I am web developer who is always torn into the idea whether there is a purpose to all the sites I have other than earning 5-10 bucks in adsense and improving my web development skills. After reading this article it gives me an idea that I am not alone in my quest.

Finally I realized who Chris is (aspen), and I felt shame. To accuse aspen for “not sharing” enough is a blasphemy. I have learn a lot reading his numerous post in forums and from looking at his sites.

You should all first do your homework before asking for more info in the game. Read around, look carefully at successful sites and networks. Most of the answers we look for are out there already. Why should someone chew the food and put it your mouth?

Designing for AdSense is a violation Google’s “Terms of Service” - so no one would claim that they were doing so or Google might bane the site. This is also another good reason to have a number of domains - since Google is less likely to bane a IP/NS…

You seem to have an attitude about design.

Your right - and it was a mistake to guess at your goals related to design, since I have no idea what they are…

I will say that I do feel that your site ARE well designed.

Design is relatively meaningless when it comes to profit. What matters is quality content and good marketing.

and then….

And yet most people consider Google to be a standard of usability and quality, especially when they first came out and their closest competitor was the cluttered “trying-to-hard-to-be-fancy” AltaVista.

Clearly design is important…

I can’t find it off the top of my ahead, but I did see a nice write up on designing for AdWords at one point. You get a high CTR if the ADs look like navigation or content, and I’m sure that there are other use patterns that could be played on.

In general though I focus on organic SEO and link building.

With ecommerce sites PPC marketing is a sure bet, also with ecommerce & some high paying content sites paid link building (such as shelling out $300 for a yahoo listing) is a good idea.

My sites aren’t going to win any art awards, but they’re not trying to. Design is relatively meaningless when it comes to profit. What matters is quality content and good marketing.

I can get with that. What I’m curious about, and perhaps this better left for another blog or something, is what types of marketing work for you? Someone said earlier that I needed to learn “how” to fish not “where” to fish. And well, I think my question is not of where to fish but how are you fishing and what techiques work well for you.

I think its a silly forum profile field anyways.

One thing that you might have noticed from Chris’s sites that are content drive is that they are “anti-user” do so degree, meaning that the user must WORK to get to the content, verse having it handed to them. Can you find anything that covers this approach to design and building sites around ADs verse subscription based sites were they “try” to make it very easy for the user to get content because they are directly paying for it…)

Um, not really.

You seem to have an attitude about design. My sites aren’t going to win any art awards, but they’re not trying to. Design is relatively meaningless when it comes to profit. What matters is quality content and good marketing.

And a top banner ad or a right side skyscraper is not a barrier between users and content. I don’t know where you get that from.

Take Google.com as a case study. Simple design, something any designer could throw together in 5 minutes. Take their SERP pages, ads at the top, ads on the right, ads on the bottom. And yet most people consider Google to be a standard of usability and quality, especially when they first came out and their closest competitor was the cluttered “trying-to-hard-to-be-fancy” AltaVista.