so much and there’s so much more you can do. You venture off into other areas, other niches. You begin to build all kinds of sites. You experiment with free sites, AVS pages and TGP galleries. You start to understand that certain sponsors work with certain kinds of content. You realize it’s time to move past free-hosted pages so you set them adrift without updates. You set old pages adrift in the waters of cyberspace like a baby in the bulrushes.
When was the last time you even checked the stats on your old pages? Do they still get hits? Did all that intensive search engine submission work pay off? Are your sponsors even in business anymore? Have they improved their services and maybe offer better banners or promotional tools? Perhaps one of your old sites was ahead of its time and now the market has caught up with your niche content. What about your old free-hosted sites? Sometimes if you don’t update your free page, the host will begin to redirect it to their program. Are you letting a perfectly good use of bandwidth go to waste?
Your neglected sites, no matter their domain name or content inventory or age can always work for you. If you simply took the time to add a link on each of those tens of webs to a main site you favor, you would have a network. If you just update a free host with a new sponsor banner or gallery your account would stay yours. If you took advantage of older pages that still get traffic by updating them you would maintain and possibly improve your search engine rankings. If take you an old site with a good domain and a good potential and rework it using the things you know now, what was once a lost cause might turn into a victory.
Summer’s coming. The days will get longer and (some say) the business will slow down. If you have to buckle down why not work to improve the things you already have? While suburbia relaxes in the lazy days of the coming summer with barbecues, softball games and yard sales, why not do some bargain shopping of your own?
Take an inventory of your old adult webpages. Assess their value. Refurbish that which is worth saving and finally trash that which is not. Look within to what you have. All the gold is there.