I'm thinking about designing a website to help students with their academic research and writing.

What do you think constitutes a good essay website? Should it be simple and only have relevant links (like: Home, About us, Contact us, Privacy, Faqs, TOS) or it should also have a blog or articles? Do you think students actually read these articles or blog posts? It looks like it's a hard job to maintain a blog and write posts..

Is a flashy website better or it should be very simple? What do students consider a good academic research and writing website? Are there any preferred font or background colors, should there be a lot of graphics? Should I put some youtube videos or audio message? How about live chat - is it required?

So how much does it cost to create a professional website for a freelance writer? A few simple pages, contact form, maybe a blog too.

Update: Hm, I think I'll drop the idea of building an essay website. There's too much competition in that area... :(. I cannot afford to build 100 essay writing sites and that's what most businesses do to rank well... It's not the design issue, but promotion and "SEO" aspect issues. Developing a website is one thing but bringing visitors to the website is another (and much more complex and time-consuming) thing.....

Oh well, maybe I'll start a blog or something instead :).

Also, did I make a mistake with my domain name? (I want to start my own essay site, and I registered my domain as .info, it was the only way I could get that particular name.)