Coin website VS Ebay

Technically it's not off-topic.
Jack is considering someplace to host his website.
An option is that he could be his own.
I just brought up that option, because I'm the kind of guy that would do that if I needed a server.
I also like to see people diversify.

 

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Gee, sounds like you speak from experience, lol

 

It's a bit of a stretch to suggest that one run their own server (especially wren they don't have any idea of how to do that, knowledge of web servers, etc.). Loss of power is only one of many reasons that servers "go down" (which generally refers to a service/server stopping, not loss of power), and the cost of true battery backup units, generators, servers not to mention the time that goes into all of it generally makes it not worth it for the purpose of having one's own site.

We have plenty of people who come to the web hosting forum wanting to start their own hosting company or rent a server, until they realize that it actually takes knowledge to do so, which requires effort and time, plus money to do it right. Of course you can always do it the wrong way, but that seems to be the exact opposite of what you are trying to accomplish.

"Specalize in Lincoln's, period. I do not plan on becoming a pro coin dealer per se, but my goal is to provide a type of shopping enviorment I would like to buy from myself."

Selling hosting to others when you don't know what you're doing, or trying to run a server without any knowledge of how to do so is like opening up a coin shop and selling "shiney round things." P or D? Who cares it's a 1986! Steel? Dang, these things are made of copper! Sheeeeeeesh.

IT departments can't be replaced with a battery backup.
Apache has nothing to do with indians.
DNS isn't something women get once a month.
Soft and Hard reboots aren't made of leather.
And so on...

Few listen the first time (they start listing after everything hits the fan), but at least consider reliability #1 (not price) and if you think you can get everything unlimited, plus the kitchen sink, all for $1/mo., then start figuring out how to move everything to another provider because you'll be using that information sooner than you think.

 

My suggestion is forget it. Sort of like trying to open a small grocery store next to a large super sized food mart such as Jewel or ones like that. Sure you will get a few customers but consider your web site wil be visited by a few whereas auction places like ebay are visited by millions and millions. Of course it is possible you may become well known such as some web sites of very popular dealers. Littleton is an example where as bad a reputation as they have, they continue to get customers. Sometimes a bad reputation is as good as a good one. People are curious and will go to a bad place to see what's there.
However, I think one more new coin web site is like just one more coin web site. To many already.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. They told me the same thing on the sauce. " Why? You gona go up against Tobasco? Your'e crazy !!! "

Glad I listened, because superspicy just had it's best year`ever, doubling 06' and no end in sight.

 

I began my coin site in May 2007. I wanted a site where people who know little about coins can learn about them, how to collect them, and learn about the hobby in general. My slant was to provide information that would help people not get ripped off buying coins online, and to find coins they wanted on ebay. Also, I wanted to provide coin news and guides for the reader.

I'm still in the process of adding material, and always will be. I average 16.71 hits a day, and have a couple pages ranked on google. It has been a slow process, but rewarding because I taught myself how to design, and optimize my website.

I use http://www.bravenet.com/ as my hosting site. They have a lot of features, and a help board. I haven't had any problems with their service.

I use http://www.web page-maker.com/ to create my pages, and sometimes use Front Page. With webpage maker you don't need a lot of HTML experience, and although the software is easy to use, it has some limitations.

Also, google has a free page maker http://pages.google.com/ I recommend an account with google for many informational reasons. I use their analytics to track page visits, keyword searches, etc.

After decide on a domain name and hosting service, and before you even design your first page, submit your domain name to google, yahoo and msn.com. Because it will take a awhile to get indexed and you want your domain waiting in line, so when you do publish your first page then you will have a head start on getting indexed.

These three are the most important search engines on the web. If you're site is not on google and yahoo then you will hurt your web traffic and business. Bravenet has an option to submit to the top sites for free, or you can pay to have them submit it to more.

Points you must learn about is...

Getting other sites pointing to your site by link exchange with other coin sites, or in coin auction sites user profiles, and coin forums. Google uses this as a big part of their site ranking criteria. The more sites that point to your site, the more relevant your site is too search engines.

Learn about key words and key word phrases. For example, if you wanted to buy Cents online what would you enter into your search field so you could find the sites you're looking for? If you just use Lincoln Cents in your meta tag then you will be competing with 400,000 + sites, and you don't want to start out trying to compete with sites already established.

