Website Mistakes:
Lessons Learned by a Website Newbie (me)

The biggest mistake you can make is to pick a website topic that doesn't have a very strong interest to you.  If you don't find the topic interesting, you simply won't enjoy the time that you will need to spend on the website - and it will quickly go the way of other things that you feel you "should" do, but don't really WANT to do.

Ideally (but not required) you will already know a lot about the topic of the website and you will already know where to go to find good research and interesting information about the topic.

Another mistake is to not seek help.  While very few webmasters will tell you everything about how their websites became successful - most of them are quite willing to help you solve problems with HTML, how your page looks, search engine problems, and many more issues. 

Truly, most webmasters have spent days trying to fix a problem - where they could have just gone to a discussion board and asked, taken a short nap, and had the answer in an hour or two.  Recently the webmaster was having some problems with a discussion group software.  After wrestling with it for several days, she finally went to the phpBB discussion board and literally had an answer in minutes!  Why did she wait days to do it?

We all like solving problems - but be careful to not burn yourself out by struggling with problems you might be able to solve quickly, with just a little help.

If you don't know - ask!