What do I mean by viral? Sites that take a life of their own, that grow completely by the input of your visitors.

I’m beginning work on a niche site project that will launch this summer. Perhaps I’ll fill everyone here in on the URL (not sure yet!)

Here’s what I’m aiming to accomplish virally with this site:

• Content - Through forums and article submissions, I want the vast majority of the site’s content to be created by the visitors. It will be essential to have a system in place for users to login, contribute the content, and allow me to approve it.

• Traffic - Search engine traffic is great (free & paid), but I expect the BULK of this site’s traffic to be repeating visitors. Makes for a more stable traffic source.

• Links - Every member will get a “profile” (no, this isn’t some dating site) that they’ll be encouraged to link to in their signature files on related niche forums they frequent. This will help build the link popularity of this site automatically. The most popular sites are ones where the links come freely with no need for link exchanges, article submissions, paid links, etc.

That’s it in a nutshell.

For any site you’re launching from now on, think how you can incorporate the above three viral factors and you’ll be off to a running start!

I picked up this idea while reading an article at Performancing addressing blogs, but the points are the same for regular non-blog sites. Andy, who wrote that article, found his inspiration from a WebmasterWorld post on this topic. I’ll allow you to browse his article for that link (it’s only fair to him!)

When you die and leave this earth, what do you have planned for your websites and online business? Will your family be able to take over the reins in stride, or will they not even know where to begin? (more…)

Just a quick “sorry” for the lack of posts the last few days.

With Christmas and New Years, things were pretty busy around here and I imagine they were for everyone else, too.

Expect regular posts starting later today!

Sorry about the lack of posts the last few days, I’ve been wrapping up things (literally) for Christmas.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas - Merry Christmas - and to everyone else, Happy Holidays!

Enjoy some time with your family and friends. We’ll pick things up back here once we all realize that we ate and spent too much money this year!

Thanks to everyone that’s been so patient for this site launch. It was a busy autumn quarter of college, so most of my time was spent studying Classics and BioChemistry; what a combination, huh?

I guess the most obvious question would be: What’s this site about?

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed more and more people have been trying to make a living some money with an online business. Of course this happens every year, but that’s not my point. (more…)