There’s content building, creating a blog, RSS, newsletter, link building, social bookmarking, tweeting and much more.

The key question (often missed) is NOT: ”What is everything that I need to do in order to build a successful website?”

BUT “Which action / task will give me the best result?”

You need to prioritize among all the possible actions mentioned above in order to make the best of your time – especially if you’re still in a full time job and even have children which definitely take a lot of time.

Imagine having just one page – the homepage. Which action will give you the best result (most benefit)?

Creating a newsletter module, RSS, link building or adding more pages?

Adding more pages of course. Your first goal is to create traffic which you can later monetize. And you create the foundation for traffic with lots of content pages.

I typically build most of T2 pages (menu pages) and add 3 to 5 articles under EACH of them. If I have 10 T2 pages and add 4 T3 pages under each of them, that amounts to 10 + 40 = 50 pages.

Around this time, the answer to the key question: “Which action will give me the best result / most benefit?” changes; it’s BUILDING LINKS.

A simple example: if I have 50 pages and add the 51st, I will get less traffic increase than if I acquire 1 quality link to my website. I am of course assuming that no links have been built so far.

A website with 0 incoming links will receive VERY little traffic even if it has 500 perfectly optimized pages.

A website with 30 poorly optimized pages and 500 quality links WILL receive MUCH more traffic.

So at around 50 pages or so, your most important action becomes link building. You should of course build more pages too but they can be your priority #2.

I’d work on link building and adding content until I’d have more than 100 daily visitors and then I’d start working on some other modules like newsletter, RSS, C2 and so on.

These should still follow the link building and adding pages, except that you can devote maybe 10% or 20% of your time to those extra tasks instead of using 100% of your time looking for links and writing pages.

When you start getting 150 or 200 daily visitors, you’ll probably want to earn some money.

At that time, the answer changes again; the action that will give you most benefit (which now changes from getting more traffic to earning more money!) is optimizing your monetization model(s).

Adding Adsense or Chitika or both at the right places, adding affiliate links and so on will give you the most benefit right now.

Once you monetize, your goal is now a combination of getting more traffic and consequently earning more.

(If you want to build your list, then this is another goal that might be the most important benefit at some point!)

If you just monetized with Adsense or Chitika above the fold and possibly once or twice below the fold, you can simply add more pages (with ads) and you’ll get more traffic and more earnings.

At some point, probably after one year or even more, you’ll start ranking for more competitive keywords and you’ll also have lots of links that will help you site rank well.

From here on, it’s tough to make a general statement of what action will give you the most benefit but you’ll have enough experience by now that you’ll know the answer.

Because the problem doesn’t lie in not knowing the answer, it lies in NOT asking the right question.

So again, while you’re building your online business, ask yourself the key question here and there: ”What action / task will give me the most benefit / best result?”

It will help you narrow down all the zillion choices you have when it comes to home based online business and make the most progress in the shortest amount of time.