Short Guide on How to run a website for "free"(Forum, blog or any site)

Hi everyone, I am Shole, and I have been around forums and blogs for the past 10 years or so. I never really made big money as some people did, but at some point I owned around 20 sites and even a hosting company. How much did I spend on everything? Well, technically a lot but nothing that was coming out of my savings or salary or allowance. 

1. Don't focus on money making at first
2. Quality over Quantity
3. Be helpful

1- Don't Focus on Money Making

If you are new and want to test the waters, I always suggest starting with a free website. Use that to learn from it, don't go in thinking about money first. Why? Here is a reason why:

Skills and Experience make money, not just a money making mentality.  What you need to make money is a skill, if you don't practice your skills how are you going to sell them?

Those skills will be useful for you so you can sell them on Fiverr or other sites like seoclerk and so on, where you will make some extra money to invest in your site. Growth is a slow process, and I hate it too, but we must learn and experiment, you never know you might be the new thing online that gets popular.

Anyway to be precise skills have to be constantly polished, due to the internet being the internet, everything gets an update sooner or later, so should your skills to match the market demand.

2- Quality over Quantity

As mentioned before the skills you sell must be of value. Imagine this, you want to buy a cake, you get a pamphlet with lots of cakes on it and you love it, you want to go get some from that store. You follow the address but when you arrive there it's a butchers shop, would you buy something from there?
Exactly, you won't, hence your marketing can be the best in the world if your product(the thing you sell be it content, be it a product, whatever it is) is not like the one that it was marketed you will lose clients and money.

So try to work on the quality of your content first, and then on everything else.

3- Be helpful

In real life kindness goes a long way, online it really goes a long long way. We all experienced it, we need help and we do a quick google search and find the answer. The answer wasn't provided by a machine (well kinda) it was provided by another human being. Just think about it, there is a networking possibility. It might sound cruel but it is your chance to build connections, to create a network and maybe even get a partner for a future project.

Give and you shall receive, it works, I have been active on many forums and I remember how my views skyrocketed, how I got help from people for free because I helped them out. And along the way I made some amazing friends that were just lovely and helpful (still remember the good times with them, and all the mistakes we made lol).

In conclusion, you want to make it from 0 to hero, it is a big challenge. It's never easy, nor should it be. Take it as a challenge and if you do the following things:

1) Work hard and smart
2) Be Kind
3) Be Patient
4) Learn from failure

You will succeed. This guide is half motivation half guide towards the right steps. It took me a lot of failure to realise that it all depends on me if I succeed or not, if I learn or just stay the same. Hope you enjoy reading it.