Conventional logic, spoken as if your judgments are conclusive commandments. They simply are not.
That line of thinking reminds me of stuff like... "you need a degree to be successful in life", "your too short to play pro ball", "women don't have what it takes to be in the military", "they'll never elect a Black as President". ect. ect.
Some people are simply conditioned to believe that there is a set formula to success in any given field. Of course they mean to say... the odds are... but it comes out as dictates like:
"City-guides on Shoestring budgets don't attract advertisers. SERP ranking and site quality does."
So that must mean the city guide I launched on a shoestring budget, without any SERP, that snoops said "looks like a 1998 design" and millers said was "a bit amateur", won't attract advertisers. I guess someone forgot to tell my advertisers... and I should cross-out that section in the letter of recommendation from the head of the Sheraton Hotel that states the guide is "professional" and that they are "proud to be working with the production".
The key to success is resourcefulness. Work with what you got and do the very best job you can. Then take it to market and sell it with passion. Clients hire the person, more than anything else. Of course what your selling gotta get the job done.
Remember the Google story... they launched a blank white page with a query box in the middle because they did not know design or much HTML. Many 'you can't make it like that' people laughed, including Yahoo -with its tv ads and a page full of content (not "original" content, BTW). But Goog and its ("basic") text ad system just worked -and quickly cornered the market.
Bottom line, clients / advertisers want VALUE. They know when they see a fancy design, killer graphics, a CMS system and original video productions that THEY are going to pay for it.
I give clients a choice... you want pro produced vids? Great! Here's a sample and here is the cost. A few take it, but most go for the less expensive ad options.
Awwwww, look. It's eHoratioAlger.
You're tilting against windmills here that just don't exist.
There is a world of difference between 'simplicity' and 'crap'. People who furnish 'crap' are usually quick to confuse the two.
You essentially gut any credibility you might have when you argue against ranking as being a critical factor. Unless you're dealing with a domain name that has a ton of direct navigation (geo.com) or you have a very mature social networking web that generates shitloads of traffic, the ONLY thing that translates into value for your advertisers is eyeballs.
Period.
Period, period, period.
In the year 2010, the engines are what bring those to the gate.
Now, I don't know where your city-guide is located and perhaps you're in some backwater region where "Bobs Feed and Grain Store" pays you for ads, simply because he 'feels' internet advertising is the right thing to do, without any real concern for eyeballs or conversion, but for everyone else, action and conversion is what advertisers want. The thing is, while there may be some new, innovative way to make a city guide that has yet to be discovered, the most effective way has been established for quite some time- and 'that way' isn't by letting your 13 year old kid use Frontpage to make the site.
Oddly enough, you and I seem to be an a general'ish sort of philosophical agreement about simplicity- and I *totally* agree that a motivated person with less resources can overcome a lazy person with more resources, so yeah, resourcefulness is very important- however, the reason Google attained it's relevance wasn't *just* because it was "simple". It was because it delivered a massively, massively superior product to anything else out there and search is one of those things where results matter more than the upsell. People cite "simple Google" and think that their mediocre efforts are in league with them, because both are "simple". Not true.
Anyway, no real point in arguing or railing. The only thing that matters is outcome and if you're having a positive outcome with a crap site, congrats. Just know that the 'moat' that protects your competitive advantage is very narrow and anyone, at any time, could come along and kick your butt.
Discovernow seems to have some Tourettes tic where he's crowing about 'paralysis of analysis' - even though he's the one who's openly admitted he doesn't develop domain names and just 'buys them' - pretty sure there's no more paralytic state than that. For everyone else who is building, I think it's important that they definitely be resourceful, be ingenious, but not try to reinvent the wheel when on some things, there is definitely a 'right' and 'wrong' way to do things, in some regards.
