SiteFunda.com Make Money Online

Interview with Dan Ball

Hello, my name is Dan Ball, a web developer of 10 years or better in Minnesota, USA.

Q1) Your primary website:

Ans: Home Recording Connection - A large and active online community for home recording musicians and recording engineers. 

Q2) How did you started off:

Ans: I got my first modern PC in 1996 and immediately was intrigued by the Internet and took to teaching myself the skills. 

Q3) How many sites you own:

Ans: Own? Half dozen or so. I manage many more than that. 

Q4) How much money you make online from different sites of yours:

Ans: Well, it’s how I support my family, managing web sites is my career. It would be rude to give hard numbers. 

Q5) What are your primary methods, you use for your site’s promotion:

Ans: Almost exclusively organic search results, occasionally sharing banner ads on other sites, but not often. 

Q6) Any message/tips for starter webmasters:

Ans: Learn the programming language, don’t rely on WYSIWYG editors and that sort of thing. If you want to survive in the business, learn the languages and platforms. And don’t make a site just because you think it will make money, if it’s a hobby site, make it for a subject you are passionate about or a subject you are knowledgeable in and interested in, or it will be a sucky hobby. 

Q7) What is your favorite niche. Which category you think is more profitable?

Ans: Can’t say I know what is most profitable, I have had good luck in the music niche’ which can mostly be attributed to the fact I enjoy it as well. 

Q8) What should you choose if you have to make a choice between a directory, a blog and a forum.

Ans: Forum. Hands down, no contest. Directories are worthless, there are already too many, and only a very few matter. Blogs are generally silly. One persons rant on any given subject, and very few are actually authorities in anything they rant about. Blogs are great for leaders or authorities in a given subject, but that’s about it. Forums are user generated, cross sections of opinions and input from people across all demographics, much more enlightening, bringing with it only  the overhead of needing to moderate it, nothing sucks more than an un-moderated forum. They inevitably go to the dogs, and tough guy kids that bully people from behind their keyboard.  

Q9) Your favorite web host, hosting company.

Ans: Host PC, best service, support and prices I have ever had. 

Q10) Favorite search engine:

Ans: Google. 

Q11) Favorite website:

Ans: I like a few, Slash dot is cool, The Smoking Gun is fun. Too many to think of. 

Q12) any thing else you want to say!

Ans: Yeah, no, um, well, not really I guess.

Related links and resources:

The trend of making money online is very successful by effective internet marketing. There are different ways which are used by internet marketers for making money. In these methods, link exchange is very commonly used and it is also known as reciprocal linking. The other way is email marketing in which email is send to prospect customers. Another very popular way is, pay per click advertising in which advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website.