Newsletter Content: A full Guide to the 6 Core Elements

Email marketing is crazy lucrative — like $44.25 returned for every $1 of investment lucrative, according to Salesforce. Yep, newsletters make money fly around like sparkly flecks in a glitter bomb, which explains why so many marketers do it. Wanna get some of that money? Yeah you do! 

Whether you are interested in starting a newsletter series, or you want to improve the one you've got, I'm going to break the content down for you in a juicy little guide. 

Before I begin, I'd like to point out something that I've noticed through research and experience, because I urge you to keep it in mind every time that you think about any part of your newsletter content strategy. I'll be showing you how this applies to every one of my points, how it works and why it matters. 

Here it is: You need to treat your newsletter series like a conversation, with the aim of building a friendship. 

The Vertical Response blog has a quote from the Nielson Norman Group which sums it up perfectly: 

It's all very touchy-feely, but it's true. An inbox is a person's correspondence kingdom, and if you displease them they can banish you by unsubscribing or worse (clicking that "spam" button). BUT! If you become a friend who visits regularly with great conversation, never asking more than you give, then you'll have a lot more sway when you do decide to promote products or offers. 

It comes down to social science, and just like with any science experiment wanting to be taken seriously, there are a few variables to consider across the board. In the case of email marketing, everything revolves around these 6 core elements. Any other fancy-shmancy stuff is a distraction till you master these elements, so sink your teeth in here.

1. Subject Lines That Get Opened

You've got a few words to sell your email before you get ignored or deleted. Going back to the core "friendship" theme of this post, I want you to think of it like your one chance to convince someone you've always wanted to befriend that you're worth their time. If you are unmemorable, or you say the wrong thing, you'll lose them.

So what do you say to get them to notice you?

Get in Their Heads

What do they want? What do you have to give them? You'll go further into this when you're writing the body, or "meat," of your newsletters, but it always pays to think, "What is the general type of person who would sign up for this mailing list?" and, "If I were that person, what would snag my attention? What would I want to know?"

Get to the Point with 6-10 Words

Web Marketing Today shared the results of a Retention Science study in which subject lines with 6-10 words performed better than shorter or longer subject lines: 

Keep it short and sweet! And keep in mind that because you only have a few words, you need to get to the point. What are you trying to say? You want to entice them, but also inform them of what they'll get from opening the email. 

Include a number

The Scoop.it blog has shown that having a number in your subject line can be incredibly successful:

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People like to know before they invest any of their time, that the information they'll be browsing will be easy for them to scan. Numbers promise easily-digestible structured information, while also invoking curiosity: "There are 6 ways of doing that? I wonder what they are..."

Address them personally

If you were in a crowd and you saw a friend, yelling their name will be a lot more effective for getting their attention than just yelling, "Hey!"

When people are skimming through their inbox, seeing their name will snag their attention. It feels more personal, as though you're taking the time and effort to talk specifically to them, rather than lumping them in as just one of many. People like to feel special, not lost in a sea of others, so personalize your subject line with their name. 

Different auto-responder services will have different ways of including your subscribers' names. Most will have the option to "personalize" nearby, which will give you options for information that you can include in your subject heading.

For example, if you were using Aweber, you could populate your subject line with your subscribers' first names by selecting {firstname_fix} from the personalization menu, or just typing it directly into your subject. It's definitely worth figuring out how to do this with whichever auto-responder service you choose to use.

Tell Them What to Do

Don't make the mistake of using passive wording that doesn't implore your subscribers to take action. Instead of, "Free e-book," write, "Get your free e-book now!" Let them know they should take action; don't let them delete it or put it aside for later only to forget about it completely.

Avoid Words that Spam Filters Hate

​Spam filters are a marketing fun police, so you need to avoid words that could stop your newsletter from being seen altogether. There are plenty of useful lists of spammy words to avoid on the internet, like this list by HubSpot. Read it over so you get a better idea of what not to include in your subject lines.

2. Greetings! We Come in Peace! Hellos, Sign-Offs, and General Tone

It may seem like a small thing, but the greeting you open your emails with, and the sign off you use at the end, can greatly affect the tone of your newsletters. For example, if you were to send a newsletter about expensive jewelry with the greeting, "'Sup," I doubt it would go down very well.

What type of audience will your newsletter be going to? Is the topic up-market, something that requires a somewhat formal greeting and sign-off? Or is it quite relaxed? (In which case you should aim for laid-back and friendly.) Either way, it needs to be welcoming. 

