Question for successful webmasters

Question

Which is a better path to getting into internet marketing in your opinion; Buy a small, established website that has a monthly cash flow to learn how it all operates?, or, hit the forums and start from scratch and learn-as-you-go?

If you had to do it over, what path would you take?

Answer 1

With an established site, you have already some content (depending on quality though, you may have to scrap the whole content and replace it). The main benefit is the aging of the domain name, the number of links the site already got, and possibly, some established traffic

The problem with the established site is that you don't really know what the previous owners did, and whether the site got penalties from the search engines. The worst thing you can do is buy an established site, and then find out you can't monetize it because it has been kicked out of Google Adsense and other ad programs (once kicked out, you can't reapply)

With a new site, you have the full control of what you do with it and you'll be responsible for charting its growth. No penalties, nothing.

BUT -- most new sites land in the sandbox so it takes time for it to be visible  in the search engines (sometimes as long as 6 months to 1 year). That means you'll work overtime to get traffic to the site, even spend more in terms of PPC for lack of organic traffic.

It has its pros and cons. But if there's an opportunity to buy a clean, good site with a reasonable price, I'd go for that.