Create Good Stuff or Create Garbage

So yesterday on my drive cross country I called back a person who wanted some strategy advice for marketing his sites.

He was creating satellite sites using stuff like spam-brandname-productname.info but putting quality useful articles on those sites.

There are two ways to do well on the web. Create uber high quality channels or create lots of garbage. The people at the top of the content pyramid gain from the additional public relations and linkage data. The people at the bottom gain by appearing relevant for so many random queries. If you are stuck in the middle you are going to get ate up from the edges.

If you are creating garbage you need to keep your costs low - both in attention and in money. If you are creating good stuff you want to have something that is original and one of the best channels in your field such that you can get linked from the experts in your field and even some web experts outside your field.

100 small satellite domains probably are not going to work well at promoting your main channels directly unless they are niched down to be uber unique and/or require essentially no ongoing commitment.

If your field is really spammy you can eventually do well by starting off with one of the least spammy channels if you can keep it fairly low cost until they are profitable, but as the markets get more competitive and become attention markets eventually some of the profits need to be reinvested or you end up losing market share.