Often a "Hi (firstname)," to open, and a "Kind Regards, (your name or company)" as a sign off will do fine, but remember to consider your audience specifically.

3. Optimal Newsletter Content Length

If you couldn't skim through your newsletter and get the gist of the valuable information within 51 seconds, it's either too long, or has poor layout. The 51-second mark comes from the Vertical Response blog, which shows that 51 seconds is how long the average person will give you.

This doesn't mean that you have to cut your content to be so short that you can't squeeze a good amount of valuable information in there. Internet goers are scanners, they won't read a block of text thoroughly, not even a small one. The Nielson Norman Group performed a study that showed that "only 11% of newsletters were read thoroughly, so layout and content scannability are paramount."

So don't make the overall newsletter too long, only as long as you need to get in enough valuable information without extra fluff. And as for your sections, use clear understandable headings, and only small paragraphs under each one. 

4. Butchering Your Content to Get The Best "Meat"

The actual body of your newsletter is what it's all about, and this is where a lot of people really get stuck: "What do I write? Where do I start? Do I just promote my products?"

This is where the rule of treating your series like a conversation is perhaps most important. If you walked up to someone you wanted to befriend and started spinning of offers and telling them about products like a door-to-door salesman, chances are they won't respond very well to you.

It's spammy, it's impersonal, and it's frustrating, which is why Scoop.it showed that, "On average, content beat promotion by a 2.2x on open rate and a 6.0x on click rate."

You Need to Build a Friendship First

Greet your readers, then ask them a question about themselves. Offer some information that they might find valuable. Don't hard-sell anything in your first few emails. Let them value your newsletters and look forward to them — let them trust you — before you promote anything. It's a give-and-take, mutually beneficial dynamic that works best in business.

Your average newsletter might look something like this: 

"Hey, it's [Name] from [Website].

*question about them* or *personalized intent for reaching out* then,

*helpful information* then,

*link* then,

*personalized statement* then,

friendly sign off."

You'll want to change it up from newsletter to newsletter, but generally these are the elements you want to include. Earlier you'll want a minimal level of promotion, and then later on you'll want to throw in the odd hard-sell email to really push through some sales.

By that point, it'll be more like a friend throwing into the conversation, "Hey, have you seen this thing yet? It's great! You should get one." That's a much more powerful recommendation than any coming from the annoying impersonal door-to-door salesmen. 

A final note for the "meat" of your newsletters is to research your content well, so that you really are providing quality, on topic information. Look at forums to see what people are looking to know about your niche topic. You can even use AffiloTools to look at which pages on your website are getting the most attention lately, to see which type of information is the most popular with your site visitors. 

Research the answers to the questions being asked on forums and build on the most popular topics of your website to give your subscribers some truly valuable information. That way, when you do promote, they'll be as receptive as you need them to be to really make the most from your newsletter series. 

If you don't have the time to do this, you can hire someone to do your research, or to write for you at the likes of Elance. Alternatively, you could purchase something like AffiloJetpack, which already has a full series of quality newsletters created for a variety of popular niches. 

5. What Frequency/Consistency Gets You PAID

No one likes a friend that makes personal space feel like an unreachable oasis, but a friend who is never around can be even worse. You need to set a pace for your newsletter series, not too often, but not too sparse, and stick to it. Don't be flaky and inconsistent. 

Scoop.it shows that at least 1 newsletter a week is much better than every two weeks:

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They also stated that "...the #1 criteria for impact was by far the frequency of our campaigns." If you're providing quality content, your subscribers will be looking forward to your newsletters. You need to be sending them at least once a week, but more likely twice a week, without fail, to ensure the best relationship with your subscribers. 

6. Don't Drop The Ball: Follow Up

Last but not least, you can't just leave your friend hanging when it's their turn to talk. If you go on and on, even if it's all fascinating stuff, if you haven't also taken the time to listen to them, they'll feel like you don't care.

If people reply to your emails, respond to them! If they're asking for more information on a particular topic, take that into consideration when you craft your future newsletters. You could even reach out to them with a survey at some point, asking how they're finding the newsletter series. What do they like or dislike? What would they really like to hear more about?

Also, if you have a friend who wants to leave, it's sad, but you have to let them go without making it hard for them. Always make it easy for people to opt-out of your newsletter series if they want to, or you'll risk the inbox version of a restraining order and a criminal record. If they can't click, "unsubscribe" they might just click "spam," and that's worse.

Some auto-responder services automatically include this, but you might want to check with the one you're using that there is in fact an unsubscribe option going out with each of your newsletters.

