Ten general tips that will help you ensure that you are a competent webmaster.
1) Have a Purpose or Objective
As a webmaster, you must have a clear and effective goal for your website. It could be as simple as providing stock photography, writing a must-read blog about your favorite topic(s), or developing some sort of product or web service. The purpose or "mission" that you set out on in the beginning of your website is what should act as your motivation, inspiration, and driving force in producing a successful website. Such a goal or objective is also the perspective that you can use to prioritize your work in creating the website. It can help you avoid wasting time in petty projects that are not entirely what you're website is about.
2) Stay Dedicated, Have a passion for what you do or what you aim to do.
When choosing the objective for your website, make it something that you are truly passionate about. The benefits of being passionate about what your site is about include that you won't find it as "work" to get things done for the site and that you will be willing to invest more time and resources (both physical and mental) than you would if you labeled the site simply as a "project." Dedication to your site can help you in times of procrastination and of lack of inspiration.
But what if you don't think you have passion for something? Well, think about it, why are you reading this article? Why are you choosing to become a webmaster (if you aren't one already)? Something, whatever it is, be it just curiosity, an interest in getting something done, or a want in making your idea come to form, is what is motivating you. Seize on that and take it to its limits, and see how far you can go with it.
3) Innovate, Innovate, Innovate
Whether or not you think your website has some form of competition or not, it is imperative that you subject yourself to nonconformity when it it comes to building and judging your own website. As it is in the world of business, a good webmaster is a good innovator. If you have an idea, not only challenge the idea, but look at it through different perspectives by looking for better ways to implement such an idea. You must always see room for improvement in everything your site does, and as a result, your site will dramatically improve in the long run.
4) Don't Copy or Mimic Another Site or Another Webmaster
To be successful is to be a leader in some way. As a webmaster do you consider yourself as a leader, or a follower? This ties in directly to #3.
5) Actively Engage with your Audience & Confront Negative Feedback
Whether your audience is just a visitor, an occasional reader, or a potential customer, you can learn learn a lot by interacting with them. Ask for their opinions not just on any changes to the site, but also on certain concerns or issues relating to your site or something your audience would be interested in. You could potentially discuss opinions from your visitors with new ideas that may change the site or about the quality of a feature provided by the website. What this allows you to do is it gives you the opportunity to learn about the faults of your website, allowing you to address these faults to better the website overall. Ignoring or failing to act on negative feedback can be seriously harmful for the success of your website.
6) It helps to be a Perfectionist (to a certain extent)
If you want to be a successful webmaster, should you be a perfectionist? It certainly helps. You must have an eye for detail to ensure that you do not do a sloppy job in developing your website. It will allow you to more willingly focus on fixing past mistakes or imperfections. As long as perfectionism isn't taken to an extreme (spending hours on minute details, for example) it can be an effective tool in improving your website.
7) Stay Organized
As a webmaster you must stay organized in many different levels. In general, of course, you must learn to manage well the amount of time you are willing to invest in developing and running your website. You also must prioritize well your projects by relative importance towards your website's goal or objective.
8) Plan Ahead
This goes hand-in-hand with staying organized. You should plan ahead the long-term goals of your website. It also helps to place various benchmarks in place for where you hope your website to be by a certain date. It could have a similar effect to New Years resolutions in that it adds a sense of urgency for you to get things done. It also helps greatly to plan ahead in the short run if you are ever feeling overwhelmed.
9) Don't just "Test Drive" your Website. Use it Actively as any Visitor Would!
This is especially important in the world of programming, but this also equally important for you the webmaster to repeatedly use your website in the perspective of any random visitor visiting your site. The benefits of this are that you can more easily understand what a visitor might think of your site or an aspect of it and that you can easily adjust your website to better benefit you and your visitors as they visit your site.
10) Get to Work!
An amazing website isn't going to make itself--and even less overnight. Essentially, the point of you having a website means that you are willing to spend time working on it, of course. You don't necessarily have to work on every aspect of the site itself (such as the design, the code, etc.), but you must still ensure that your website doesn't stray too far from it's set goal or objective as described in #1. Good luck!
