In this post I mentioned that HowStuffWorks had to become a business at some point. And the question was asked, "Why did HowStuffWorks have to become a business?"It's very interesting how this happens, and it has happened to a lot of people. When you start your web site, you typically begin on some kind of $15/month virtual hosting account (more on these accounts next week). If your site starts

What we have here is an amazing web success story. Do NOT ignore this post - read it carefully because there is a lot to learn. There was an article yesterday in the paper about a knitting book. This article (written by Marcy Smith Rice of the N&O) is not something I would normally read, because I have no interest in knitting. But here is the amazing paragraph from the article that got my

There are two reasons why you would spend the time that it takes to create a web site:You enjoy it. For example, you might enjoy bicycling as a hobby and you enjoy writing about it to spread the word. You have read How to make a million dollars and you are thinking about starting a web site as a business -- specifically to generate revenue.When I started HowStuffWorks, it began strictly as a

The question was asked yesterday, "I read your post on celebrity blogs - Can a normal person make any money on a blog?" Another way to phrase the question would be to ask, "Is it possible to create a blog that gets any kind of traffic?" The answer to this question depends on a lot of different factors, one of the most important of which is resonance. We will begin discussing resonance next

This is a nice article on "thinking big." The example it uses has to do with small web design firms, but the principles discussed in the article can be applied to just about any small business -- it is a general call-to-action for business owners:Why Small Web Design Firms Should Think Big

[This is a follow-up to Lesson #1 - Using Alexa]The question was asked, "If you know that a web site has a rank of 1,000 on Alexa, what does that mean in terms of real traffic? How many visitors a month is that?"The way you figure that out is by calibrating alexa. Many sites will publish or announce their "unique monthly visitors", and by finding several announcements like that you can determine,

If you are interested in seeing how web advertising has changed over the past 10 years, or if you would like to better understand what the state of the web advertising world is today, then this is a good report to read:The decade in online advertisingSee also:How Web Advertising WorksThis article (written perhaps 3 years ago) is now a bit dated in terms of ad rates (they've gone up since the

An amusing article discussing how different celebrities use their blogs:Blah, blah, blog!

This blog is going to include "formal lessons", like this one about Alexa, combined with news-of-the-day links that demonstrate different people/companies trying out different ideas. There will also be links to other sites that offer valuable information about the Web.In Lesson #1, let's talk about Alexa. Alexa is a great way to understand what people care about on the web. From our perspective,

On Marshall Brain's Blog I have been keeping a chain of little web ideas that caught my eye over the last couple of months. Start here and page through the list.Perhaps the most noteworthy of the bunch is the article on IPodLounge.com. The article points out that, "In recent months, iPodlounge has grown from a niche website into a professional publishing operation with big plans. Riding the wave

After I published How to make a million dollars, I started getting a lot of email. People are asking great questions, especially about the Web and creating new Web sites. I thought it would be interesting to create a blog to answer questions and talk about different techniques that people are using on the web to make money. So here we are. The idea behind WebKEW is to collect together ideas,