It's inevitable, but it's not really a loss in the grand scheme of things. Just like with friends, the ones who stick around are the ones you really want anyway.

The 5-Step Blog Writing Process

The 5-Step Blog Writing Process

Whether you've decided you'd like to have a crack at writing your own blog posts, or you want to optimize your current writing process, this is sure to give you a boost. I've spent a while now trying to find faster ways to do it without sacrificing quality. 

One particular Bill Gates quote always stuck with me, even before I got into the business world. He said, "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” At first I thought, surely a hard worker is better than a lazy worker! But it made sense. A smart but lazy person will instinctively optimize anything they have to do for maximum efficiency.

Now, I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I think that my amount of laziness sometimes would do ol' Bill proud! I've worked at optimizing my blog writing process, and I've discovered some pretty darn helpful things. 

The idea of "optimization" through organization, can seem like more work than just sitting down and writing. I found, however, that with this process I am more relaxed than ever. It requires a lot less mental churning.

So if you want to learn how to write faster while taking some mental weight off your brain, try out this 5-step process...

1. Define Your Topic With a Title

Creating a title will naturally refine your topic and set the integral focus for your post.

This part is fairly straightforward. Often you'll already have an idea of what you're going to write about, but in case you don't, here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

• Browse through forums in your niche to see what people are looking to know.
• Browse other blogs in your niche to get an idea of hot topics. 
• Do some keyword research around the topics you've found, or any other topics that you think could be good.

Once you have a rough idea, think about the title of your post, because this will give you your angle. In this case, my main goal was to create an optimized blog writing process, so the title was clear and simple:

"The Productivity-Optimized 5-Step Blog Writing Process"

People also like to see a number in titles, just like they do in email subject lines, as I mentioned in my last post. It promises structured content and invokes curiosity. What are those points? What are those steps? You don't have to know the number of points you'll have before you start, in fact often you won't know till you've done your research and planning. I usually use an "X" as a place-holder until I know, i.e., "The Productivity-Optimized X-Step Blog Writing Process"

You can adjust your title later (it's not set in stone) but coming up with one right from the beginning and keeping it in mind as you go is a good way to get consistency throughout your research and planning.

2. Jot Down Your Initial "Sub-Concept" Ideas

Listing your initial ideas will help you to refine your topic and guide your research.

If you have any ideas at all about what you'd like to cover in your post already, jot them down. Make a little chart or outline if you like, but I usually just create a bullet point list in a Word document.

This will help with your research, and also help you to refine your concept. An efficient blog post has enough information to keep it interesting and informative, but doesn't cover everything under the sun in one place. 

It's kind of like choosing a sub-niche to focus on with an affiliate website, rather than targeting the broader niche as a whole. If you had a St. Bernard dog, you'd be more likely to go to a St. Bernard Training website than a generic dog training website. 

Just like that, if you hone in on something specific with your blog post, people looking for that information will be drawn to the direct approach of your post.

If you're planning to research a topic you know nothing about yet, then just jot down a couple of questions you already have, and ideas of what you think might go into such an article.

3. Find Relevant Resources and Record Notes the Smart Way

Separate your resource hunt and your mental-digestion of the information into two separate processes to minimize clutter and cognitive load.

This is a biggie, so I'm breaking it into two parts for you...

Part One: Find and Record Resource Links

Time to pay a visit to your best friend: Google. Start by typing in keyword related to your main point. For example, for a post like this one, I might search "blog post writing productivity tips" and see what comes up.

Skim the titles, and if anything looks good, open it in another tab. Take a quick glance at the page. If it looks promising, copy the link into your document, and then close it. You aren't reading through these sources yet, just making a list. Later you will go through them one by one, making quick notes. 

I found that this way of only having one or two tabs open at a time throughout my research makes everything seem so much less overwhelming. When I started out, I'd open masses of tabs, skim through them trying to figure out what information I needed, make mental notes and then struggle to find what was what later. 

I began to realize that it was like throwing things on the floor of your room and leaving them to clean up later. You end up with an overwhelming mess. Cleaning up as you go is much easier.

List a few relevant links this way, and then try Googling other points you jotted down in the previous point. For each, collect another couple of links to articles that look promising.

Part Two: Now Write Your Notes

Once you have a solid list of resource links — I'd say at least 10 but no more than 20 — you're ready to open them one at a time. Only having the one article to focus on at a time, without a bunch of tabs cluttering your browser, makes it feel easy.

