undefined | Better HN

0 pointsPaulHoule1y ago0 comments

Not necessarily but I don’t think it’s going to be that profitable for them.

I’m aware of people, circa 2010, building out huge sites where they started with affiliate offers and automatically generated thousands and thousands of landing pages and also had automated SEO spam to drive traffic. Some people made money that way but the affiliate plans that work are the sketchy ones (adult friend finder was probably the best at that time) whereas for normal products with Amazon or EBay you didn’t make a lot.

I think tools to make web shops quickly could be a good idea and probably not that hard but driving traffic is another thing. By 2011 the serious SEO spammers I knew had mostly switched to running paid ads, there was one guy who would charge $10,000 on his dad’s Amex to run ads, make it back in 3 days, pay the card and repeat. It is fine and good when it works but it is competitive. You need capital to start and could lose it if things went wrong.

I have not been involved in that sort of thing for a long time but I do know it is not easy.

0 comments

clickzyn1y ago

Wow, thank you so much, Paul Houle, for these clarifications; they are priceless to me. The challenges are as follows: - Driving traffic to the newly created shops - The low potential user profits - The competition in this field - The capital required to start - Possibly other challenges that haven't been identified yet

Since it's quicker and safer to challenge ideas before implementing them, do you think that some variations of this idea could mitigate as many of these challenges as possible? I don't want to bother you, and I'm really grateful for your previous response.

PaulHouleOP1y ago

Look up my profile and send me an email and we can talk.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse