The DFN Lounge

With

Wingnut

Of

Pepee's Pornn Palace

Panning For Gold

Many webmasters are looking for that golden nugget that will bring them fame and fortune overnight. Just as the early prospectors did during the gold rush, they too had visions of vast wealth made overnight.

Those webmasters will soon face the same harsh reality that many of the early prospectors found, fame and fortune rarely falls into your lap without a long arduous journey. Many of those gold hungry folks didn't make it and so too will many of today's webmasters.

How could this be Wingnut? "There is gold in them there hills!" "How could they not find a huge vain of golden delight for themselves?" "Why can't I make 5 figures a month?" "I put up a website, how come the Internet masses are not beating down my door and filling my back account?"

Do you see the similarity yet? Just as the successful prospectors did, they panned for the gold nuggets. If no nuggets turned up they moved to a new location and started over again. If a few nuggets showed up they panned even harder, many times those few golden nuggets lead them to the mother load. I'm sure there were times when they realized there was no mother load in the location they were in but it did provide them with enough gold to get them through the tough times.

We as the leaders of Internet commerce can learn plenty from the early prospectors of the gold rush. Some of will learn the lessons well and will be here a year from now still working the golden Internet waters. Others will miss the lesson completely and will vanish from the vast Internet stream. Now that summer is in full swing and this being our typical slow season you will start to see them vanish one by one.

First you start to see the domains being redirected, a last ditched effort to find some golden nuggets. That may work for a very short time but will eventually backfire on them as the traffic stream dries up from the sites getting removed from all the hard earned traffic sources. Next the domains go belly up, the white screen of death, no gold left for the bandwidth bill, domain registrations expired.

Then come the processors and site owners cracking down of those trying to prospect gold nuggets in an illegal or unethical manner. Again another sign of missed lessons … Who will come along next? The webmaster/prospector that understands prospecting takes hard work and careful planning will come along and scoop up what is left. The "big guys" also can clean up and get even bigger during this time; it truly is amazing what you can acquire during the "rough season" (or so I've heard).

"So what can I do to prevent this from happening to me Wingnut?" Well, I don't have the silver bullet for you; I do have to tend to my own panning you know J. I will tell you this much. Reading this article, the rest of the DFN and reading VNWR on a daily basis puts you into several steams of water with golden nuggets flowing right under your nose.

You just need to roll up your pant legs, dip that pan into the water and sift through the garbage. There is gold in them there hills.

Wingnut