Adoption Agencies

Overview

An adoption agency is a site that lists all of the pets that are up for adoption/trade/being zapped, etc. If you decide to create on of these, there wouldn't be too much competition around, thus increasing you chance of being successful. Most adoption agencies today are only open for less than a month before being shut down. This is because they aren't the most exciting sites out there, since all you are doing is listing pets that are going to be given away, but if you are one of those Neopians who love to deal with the whole adoption process, then go for it!

FAQ

How do I find pets to list? You can find pets at the Pound Chat, where users regularly post ads for their pets that are UFA/UFT.

Difficulty Level:

*I have never actually owned an adoption agency, so this is just what I think it would be like. For an adoption agency, I would say the difficulty lever would be anywhere from a 4-6. To me, they don't seem that difficult. The only hard part would probably be getting owners to list their pets in your adoption agency, and managing all of the pets/owners.

Maintenence Level:

*I have never actually owned an adoption agency, so this is just what I think it would be like. I would say about a 7-8. I feel like you would have to be on pretty much everyday to check up on all of your listed pets, and to make sure all of the pets are still up for adoption, or up for treade, etc.

Useful Terms

AA - Adoption Agency
App - Application
PC - Pound Chat
UFA - Up for adoption
UFT - Up for trade
Do you know any other useful terms?

Recommended For You?

I would say in order to run a high-quality adoption agency, you need to be able to be online everday to add more pets, and to check the statuses of the pets. You should only make one of these if you are planning to keep it open. In my directory, I constantly get neomails saying "my adoption agency has closed". If you are willing to keep it open, then go ahead and create that adoption agency.

Successful Adoption Agencies

Tips from Adoption Agency Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?

Michelle at Prestige - "There are many thoughts that go into creating a clean, organized, navigable layout and the best way to create a really good one is through practice. I used to hate the saying "practice makes perfect" but then you start to realize that it's true. I began making layouts about 7 years ago, and the reason I kept making new ones was because once you finished one, you slowly see what's not so good about it and how you can make it better. Little annoying things start to pop up and you have to think of how to fix them, along with how on earth to code them (my most recent agency's layout took about 4 days). But the more little annoying things there are in your first layout, the better your next layout looks. A good trick to finding those bothersome details is to use the site yourself. Don't just update it every once in a while, but actually try to navigate it and see what other users could find difficult to find or annoying to do (i.e. lots and lots of scrolling). Another technique is to navigate other sites. My best work comes out of inspiration; seeing something I like about one site, seeing something I don't like about it, and then combining everything I liked about the sites to create something really good. (However, you have to be very careful not to copy anything too much. Not only is it stealing another person's work, but it's putting down yourself and your work because it's not all truly yours.) Moving from the technical side to the design side... be aware of colors, patterns (mismatching, too many at once, etc), pixelation (stretched or enlarged images look cheap), etc. I've taken many art courses in my years at high school & college which definitely helped, but practice helps too."

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other Adoption Agencies, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
This is a screenshot from TAAC, that shows an example of how you can set up the list of pets that are UFA/UFT. Drag the image to your address bar to view. Its good that they have links to the pets lookup, and a link to neomail the owner, but i think it would also be helpful to have a link to the owner's lookup. Its also nice that they have a list of the pet's stats. It would be helpful to also have a list of the owner's "requirements" or what they are looking for in their applicants.

This is a screenshot from a segment of Prestige. This a good example of a way to list information about the pet. You can tell by the header that this site lists the pets by according to their color, and probably also by species. It's also great that this site states the owner's requirements, and a link to neomail the owner of the site. This site lists the pet stats, name and species of pet, and an image of the pet, which is good. However, it does not have a link to the pet's lookup or to the owner's lookup.

