About You
Looking at your skill set and seeing what opportunities fit you best.
Why make a web page?
Like any business, you need to know why you want to be in business. Are you making a web page to make money? To get a message out? Because you like to design? As a hobby? If you are looking to get serious and either make a lot of money or just run a very successful high-traffic site then doing it just for the money won't work. People prefer to think that success on the web is easier than in "real" life but the fundamentals of running a successful web site are no different than any other business. You still need to be better than your competitors in order to be successful. You still have to fill a need in the marketplace. I will admit that starting a web page is a lower-risk proposition than starting an offline business (you don't have to pay rent on a commercial property) but that doesn't mean it will be easier to succeed. In fact, it will make it more difficult because everyone else out there knows it is a low-risk proposition also and will put up web sites of their own in order to cash in on the supposed Internet gold rush.How much time do you have to devote?
The more time you have to devote to your site, the better it will be. If you have a full-time job or school you will have to decide up-front how important the project is in the scheme of your life. If you are a very busy person, you will not build the next Craiglist by putting in a few hours on the weekend. Many webmasters who start off with their first or second site usually are working a 9-5 job or going to school full-time and work on their site during their free time. Even though it is not their main source of income, many times they spend more time on it than they do their job. After 2-3 years the site grows to the point where they may be making some decent advertising or sales revenue and can quit their normal job and work on the site full-time. A big factor of how much time you will put in will be how much you care. This matters the most. Many people get that initial excitement of learning to put up a page but their half-hearted desire fades as time goes on. This even happens to intermediate webmasters. Sometimes these webmasters set up a first web site where they get lucky by being the first one into their category and end up achieving some easy success. But then they decide they want to put up a ton of other sites but soon realize it is harder to be successful in more competitive areas, or be successful outside their comfort zone of knowledge.How much web page experience do you have?
This will determine what your time will be spent on. In the beginning of your webmaster career you will mostly be learning to code and will rely heaving on scripts. If you are a complete novice at being a webmaster then having a site that requires complicated coding will probably not work. Either it will take way too much money to get a coder to do it or it will take way too long to learn how to code. So your first site will probably be a pure content site. When you reach the intermediate webmaster level, your sites will be more functional than informational and there will be more of a focus on marketing.Are you a creative person or technical person?
The different skill sets people have can generally be separated into two categories: technical and creative. These skills will determine what kind of site you will be putting up because you will want to match up the skills you have to the skills needed for a particular kind of site. Most people should already know what they are good at, but for those who don't know if they have technical skills will want to ask themselves: What is my "computer IQ"? Do I pick up computer skills quickly? Do I instinctively understand computer code? Am I the one people go to with their computer problems or am I the one going to other people with computer problems?Creative person
For a creative person, it will be hard dealing with the operational details required to run a business. It will be a LOT less fun when you have a website that's been fully implemented and you spend all your time answering e-mails from visitors, dealing with affiliate programs to get payments, dealing with hosting company problems, cleaning up spam in your forums, etc. You should be aware that the needs of the web site and the rewards you get will change as your site grows. You will want to decide how to deal with that by either selling your site, getting people to help operate it (by getting admins for forums for example), or by simply understanding your new role and accepting it.If you are a creative person who lacks technical skills then your web sites won't be able to compete with highly technical sites. No matter how hard you try you simply can't be the next MySpace or Monster.com if you aren't a great coder - unless you are very business-savvy and knows how to get other people to do it for you AND have a lot of money to blow.
The creative skills involved in making web sites can be further broken down into artistic and writing skills. There are great web sites where webmastes who are great writers take advantage of their writing talent by creating great articles or blogs and gradually attain a very wide, loyal audience. If you are the type that loves to write, then you will probably want to create a content-driven site that is refreshed with new articles on whatever it is your interests are. But even if you are a great writer, you can't just put up a web site simply because you want a web site. You have to have something to say. Think of putting up a website as writing a book. It needs to be purpose-driven.
Artistic people who become webmasters will be able to create web sites that are aesthetically more appealing than other web sites. But having a site that is only aesthetically appealing will not get you anywhere if your site doesn't have valuable content or isn't highly functional. Making a site that looks good is a smart tactic but it isa tactic that will complement your overall strategy. It is not a stand-alone strategy. Nobody goes to a web site only to look at it.
Technical person
The strength technical people bring to their sites is the ablility to code great backends. They will be better off if they try to create either a pure application site or a functional information site like del.icio.us or chicagocrime.org. Their ability to code will give them a great advantage over an amateur webmaster who can't code a functional web site and doesn't have the money to hire a coder. They will also have the skills and patience to operate a web site and deal with technical glitches of their sites that need fixing. These sites are the kind of sites that have great potential. But in order for web sites to realize their full potential technical people need to understand that marketing counts just as much as great coding does. So they will have to find people to compliment their strengths (assuming they are a technical person that is not well-rounded). For example, if a technical person wants to create a content site then they will have to get someone who can write very well.
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