Okay, so you've come up with a great idea or product and want to start a website? With all the people starting up websites today, they have no idea what it really takes to become a successful website owner, and not to have to work their daytime job anymore.
I've done a fair amount of research and found out how some of the "big" guys have made it, but yet don't want you to know about it. They keep the secret close to them, because it could spell disaster if the secret is let out. So, I'm here to tell you everything I've learned on my own, and it don't cost a red cent.
Before building your website/blog, ask yourself this first question

#1.) What idea does your site revolve around? Is it about gardening? Sports?
Electronics?--Whatever it is, make sure to write down specifically what your website/blog is going to be about. Get a specific as possible.

#2.)The next thing that you should do is build your website/blog. Come up with every bit of resource to make the site interesting with all the content that you can come up with. There are plenty of freebies out there, and I can tell you about those later on when you are building your website. When you build your site, make sure to put meta tags in it. If you don't know what that is, there is a site that shows you on the internet that I found www.dalleh.com

This will help your site be indexed into the search engines when submitted. If you don't have meta tags in your site, your sit cannot be spidered by the search engines. I am trying to brief as possible so that I don't confuse you if you know nothing about the matter.

#3.)Submit your site to the search engines. Don't...and I repeat...don't pay for
this service to be done. Many of the search engine submitting companies want a bunch of money for things that you can do for yourself in a matter of a couple of hours at the most. It sometimes takes a few weeks before you show up in a couple of the big name search engines like www.yahoo.com and www.google.com, but I'll show you how to get around that later on in the article. There are also a lot of submission service companies out there that will submit your site for free in the major search engines if you just place their banner/button upon your website/or blog..

#4) Gettin' down to the nitty gritty. This is my favorite part, because I love research. Now, you may not be one that likes to dig things up; but this a crucial part of the process and is definitly needed for success. You need to do research on your competitors. Remember when I was talking about write down specifically what your website is going to be about? Well, here is where it will come handy. Referring back to (#1), type in your key word on a big search engine such as www.yahoo.com or www.google.com and locate your competitors. BOOM! There they are! Your competitors that you either have to team up with, or absolutely crush to get to the top. I know it sounds ruthless when I say crush; but hey, we're talking about the internet here and not a playground. Copy each url of the sites. Copy and paste, or whatever works best for you. Go to each and every one of the websites. Write down their strengths, weaknesses (or what they are lacking). Write down everything you can find out about their site. Keep this for your records on your computer, or print it out and keep it in a folder.

#5) More Research-- Copy each url that you collected information on and go to www.alexa.com and do a rank search. This site has so much infomation there. It's incredible! This shows how many hits they are getting, and how long they've been around. Your asking why this is important, but I'm about to get to that. You can even look up information about your site. Don't think much information at all will come up about your site at first, especially if it's brand new.

#6) Find the best competitors rank and find out who's linking to them I found out all about my competition there; who was linking to them, and everything about the sites on alexa.com. This is the key right here. This is where the big boys play, and where you find out who's linking to them. Find out what their rank is. Always try to find the biggest ones linking to the site. Always try to find the ones that are in the top 100,000 in the world. See what the sites are about. Your gonna find out that some of them are just forums-(message boards), or just online document saving communities in which you will save your filed documents, images, etc.

#7) Go to the site that are linking to them and find out how or if this site is doing link trade. If it's just a forum-(message board), then join it anyway. Please make sure to get a free email address when you are doing all of this, because it could clutter up your personal email. Trust me, I've been through it and its not fun. Trying to delete or save all of this stuff can be a little bit confusing at times. Also, another thing that is pretty tough to do is remember all the passwords. So,.. write yourself emails to forward to your free account to try to keep them
in order. This stuff will definitly come in handy later.

#8 Before doing a link trade with the site; make sure to already have a link back to them before asking a link. The website you've already built needs to have a link section in it. Make sure to have them placed in there. Also, you don't want to be very generic when asking for a link trade with a site. Don't write "Dear webmaster, I would like to submit my link for a trade." It will get discarded. You have to have a reason for link trade. Give them some insight as to why you are submitting your trade with them. I'm sure if you've done your research, it is a matter of relevance in material in the site itself. Give them reasons why you like their site. Heck, I don't know any other way of putting it besides kiss their ***.

#9 keep doing it... find the highest ranking websites to link to and the relevance of your content. I know that this part seems redundent, but it is a tried and true process that works over time. Don't spam people or boards, but approach them. Write nice formal emails, or if you have a way to call them to talk to them do that. Remember, you are building a business and not a scam operation, so treat it like your business. This takes time and discipline. Eventually, you
will get some good inlinks coming into your website.

