The Nuts and Bolts of Running a Successful WebSite

LOL, man you have a knack for asking all encompassing questions.

Here's the short version.

1) Know the technology involved (e.g. php, html, asp...) or plan to spend money on the expertise.

2) Plan what the site is going to be for. Don't just wing it and have a site for no point other than having a site.

3) Decide how it will remain viable. Can you pay for it when the bills are several thousand dollars a month? If not you need to either limit the growth or monetize it.

4) Decide how to monetize it. This depends on the nature of the site.

Will you cover costs through goods? Services? Or ads?

Or a mixture?

Content based sites generally rely on ads, as the cost is associated with free page views.

For this your goal is to kick start it to a broad audience because without a broad audience it can be hard to monetize (e.g some ad networks require 20 million monthly page views to join).

So for this, you need to be able to cover costs while growing.

For a service or goods site it's straightforward as all growth should directly translate into revenue.

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Now we assume you are using a content based model because services all depend on just what service and success is usually a simple matter of sound business and promotion.

5) What will the topic of your content be? This is crucial. Some are harder to monetize than others (e.g. religion is not easy to monetize, finance content is).

Some are not as easy to promote as others. For example, a pop media topic like movies and music has broad interest but underwater basket weaving doesn't.

6) Weigh one against the other. It's easy to find interest in, say, music but that also means there's a glut of music content out there and the low prices on music products (say, compared to cars) makes it hard to monetize.

Going for a "general purpose" website can be fatal. Finding an under-represented niche can be a quick ticket to the top (but also a fickle one depending on the niche, e.g. Iraq war parody sites are not going to get much traffic in the long term).

7) Decide how the content will be generated. Will you write it? If so, you can have high quality and low volume.

Will it be user-generated? If so, you will have high volume and less control over quality.

8) Keep useability, and search engine optimization in mind unless you are going to spend money on advertising.

For service based sites it's easier to calculate a ROI on advertising but much harder for a content based site (e.g. if I spend 30 cents on a visitor for hosting and convert 10% into customers at 50 dollars a month there's huge profit. But if I spend 5 cents on a visitor who will earn me less than 1 cent in the ad view I need to know how well that visit translates into repeat visits and how well visits can be monetized through ads and translate into a wider audience through things like word of mouth).

9) Decide how to kick it off. An advertising blitz can do it, but so can a lot of hard work and patience.

10) Make the site sticky and get repeat visitors, or loyal customers (if it is a service).

Thus ends the Site Bible. Feel free to leave this Bible in hotel rooms as long as this post is linked to.

Great info! More questions and thoughts will be coming I'm sure.