Make notes from each article underneath the link to it in your word document, as this will make it easy to return to the source later to get a reference link or further information if you decide you need it.. Here's one I created for a previous blog post:

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You can skim each article to begin with to see how much valuable information is there, and make more notes for some than others. One-by-one doesn't mean that you have to spend forever on each article, it just provides order in your filtering of information.

4. Structure Your Points, Organize Your Research

Copy/pasting your research links and notes into a spreadsheet is quick and easy, and it will make writing straightforward and simple.

By the time you've finished writing notes, you'll have an idea of the common themes around your topic. Look over your notes and original points to build the final list of points to cover in your post. The more evidence from your research to back those ideas up, the better.

If you're a total spreadsheet geek like I am, it only takes a couple of minutes to do one final bit of organization for your research, once you have your list of points and the links to all the research.

I put my final list of points down the left hand side of my spreadsheet, and my research links along the top, although depending on your number of points vs. your number of links, this is easily reversible. Here's an example of a quick one for a blog post about writing newsletters. 

This will only be a quick case of copy/paste if you've done the previous step, and it means that when you go to write each point, you can easily see which notes you have to support it, and where they came from. Everything is set up so that you can refer to your research without having to do a single bit of hunting or sorting through notes and links. 

I'm a particularly visual person, so if you are too, you might find this of particular use for organizing your points, research, thoughts and relieving some of that cognitive load. If you find as you write that you need more to back up any given point, you can add it easily!

5. Now Write! It's as Simple as That 

Writing your blog post is now straightforward. You'll have time and energy leftover to add personality, making your post a winning combination of information and enjoyability.

With all of your research done and organized, writing becomes a breeze. Go through the spreadsheet one point at a time, and start writing out the facts and evidence. Then, when all are done, comb back over and add some personality.

People are looking to find answers to their questions or information that can help them advance, and if you can provide that they'll appreciate it. But they'll just as easily forget you when they're gone. You make it informative and interesting? They'll remember you, and come back for more. Keep it up, and you're on the road to a healthy following.

Add in some examples or analogies, or some quirky statements that tie in with your points. You already know you've provided the valuable information, so making it fun to read will only add to that. 

As this "add personality" or "make it fun" part can be less straightforward than simply presenting facts, I've got some articles you might find useful. I urge you, however, to remember above all to keep your audience's tastes in mind, especially when using humor. "Bad taste" humor can produce laughter from some, and a blank stare of utter distaste from others, so tread carefully!

HOW TO MAKE A WEBSITE (All four parts) - FULL GUIDE

PART ONE

Designing Your Website 

1 

Get inspired. Look at websites with great designs and think about why they're great designs. It usually comes down to the information, resources, links, and pages being laid out in a way that is easy to see and use. To get ideas about how to design your own site, look at sites which do similar things to get ideas about where you should put different types of content.

·        Stay realistic to your skills.

·        Ease of access is the most important thing. If you don't have a certain piece of information easily visible, make sure that getting to that information is very logical.

·        Generally the simpler the design, the fewer the pages, the better.

2

Choose a topic and purpose. If you already have a fairly good idea about what your website will focus on, skip this step. If not, here are some things to help you figure that out. First, understand that there are billions of people on the Internet, and a large percentage have websites. If you limit yourself to something that hasn't been done, you'll never get started.

·        When you think, "Internet," what is the first thing that comes to your mind? E-commerce? Music? News? Socializing? Blogging? Those are all good places to start.

·        You could create a website that's dedicated to your favorite band, and have a chat area where people can talk about it.

·        You can build a page for your family, but be careful about things like this. The internet is full of unsavory characters and information you put up about your family could end up being used against you. Consider adding password protection to your personal family website.

·        If you're a news junkie, or want something less filtered than traditional media, build a website and get publicly available feeds from news providers such as Reuters, BBC, AP, and others. Build your own customized news aggregator (what used to go by the quaint name of "newspaper"), then see and show all the news that's fit to digitize.

·        If you're creative at writing then you can start a blog where you can write about anything you want and attract monthly readers!

3

Make a plan. Building your website is going to take a commitment of time and possibly money, so set a limit on both, and then dig in. The plan doesn't have to be a big, complicated spreadsheet, or a fancy graphic presentation, but at the very least, you will want to consider what it will do for you and the visitors, what you'll put on the website, what goes where on the webpages.

4

Gather the content. There are lots of different types of content and many have their own considerations. You'll need to figure out what's best for your website and your needs. Some things to consider including:

·        A store. If you want to sell things, you'll need to figure out how you want the items to be available. If you have relatively few things to sell, you might want to consider having a store with a hosting service. Society6, Amazon, and Cafepress are all well-established store hosts which let you sell a variety of items and set your own prices.

