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Before you start building your site you will need to decide what type of site you will run. There are two main types of sites on the Internet, e-commerce sites and content-driven sites. E-commerce sites are those that sell products and content sites are those that provide information or other content. Despite programming and design similarities these two types of sites of fundamentally different in almost every way, be it promotion or revenue generation. This guide will only focus on content sites, sites that provide information. However much of the advice, especially in the realm of search engine optimization, will be applicable to all sites.

There are different types of content sites and which type of site you choose to run will greatly affect the type of work you need to do to create it and the type of work required to maintain it. Also some topics may lend themselves to a certain type of site so when you decide what topic you want your site to be on in the next section that decision may influence your site type choice.

The two most common content sites are online magazines and reference sites. An online magazine can be a site about any topic and it is mostly article driven. This type has both a steep traffic curve at first and great traffic potential once you get established, the typical growth curve of such a site is usually exponential. Online magazines, like traditional magazines, require lots of content on a regular basis thus the maintenance requirements for such a site are high, the good thing is that you can often get article submissions from your loyal userbase. That loyal userbase is another asset of an online magazine. Your frequently updated content creates loyal and repeat visitors thus enabling you to expand your site to include a community and or newsletters. As discussed later in this guide your community can also be a source of content for your site.

A reference site is very similar to an online magazine in how it provides information but it differs in that it does not offer frequently updated content. In many ways a reference site is similar to a book, whereas an online magazine is obviously similar to a magazine. A magazine will emphasize new article’s on it’s cover, whereas a Book will contain a simple table of contents, or an index, directing the user to the information they are looking for. The corresponding websites for these two types follow similar trends. Your reference site will emphasize a content catalog, index, or menu in it’s design and navigation structure, your online magazine will instead give recent articles top billing. The reason is that a reference site has a higher number of unique or first-time visitors, while an online magazine has a higher number of repeat or loyal visitors. Reference sites have as high of a traffic potential as an online magazine but their growth is typically more linear. Also, as a book is thicker than a magazine, reference sites usually start out with more content than a online magazine. In fact if you’re making a reference site you usually get most of your content before you even publish the site, however eventually it may be possible for an online magazine to grow to the size where it has more content in it’s archives than a reference site. The major upside to a reference site is that it will usually run itself, making your maintenance work much lower and your potential for residual income much higher. However startup work is often greater as you must obtain a large amount of content before initial publication and the lower number of repeat or loyal visitors makes starting a community much harder.

There is another type of site very similar to a reference site and that is a resource site. A resource site is often structured like a reference site but instead of providing the actual information it instead just links to it. A resource site is in many ways just a directory. The traffic potential for such a site is only so-so, the problem is that while you may get many unique visitors each visitor may only visit one or two pages before they leave your site. However the profitability of such a site can be very high, almost higher than any other type of site. The reason lies in affiliate programs, which are discussed later in the guide. But suffice it to say that if you can work it out so you get paid when someone follows one of those links from your site then you will end up making a good deal of money.

There are two other main types of content-driven sites, however this book will mostly focus on the ones mentioned above. The first is a community site. A community site is one that revolves around a bulletin board. This type of site is ripe with difficulty, the major issue is that it is hard to get off the ground. People come to a community site for discussion, and when you first start off you have no discussion. In may way’s it’s a “Catch 22″ issue, a later article will present tips for getting a community off the ground. Another issue is that due to their number of page views per unique visitor community sites are relatively unattractive to advertisers and in general make the least amount of money per visitor than any other type of site. There are some benefits to running a community though. The first is that if you use a commercially available script you should be able to setup your entire site in less than a day, and then you will just need to get traffic and discussions going. The second benefit is that the site provides it’s own content, so maintenance - other than moderating the forum and keeping things running smoothly, is relatively minor. You can also usually recruit trustworthy members to help with moderation.

The final type of site is an entertainment site. Any of the above sites could provide entertainment but an actual entertainment site is a little different. An entertainment site usually provides little in the way of textual content and instead what it offers are interactive programs or little widgets that are entertaining. Any type of site where visitors go to play with something could be categorized as an entertainment site. Entertainment sites are usually very easy to promote and they are the type of sites that can grow virally. Viral growth is when your visitors promote your site for you by telling their friends about it. However entertainment sites, like community sites, generally create very little revenue per unique visitor, however once your script or game is made there is generally little maintenance to do. Often with an entertainment site the highest cost is going to be your bandwidth, due to large amounts of traffic that generate little revenue and the fact that games often include pictures or movies that use up large amounts of bandwidth.