Competitions

Overview

A competition site owner gets a bunch of sites together, and then asks people to vote for them. Each competition gives about 2 weeks for contestants to enter, and then around 3 weeks for the voting to occur. Even through owning a competition site may seem fun and exciting, the work seems to be quite tedious. If you decide to create this site, I highly reccomend to have a button that says "Vote for me at (YOURSITENAMEHERE)", so that the competitors can use that button to put up on their site. However, there are more than just sites of the month. There are Button of the Months, Icon of the Months, and more! You can create any type of competition you want to.

Difficulty Level:

*I have never actually owned an competitions site, so this is just what I think it would be like. For an acompetitions site, I would say the difficulty level would be a 5. All you are doing is checking neomails and tallying up votes, which doesn't take too much skill. The difficult aspect of it however would be finding site owners to join the competition.

Maintenence Level:

*I have never actually owned a competition site, so this is just what I think it would be like. I would say a 9. You need to be on everyday to add up the new votes.

Useful Terms

SOTM - Site of the Month
BOTM - Button of the month
GOTM - Graphic of the month
IOTM - Icon of the month
BaOTM - Banner of the month
Do you know any other useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you are able to get online atleast once everyday, then go ahead and make a competition site! Just be willing to keep it open for more than a month, and not quit. Most competition sites are only open for a few months, because the work gets tedious.

Successful Competitions

Tips from Competition Site Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?
*Make sure you check out Mignon Ink's Competition Site Guide!

Alice at Dreamer - "My advice to some one would probably be to not expect success to come to you. A quality site comes with lots of effort and hard work."

Laura at Hollywood Stars - "I think to own a competition site, you need to be organized, enter in Neopets almost every day to check the neomails, create folders for this, will facilitate. If you don't have many competitors, send a neomail asking if they want to join."

Lilly at Extravaganza - "If I could tell a site maker one piece of advice, it would be to never site back and offer the basics of what a specific type of site has to offer, but to keep striving to make your site as unique and creative as you can."

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other competition sites, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
This is a screenshot from Mignon Ink, that shows an example of how you can set up the list of contestants in your competition. Drag the image to your address bar to view. Some positives are that it lists the top three contestants, but it should say "Last Updated:" and then the date, so that the contestants and others know when that count was last updated and if the numbers are correct. Its also good that it lists the total number of votes, but why include the negative votes since they aren't technically votes anymore. Or if you do include the negative votes, say "total votes: # and then underneath say "negative votes:#. Also, its good how there is awards for the contestants, but you should label which is for who. For example, is the blue ribbon for all contestants who enter, or for 4th place? Another negative is the fact that credit is insisted for being able to remove votes. I'm sure other sites have had to remove votes in the past, so its not technically Mignon Ink's idea.

Dailies/NP Guides

Overview

This is just a guide that lists Neopia's activities for you to do daily that can help you earn items or neopoints.. or commonly known as dailies! Some examples of dailies are The Soup Kitchen and Giant Omelette. The key to a good dailies or neopoint gudie is organization. The dailies need to be organized so that your site is easy to navigate through. For a neopoint guide you list dailies as well as easy games to earn neopoints with such as Adver-Video, or Fashion Fever.

Difficulty Level:

I would say the difficulty level would be a 8. The difficult aspects are finding all of the links to list, as well as organizing them into an easy to read way.

Maintenence Level:

It really depends. If you list answers to dailies such as The Daily Puzzle or The Faerie Crossword, then you need to be online everyday to update the answers, which may take awhile considering you need to find a reliable place to list the answers for you to put on your site, unless you already know the answers, in which case you do the puzzles yourself and then put up the answers.

Useful Terms

NP - Neopoint
k - 1000
Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you are able to get online atleast once everyday and are very organized, then go ahead and make a dailies site. You also should have a vast knowledge of Neopets to be able to write tips and advice for each daily or game.

Successful Dailies/NP Guides

Tips from Dailies/NP Guide Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?

Ham at JubbyJubJack's Guide to Neopia - "Really, the most important thing with that sort of thing is to be practical since there are millions of dailies sites out there. Why is your site necessary, and what could you do to make it stand out from the masses? Think from the point of the viewer. The most important and practical information should be the largest and the first on the page. Organize well, and remember that people are coming for quick links and dailies, not for a bio of you or flashy graphics. Consider loading time and how to best structure information."

