I love designing and building sites but I hate/suck at the promotion part...any advice?

What you could do is get a partner to work with you - someone who is more interested in the marketing side. Then the two of you could work together to create either a web design business - or to create sites that are worth more for Flippa.

I know what you mean...

I dislike promotional activities as well, but your income will increase dramatically if you do them.

Even if you decide to sell/flip sites, they'll sell for much more if they have traffic or are making money...

For myself I had to come up with a way to automate all of my promotional activities for all my sites. I use all automated tools and I came up with a system that works for me. I just wrote up about it on my blog, feel free to check it out...

Outsourcing your promotion is another option but I found it to be more expensive once you have many sites...

I follow one of the method sometimes.

1. Buy a good domain name from Godaddy in auction
2. Build website using http://HyperVreGold.com software
3. This Gold version can generate about 100-150 pages. Don't use free version because the owner makes profit, not you
4. You can place Adsense and Affiliate Ads
5. Test it for couple of weeks and make changes
6. Forget it and enjoy money from Adsense and Affiliate network

I hear ya brother, I'd rather noodle all day with wordpress than do real work.

Flipping is an option and going the freelance route is another.

Subccariel (however you spell it) has (from what I can tell) a pretty cool business model. Building up niche sites and selling them as WSO's. There are a couple of other cats who are doing the same thing. You could also put those sites on domains and flip them for a higher price to double the revenue stream. This should also lead to some freelance interest on the side. My opinion, many of those pre-made sites are dated and bland so there is room to blow the roof off the place with better designs. The woo themes are getting a little long in the tooth.

Now, I'll go back and read the rest of the reply's

Outsource some of the tasks that you are not that good at. Although build up a knowledge of ALL areas first.

Mark Thompson's post and link have a lot of good info. If I understand what he is saying, don't sell a site for peanuts right away but give it some time and let it grow, promote it, then sell it at a much higher price.

I suppose if you have an efficient system that let's you create sites quickly, selling for a lower price isn't a big deal since you're working of a quantity not quality business model.

Either team up with someone who sucks at the technical stuff but thrives on marketing, OR read every news related thing and find opportunities world wide and build simple sites catering to their needs.

Ex. the first thing I ever did to make money online: Im a huge soccer fan, so a few years ago when they announced that the World Cup was going to be in south africa, I bought a .za site, had a friend who was technically inclined build a simple site based around flights, tickets, merchandise, etc. for the cup...had some affiliate links and what not...

Not a sustainable income, but made us some money and I've done the same for other such things...all the info you'll ever need is in the news

you can have a partner who will market your sites and you will make the sites. you can also recruit any person who is good in marketing by paying him monthly. i think its the best way to get good profit from your site making.
cheers

Then You can start a business like you start creating micro niche websites with unique posts on each sites and start selling them. You can start your own website to sell those created websites and you can promote in warrior forum and once you will start getting reviews then you will get more buyers for you and hence your profit will increase. Hope this is a useful info for you.

And I want to ask: Let you are creating a micro niche site then how much you will take for selling direclty? like via paypal don't use flippa 20$ fee.. instead you can reduce this price in overall cost and can make more profit.

Hey Guys

3 WAYS LINKS? WHITE OR BLACK OR GREY?

Thanks

Chunkynuts

I know your pain, and it's devastating to business success, that's for sure.

One approach I tried that seems better than what I had been doing is to work for other people so they do the marketing. Offer your services as a web designer. This shifts all the marketing aspects onto someone else.

As well, you could always hire a marketer to do that part for you, but it'll cost a bit. It would give you more time to focus in building bigger and better sites, though, which then will be more valuable to resell.

Partnering, as someone already mentioned, is another option. That way, you just share the profits, rather than you having to pay someone.

Another option is to just find a few marketing methods that work for your business and do only those, rather than getting overwhelmed with so many. For me, it's going to be article marketing for some time as that's easiest for me to do as opposed to building joint ventures.

In your case, though, JVs might well be the best option.

Sylvia

My advice is to learn to love the taste of Ramen Cups. Web developers are literally a dime a dozen. Learn how to rank the sites via seo and you're sales will explode. Just because you suck at something doesn't let you off the hook in having to learn how to excel at it.

Write Articles to get targeted traffic.

It's simple and as instant as you can get. (without having a list)

you can sell your expertise to people who would like websites designed for them