#10 Start writing informative article on a subject and submitting it to several different online ezines! This is where things really start to take off for you. There are many publications out there on the internet that would love you to write your articles and submit them to their sites and ezines. Just to name one that is high on the list would be amazines.com amongst a list of so many that I wouldn't be able to fit in this article. You would have to contact me for that information.

#11 Get them published on top ranking which will raise the (PR- page rank) level of your site and search engine exposure and get hits to your website just from writing good quality articles. A good example.. Do you have a key interest in music or plants which is what your website is about? Do you know more about a subject more than others know? There it is. By writing articles on certain subject matters and linking to your site/or blog can improve search engine rankings, not to mention a lot of traffic coming your way to find out what more is on your site. So, be prepared if you are a good writer because you will be swamped.

#12 Continue to build informative subjects on your website/blog to help make it interesting. Always update your website at least one time a week, if not everyday. find all the free stuff you can to install to your website or blog. Whatever you do, keep it interesting and real. Don't ever try to just sell, sell, sell because people are a lot smarter than you think. The internet is fun and profitable as long as you take a soft approach to selling quality things to people. I have my own things to sell amongst affiliate programs that I participate in, and if you don't have a product and need help with getting products to sell, I have no problem in helping you out there either. Don't know how to build a website or a blog? No problem.. I can help you do that too. Now, there is no reason for you not to go out there and get your dreams of becoming a webmaster.


I found out all about this research through 16 hours a day of hard work on the internet right after I lost my job when my boss had a heart attack and decided to go out of business. I've learned a lot and wouldn't mind helping a few people out. I first started a blog then went on to create a website. I'm not getting rich yet, and don't want you to think that you will get rich overnite or anything. Being a webmaster takes a lot of time and work. I hope this will help you all out. Let me know if you need any other information.

thanks, great post!

Some good ideas there, I will be implementing them into a couple of my newer websites soon. Thanks!

Yes ! Good ideas ! Nice post.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Very useful for me considering I'm a newbie.

I am putting down a list of points that could be termed as
"Marketing tips of a new website".

1. Tell Your Associates: There is no need to reach the unknown millions of people out there surfing the Internet, instead it would be wise if we contact our friends and associates. Look at your e-mail address book and get the word out, tell your business contacts, friends, relatives and tell them to tell their friends too. Channelise them in a proper way.
2. Link to Your Own Site: If you already have one web site, make sure that this site is linking to your new site. A web site without any incoming links to it will have a very low page ranking in the all-important Google search engine and will face an uphill battle to be seen in Google search results, especially if you are in a very competitive category. Even when your site is in the construction stage you, or even your web designer can link to the new site from another already well-established site, mentioning that the new site is under construction. If you already have several sites, then link them to your infant site. It will help the new site to be seen in competitive search engine listings even in its debut period.
3. Get a paid inclusion in one of the big search engines: It takes 4-6 weeks to get listed in Google, and other search engines are equally slow. However there are a few fairly important search engines that have inexpensive express inclusion programs. If you join these programs, then your site will be listed in 48 hours. Inktomi, which provides results for MSN and 100 other search services, has an inclusion program which costs $39 for the first URL that you submit, and subsequent ones cost $25. The value of the Inktomi submission is that they revisit your URL every 48 hours and if you make changes on the page you can see the results in the MSN listings very quickly. Thus, you can tweak your pages and see how it affects your position.
4. Add your site to the Open Web Directory and the major search engines: Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to search engine submission. Forget about the sales hype that tells you to add your URL to 300, 000 search engines. Only a few search engines and directories provide the lion’s share of Internet traffic. If your site is in good shape, no longer under construction, then go to http://www.dmoz.org. This is the Open Web Directory. Find the category where your site fits, and make a submission. If you are accepted here your site will appear in the many search engines and local directories that use the results from the Open Web Directory. Inclusion in this directory usually takes time but it will help you a lot. Similarly submit your site to Google, Alta Vista and All The Web, these are the remaining giants where you can submit for free.
5. Start a reciprocal links campaign: Once you have given yourself a link from your other sites or from your designer’s page, you can go out and ask other complementary sites for links. Always try exchanging links with sites that have a good page rank for it indicates that the site has good hits and is often visited. By having a trackback link chances of your site having hits is enhanced.
6. Write an article about your product or service: If you have a website the chances are that you are an expert in the field that your site is all about. Write an article about your product or service, or write an article related to the subject matter of your site. Submit the article online to various websites and e-mail lists dealing with your topic. The publication of your article in a big e-zine, or on a popular web site can get your new site off to a roaring start.
7. Promote Your Site Off-line: Now that you have a site, put the URL brochures, business cards, TV advertising, and circulars.The cafepress.com has a program enabling you to put your URL on these items and even sell them online.
8. Last but not the least be unique and be promotionally inclined initially for traffic generation.

Good points, marketraise01