What Kind of Website to Create ?
Posted by Spyros Panagiotopoulos in General Website Creation Tips, tags: blog, e-commerce, e-shop, image site, portal, social network, video site, website types
Before actually creating a a site, the webmaster has to think of a very important parameter. What kind of site is he/she are going to create? Will it be a blog? Perhaps a social community? Or maybe an e-shop? Well, that depends on the business model you’re trying to follow.
I can’t stress enough how important an appropriate business model is. Unless you’re not creating a website to make money out of, it’s very important that you have a solid plan on how to make it successful. That plan is directly connected to the actual type of website you want to create. Let’s examine the different kinds of website that a new webmaster can create.
Creating a Portal Website
Portals are websites that contain information, articles, videos and more about a certain subject. While they are a great monetizing source, they are somehow difficult to monetize. The reason is that portals tend to be quite a bit generic in the content they hold. For instance, a portal about basketball is surely a nice topic, but there’s plenty of competition around and it’ll be difficult for a newcomer to blend in. If you decide about creating a portal, i’d suggest to be very precise on the niche market you aim for. For instance, do not just create a portal for basketball, but better create one about “best baskeball players in history” or such. Try to aim for a specific topic in the large competitive basketball area and write content, upload videos and more about it.
The good thing about portals is that they have a socializing spirit around them. If they manage to get noticable traffic, they easily transform to social networking places and building things like forums and such becomes a breeze. However, that is if they become successful af their own. I would not be against creating a portal as a first website but i think that it’s not the perfect solution for a beginner. I you do, however, decide to take up the work, it would be a good idea to create a supporting blog that more easily draws traffic and could send in some people.
Creating a Social Networking Site
You may be thinking: “Why not create a social networking site? This way people will build my content and i won’t have to do any work at all !”. Well, THAT IS SOOO WRONG. Why would people just go to your website and add content? After all they are not hypnotized 
In order for people to create content at a website, content must ALREADY be rich. Think about it. You happen to visit a new website and see lots of content around, people discussing and comments all around. Doesn’t this make you feel like you want to contribute? I bet it does. On the contrary, if few content and people are around, why bother signing up? You probably talk to more people at your social circle alone.
You have to understand that Social Networking sites are not just creating revenue by themselves and do not just flourish. You have to have people joining constantly and creating content and that can be done in one way and that is promotion. Whether it means that you have tons of quality content or pay lots of money advertising your network, promotion is the key. People have to see that your site constantly evolves and that it is a great place to talk about lots of things.
The best way is to go about creating a simple site first and if you have enough traffic, then go about creating a NICHE social networking website. This is a good business plan. Start by creating a targeted topic website, get lots of traffic and then move on to creating a social network ABOUT that topic. Don’t just go about any topic. Follow the already successful one and more easily drive people to your newer website through marketing on the first one.
Creating an e-shop or e-commerce site
I would definately not recommend such sites if you are a newcomer to webmastering. Creating an e-commerce site immediately puts you into the seller’s position. You need to have lots of marketing abilities and be able to convince people about your credibility. Creating such sites is probably the hardest thing to do online to make money. Since you can’t really have quality content, you need to advertise. However, that costs money and unless you have LOTS to spend, it will be too tough to hit the market, unless you have a great new idea of a service or product to sell. Moreover, in order for people to buy things from you, they need to trust you. As you know, people tend to trust big companies and well-known people and that is not weird at all. After all, would you buy something from somebody you do not trust? Well, not really, unless a big company, like ebay is involved. So, before starting to follow such a difficult business plan, think. Am i trustworthy online? Can i convince people to buy? Do i have lots of money to spend advertising? Do i know much about marketing? If you mostly answer n, it would be better to avoid going on for it.
Creating video-like sites, image upload sites or file sharing sites
If you’re really thinking about competing youtube, rapidshare and such, you’re really ambitious These areas already have established companies that pay literally millions in order to advertise and keep up with their services. Even if you manage to create a youtube like site that attracts visitors, you would have to obtain lots of bandwidth and lots of disk space and those cost quite a lot. What’s even worse, video sites are not that good marketing places since they tend to be generic in content and so advertisers usually don’t pay much. It’s better to avoid creating such sites.
Creating a blog
I have to admit that a blog is probably the perfect website type for a new webmaster to begin with. Blogs are easily created, easily maintanable and a perfect chance for the not so knowledgeable webmaster to create a competing website. There are blog platforms today, like the great wordpress that make creating blogs a pretty easy. The great thing about such platforms like wordpress is that contain very important Search Engine Optimization tools and even more management tools that make the webmaster AND marketing work easier to do and maintain.
I’ll certainly be creating an article describing lots of things about wordpress, but i’d like to say a few important things as to why a blog is a very solid choice. The most important fact is that blogs are all about content. When people visit blogs, they ALREADY KNOW that they will see content or they are at least searching for it. When i search for “poker blogs” i know what i’m looking for and that is information about poker.
As long as you can create QUALITY INFORMATION that people would want to read in order to learn new things, you’re winning the game. It’s VERY important to understand that CONTENT leads to traffic. To be successful, you’ll have to blog regularly and include content that people want to know about. For instance, in a tennis related website, people would generally want to learn more about Serena Williams’ playing style rather than your playing style
So, my advice for newcomers to website creation is to start with a blog for sure. It’s easy to setup, easier to marketize and therefore easier to make money out of if you take the time to create content and update regularly with good information.
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