In my previous Post Challenges of Starting a new website Part 1.  I talked about my new website My Weekend Trip Planner and how difficult it is to get your website discovered.  It is very difficult to get that initial traffic to the sight especially because SEO is really hurt by the fact that the site is so new. It is important to build the traffic to your site at least initially through other sources then just search engine.  These ways can be things like word or mouth or paid advertisements.  One of the ways I have found that works the best is social media.  Social media is extremely important especially for discovering a website.  You need to use social media to create a buzz for example on My Weekend Trip Planner when I launched the site I changed my status on Facebook to announce the launch of my new site.  I also tweeted it.  I received 30 visits from that in 4 hours.  This is perfect example of you can use social media to tell people about your site hopefully they will then tell their friends and the result can be viral.  This will then increase the likely hood people liking to you and before you know have a powerful website.

I just recently built a site for this class called My Weekend Trip Planner.  It is a great website and I think you should check it out on a side note. Upon completing the site I realized that there are definitely a lot of challenges that need to be overcome in order for your website to be successful. Take my website My Weekend Trip Planner, it is a website tells people about great weekend trips that are located right next to them.  These trips are meant to be affordable and for people that can’t use vacation days. I think this is viral idea and it has a lot of potential.

The Problems

The Problem is having people find your website.  The internet is a big place and there are literally millions of website out there.  How is Google going to find you how are you going to be found.  SEO is essential, but when a website is created it has a lot of disadvantage that really hurt it SEO.  First, Google like sites that have existed for awhile.  This makes sense because Google wants to make sure that the website is some fake that was just created to rick people.  Another huge problem s since you were just created you obviously don’t have any links.  Links are the currency of the web.  It is essential to have a lot of links to your website this will really boost Google’s image of your site, but that takes time, but if no one knows you exist how are they going to link to you.  Finally a news site doesn’t have a lot of content because it was just created.  These are all issues that really devastate a website.  In my next blog I will talk about possible solutions to help get your site discovered.

PS You should visit My Weekend Trip Planner and submit a vacation.

Kiva.org is an innovative non-profit organization that takes entrepreneurs from some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world and essentially gives them the capital to start their own business.  Kiva uses their website as a marketing tool, a weblog, and a means by which members can monitor how much money they’ve lent and to whom.

One aspect of Kiva.org that I believe is a very useful marketing tool is their “Community” tab.  Kiva allows members to join various “Lending Teams” and pool the money they’re lending together towards whatever cause or dogma they uphold (i.e. Kiva Christians, Team Obama, Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender, Team Europe, etc…).  Each respective team is ranked against other teams by how much money they’ve raised.

I like the way Kiva’s purpose is to help the poor by creating virtual VCs in order to create accountability, and their site does an excellent job of turning the cause of raising money into a competition between various regions, belief systems, and (in the case of GLBT) sexual preference.

I never had much interest in fantasy football, let alone any other fantasy sport.  This all changed after one of my buddies from home hit my interest in fall of 2008.  I was immediately hooked and determined to learn as much as I possibly could about the subject.  I asked my friend if he knew of any good websites about fantasy sports.  Enter WalterFootball.com

Walter Football is the ultimate source for any and all fantasy sports rankings, mock drafts, tournament picks, etc…  There is a virtual smorgisbord of information on current fantasy sports to be found at this site, which when combined with his wry humor and good advice creates a winning recipe for catching the interest of any fantasy sports enthusiast.

Walter, the author and webmaster of the site, is a Penn State alum who lives in Philly and does little more than watch sports and write about them.  His website WalterFootball.com is also one of the most well-known and respected fantasy sites on the Web.

This is a perfect example of an internet entrepreneur who took something he loved, turned it into a website, worked his butt off, and now makes a comfortable living off of nothing more than a little sports-writing and mock fantasy drafts.

I lived in San Antonio, Texas from age 7-10, and this past summer I went back to an old friend’s wedding.  While visiting got to hang out with Sean, one of my close friends from my days in Texas.

In catching up with him, I found out that over the past two years he has developed his own computer repair service.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is not your average “I reset my neighbors wireless router” repair service.  This kid has clientele all over the city, gets away with charging $50/hour, and drives a 2007 Ford Mustang.

Sean uses both a personal website and Facebook Page to market his business.  He has over a dozen personal reviews on his own personal site attesting to his greatness.  This guy has no employees and doesn’t contract out any of his advertising because he does it all himself.

As a result of his hard work and successful marketing, Sean is working 10-20 hours a week and making around $35000/year while playing in a Christian rock band that’s about to get signed to a major record label.  Pretty impressive what a 21 year old with no college experience can do when he puts his mind to something.