1. be in demand. Obviously, you want people to come to your website. This means that people must be searching for the subject matter you're going to be presenting. For this, you need to know about keywords. There's a lot on the web about keywords, so I won't explain them here. But by researching your keywords, you'll get a good idea of the demand. In addition to what SBI said, my marcom tutor said something that really stuck: don't be afraid of competition. Meaning, don't be put off a site concept just because somebody else already has a website about the same subject.
2. not be too broad. This means that your subject matter should be tailored. If your concept is "football", you could go on forever. If your concept is "Newcastle United", you've already trimmed off a huge chunk about football, but you have a much more specialized field.
In my marcom class, we spoke about niche markets. What is a niche?
Think about, for example, the dating niche. Within that you have the subniche: online dating. And then the subsubniche: jewish dating (think jdate, and others). When you define a niche market, you identify a group of people with their own set of problems which you then seek to solve.
Either that, or you create your own niche. An unserved market. Sometimes it's a question of packaging a few of the existing problem-solvers together and then solving that.
3. excite you. This for me is where kid's science experiments fell down. I'm not that into science, and even researching experiments was a bit of a yawn. If you're going to be working on something, it should be fun. Expecially when it's a project you're chosing to do. Your passion will drive the project.
4. deliver high ROI potential. If up to now things were fairly obvious even to me, this point is a little more elusive to the internet virgin. SBI reassures me not to worry about this though as as I follow their training through, this will become very clear. I will learn how to turn traffic into money.
By thinking about my site concepts in the context of what will make a good website for me, I think there is another critical ingredient to your thinking. After initially spending about a week getting excited about gifts for men, I had a chat with my marcom tutor who raised the point about monetization. I had envisaged getting money through affiliate programs and adsense, but really, if i'm not going to be selling any of my own products, writing content about gifts for men, expecially when I haven't really seen them, is going to be tough. The type of website I was looking to establish was a content website. So I think it's important at this stage of the game to have an idea of what type of website you're intending to set up.
So, during this process I've left behind kid's science experiments and gifts for men, and now I'm going to do some keyword research on anniversaries.
