A Successful Webbie

Preparation
When your just starting out, you obviously need to advertise. No one will know your little site, and therefore it will need to be promoted. Before we get into that jazz though, you need to prepare your site for your visitors. And that's what this first little snippet is about. Think about it: ff you go to a site, it makes an impression "good", "n00b", "horrible", "awesome" or whatever. So it's smart to get your site up to standards before you advertise. That way, when people come to your site they will see a new site with good potential and hard effort investments.

First thing you should do is set up the basics. Equip your site with a website layout. You can use a premade one - like the ones offered by Neo-Reality or you can try making your own. Remember, premades are not to be ashamed of and a good premades often looks a lot better and more professional than a hideous "home-made" layout. I suggest using a premade in the first month or so and then "graduating" to a custom made. Unless, of course, you are really good at making your own web layouts. Start by making the vital pages before you open. That's a "contact us" page, "Home", "The Staff", "apply for staff" (if needed), "Terms of Use" etc. You should not open your website to the public until these pages are up and running nicely. Try to add at least 5 "content" pages to your site before your grand opening. If you're a mix of a help and graphics site, like Neo-Reality, try to add at least 3 pages of graphics (with a bare minimum of 3 graphics per page) and 3 original tutorials. Why? Imagine a new restaurant is opening in town. And the entire menu was loaded with lots of cool dishes. So you want to try a super awesome noodle dish or what not. So the waiter comes and you prepare to order. And everything is "coming soon" (or for the sake of the tutorial "currently not available"). Turns out the only thing they actually do have is a carrot (sliced and washed) and a glass of water. Your impression? Not that great. Unless sliced carrots are your absolute favorite food and you'd love to pay 15 bucks for carrot with water. Point is: that restaurant permanently ruined its first impression in your mind and, chances are, you won't return to make a second. How does this relate? Well, if your site is completely vacant there is no point advertising. Rather, invest the time you would spend advertising into your site and then advertise. You will be a lot more successful! Coming soon signs just make people notice how little content you have. They are baaaaaaad. Repeat after me: Coming soon sign = Big no no. Okay? gooood... =P

The spices
In any good recipe, you will need some spices and extra flairs. Just like in a good site. Your site needs to stand out. When someone opens your site they need that little something that gets that "wow" effect. The cherry on the top. And what is that? You will need to find your own cherry. How do you do that and what cherry am I talking about? It needs to be something that sets your site apart. Obviously I can't tell you what it is since then it wouldn't set you apart, now would it? By Neo-Reality, one of the most important things were the website layouts and templates. We were the first Neopets graphics site to offer both of those. We were first to offer a Proboard Forums guide section. We were first to offer the style Paint guides that we do. And so on and so forth. Make something original. Everyone offers Welcome banners. Make your welcome banners DIFFERENT. Make people go "wow, how did s/he do that?" Nothing come to mind? If you own a graphics site, offer free graphic requests. In the beginning your site won't be overly popular so it will be do-able. Make GOOD game guides. Not just those lame 5 sentence copies of the instructions plus a list of cheats. Give walk-throughs. If there's a current plot keep updated. Offer a daily crossword answer section. WHATEVER. It just needs to be there.

Professionally
Be professional! That doesn't mean use french words that no one understands, but just be professional. Never ever lose your temper and start cursing at your visitors. Simply block that person from your site. Think about it this way: they are unable to control even themselves. How powerless is that? Use correct spelling. Try to think forever so slightly about grammar. If you don't take the time to type "later" then chances are people will think "never again" instead of "see you later" because they think you don't invest any time into them. And, well, technically they are right. All guides should have over 85% of the words spelt correctly. It makes your guide a lot "easier" to read and just makes it seem like you are smart (which, hopefully, you are) :) It just shows that you're serious about your site.

Advertising
We get to advertising pretty late in the guide. That's because I believe good work markets itself. If you have followed the walk-through until here, then, most likely, you've got a relatively nice site. Now, before we get into the advertising it's important that you keep updating. Try to get at least 5 graphics for all your graphic pages and at least 5 guides (preferably spread over 2 or more sections).

Now to the actual advertising. Advertise on sites and places that
1. allow it and
2. have many people of the group you are targeting.
People not interested in neopets won't be interested in your neopets help site either. Seniors who play bingo every night probably don't know too much about anime graphics - nor are they interested in getting some. I have been told that neopets does not allow advertising to outside sites so any site not on your petpage, you cannot advertise over the neopets boards. I wouldn't risk it. A lot of other neopets forums, such as the Neo-Reality Forums, however, allow you to to advertise your website. I strongly suggest you take advantage of that privilege as it is quite helpful ;)

Be sure you're also advertising passive, not just active. Add your site link to your userlookup, your shop, your guild etc. Try to use your own graphics and use your best ones, that way people will say "wow I want a lookup like that too!". Then try to go on the neopets help boards and you will find that a lot of people ask for custom graphics. Offer to make some and put your site name on them so that when others see those graphics they will go to your site. If people need general help, also help them out so that people get to know how nice you are =) Once you get about 25 hits a day (Don't worry, this is pretty easy since that's little more than 1 per hour), apply for affiliates with at least 30 different sites. Remember to make sure to fit their requirements and try to apply for affiliates that get about as many hits as you do. In the beginning, the large sites will turn you down so work with the smaller sites. Often, it's also smart to affiliate with your afiliates's affies. About 15 affiliates are nice for a starting site (if you apply for 30 chances are you will end up getting around 15) since you will depend a lot on this for hits. Also, sign up for at least 3 topsites in order to promote your site even more!

Afterword
Obviously, this is just a guideline. You will need to find your own way to success. Just be original, have a good bit of content, and be professional. One more thing though: Never put your site on a "closed" hiatus unless you accidentally deleted the entire site or you are having severe bandwidth problems. In both of these cases you should get the problem fixed within 3 days. Hiatuses longer than 3 days and more regular than twice a year can severely damage your reputation and the amount of hits you're getting. Neo-Reality has never been on a hiatus. If you're just not going to be updating, post so on your site but leave it open. That way you will only lose some of your potential visitors, not all of them ;)

~Kathrin