Mistakes to Avoid in Developing Your Writing Website
Developing a writing website is fun and can be a potential moneymaker. But if it cannot easily be distinguished from its competition, it will not likely succeed. To ensure its success, you’ll want to avoid the following mistakes:
- Not focusing your material and audience. When you first thought about developing such a website, did you consider a specific audience or “anyone who is interested?” For example, if your website is focused on a specific audience, such as teenagers who want to write for publication,” you will be able to visualize that audience and tailor your material and tone to it much better than you could with a vague, undefined audience. So giving your potential audience plenty of thought will help you to build a good foundation and establish a good focus for your website.
- Forgetting your audience’s purpose for visiting your website. In other words, what kind of information would teenage writers be looking for? What kind of stuff do they want to write and why?
- Selecting the first domain name that you think of. It is easy to get carried away with the excitement of developing a website and choosing a good domain name for it. It is also tempting to choose the first name or two that occurs to you. Don’t give in to temptation! Take the time you need to brainstorm a list of possible names and forget about it until the next day. You will be able to review those names more objectively and eliminate those that are unsuitable. And don’t worry if this process takes a few days. You will eventually find and select a great domain.
- Overlooking the importance of your website’s content. Think about it for a minute. Will you include links for articles on your site? Will you have a Q&A page? Will you include a Resources page, an All About Me page? These pages and their development will also take time to create and write. Consider working on these pages as you are developing your domain name.
- Overlooking the competition. This is probably the biggest mistake. Your website will have plenty of competition and one of the first things you should consider doing is finding out what it is and how your website will stand out from it. Visit a few writing websites and decide what you like and dislike about each. For example, does a competing website focus on new writers? How does it meet their needs? Even more important, what’s unique about it? What could that website have also included? Answering these questions will clue you in as to what your own website should be like and define its unique qualities.
- Not updating the website/overlooking the importance of new features such as writing challenges and forums. When visitors come to your website, what do you want them to do? How will you make their visit productive and fun? How will you keep them coming back?
By paying attention to these mistakes, you will be so much ahead of potential, but clueless, webmasters who make haste in developing their sites, but wind up regretting their hasty decisions.
Thanks for reading!
A published writer, Dorothy Zjawin’s credits include a number of Instructor articles and a book, Teaching Ideas for the Come-Alive Classroom (Parker Pub. Co./Prentice-Hall). Her website http://www.profitable-pen.com
includes ideas for new and experienced writers.
