Lost and Confused

zkiller

Super Moderator
Staff member
vaelor, there is a number of things i would like to say in reply to all that has been mentioned here since my last post, but that will have to wait til tomorrow. this flu is really getting to me and i need to lay down. so, basically this is a pointless post, but i will be sure to get back to you, in your search for glory on the web. :)
 

StephanieCordray

New Member
ian said:
As to the web hosting idea, I thought Stephanie was recommending that you use free web hosting and not actually start a free web hosting service, I may be wrong on that.



Yes,that's what I meant. vaelor mentioned one of the businesses he had thought about was web hosting but didn't or tried it and it failed as welll... I'd have to read back to remember that.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
yeah i remembered that stephanie was moondancer, before the avatar.
 

zkiller

Super Moderator
Staff member
yeah, i am horrible with names.

i slept like a rock last night. 13.5 hrs and i had to force myselft to get up, since i have to be at work in 1 hr. sorry for going off topic.
 

zkiller

Super Moderator
Staff member
anwyays, to get back on topic.

i can understand your disappointment and frustration, vaelor. i to have been in the web game for many years now. i actually started to learn how to write html and so forth in high school, but it really didn't interest me back then, it was more of a half to kind of thing. i honestly didn't think i would ever need the skills i aquired then ever again, but a couple of years later, i did my first web site along with a friend and have been at it ever since. that was in january of 99, so that's 6 years now. i too have little to show for now, although i did have something to show for before moving back to germany 3 years ago.

i guess there really isn't much left to add to what everyone has givin you for advice and i don't want to sound like a broken record, so i won't repeat what they have said. all i will say is that you need to figure out what area of business it is that you wish to go into. even oversaturated fields have room for improvement and therefore can still be profitable. espeically, if you are rather good at marketing a product or service.

hmmm, i guess that is rather redundant, isn't it. anwyas, i find myself at a loss of words right now.
 

Vaelor

New Member
Ian, Stephanie, Stefan... sorry, I didn't mean to let this thread die and ignore your several most recent posts... I had to double-check my thread subscription preferences there, I was about to complain that I was sure I wasn't getting my email notifications properly, but I just searched through my filed emails, and it turns out I can't use that excuse. I honestly don't know what happened here, I must have got the last notification when I was very busy, told myself I'd come back to it later, and then accidentally filed it away in the next Inbox cleanout. =(

Anyway, allow me to revive this thread a little. First of all, I can't work out how the conversation turned to web hosting, I thought it might have been something I said, but reading through the history, it seems one moment I was talking about needing an inspired new idea for a web project, and the next minute everybody was suggesting I try free web hosting, so I can only assume something I said was misinterpreted somewhere along the line.

Hosting isn't even remotely the issue here. I have a server that is extremely cheap which I couldn't be happier with - I had some trouble with software configuration and whatnot previously because I don't have any skills in setting up a Linux webserver myself, and the sysadmin I took on when I bought the blank slate server ditched me for more "important" obligations, so for a while there I was toying with the idea of seeking a temporary alternative to get my sites back online, and briefly discussed the possibility of hosting with Stephanie's company, JC Hosting. But, as it turned out, [tab] has patched the gaps in my server with remarkable talent and above and beyond the call, and in an amazing timeframe no less, so now I have a top of the line, customized to an insanely specific extent, as I require, and for less that what I'd pay elsewhere for an "another brick in the wall" style virtual reseller account with some other companies I've seen. So hosting is absolutely not a hurdle for me - I can now host unlimited/infinite web projects of any level of complexity and any manner of content (so long as it's legal, of course!), with no problem. (Oh, though I think I owe [tab] my soul or my first born son, I forget which now! =P)

Which brings me back to the beginning on my issue here in this thread - I need a new site!

I actually came up with a decent idea the other week, which will be one of the first projects I implement once [tab] has put the last couple of finishing touches on the server for me... I was lying awake for hours in bed one night, as I do, and couldn't stop thinking about the old piece of wisdom, that a highly targeted niche site that caters to a small but precise demographic of traffic will be much more successful than yet another generic site in an oversaturated market, even if you pump a million untargeted hits a day through the thing.

Well, the idea came to me the next day while I was bored and sitting here picking through my collection of ancient classic games to find something to play. But game after game that I tried to install just wouldn't work on my current system - Windows 2000 is pretty unfriendly to DOS games from the 80's/90's! And then, while Googling around to find the usual obscure forum post in which somebody on the other side of the globe once got X game working on Y operating system, it hit me - what a perfect niche, classic gaming afficionados who need to make their old games work in an increasingly fast moving computer industry.

And hence, the day after that, I purchased the domain NewDogOldTricks.com - Who says you can't teach a New Dog Old Tricks? =)

I certainly don't expect it to be a high traffic, high profit site, but the beauty is its simplicity - the site content will be 90% user contributed, slotted into an article template system which I've designed (but will need to contract somebody to code). Then I generate revenue from Google AdSense and a couple of other related affiliate links. My aim is to set it up as a small background automated income stream, and then move onto other things.

So, things are on the move now, slowly, but I certainly expect a better business year in 2005 that I had last year!

But still, I'm on the lookout as always for something... bigger. I don't want to run 400 niche sites with ad banners and affiliate searchboxes on them. I need a project that I can pump my boundless free time and enthusiasm into and see a serious return from over the next five years or so...

Unfortunately, as you suggested Ian, a "day job" isn't an option for me due to health/disability reasons, so my online business really is going to have to start making it for me unless I want to spend the rest of my life with the poor quality of life that nothing but a government pension provides one!

So, back to square one, brainstorming-wise... there are a lot of brilliant ideas and concepts out there, and surely even in today's enormously overpopulated internet world, not all of them have been done to death endlessly already... we just have to come up with something great, and throw our shoulders to it...
 

StephanieCordray

New Member
Vaelor said:
Well, the idea came to me the next day while I was bored and sitting here picking through my collection of ancient classic games to find something to play. But game after game that I tried to install just wouldn't work on my current system - Windows 2000 is pretty unfriendly to DOS games from the 80's/90's! And then, while Googling around to find the usual obscure forum post in which somebody on the other side of the globe once got X game working on Y operating system, it hit me - what a perfect niche, classic gaming afficionados who need to make their old games work in an increasingly fast moving computer industry.

I actually know a couple of people here who would be interested in that site. Maybe even me, lol... although the only really old game I have left is probably not one I'll ever have time to play... I don't even have time for my Sims II, lol.

I think we got off on the topic of hosting because of your cash problems but since the ever reliable [tab] has you all fixed up, you are in good shape.

Keep your mind churning ideas but don't churn so much that you sour the idea you already have. Concentrate on this one for a bit, see how it goes, figure your time spent with it, them implement another idea or the next step for this one. Preserverance!
 
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