Tips from the diary of a newbie - part II

How go it? The site that is…

Well, by now the site has been up and running, you have (at least you think you do) great content that everyone and their mothers should be flocking in to see. Hopefully, you are also getting emails from your server provider stating that your site is so popular, that you will have to increase your bandwidth in order to stay afloat. You are probably looking at least 10,000 hits a day, and an income from the adSense section of about $200 a day. Well, if this is the case, then you will not have to read any further. Actually, you can email a listing of how you did it, what you had, and which lucky rabbit’s foot you used. However if you are like most average Joe’s out there, you have gotten maybe 100-500 hits a day, some of these numbers are slowing down as the days go. You maybe shocked by this unremarkable trend on your site. Don’t be surprised but don’t just stand there and let it happen. The first section was just getting the site up and running. Now you have to keep it running. So here are the questions: How do I keep my site up there in traffic? And why did I only make $2.30 with my ads that I had? Well, view your site as a garden. That is one of the best approximations that I could give you. It will grow weeds, it will wither and die without nourishment, and sunlight. So now you get to learn how to be a gardener.

How does a web site need nourishment and sunlight?

Ok, I admit that if you take your computer and put it out in the sun, you are just gonna ruin it. So don’t. and do not email your site a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that ain’t gonna do squat either. (Oh believe me I tried!!) What I mean is that “nourishment” = content. You must constantly provide your site with fresh and interesting content. You might want to use this opportunity to add-in user interactivity. This way, let the users of your site make their own content. This is way so many of the big names are, well… big. Look at digg, del.icio.us, technorati, and others. They have the users fill in the content for them. Think of it kind of like the old Tom Sawyer thing with the fence. “Why do all that work yourself, when you can have the neighborhood do it for you?”

Personally, I am working towards implementing such a system on my site. Of course I need to have a well-defined goal with it. So once I have what it is I want the rest of the world to share in, I will get that part up and running. But there are other ways of keeping the content flowing, for example what you are reading now. True, it is a little bit harder than having people post content to you, but it works in a pinch.

Try to make the content unique. If you are just going to re-hash information that is easily available on other sites such as Gizmodo’s latest tech buys, then why are they at your site? So try your best to make sure this is the type of information that would be hard to come by from other sites. This would include even doing a compilation of various web sites that have like-minded information. Even though each site has information about the same topic, yours is the site that has a complete listing of sites that users can go to get the information. I am sure that there is other ways to get information and content coming in at a constant pace.

Of course, I have mentioned this before, but will mention it again. If most of your content is to be added by you, one of the better ways to go would be with a blog. There are literally hundreds of different types of blogs out there from the personal, to the technical to writing, and Political, just to name a few. So if you want an easy way to keep your content fresh, look into this..