This advice was Written by a successful Webmaster friend, Daniel Sitar of GT Web Development. I thought it might help some so I'm posting it here:
The first step is choosing a domain name that will be the home of your website. Some people like to pick shorter, memorable domains, which they can “brand” (example: Google.com or Yahoo.com) while others like more descriptive names (example: GermanCars.com or JalapenoPeppers.com). Make sure your domain name is not overly long (under 15 characters or so) and is a .com if at all possible, although .net and .info will also work well. Even a .us or .ca name will work if your location will play a role in the site. Also try not to use hyphens (like this “-”) because it makes your domain hard to say out loud. I recommend using a place like
www.NameCheap.com or
www.GoDaddy.com to register your domain names.
Next you need to choose a web host. The best website hosts are the ones whose name you forget, because you never have any problems with their service and thus never need to contact them. Use Google and Yahoo to find a plan that matches what you need. At the start, you shouldn’t spend more than $10 per month on hosting and if your site grows larger and starts getting more traffic you can easily upgrade your account.
The single most important thing to your website is content. Visitors love to see content, as do search engines. Writing and developing unique, interesting and original content is the best way to make your site successful. This takes time, but a website without articles, stories, descriptions or other text (unless your site is incredibly ingenious) will most likely fail. Website design isn’t actually all that important, assuming your visitors can easily navigate through your pages and don’t go blind because of your use (or overuse) of color. Choose 2-4 colors that look good together and are easy on the eyes and use them to style your site. Knowing HTML and CSS are a big plus, but don’t stress if you have to use Dreamweaver or Frontpage as sites made with these programs can still be incredibly successful. Make sure to properly SEO (search engine optimize) your websites by giving them keyword rich page titles and headings and using META tags appropriately.
When it comes time to market your site, there are really no shortcuts. Use articles (some of the custom content of your site) to submit to free article directories (which can be found easily on Google) with a link back to your site at the bottom of the article. Digg.com is an article submission site which can bring you thousands of visitors if your article is well received in that community. Link building is also crucial in determining where your site ranks in search engines, especially Google. Email sites similar to your own and ask them to put a link to your page on their site, in exchange for your link to their site. You can also pay for 1 way text links, where you do not put a return link to their site. Some SEO gurus think this type of link is worth more to search engines than link exchanges. Link building and article submissions take many hours to do properly, but they are essential to the success (or lack thereof) of your website.
If you want to pay for traffic, Google Adwords is the way to go. Spend time researching your keywords and ads themselves to try and find the most efficient way of reaching your target audience. It is pretty easy to get 100 visitors for $5-10, but if they are not interested in your sites subject matter or don’t want to buy what you are selling, it probably is not a good investment.
Assuming you have been able to create an interesting website which provides your users with good content, the final step of the equation is monetizing this traffic. Google Adsense is an obvious and practical choice, but you either need a lot of traffic or be in a high paying niche for this to be very profitable. Yahoo Publisher Network is also an option for American publishers and many people finds it generates more revenue than Adsense does. Azoogle is a cost per action network that allow you to capitalize on traffic that often does not fair well with Adsense (Myspace, Games, Entertainment) because you can earn $1-$2 when a user signs up with one of there programs (he or she doesn’t actually have to purchase anything). Clickbank is also a type of affiliate or cost per action program, where you can sell thousands of digital products such as software and EBooks and make 20-75% of the sales price of that item. You can also sell banner ads to private parties for a fixed monthly fee or even create your own product or membership and attempt to sell it on your site. Once you have targeted traffic, the rest is pretty darn easy.
The final part of this equation is time. Websites often take months and months to become popular and there isn’t much you can do to speed up this process (although link exchanges and article submissions certainly help). Don’t get discouraged if your site isn’t popular right away, just keep adding content and make the website a place people actually want to visit. Once you have lots of visitors to your site, then you can “worry” about trying to convert them into revenue. Stay positive and don’t lose sight of your online goals, whatever they may be.
DeluxeNames
AdminAdministrator
Comments
just wish that i really take the time and effort to do what is mentioned in the article...
Try to avoid long and cumbersome query string URL's such as site.com/index.php?act=add&id=35&n=3 or site.com/articles.php?art=123 as search engines can have problems with these, meaning they won't always index them.
Try using URL rewriting to make these look more like site.com/add/35/3 and site.com/articles/123 or preferably site.com/articles/<article title>.
This also makes it easier for users to navigate through your site as they don't need to mess with query strings.
Apache has the mod_rewrite module for doing this and frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Django have internal URL routing \ rewriting systems which can be easier to handle.
To add to the paragraph about domain names:
URL hacking has become popular these days.
This is not a form of hacking in the usual sense, but a way of combining the domain name and the domain extension into one word.
Sites such as del.icio.us, script.aculo.us and Yahoo's blo.gs do this.
Domain hacks allow you to simply tell the user to just enter the site name, but having to tell them where the dots should fall can be a chore.
It's a good idea to evaluate the pro's and con's of such domain names before buying the as a cool sounding name might not get much traffic if it's annoying to use.
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
So I'd suggest another addition to that formula, being never behave as if you know it all.
I'll toss in a little affirmation you can print and put on the top of your monitor as a personal note when you go out to follow webmaster wisdom in an attempt to be successful. Because following the formula for success is the same as following any formula or recipe.
REMEMBER:
If you are given the recepie for meat loaf, there is no amount of frosting, hardwork or money that will ever make it chocolate cake. If you follow the same recipe you get the same results.
~ Jared
A good webmaster / developer example is Darren Gates who has built a huge company at just $5 a time. When you follow the same pattern over and over again and use what works eventually it compounds.
~ Jared
Darren owns www.tufat.com
Darren's script archive is nice, I know that a couple of my sites uses his scripts.