my 2 cents for online publishers.

Engage with your readers, make them feel like a community, and don’t leave their comments/questions/emails unanswered, gives them reason to come back.

Not engaging might have the opposite effect.

I really hate sites with ads appearing in the middle of the articles.

And, may be for the individuals publishers/bloggers, not updating frequently is a best possible way to lose the readers. So being quiet for a long time is a big mistake.

Check back after the new year for something on that topic….

What are the positives?

Stephen Harlow suggested reader-generated content.

I’d add freshness as sine qua non. Stale sites are like yesterday’s newspaper, eh?

Can other readers add to this list of “Smart tips for new online publishers”?

Announcing something before you’ve done it is almost always a mistake. Every time I’ve done this I’ve regretted it, mainly because *everything* takes longer than you think it will, and often because you don’t know what it will look like until it’s complete. Every time I waited until a project was ready for release, I was rewarded with greater impact on my audience.