Machi at Kissmoto's 100k a Day - "First of all, make the site neat and easy to read. A well-organized site helps people eary to understand what are the ingredient about. Second, make a navigation and quick links. There are kinds of ways to make neopoints, but not all of them are needed by everyone. Navigations helps people to access their favorite parts. The most important, update it! There are activities and game ratio change every month. People need the updated guide to make their neopoints. If a guide is not updated, that's almost useless for people."

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other dailies and NP sites, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
This is a screenshot from JubbyJubJack's Guide to Neopia, that shows an example of how you can set up the list of dailies and games. Drag the image to your address bar to view. This is probably the best of one of the best sites on Neopets. It has everything you could possibly want in a dalies guide. It lists the date and all of the events that are going on that day, and month. Although, in that section it would be nice to have links to the news and Neopian Times. This site also lists all of the Neopian shops, for quick restocking links. Also, it lists easy NP games with intstructions and hints which is helpful if you have never played a game before. This guide also has links to other guides, as well as a link to the creator's lookup and their stats.

Font Sites

Overview

Have you ever seen those super cute, colorful fonts on the boards? Chances are they came from a font site. A font site makes premade fonts for others to use on the NeoBoards, and sometimes even takes custom requests. The fonts mostly include a neoHTML code (your main font) and a NeoSignature code (what goes underneath your text). They make fonts that go with certain avatars, fonts with symbols that make pictures, and more! Some font sites even list neat copy and paste webdings/wingdings/etc. symbols. The text in the premade fonts usually consist of song lyrics or quotes, as well as symbols to make it interesting.

Difficulty Level:

*I have never actually owned a font site, so this is just what I think it would be like. I would say the difficulty level would be a 5. If you take requests then you need to be fufilling those requests which would make it difficult. Also you need to be creative and be able to think of new fonts that haven't been made before by other sites.

Maintenence Level:

I would say a 6, or a 7 if you take requests. You need to keep putting up new premade fonts, and/or fufilling the requests and accepting new ones (assuming you make high-quality fonts and people want to request fonts from you).

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you are a good font maker, creative and can think of new, never before seen fonts, then go ahead an make one!

Successful Font Sites

Tips from Font Site Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?

Monky at Fontosis - "The thing that is important to owning a font site is originality and variety. If you have 100 fonts that are all basically identical, but just for different avatars and with different colors, then you don't really have much variety and it's pretty boring. Try to make every single one of your fonts unique. Also on your font site, you should try to have extra content such as templates, a tutorial, etc. A lot of people don't know how to make their own fonts and just need a foundation that you can provide."

Katie at Katie's Fonts - "Never give up. People will criticize your fonts, but you have to keep going and be unique. Never let stealers stop you. Just report and move on. You always need to make your fonts look high quality. I suggest you use the font faces Georgia, Tahoma, Mistral, Arial, and Terminal. (:"

Screenshots

None yet!

Guides & Tutorials

Overview

Guide: Instructs or explains the fundamentals of a subject or skill. So, that means guides explain a certain concept, such as a game or an activity. Tutorial: A step-by-step manual on how to preform a specific task. Tutorials are explain how to do something, such as how to make a good site, or how to make a layout.

Difficulty Level:

Anywhere from a 6-8. If you know what you're talking about, and have experience on what you're talking about, making a guide should be rather easy. Making a guide is more difficult when you are explaining a broad subject. For example, its easier to make a guide on 200m Peanut Dash, than it is to make a guide on every game. Also, when you narrow down your subject, your information can be more detailed, thus having better content.

Maintenence Level:

2-3. With guides and tutorials, you don't have to update! That is, unless whatever you are writing about changes.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

Are you good at explaining things? Can you break difficult subjects down into words that are easy to understand? Then making a guide is for you.