·        Media. Do you want to display videos? Music? Do you want to host your own files or do you want them hosted somewhere else? Youtube and SoundCloud are great examples of hosting options, but you'll need to be sure that the way you design your website allows these media types to display correctly.

·        Images. Are you a photographer? An artist? If you plan on putting original images on your website, you might want to use a format that can help keep them from getting stolen. Make sure the images are relatively small or that they are hidden behind some Flash code, so as to keep them from being easily saveable.

·        Widgets. These are mini-programs which run on your website, usually to help you keep track of who visits, what they're looking for, and where they're from. You can also find widgets for booking appointments, displaying a calendar, etc. Look into what might be useful for you (just make sure the widget comes from a reputable source).

·        Contact information. Do you want to have contact information on your webpage? For your own safety, you should be careful about what kind of information you have available. You should never display things like your home address or home phone number, as information like this can be used to steal your identity. You may want to set up a PO box or a special email address for people to contact you at, if you don't have a business address.

5

Draw a flow chart. For most people, the website starts on the home page. This is the page that everybody sees when they first go to www.yourSite.com. But where do they go from there? If you spend some time thinking about how people might interact with your site, you'll have a much easier time down the line when you are making navigation buttons and links.

6

Plan for user devices and situations. In recent years, smartphones and tablets have become incredibly popular platforms for browsing the internet, and they require websites to be designed for them. If you really want to make a website that will stand the test of time and be accessible to the highest number of viewers, plan on making different versions of your site for different devices, or plan to use a responsive design that adjusts as necessary. 

PART TWO

Building Your Website

1 Decide what method or tool you'll use to build it

Decide what method or tool you'll use to build it. When you have the basic idea down and have a plan for how it will be laid out, the next to think about is how you're going to build it. The options seem endless, and people will try to sell you this or that 'fantastic' application, and every other thing that you "absolutely must have" on your site, however the reality is that there are a few great tools for building websites, and one of them will be best-suited to your situation and needs. 

2 Build it yourself

Build it yourself. This is the first option. If you have a website-building application like Adobe Dreamweaver, it is not very difficult to create a website from scratch. You might need to do some coding but don't panic! HTML looks complicated, but it's like listening to Shakespeare—it's hard at first, but once you get the feel of it, it's not that difficult.

·        Pros: website design software simplifies the process of building sites by letting you drag-and-drop images, text, buttons, movies, and anything else you can think of, usually without ever having to dig into HTML. Many web design applications will even let you create sites specifically for your smart phone or pad. If you are building a basic, personal website, this is really a great way to go.

·        Cons: there is a learning curve, and though you don't have to dig into HTML, it's not totally geek-free. If you are in a hurry, this might not be the best solution. Perhaps the biggest con, though, is that if you are not a graphic designer, you could end up with a page that hurts the eyes. To mollify this somewhat, there are a number of free templates in the applications, and on the internet, but be aware of your limitations—if you have any!

3 Use a content management system (CMS)

Use a content management system (CMS). This is the second option. WordPress is an example of a great option for building websites. It helps you create web pages and blog posts quickly and easily, set up the menus, allow and manage user comments, and has thousands of themes and plugins that you can choose from and use for free. Drupal and Joomla are other great CMS options. Once the CMS is hosted, you can manage your site from anywhere (in the world) that has an Internet connection.

·        Pros: Very easy to use, quick to get started with one click install, and lots of options for the beginner (with enough depth for more experienced users).

Cons: Some themes are limiting, and not all are free.

4 Build the website from scratch

Build the website from scratch. This is the third option. If you decide to build your website from scratch, you'll need to start using HTML and CSS. There are ways to extend your HTML skills and add more features and more depth to your website. If you are developing a professional website, these tools will help you get that edge that is needed in any business venture.

·        CSS, which stands for "Cascading Style Sheets". CSS gives more flexibility for styling the HTML, and makes it much easier to make basic changes—fonts, headers, color schemes—in one place, and have those changes ripple through the site.

·        XHTML is a web language set by W3C's standards. Almost identical to HTML, it follows a stricter set of rules for marking up information. What this means, for the most part, is minor changes to the way you write code.

·        Look into HTML5. It's the fifth revision of the core HTML standard, and will eventually subsume the current version of HTML (HTML4), and XHTML as well.

·        Learn a client-side scripting language, such as JavaScript. This will increase your ability to add interactive elements to your site, such as charts, maps, etc.

