I have a theory that the internet is like a field of onions. Each individual website is a many-layered onion, buried within the field. A website gets created on the internet, but no one knows about it. It’s buried in the field. Once that onion gets pulled out of the field, the outermost layer is when the creator tells Person A to check out the website. One layer down. When that Person A takes a look and thinks, “man, that’s cool,” they go tell their friend, Person B, to check it out. That’s the second layer of the onion. See, a website only grows as people tell others to check it out. So the first layer of the website-onion represents when the website creator tells someone to go look at their website, and the second layer represents when that first someone liked what they saw in your website and told someone else to see it for himself. So now you have two people exploring the website. When both Person A and Person B go tell Person C and Person D to go to the website, that’s the third and fourth onion layers. The layers are endless. As word keeps spreading, the layers keep peeling back and the website gets more and more exposed. After enough layers are exposed, The website has reached viral status and has become the next big internet buzz.
You’ve all heard of Huffington Post and Craigslist, right? Well, how did you hear about them? From a friend. Someone told you mid-conversation, “oh, hey, I saw this on this website the other day…” And when you get back to your computer, you’re going to see what they were talking about. With the internet, everyone wants to know what’s the newest and best website up there. Everyone wants to be the one to inform someone else of a cool website first. When they’re talking about a website, more people start visiting it and the number of hits on the website escalate beyond reason.
So really, all you have to do to have a successful website in the onion-field of the internet is to talk about your website. Spread the word. If it’s a good one, it will catch on as people tell their friends, co-workers, anyone else. Once you get enough people talking about your website, you’ll be successful.
And I know this from experience. Before I even got my website all up and ready to go, I was telling people about it. They were all interested and spread the word. Now it’s up with the new layout and new additions on a regular basis, and my numbers just keep on rising.
