I converted a few of my XSitePro sites to WordPress. I did this madness a few months ago. Coin wasn’t being banked in the rapidity that I was accustomed to. So in a fit of boredom and stupidity I traded much loved laziness to blog posting hubris. The experiment was a flop. Just because I blogged and pinged didn’t add to the retirement account. In fact I made less money month over month than when the site was as lively as a rock.
So today I nuked WordPress off the sites. I relaunched the static pages and added a few more. Now instead of blog and ping and getting backlinks, I’ll just get backlinks. With a few exceptions, authority sites will be static. Blog sites will be free and consist of quick flash posting using bookmarklets and the like.
Looking through my stats I am noticing that Google likes full domains. Those sites I have that are subdomains like Squidoo, Hubpages, WordPress, Blogspot, etc. are suffering for the attention of their Daddy G. Mama Bing is showing the love to all my little bastards. Go figure. Just means that I have to build more since Bing only gets about 10-15% of searches.
Anyway, my best performers are XSP sites. I drink the blogging Kool-Aid and dance the blog and ping. This has to stop. I firmly believe that if you build a blog Google expects it to be blogged. Static sites do not have that stigma. So if I have 30 articles why not simply stick them on the wall and walk away instead of having to come back and paint the rest of the room? I have too many sites that I would have to blog. Not doing that for authority sites anymore.
But like I mentioned in that shit I wrote yesterday, I will still do quick posts using bookmarklets and commenting on, and quoting, news articles and other posts. 5 minute flash posts to get a pingback, spider crawl and links to places that matter.
Basically I have to simplify. I can literally sit down at the table and overwhelm myself at the thought of all my “authority” site blogs that I should update with some original content. I don’t have that problem with static sites. And I can use blogs on other platforms for backlinks, to drive traffic and make money. So today I have 3 less WordPress blogs that I have to blog. I expect to add more back to the rock pile.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree. I tried the blogs and I have had much better results with static sites built with good ole front page. I just use the blogs to build backlinks to the money.
Your statement about the static sites not having the stigma is dead on… IMO.
As always, I’ll have to go ahead and disagree with your statement about Google expecting a blog to be blogged. Traffic at OpTempo has remained the same although I’m not updating it very often. Of course, I do lose trends traffic but the core search traffic has been the same there for over a year, blogging or no blogging. At another WP site of mine that hasn’t had a new post since 2007, it gets even more traffic than it did when I was actively blogging there.
However, I do like static sites since they create less server load, no database problems and don’t require updating dozens of blogs with a new version because somebody on the WP team forgot to close a SQL injection loophole. About 70% of the new niche sites I’m creating these days are static PHP/HTML.
Two of my best money makers, incredibly to me, is on Blogger that I too built and left to die in ’07. They each have 40 un-rewritten pieces of PLR. They rank for the most obscure long tail keywords you could imagine. They are ugly and in your face ads Adsense.
Any Blogger blog that I have built and left since, oh, late ’08 has been a complete flop. It basically is the same with Wordpress blogs but I refuse to admit as much. If I blog the things I get traffic. If I don’t I don’t. It may be a most unfortunate coincidence. All I know is the static sites that I have built do fine.
And the database thing and server load is something that I don’t ignore anymore. As you know, you can put far more static sites on shared hosting, which is what I cheaply use, than WP blogs.
I keep running back to play in the blogoshere because that is what you are supposed to do. And I can’t figure out why my blogs aren’t as successful and just keep pounding my head against the concrete to get it to work. I’m not allowing myself to waste that time anymore. As far as authority sites go.
I wonder too if the guberus have more of a vested interest in keeping people interested in blogging. There is ssoooooo much you can “teach” about blogs. What the hell is there to say about a static site? I dunno. It just seems as if the IM money is in blogs. The marketers have an interest in keeping people blogging.
I get that many if not most people are uber successful flogging a blog. Doesn’t work well for me. I’m kind of glad.
I agree with you about building static sites on cheap hosting, rather than blogs, because of server loads, and because of what Frank said about WP constant updates.