·        Learn a server-side scripting language. PHP, ASP with JavaScript or VB Script or Python can be used to change the way web pages appear to different people, and lets you edit or create forums. They can also help store information about people who visit your site, like their username, settings, and even temporary "shopping carts" for commercial sites.

·        AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a technique of using a browser sided language and a server sided language to make the page get new information from the server without refreshing the page, often greatly reducing user wait time and vastly improving the user's experience but increasing bandwidth usage. For a website that will see a lot of traffic, or an eCommerce site, this is an excellent solution.

5 Web designers

Web designers. This is the fourth and final option. If you are not up to designing your own website, or learning new coding languages—especially for more advanced sites—hiring a professional may be your best option. Before you hire, ask to see a portfolio of their work, and check their references carefully.

PART THREE

Test Driving Your Website and Going Live

1 Register your domain name

Register your domain name. If you’re on a budget, there are strategies for buying a cost effective domain . Find a domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell. If you use domains ending with .com, you will end up with more traffic, but most of the easy ones are taken, so be creative!

·        Look to Network Solutions, GoDaddy, or Register.com are good in US and uk2.net if you're in the UK to research and find the ideal domain name for your website. Wordpress also includes a feature whereby you can use a name that's tagged with their site, for example, mywebsite.wordpress.com. But if the name you choose is also available as a .com, they will notify you when you sign up.

·        You can purchase domain names if they have been "parked" or are for sale online through business sales sites. It's a good idea to get legal and financial advice before purchasing an expensive domain name.

2  Inspect your website

Inspect your website. Before you post your site, it's wise to test it thoroughly. Most web design software has a way to test your site without taking it online. Look for missing tags, broken links, search engine optimization, and website design flaws. These are all factors which may affect your website's traffic and revenues. You may also generate a free full-functioning site map to submit to search engines like Google, in a matter of minutes. 

3 Test your website

Test your website. When you finish your website, do usability testing. You can do this by asking a few friends or family members to try it out. Give them a specific task like "edit your profile" or "buy an alpaca sweater from the bargains page." Sit behind them and watch them navigate—do not help them. You will likely find areas where you need to improve navigation or clarify some instructions. Alternately use something like zurb.com to user test on specific demographics for different types of engagement. When testing a website in 2014 it's becoming important to keep the platform in mind and make sure the website is usable from smartphones and tablets as well as desktops. 

4 Launch it

Launch it! Choose a web host and upload your website. Your web host may have an FTP feature, or you can download your own FTP program like FileZilla or CyberDuck. If you hired a professional to design the website, they should be able to take care of this for you (but it still pays to ask questions so that you understand what is happening). 

PART FOUR

Website Considerations

1    Website business idea

Website business idea. If you're doing this for money, which ideas stand to make the most profit? Which ideas require the most commitment? Which ideas look like they'd be fun to pursue? You will be spending time working on your website, so choose the idea you are most passionate about (that is also profitable and practical for you).

 2   Define your goals , and work to achieve them

Define your goals, and work to achieve them. The website you create may be for fun, it may be for profit, or some combination of the two. Knowing your expectations makes it much easier both to design your website, and to track and make sense of the results. 

3    Be ready for competition

Be ready for competition. Content sites require less investment but they also face more competition, since anyone can start a content site. To make money from this kind of site, you provide information and generate income from the traffic you receive through advertising, such as through Google AdSense. In order to optimize AdSense, you will have to write your content purposefully and make it interesting so that people come to your site. Use specific keywords directed at people searching for specific terms too; just don't get carried away with this aspect or the content may suffer and readers won't like it. 

4  Know the audience or market you want to reach

Know the audience or market you want to reach. Which kinds of people will your website serve? Conduct market research to figure out more about your audience. Things to know or find out include: What do they do? How old are they? What are their other interests? All of this information can help make your website much more useful. However, be careful of assuming that your site is only targeting one group––always watch for trends that show other types of people becoming interested, so that you can cater for their interests too and make the most of new opportunities. 

5    Do keyword research

Do keyword research. This is necessary to determine whether people are searching for topics that are relevant to your site and can be useful for learning more about your potential clients. Making a conscious effort to incorporate in-demand keywords into the site can also help you get a better search engine ranking. There are tools available from Google (ex. google.com/trends/ and google.com/insights/search/#), Overture, and third-party software developers that can make the keyword research process easier

6  Provide quality  content and service 

Provide quality content and service. Most of all, listen to your readers and customers and learn from their experience with your website.