If you're looking for an idea on building your next site if you are into building sites an monetizing them with AdSense, I'll give you mine: WHAT: ------------------------------ I recently created a database of file extensions. I didn't do it in english, because there are already websites in this niche and I realized that there wasn't webmaster competition at all in my native language, so I built it in this language. Of course the adsense clics pays less but I can be well located for all searches, I don't have real direct competition. There are of course a few computing sites which have a section on file extensions and what they are, but those sections are not the main purpose of those sites and their database is not complete at all. Look at your own language other than english if there are sites dedicated to file extensions. You should search for keywords such as "open file ZIP" or "read file MKV" or "how to open file with LNG extension" etc. If you find none or only a couple of site DEDICATED to file extension, then you can think about creating yours. HOW: ------------------------------ The think is that you probably won't find a ready made database of file extensions in your language, so you'd have to do a lot of translation, and so this idea is for people like me who actually enjoy reading about file extensions and also translating english into your own language. What you need to do is use the few file extensions database or sites in english such as file-extension.org, filext.com, wotsit.org, filezed.com, etc. and use them as a basis for translating and creating your own pages. You can find on them lists of popular file extensions and most searched for extension, that's the ones you should start with, so that you cover the minimum 100 or 200 extensions that most people will encounter in their computer life and it will enable you to increase your knowledge about things we take for granted, but it is still interesting to read about again. To create your sites, I don't know what you use generally, but personnally I cannot recommend enough to use a CMS if you're still doing your website "by hand" and the one I recommend is simply the best, NO IT'S NOT JOOMLA! It's http://www.drupal.org spend time installing it and learning how to create a site with it, the time spent will be useful for the rest of your webmaster life. Once you have a few extensions done, here are the pages you should create too: - popular file extensions (plan a check box when you create your file extension pages, to include a YES/NO to the "is it popular" question) - most searched for extension on your site (with a counter on each page you can then list the ones with most visits) - software tools (used to open or modify extensions, should be linked to the related extensions) - recent additions (the extensions you last created) - recent modifications (the extensions you last modified) - FAQ (what is a file extension, how to display them in windows, why are they not all 3 letters long, etc) - some indications on how to link to the site (I know it sounds stupid, but the easier it is to link to your site to all levels of webmasters, the better) and if you can to how to install a search box on their site that will give results on your site. - privacy policy and legal terms/TOS (those are mandatory more or less when you use adsense now) - contact page (with a prompt for people to send you new extensions info or modify some) Then when you've done most of the basis, that you site is good looking, you can go to your local wikipedia and search for pages about some of the most popular extensions and add your direct link to your pages. Also search and reply to questions on yahoo answers in your language and put a link to the direct page. Also make sure that the front page doesn't have a lot of adsense, and the file extension pages don't look spammy because of the ad placement. Then you can register your site with some of the most useful web directories, no need to register to hundreds! You could add a forum and what not, I let you think about it, but the most important is to keep growing your database so that after you've done the most popular extension you'll start going into the rare ones, and that will be good for your LONG TAIL, it means you'll have even less and less competition on google search results for those terms! THE RESULT: ------------------------------ You will then have a brand new website USEFUL to people, where you can target the IT market, laptops, software, etc. with affiliates products. This is additional to adsense of course. If your site doesn't look spammy in terms of adsense placement, then it can be used and spread by other people if they find it a good resource they can send links on forums, on their blog, etc. So don't be greedy, put less adsense possible and work on increasing the daily visits, when you'll go over 1000 unique visitors a day, you can begin to add more ads, but let it grow slowly at first. --------------- If you want to know specific things, maybe about how to do things with Drupal, you can ask.
I don't want to argue about that today, but ask yourself the question why so many high profile sites have chosen drupal to build their site, it's not because they didn't know about joomla! Coders like drupal because the code is very clean and efficient. Non coders and beginners like joomla because it comes with very nice templates and the admin menu is nice looking. Now you choose. There are also nice templates for drupal, the administration module for drupal improves greatly the user-friendliness of administrative tasks. But also the code has been improved with joomla 1.5. Still not enough to convince high profile sites !