LazyHippy

Great thread - loads of useful info.

There seems to be a bit of confusion about Eli's cycle site method, especially when compared to splogs or aggregated content blogs.

From what I understand, the aim of cycle sites is to get trackback links, not to get them indexed. (Eli suggested cycling them as soon as they start to appear in the search engine results.) A splog you might slowly build up over time, submit through SQUIRT/QUIT, gain links and aim to get a lot of pages indexed... A cycle site aims for massive amounts of posts (suggested, start with 10k feeds) to gain trackbacks on small percentage of them, then 'cycle' it after a month or so - replace WP and redirect where needed.

I started on some cycle sites using wpmu (seems ideal for it imho - works well), but on shared hosting... I very quickly got IP banned from Google blogsearch! Oops! I know I need a bigger variety of feeds (and prob to put it through a proxy too) but I've now listened to everyone and will be sorting out a dedicated box soon - due to the resources these use it is generally not recommended on shared or VPS hosting and a lot of peeps have suggest min 2Gb RAM on a dedi box.

A few bluehat pennies have just dropped for me and I've taken a step back to working on building the foundation sites - massive database sites that again I don't expect to make much cash but (hopefully) generate a lot of link juice.

SEO 'empire' building is a long-term game and I don't think cycle sites are the best place for newcomers to start due to the server resources required and their aim being to build links and authority, not necessarily making any more cash than paying their rent.

If anyone has them working well on shared or VPS let me know which companies don't mind your sites keeping the servers busy! Going by the speed my first db site is running I think I'll need a dedi for them too.. although that could just be my shitty newb coding!

Aequitas... great post. What's the deal with viscript now? Who's selling it. (Sounds ideal for the vid-blogs-to-flip method.). Not really thought about site flipping before - kinda amazed at how profitable it can be! Nice one. (Another thing added to the ever-growing list!)

I've only been in the game about 6 months and very much consider myself a noob, one of the big problems I've found is staying focussed on one project. It's often been the case of start something, hit a wall, go back and learn more.. then get distracted and move onto something else! Eli's 'SEO Empire' strategy has helped me focus more and see how all the bits can fit together - definitely recommended reading!

I'm still fighting the temptation to stop my very slow database site building and move to focussing on something which will make cash now....

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