The only advantage I find in blogs over static sites, is that they are more of an ‘instant build’ (as I always mess around with the html and css much more on static sites), so I can throw blogs online very quickly.
But that initial advantage soon gets overtaken when a ‘new WP hack’ is dicovered and you have to update squillions of the things.
I like blogs for backlinks and static sites for selling.
“I like blogs for backlinks and static sites for selling.”
I could have saved myself a boring post and just written that.
I built an XSP template for Ebay “sniper” sites. Can get that up damn quick. come to think of it, need to build more of those.
What about the other side of the internet marketing equation? Splork, have you ever tried creating one of the products that everyone is trying to push? Like I see some woman created the ebook that the Griz claimed he was too lazy to write. Now she gets xx dollars whenever anyone buys one, and instead of chasing links and adsense, she can buy adwords or talk you or the Griz into affiliate promoting her product. Which the Griz is doing, but even if she is giving him half, she is still banking pretty good and did not have to do all the work the Griz had to do to get his site to rank. And if she wrote a useful book, she can even hold her head up high that she is doing something to help people. Wondering if that might be more up your alley, because _you_ could write something actually worthwhile… the real story to making money with adsense, or some such. I realize most such info or ebook products are often not worthwhile, but given you write great stuff here on Lost Ball in High Weeds, seems like you could buck the trend and actually write an ebook worth paying for…
ps… if you do and it works for me drop me an email and let me know so I can get more motivation to get off my lazy butt and try the same…
Well I appreciate the thought and words Freelander, but I’m not sure I really have anything to offer that I should charge anyone for. I would hate to write something up and compel people to buy it only for people to see what a hack I am or something.
Why don’t you just use a simple wordpress template for a niche site and make it look like it is static. No comments etc..
Just build it and leave it as it is, unless you want to add articles to it off course.
People do it all the time. I prefer to use a non database, non CPU intensive, non plugin needed solution.
A web page doesn’t get any simpler than with static HLTM. And with XSP I can add and schedule articles to the site just like a blog.
Splork,
Dave has a good point there. Can’t you just make WordPress to be a CMS and not look like a blog?
Many of my best sites are WordPress blogs that haven’t been updated in a long while.
Definitely. I just have better luck with static sites. Not suggesting anyone follow me off the ledge. Just reporting what I’m doing.
Server load – particularly SQL server load – really is the elephant in the room and a largish WP site – 5000 pages or more – can start to be a real pain on shared hosting.
I wouldn’t even attempt a Joomla site of that size, even on a dedicated.
I’ve also started to revert back to plain HTML/CSS for new sites but the initial work is in the templates – most of the latest premium WP templates are really good now and let’s just say that Template Monster for HTML just doesn’t cut it for serious sites.
XSP 2 has some really great features – like scheduled posting – but Dreamweaver gives me the fine control over the little things that make a big visual difference. In the end I use both alongside each other.
If there ever is an XSP 3 then I think we’ll have the single tool that everyone’s looking for but until then it remains a case of splicing together the best from each.
I used to use Dreamweaver but it just takes too long to fidget around with the code. I simply want to get a site up. I make very amateurish, perhaps ugly, XSP sites. I’ve found that if I am building a site for Adsense I have better luck with these type of sites than with a blog. I do horrible with Adsense on a blog. I also have a template I use to build dinky little eBay sites as well. If I am building a site to talk about products then I will typically use a blog.
I own XSP2 and have stopped using it completely. I have tried about half a dozen WP blogs and whilst the server load on my VPS’s has been insignificant, I have also noted no advantage as far as traffic is concerned. Now I use a visual designer and notepad++ to do all of my websites.
XSP2 uses a third party encoded menu system that I do not like. It allows for very little control and like WP it locks you into a structure unless you want to do a lot of work. Static sites in HTML are very easy after a short learning curve, especially if you use a visual designer to set it up and then look at the code to see what actually happens.
