Many many many years ago I was a fan of, and peripherally involved in, SPEWS.
SPEWS was a blacklist, it was easy to get on it, host annoying spam and ads, except SPEWS would block by IP range, so it blocked hosting providers.
The usual counter argument was I’m not a spammer, I just happen to be buying hosting from a spam host, well, tough shit… move.
Fast forwards to today and someone got referred to me, given my long experience in the field.
And let’s not forget the rules of spam, all spammers lie, all spammers define spam as that which they themselves do not do, etc etc
The problem, they tell me, isn’t that they want to make MONEY, they just want to cover COSTS, and they have tried EVERYTHING.
So I listen and dig a little deeper, and these websites, a handful of domains, cost them between £100 and £120 a fucking week.
My first response is what fucking sites are you running? fucking ford.com?
My local provider is Krystal…
https://krystal.co.uk/pci-compliant-hosting/pci-compliant-hosting-features
I do not know *how* you can spend £6k a year on hosting? For a few fucking websites???
We dig a bit further down the rabbit hole and I rapidly lose patience, “I just wanna cover my costs” included his home broadband, Pc and running costs, and of course coffee and smokes.
We dig a bit further down and his fucking awesome websites are basically fucking dreck, my jaundiced take is he is trying to link farm enough clicks to position himself so he can get free gear to “review” and go from there.
But basically I’ve taken 50 quid from this tart to go over and see him and talk about his problems, so I say I get you don’t like me, anything I have to say, or anything else, but the fact is you have handed me fifty quid to give you advice, advice that is worth a thousand if I was consulting at commercial rates, now do you want it, or not?
He says yeah OK.
1/ making money out of websites is generally speaking one hell of a trick, *unless* you are selling a product or service that is in demand, then it is a piece of piss.
2/ going out and “finding” a product or service that will sell, and then setting up a website for it, is generally speaking one hell of a trick, and one hell of a lot of work.
3/ NOBODY, not even your customers if you have a product or service to sell, ASKED you to set up a website, that was YOUR choice.
4/ My current main website makes a fucking huge return on annual investment, ONE FUCKING SALE pays the entire annual cost, and I spend precisely fucking ZERO of dead tree printing / publishing / advertising, or staff wages for same, win, win, win, win, win.
5/ it doesn’t matter HOW important YOU think YOUR website is, nobody else is going to share that opinion, especially if you start charging for it.
6/ If you MUST do advertising on your website, ensure that ALL the following are true;
- 100% of all ads are served from your own web server
- 100% of all ads are either static text or static images AND NOTHING ELSE in their own bordered box with “advertisment” written in small font at the top and in the page source
- 100% of all ads fit at most 2 standard size ad boxes
- ads never consume more than 15% of screen area OR 30% of screen width, no matter where the browser is scrolled to.
- ads should only have one clearly labelled hypertext link, that the user MUST click to activate.
- ads should be screened by YOU, if they lead to a pupup link farm or other shit, delete them and blacklist the asshole who paid you to run them.
- ZERO cookies on your site that are not YOURS from YOUR server and identified as such.
and buddy, lose all the fucking crap javascript content creation and delivery crap, lots of people run noscript and all they see is a blank fucking page or a page with nav links that don’t work
I tell him all this and he is all but but but if I do that I basically won’t get any ads!!!!
Tough fucking shit.
What you *will* get is a loyal readership who you never hear a single complaint from.
I’ve since heard from the bloke who referred him to me, apparently he was on the phone to him demanding that he repay him the 50 quid he “wasted” on me.
I constantly get complimemts from customers about my business website.
- There are zero ads of any kind, 100% of all content comes from my own hosted server.
- There is zero javascript, backend is a lean PHP / SQL CMS that just works and serves up compliant HTML
- 99.99% of all questions a customer can ask short of an actual specific quote are answered on the website, eg it is clear and informative
- it doesn’t aim for an art design award, the layout is simple and clear and traditional (nav on the left)
- you do not have to register to view it or use any part of it
- you do not have to pay to view or use any part of it
- you do not need an Intel i9 CPU and 16 gigs of ram to view or use any part of it, it works on an android phone
- you do not need any specific browser or screen resolution to view or use any part of it.
- you do not need any specific OS or code library installed to view or use any part of it.
- there is zero flash
- there is zero javascript
- there is no tracking beyond server stats like webaliser
- it JUST. FUCKING. WORKS.
- there is no cost of any kind to view or use it, beyond your time and minimal bandwidth.
But then I’m not a lazy cunt, lying fuck, spamming asshole, marketer, PR guy, or anything else.