So, basically, create a demand-media site but without even paying writers the $3/hour to create crap articles? Just scrape them from the government? :-)
I'm all for the lifestyle business thing, but there are more fulfilling ways to make $2k/month, imho... As the cost of creating businesses drops, the number of viable niches literally explodes.
This isn't "scraping government websites", this is using your skills as a programmer to manipulate data, to make graphs and visualizations of the data.
This is what I got from the article. data.gov has LOADS of datasets for the USA, as well as hundreds of other APIs from different departments that can be used to retrieve that data in real time.
The problem comes just after you click "download" and realize you have a 600MB XML file listing the Ph levels of groundwater sites around the country for the past 25 years. How in the hell are you going to make that data an interesting draw that users want to read or learn about?
I have no skill for frontend design, but I've recently begun to learn how to display data in an intelligent manner. If anyone is interested, these books have helped me:
> How in the hell are you going to make that data an interesting draw that users want to read or learn about?
People are probably looking for that data. Find out exactly what they're searching for, and tailor your content/site presentation around those keywords. You can use Google Keyword Tool to find this information:
Right, but you still need to present it in a way that is easy for people to understand. XML is a fantastic way to deliver a large amount of data, but it is hardly parse-able to anyone who doesn't know what a markup language is. JSON as well. My point was that "take data, throw adsense on it" is hardly a simple plan.
Developers need to know how to display data in an easy to understand, easy to follow, and easy to consume manner in order to get people to the site. Keywords and SEO only go so far. You still need readable content for humans.
I wouldn't. I'd rather put that time into my fulfilling business. After a year of such extra effort, it'll probably make more than $2000/month difference in my bottom line; though that assumes I have a real business to invest my time in, and that I can afford to work for a year before seeing that $2k (or more) show up.
I have my doubts that yet another generated content spam site would be worth $2k/month, though I'm sure there are a few...I kinda suspect it'd take months of experimentation to actually find one that pays, and keeps paying over a long term. If you only get one $2k month, and it drops like a rock soon after (either after competitors sweep in and rejiggle the same data, or after the data becomes stale and needs more human intervention to update).
Also, ew. I'd feel gross if I were creating spam for a living. I've come upon this kind of site quite a lot when looking at government auctions (which admittedly have horrible sites, when provided by the government), and the level of spam in the industry is just disgusting. Everybody fighting for the same keywords, clogging up google results for the real data, always out of date, often pointing to no-longer existent goods, mingling many types and branches of government (each branch has different requirements for buying from a government auction; even if you qualify to buy at one, you may not qualify to buy at several others) to beef up their listings, etc. When done poorly, it's evil, plain and simple. A low-grade evil, but evil, nonetheless. I don't want that kind of thing on my conscience, and I don't see how anyone could do it well on a few hours a week or month.
Ah, so you already have an existing business. I believe that most programmers do not.
You have to work to make money from your business (most likely). With an authority site providing data that people want and are linking each other to, you're making money passively.
$2,000/month is only $66/day. That's not a big number. That's a single sale of certain products on Clickbank[1]. If a given product averages one sale for every 1,500 visitors, your goal is 1,500 unique visitors per day. That's not unattainable, either. Making money online is not a complicated process.
I don't see how the OP's idea is anything near a spam site. It's taking data that people could be interested in, making it available, and helping people find it. If people happen to click some ads while they're on the site, great! A spam site IMO would be like those fake torrent sites that come up when you search for a product name.
Google Search has an insecurity complex where it will show you a ton of low quality content instead of telling you it did not find anything good.
The problem isn't that a bunch of folks have made lame sites; the problem is that no one has made a good site. Make one, and Google will happily rocket you to the top of the results page.
But not when it takes 6 months to get it going. For a 6 month project I would aim higher. How about building a useful app or web based service in 6 months and making some real money from it.
additionally if you're going to be pulling down public data sets there are probably more interesting and useful ways that you can restructure/reorganize that data. There's a lot of useful data out there that is a real mess that I'm sure some niche would actually pay decently to presented in a more usable fashion
I used to work at a firm that paid gobs of cash for just this sort of data. The trick, of course, is that you need to be well versed in the needs of potential clients before you can even think about staking your claim. But if you know what people need, and if you can collect and effectively present it to them, they will pay for it.
More, if you do it right. Take a look at instantdomainsearch.com. It provides a tiny amount of information, all of which is readily available from other sources. It's still quite profitable.
The article does recommend buying freelance writing for $10 per page, which is more than $3/hr for the low-complexity writing presumably required. For example, he kind of writing on DMV.org, that just puts some chatty flow between steps in a workflow and around the data.
I'm all for the lifestyle business thing, but there are more fulfilling ways to make $2k/month, imho... As the cost of creating businesses drops, the number of viable niches literally explodes.