While CSS can be a pain, it is no less painful than trying to modify a WP theme to suit and the plethora of WP themes only increases the poorly designed CSS out there. Some quite nice looking WP themes are hideously coded in the CSS and the order within the stylesheet shows a complete lack of logic in many WP themes.
Dreamweaver offers relatively tidy CSS and if you like JS menu’s, the options are there as in XSP. Although I personally prefer CSS only menu’s as I like my sites to look the same regardless of browser security settings.
XSP is great if you want quick websites with limited control of the menu system and don’t want to use several computers around the house to do your work on. (They only allow use on 2 computers and my house has 4 computers)
WP tends to rip all control from you and only offers themes and plugins in return. Not a good trade off as far as I am concerned. I have tried the XSP, then the WP and now am back to good ol’ HTML.
Just my opinion.
“I like blogs for backlinks and static sites for selling.”
I too like this expression. Being a tech dummy, I am constantly breaking WP blogs. All the constant upgrades and then plug-ins that don’t work, make me so crazy. I just lost some posts on my djnuttall site due to WP nightmares. The only blogging platform that seems to stay the course for me seems to be Blogger.
I do my best to build static XSP sites, but they are the ugliest sites on the internet. But once they are up, the backend is basically done and all I need to do is put fresh content on them and get links. Works for me.
Well, you have managed to get me to post a comment at last Splork. Have been reading your wise words since PLR Pro first started (found you in the PLR Pro forum at the time).
This post struck a chord with me since I also got sucked into the ‘Wordpress is Everything’ mentality a few years ago. Originally, all my sites were built using XSP 1 and used to do well as far as ranking and adsense were concerned.
Going back a while, I had to shift to another host and decided to put all my XSP mini sites under different themed domain names. On each domain (all 13 of them), I put a WP blog on the front end with all the various XSP themed minisites underneath that in sub directories. The idea was to post articles on the blog with links to the various mini sites underneath.
Then, being that Wordpress was the be all and end all (not), I converted some of those XSP sites to WP. In addition, I started a couple new domains and put WP on them as well. The strange thing is that I have known all along that WP wasn’t cutting it as far as adsense was concerned but I still carried on regardless.
Anyway, long story short I am now going through each domain and converting all the WP sites back to static html using XSP 2. Not an easy task since I am having to do it by cutting and pasting each article post from WP to XSP and then 301′ing each article. What I need is some means of bulk exporting posts from WP so that I can bulk import into XSP but haven’t been able to find anything that will do that job.
So, I can tell you from bitter experience that niche blogs just do not work as far as ranking, adsense etc are concerned.
In any case, I can do the same thing with XSP static sites as WP does. Make an RSS feed inside XSP and then submit the feed using RSS Bot. When I post any new articles, RSS Bot also has a ping facility.
I guess we all have to learn the hard way although in my case it has taken a while for the penny to drop. I registered my first domain back in 1996, but still, some fourteen later, I am still figuring out this so called IM thing!!
Alan
Thanks for reading Alan. I feel your pain. That’s pretty much my story. Unless I have something to say every once in a while, I won’t be creating a blog. For all these niche sites I post up it’s easier on me and the host to simply create a quick XSP site. I do much better with Adsense on XSP sites and basically an ugly template.
Hey Denise. It is much easier and I seem to make better money with an ugly XSP site and Adsense. I’ll let the free blog sites, and god knows there are a shitload out there, handle the load for feeder type sites.
Hey Anne. Yea if you are into (heavily) modifying your sites XSP is not for you. I don’t care about how the site looks as long as the info is there and the people that skim over it click an ad. XSP provides that easily.
True,XSP is a really useful tool for getting things up fast.For me its a true gem since i have almost 2 to 3 sites coming up each week.however a few more modules would definitely appreciated.
This is where I am stuck-1/2 the people like WP and the other 1/2 does not. I did HTML sites a few years ago using NVU-it did not work very well for me. I think I just need to play around w/ both kinds
Use the one you like the best. They are equally useful. I just have better luck building with XSP though I do use WP from time to time. If I did not have XSP I would use WP. I certainly wouldn’t put up sites using NVU. I have better thing to do with my time.