It might sound obvious, but it does bear repeating. Before you create a web site you need to pick a topic. You should put some thought in to this because you'll need to be able to write at least 50-100 pages on your chosen topic. A smaller number of pages will likely result in the site never gaining traction with the search engines and won't impress first time visitors.

If you've never created a web site, you're in luck. Why? Because it means that you can write about anything you want. The problem is that once you're on web site number of 5 or 6, you may find it quite difficult to come up with yet another topic.

To pick a topic simply start with a brainstorming session and start listing ideas. Don't reject ideas that pop in to your head at this time. Simply list topics until you run out of ideas. When the flow of ideas stops, take your list and start grouping the items in to a hierarchy of related topics. For instance, if you had written on your list cats, dogs, pets, and animals you would re-organize your list so that pets are a sub-category of animals. Cats and dogs would then be a sub-category of pets. Because of this moving around of list items it probably makes sense to use a computer program like Microsoft Word or Excel rather than a pen and paper.

Once your list is categorized examine each topic you listed and start eliminating topics that you don't think you could write 50+ pages about. Again, the site you end up building will need to reach a certain critical mass of content to improve your chances of getting enough traffic. What you'll likely see months down the road is that a handful of pages will attract a majority of the traffic. The problem is that there's no real way to know which pages will be the most popular so you need to make sure you have enough content to improve your chances that you'll have a few gems in the lot.

Anyway, as you move through the elimination process you'll eventually be left with a list of good ideas. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help determine whether a topic idea is good or not:

• Do you have experience with topic?
• Do you have books, magazines, or course material about the topic that you can reference? Please note that I'm not advocating copying content directly from copyright materials. But having references handy can act as inspiration or reminders of things you already know.
• Does the topic change over time? For example, computers, digital cameras, or pretty much any technology. Such changing topics mean that you will have plenty of new material as time progresses.

Answering "no" to any of the above doesn't necessarily mean that you should eliminate a topic, but any idea that receives a "yes" to each of the above is probably a good one.

Finally, unless you have a lot of time on your hands perhaps because you're unemployed or a part-time worker, you should select one of your strongest ideas and focus on it rather than attempting to start multiple sites simultaneously. Be sure to keep your list though as you should return to it once you're ready to move on to the second web site.