The idea of a mashup, or a site built with pieces of content from other sites, is definitely not an unfamiliar idea to me or most people. I have a large network of such sites based around sports and I’m starting to branch out into other topics lately as well. My latest is a site about my favorite record label called Sub Pop Bands.

I’m a big fan of the mashup idea for two reasons: speed and simplicity.

Mashups Are Quick

I have a custom built content management system for my mashup sites but even if you don’t have that kind of programming knowledge making your own mashup site is relatively simple. There are so many widgets and free scripts to let you bring in fresh content that putting together your own mashup site should take no time at all.

Aside from the content from outside sources, my mashup sites also contain hand-written content that I have made unique for that site. Whether you write this content yourself or hire someone to write it for you is your decision to make. When I have the content in hand I simply copy and paste it into my CMS and the site is updated.

Mashups Are Simple

A mashup site isn’t a complicated e-commerce store, a frequently maintained blog or any other type of time consuming website. it’s really a simple content site that is augmented with automatically updating features to keep the site fresh with new content. How can it get much simpler than that?

It is that simplicity that makes it possible to produce, quite literally, dozens of these sites with little to no effort. For under $50 I can have all of the necessary content written for me and away I go. No fuss or hassle after I load up the site using the content management system.

The End Goal

The whole point of the mashup site, as with most things online these days, is to make some money. You can use something like phpBay Pro to add eBay listings to your sites like I do. I also include AdSense and sell private advertising on the sites when the time for that is right. It takes a bit of time but not a lot of effort to turn these sites into profit machines.

I’ve been trying to post all of my WordPress thoughts over on the new blog at WordPressings but this post kind of treads the line between both sites.

I recently took on a small site project for a local client and we decided to save time and money and use WordPress as the site’s backend. Normally, I would use a stripped down version of my own custom-built CMS for this kind of site but I was interested in trying something new.

So far I have the basic template made and the next step is converting it into a WordPress theme. After that, we’ll have some brief WordPress training and the site should be live.

What’s interesting about this project is that we won’t be using any of the blog features associated with WordPress. The only portion of the WordPress admin we’ll be taking advantage of is the “Pages” interface. All of the site’s content will be controlled with pages, and not posts, because we don’t want this site to look or function like a blog.

I’ve debated in the past whether or not WordPress (especially the 2.5 release) was ready for primetime as a content management system. I’m still not 100% sure it is but I’ll learn a lot with this local client. I’ll report back in a few months on how this all worked out.

Since the recent switch from Commission Junction to an in-house affiliate program my stats on my eBay auction sites have gone in the tank. I’ll be the first to admit that my eBay sites don’t see a lot of traffic but before the switch I was seeing regular levels of clicks and sales.

Since the switch my stats are all over the place. One day I’ll have no clicks at all and then the next I’ll have 70+ on one site seemingly at random. The next day we’re back to no clicks.

I’ve read in a lot of other places that people are not happy with the numbers they’re seeing as well. They’ve reported this to eBay and have basically been told they’re wrong and that everything is going just fine. One of the big points of argument with affiliates seems to be the number of new signups they’re seeing. It just so happens new signups are one of the biggest money makers for affiliates but I’m sure this sudden drop is just a coincidence…

My eBay revenue was so small to begin with that I’m probably in no position to really argue but some of the bigger players in this field feel something is amiss. When enough people start to see smoke there probably is a fire.

As a freelance web developer, a portion of my business inherently relies on other people doing their jobs for me to be a success. This is never more brutally true then when it comes to dealing with web hosting for a project. The trick is to find affordable web hosting that is at the same time incredibly reliable.

There are lots of companies offering cheap web hosting plans with outrageous guarantees about storage space, bandwidth and uptime. Of those three the most important is clearly uptime. Storage and bandwidth are getting cheaper by the day but a reliable server at a decent rate is becoming more and more of a rare commodity.

This lack of reliable web hosting is why I always stress to other web developers the importance of taking the extra time for research to compare hosting plans. It’s never, ever the wise move to jump for the cheapest web hosting solution. Instead, take your time and conduct due diligence before making a decision. Ask other people what hosts they use but keep in mind that every host is going to have horror stories. Make sure you ask a variety of people for their opinions before making a final decision.

It’s very important that you make the right choice for your web host. If you make a mistake and choose a lousy provider the downtime to switch hosts is going to drive you, and your client, insane and it might result in a lost job.