Ok well starting a website or blog is not that easy, but if you follow some simple guidelines you can have a fairly decent website that people will want to come back to. After thinking about all of the steps in creating a website I have come up with three guidelines you should follow if you want your website to become popular.
Keep it Updated – If you just put some content on a website and don’t update for months most likely people will not come back. If I go to a site and I think it’s interesting I bookmark it and come back and check it out every few days. If I see that the site has not been updated in a couple of weeks I take it off my bookmarks and usually do not return. So updating is key, especially since you can send out news releases about your latest content and people can subscribe to your RSS feed to see when you have updated.
Make the site something you are interested in – It is a lot easier to write and keep a site updated if it is something you are interested in. All of my site’s topics are things that I like or I’m interested in. That is why it is not a hard thing for me to keep them updated. Just because a topic is popular does not mean it has to be what your website is going to be about. Make your site about things you like and you will enjoy working on it.
Get Your Own Domain – I RARELY go to websites that are hosted on free services like Tripod, AOL, and Geocities. It really does not cost that much to register a domain and get some hosting. You can get domains for around $6-$10 a year and a lot of hosting packages are only $5 a month! Anyone can afford that and a lot of these hosting companies have free website builders if you do not know that much about making websites. If the hosting is to much, make sure you get a domain. You can have the domain pointing to your free hosting until you get enough money to purchase hosting. Believe me having your own dot com is a nice thing!
Hopefully this list will help anyone who is starting a new website and help them make their site look official and maybe even make them some money! Good Luck!