I am a nine-year-old homeschool student. Recently, I got a letter from a person who was wondering how I made this website. I want to share what I've done for my site to create and maintain it.
In March 2008, I got the idea for my website when my mother and I were earnestly searching for contests to help me enjoy math more. While we were looking, we found that it was tricky to find many contests for individual students to enter by themselves. We thought that it would be nice to make a website with a list of math contests that individual homeschoolers can enter, because sometimes it's hard for homeschoolers to get a team together for team competitions. Fortunately, my sister also has her own website,
Homeschool Writers, which helped me with ideas for mine.
Because I use OfficeLive.com, which is a web hosting service, designing my website is easy. For example, I don't have to type in brain-racking HTML when I want to create links or select backgrounds and headings. The program has a traffic bar graph and is easily used. With OfficeLive.com I have a very good resource for making websites.
To find fantastic contests which I can list on my website, my parents didn't think it was good for me to surf the web, since I'm still a kid. Selectively, my mother chose contests and bookmarked them. Then I would look in the bookmarks to see if a contest had an old date and if it did, then I would go on Google and look for a more recent website for that contest. Then once I finally had found a good website, I would link the contest on my website.
In making your own website, there is a lot of writing involved, both webpage content and e-mail letters which offer ads and request links. These count as writing assignments. First I do a key word outline, then a rough draft, then I rewrite with stronger verbs and adjectives. I try to start the sentences different ways. When I want to boost my traffic up, I usually do about five link letters a day. Having already written about one hundred people, I have been linked on dozens of sites.
Usually when I'm making an ad for a customer, I e-mail them and ask how they want their ad. If they do not care, I create it myself. Grabbing the website's header image off their site, I carefully fix it up on Paint, which is a graphics program. Then I link the ad image to the customer's website.
Occasionally other people have helped with my site. My mother, who wrote the curriculum reviews, also did the summary column for the individual contests chart, since that was difficult for me. From my sister's website, I got the professionally designed invoice form and advertising rates. When other people see my site, sometimes they help by e-mailing contests to me.
For several months, I spent one hour a day working on my website, but now I am spending fifteen minutes a day. Currently I am checking links. I look at the websites and make sure that the date is still recent and the site is still where it should be. If people e-mail me desiring a deadline reminder, I put down their addresses in an organized group in my address book. Checking the individual contests that expire soon, I copy down the expiring information, which I blind-copy e-mail to the group of people who have signed up for my deadline reminder. These are the things I am doing now on my website to maintain it.
You do have to spend a lot of time making a website. On the other hand, websites do give you better skills in writing and you do make profit off them. When you start, you might feel as if it's not going to do well, but if you work vigorously, it will probably do well in the end. Having a website is a good first business and a good learning opportunity.