Traffic is King? Content is King?

[PornoDoggy]

I don't think this is a chicken and egg discussion at all, because there is another factor entirely that nobody's mentioned.

The most wonderful content on the web is nothing but a server bill without traffic (not much bandwidth expended if nobody comes to look at it).

Traffic from the best sources going to the the most wonderful content on the web is going to increase the bandwidth on your server bill if you can't sell.

I listen to people bitch and moan about [inser your least favorite sponsor].com's plain, ordinary cookie-cutter sites that look like shit, have ugly skanky crackho models, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Go to any board, or review your ICQ conversations from last week, and you'll probably find and example.

Go back four years, and you'll probably find an almost identical rant about the exact same company. How are they able to make the initial sale and retain folks long enough to enable the rant to reoccur?

The difference is presentation - marketing or salemanship or whatever you want to call it.