First of all; yes you need budget for a hosting account and a domain name. but what's next? What's more important. The development of the website or the traffics/advertising. Let say if you have $100. And you found this cool php script that worth $100, and you also have the option to advertise on Myspace.com for $100. Which one will you choose? What do you exactly going to do if your income source is just from Adsense and not SELLINGS etc.
I will go for the script first.. and then work hard on SEO to get free traffic. After getting the next $100 from publishing ads, I will go for Purchasing Ads on other sites.
I want to say it in 3 words: Traffic, Traffic, Traffic. After all if you think about it, you want people to exit your site in order to make money.
Well with (one of) *MY* site I invested more into the features. Lo and behold traffic went up tremendously (last year). Just spent the last 3 days updating one site; daily uniques is on the rise. Depends on the site, IMO.
script. Why send people to a site with poor content? if so, your advertising $ would be worthless for a 1 time visit. work on content first, make them want to return to your website, THEN spend the $ on attracting them. just my thoughts. -Tim
A website without traffic is useless, and traffic without a good script is also useless.... Better to go with the script first .... you need the base of the website first !
I disagree. SEO is just another part of everything that should be done. Features, SEO, Advertising, Unique Content.... they are all just pieces of a pie which should be considered when making a site.
i said mostly we have 2 huge sites @ 150,000visitors day and never have spent a cent on advertising or doing anything SEOish past making pages search engine friendly concentrate on features and users will come
Depends on what type of site you own. I would simply keep adding original content as this will certainly end up getting your visitors from the search engines.