I’m an IM virgin, who still hasn’t got affiliates, a finished website (complete with the accessories you mentioned above), or a blog or anything else.

I don’t want to be some trash site, because I’m pretty sensitive to them – even though I can’t read a line of HTML.

If it’s so hard to fly under the radar of the search engines, and people resort to some of the above mentioned tactics, it kinda makes me wonder why more just don’t offer some original, valued content to begin with.

But like I said, I’m a beginner and I ain’t made a dime yet.
I’ll probably change my view once I owe Google five hundred bucks for a non-productive ad bill.

The real reason I went with that particular TLD (in 2002, mind you) was that I considered it the “appropriate” choice for information-laden sites… Silly me!