I'm curious about what makes the successful ones successful . I've seen beautifully designed, high quality content sites fail.
so I've come to the conclusion that the key factor is scaling. even if you've programmed your site to scale, unless you pour in the dough to scale your servers and allow more people to come in you're gonna fail. Is this the deciding factor? what according to you is that one deciding factor?
It is too broad and so there is no one deciding factor. You don't even have a clear definition of success. Is http://lawcomic.net/ successful? It has a loyal following, but it doesn't update that much, or earn much money for its creator.
Actually, there is an answer to that, and it's the answer to OPs question.
Customers.
It doesn't make a lick of difference how well (or how badly) you do anything else - you might have great customer service, a slick UI and ready to scale to millions of unsers instantly. Without customers, you have nothing.
Why does a site have customers? Not because it has customers. But something else.
And I think that something else is usefulness. Look at any busineas or site that is successful. To someone, it is useful.
If you're selling something, make it something that people want at the right price and make it easy for them to buy.
If you're selling advertising (you're a decade late on that one...), give people a reason to come back to the site - make the site sticky or have network effects.
Scaling comes later (assuming your initial design isn't a complete resource hog). It literally follows the money.
One answer that captures the essence of the issue and provides the correct answer is downvoted. Honestly I do not get HN members at all
My understanding (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) of it in the context of good websites is
Host: You need a great host/site, something stable & something people want to use
Agent: I consider agents as internal factors like technical, sales & marketing, They help you grow & the ensure stability.
Environment: Environment is pretty much your jurisdiction, you need to make sure that your solution is legal & your environment is supporting of you growing. Another fascinating theory to study around that is the Overton window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window).
Vector: A vector, an organism which transmits infection by conveying the pathogen from one host to another, with the most powerful agent been word of mouth.
I guess if you have these 4 components structure well, then you have a pretty good chance of having a successful website according to the Epidemiologic Triad.
Now if you're question is more around business models, then heres also another good resource to look into by HBR (https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-transformative-business-model)
I first got hooked on slatestarcodex (http://slatestarcodex.com/) when the author hit a five post homerun streak and he was just too good to not check in with.
When I'm evaluating whether to follow a tumblr I can see the process unfold in real time, where I scroll down and finally think to follow after I see several really good posts at once. The moment I stopped and saw myself doing that I realized if I ever wanted to get followers on tumblr my blog would probably need to have the same kind of five-post punch to get people interested.
So.
1. Update often.
2. Make it easy to find your new stuff, or display your archive proudly and live off the interest.
3. Keep a high quality bar. It might even be useful to take your absolute best and put it in one place so you can show people your better side.
4. Market aggressively or be prepared to wait a while.
It's also question that needs to be better defined. What sort of site? What definition of success?
For many sites, the biggest pieces are having something that people want or need, then consistently providing it. Of that pairing, having something people want is the absolute core.
You'll get some ideas.
More to the point, making sure people know about it and the site is easy to use. Beautiful design is nice but if it gets in the way people will admire it once, twice... and finally give up. Don't let content get stale.
The audacity of webmasters who think all their users have JavaScript enabled is quite cruel and shows that this problem is endemic of lack of education about who your visitors are. Infact your visitors could be anybody and they could have any configuration.