Successful Guides & Tutorials

Tips from Font Site Owners/Experts

None yet! Do you have a tip?

Screenshots

None yet!

Graphics

Overview

Oh, graphic sites. These are without a doubt Neopia's favorite sites, almost every site owner has had one at one point! However, most graphic sites are extremely low quality, because people don't have photoshop, or they don't download free programs such as GIMP. Nowadays, if you don't have one of these, your graphics site will be overlooked. Now, there are so many different types of graphics you can make. Banners, icons, pixels, and more! I offer so many types of graphics at my site Compendium that I never get bored. So its always better to offer more than one type of graphic, and to experiment making new ones.

Difficulty Level:

9. Let's face it. Making graphics is hard. You need to have programs other than the beloved MS Paint. Programs such as GIMP are free to download, and there are so many tutorials out there to help you learn how to use it. You also need to be creative and make your graphics different than other sites.

Maintenence Level:

7. You need to constantly be adding new grapics, and improving your skills so that you can keep your graphics up to date and high-quality.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

Do you have good graphic programs such as GIMP or Photoshop? Are your graphics high quality? Then a graphic site may be the site for you.

Successful Graphic Sites

Tips from Graphic Site Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?

Tloef at The Lunch Box - "1) Practice & experiment: Nobody starts off being absolutely amazing at making graphics - it takes a lot of time, effort and dedication to hone your skills. Read tutorials, experiment with whatever program you have and try something new.
2) Originality: Your graphics say a lot about you so be original! Create things that no one has ever seen before and in time, people will be able to recognize your "style".
3) Set goals and pace yourself: Don't be overwhelmed if you have a graphics site and people expect you to update everyday. The worst thing you can possibly do is rush your graphics. It's better to update once a week with high-quality content, then everyday with low-quality graphics."

Screenshots with Tips

None yet!

Link Directories

Overview

Yes, Link Directories, my favorite type of site. We all use them, and we all need them. These are some of the most important sites on Neo, and have the shortest life span. For some, directory owning can be boring, but for others, it can be fun! A directory is, in simplist terms, a page of links. However, there are many tipes of directories. Pet directories, guide directories, graphic directories, or site directories. In order to run a directory, I feel you need to be determined to keep adding links, competitive because you should have the mindset that you are going to have the biggest directory in Neopets, and organized so that your links are easy to locate.

Difficulty Level:

4. Adding the links isn't the difficult part. Its finding them, and organizing them. Once you get past the stage of adding all of the popular sites, where are you going to find the rest? This is where you have to start searching through pages, clicking on affiliates, and scanning the boards. Organizing the links is also a difficult part. Make sure your links are in alphabetical order, and separated into scrolling columns so they are easy to see.

Maintenence Level:

9. If you are planning on being one of the biggest directories, you need to put in the hard work. You need to be listing sites like crazy. I've listed 100 sites a day a few times, which can take a long time. You will recieve alot of mail that you need to respond to, which means you need to be on everyday.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you're willing to keep your directory open, and put in the hard work and countless hours of listing sites, then directory owning is for you.

Successful Directories

Tips from Directory Owners/Experts

Do you have a tip?

Annamarie at Little Black Book - "Managing a directory is a LOT of work. Make sure you are prepared to dedicate the time and intensity necessary to make directory owning worthwhile. Listing sites is important, but make sure to have fun with it as well. If you do not enjoy your site, you will end up closing it or losing interest (I remember quite a few great directories that have closed in the last year alone - New Acadia, Converse Allstars, and Meepits are Love to name a few). Spend time thinking of new ideas that will make your page unique. One of the largest problems I have had with Little Black Book is helping it stand out in the crowd of large link directories. Always ask yourself: why should someone visit my site instead of someone elses? Be creative, stay determined, have fun, and do what you love."

Screenshots with Tips

None yet!