Use phrases like "buy Lincoln cents", Lincoln cents for sale", "find Lincoln cents", etc. Also, each page should have different meta tag key words, and phrases. For example, you want to optimize each page so that you maximize your chances of someone only interested in buying Lincoln cents visit your pages, and that is your target audience. This is called organic searches.

So you can have a page for each date or series of dates so that you can use as many key words and key word phrases as possible. You can have a wheat page, memorial page, proof page, key date page, mint error page, etc. These are just examples, I'm sure you can see what I'm driving at.

Your home page should download fast so that people can get instant feedback or they will click off the page, tired of waiting for it to load.

Anyway, this post is getting too long, but if you want some help then send me a pm. I will close with just one more item, there is always room for another coin site. I just recommend specializing and offering site visitors something they don't get on other sites. I hope this helps you in your decision.

 

A few comments on the last post.

Front Page has, and always will, some problems. Mostly with holes that can be bad for the sever. I won't allow my clients to use FrontPage for sites hosted on my server because I can't spent all day and night watching to make sure we don't get hacked. There are many, many CMS programs out that are just as good, or better, that can be used for free in most cases.
Also---if your hosting company doesn't provide a Stats page I would wonder about them--a servers stats page should be much better than Google.

I don't know what you considder "awhile", but I have had pages indexed by google within a day or two. Yahoo and MSN I don't fool with much--just don't get the hits that google does. Also those sites pick them up pretty fast anyway and it saves me time.

I won't go into this alot--but key words are fast being out dated. No SE's such as Google and MSN, etc, uses programs that just scan your site and uses that data in listing your site. I find in most cases that my sites rank #1 on Google without any keywords listed. In other words---the words that you type on your site are the key words. This is really great and it saves time.
About the only time I would use keywords is where I'm trying to draw people to my site from other areas....such as:
My site is all about "how to grow hair", but I want to target people who are searching for "how to make money"....then keywords would be needed.....it isn't sure how much good it would do even then, since these programs that Google are such are running are prgramed in most cases to "skip" the tag keywords....
So I guess I said all of that to say this---don't put too much time into key words---put more time in writing the info for your site to match what people are searching for!

I agree 110%--that is one reason why I don't like flash sites all that much--they are slow and in most cases I won't stay if I see it is all, or mostly, flash.

Speedy

 

This is why I keep Flash disabled in my browser.

 

I don't use it to make my pages, but rather use it for the HTML editor. I haven't used front page for a couple of months.

So have I, but a new website can take some time. Of course, there are ways to get your site indexed faster, but my post was already rather large.

I used not only keywords, but "phrases". When a search engine looks for a site with the search criteria one entered, the first thing the software sees is the meta tag with the page title, description and key words. It's not as important as page content, but every little advantage is needed with millions of pages on the net.

If you use only targeted keywords relevant to your page content then no spybot will ignore it. Just look at the top sites on the net. Click view in your browser, then source. This can tell you a whole lot of the reason this site came up in a search, and why.

Not very wise. Just ask yourself this. If you where looking for sites on how to make money, and a site comes up in your search for growing hair, you wouldn't click on it or click off immediately. Besides, one needs to target their audience, because 10,000 hits from the above example is useless, and I would rather have 1,000 hits from customers that clicked on my site because I offered exactly what they wanted. You get more sales from organic searches then any other.

If you draw people from other areas chances are they are not interested in the product or service you're offering.

 

I don't even like their HTML editor---it seems to add to much extra junk in there. When I started designing sites I just did straight HTML, and I liked it....but now PHP is getting alittle more useful!

And I'm talking about brand new sites---I agree...there are other ways to get them indexed....and I like the free ways the best

Yeah...I know... But what I'm saying is that all of that is becoming outdated...and soon it won't be an advantage, but just something that takes extra time to do.

I hope you know that I was just pulling names out of the air when I posted that---growing hair and making money I really don't think would work.
But I also disagree that 10,000 hits from the above example is useless. There are ways to make money by selling hair....so you could get much more interest from that type of target than some. I've always said that you must make your own market, you have to find the clients who AREN'T interested in what you are offering and make them interested. The people who are interested will find you anway---it is those who don't know about your type of service, or don't think they need your type of service that we must strive to contact and get interested.

Anway---I'm sorry I went off topic--this isn't a web site forum!

Speedy

 

Yeah, this has strayed a bit off topic, but is one desires to start a coin site this information is beneficial.