Premade Layouts

Overview

Okay, what site owner (or anyone, really) doesn't love a good premade layout? A premade site is where the owner posts coding for a layout that is available for anyone to use. These layouts can include petpages, userlookups, guild layouts, shop layouts, pet lookups, etc. These layouts can come in three different ways, graphic layouts, CSS layouts, or a combination of both. Make sure you have a few anchored layout styles, since those are what seem to be the trend nowadays. Premade layouts are a great business to get into, and you feel very accomplished when you come across a site using coding that you made!

Difficulty Level:

8. Owning a premade layouts site can be stressful. You're trying to get people to use your layouts, constantly make new layouts, and add something to your layouts to make them different from other sites'.

Maintenence Level:

8. You should be adding new premades as much as possible, but thats really all the maintenance you have to do.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you can code well, and have some new ideas or styles for premades, go ahead and make a site!

Successful Premade Layout Sites

Tips from Premades Owners/Experts

None Yet! Do you have a tip?

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other premades sites, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
This is a screenshot from Autumn Breezes, that shows an example of how you can organize your layouts. Sosu was brilliant with the idea of a preview box so that you can preview the layouts simply by clicking on their icon. This is much more convenient than having to drag the image to an address bar or having to copy and paste the code into your userinfo box and then clicking preview. I also like how the themes of the layouts are organized in the top navigation so that you can find what your looking for quickly and easily.

Requests

Overview

A requests site offers custom graphics, such as layouts, banners, buttons, etc. Most request sites offer either buttons, banners, or both. Of course, to have a popular request site, you need to offer extremely high quality graphics that people cannot make themselves, or that other request sites cannot even make. You should aim to have your own style to your graphics, so that people know exactly where they came from the second they see them. For example, Foomanshu layouts are identifiable right away. They just have a certain style and look to them that makes it easy to tell they were from Foomanshu. Stay original, and try to keep up with your requests as much as possible!

Make Sure: You leave the option for people to ask you to re-do graphics incase they don't like them or something doesn't look exactly the way you want. I've requested at button sites that won't redo graphics, and when the button I requested does not look good, they won't redo it and i'm stuck with it.

Difficulty Level:

9. You need to make sure you are fulfilling your requests as fast as possible, and you need to make sure that your graphics are high quality.

Maintenence Level:

9. You need to make sure you are completing your requests, and are online to answer questions and add new ones to the waiting list.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

If you can make high-quality graphics, and you have time to make ones for others frequently and in a short amount of time. Try to keep your waiting list open and cleared.

Successful Request Sites

Tips from Request Site Owners/Experts

None Yet! Do you have a tip?

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other request sites, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
None Yet!

Reviews

Overview

Review site owners can review anything from pet applications to guilds, but most that are around today only review sites. Most review sites have a criteria based on a first impression, layout, content, affiliations, link back buttons, grammar, and updates, and their grading scale is ot of 100 points so that its easy for the "reviewee" to know how well they did. Also, most review sites have atleast 2 or 3 different criteria, such as one focusing solely on layout, or another that only lists the pros/cons of a site. Rankings are also common in review sites nowadays. Make sure that you are not hypocritical with your reviews. For example, don't tell people that they have a horrible layout, if your site's layout is low quality. You need to be reasonable, i.e. don't be too harsh or too lenient. Be fair, and try not to be biased.

Difficulty Level:

8. Its alot of work, and sometimes its hard to catch some of the problems sites have.

Maintenence Level:

9. High-quality, helpful reviews will take time. Depending on how long you are online for, it should take 1-3 days. Therefore, you need to make sure you have the time to complete you reviews.

Useful Terms

None! Do you know any useful terms?

Recommended For You?

You must have a vast knowledge of all sites, so you can understand how to grade them, and why they do what they do, and also you must have alot of site experience in order to have a good eye for the good and bad things that the sites you are critiquing are doing.

Successful Review Sites

Tips from Review Site Owners/Experts

None Yet! Do you have a tip?

Screenshots with Tips

The purpose of this is to show you the good and the bad of other review sites, which will help you avoid mistakes with your own site.
None Yet!