In my questionnaire I also asked, "What are the best and worst things about having a personal homepage?" I asked for the best because I think that no matter what the reasons are for putting up a personal homepage, people are often surprised at unexpected good things that comes from having a one.
I asked for the worst because I know that although personal homepages are often a labor of love on the part of the individual, there are some real problems that come with having a personal homepage.
Here are the best things about having a personal homepage:
33 % Meeting new people and sharing common interests
30 % Positive feedback
11 % Outlet for personal/creative expression/self-identity
9 % Contributed to being hired for a job, making professional contacts
6 % Other
4 % Created something you're proud of
4 % Increasing skills (web design, HTML skills)
3 % It's cool

I figured meeting new people with a shared interest would be right up there, but what I didn't count on was how many people are getting positive feedback. Creating a personal homepage can be lonely work; it's nice to hear from others when they think you're doing a good job, or when they share some part of their life with you because of your personal homepage. Even more inspiring are the emails where people say that you have affected their lives by what you have said within your PH.


Here are the worst things about having a personal homepage:
37 % Updating personal homepage (lack of time, feel guilty when not updated)
23 % Negative feedback (through email or guestbook entries)
15 % SPAM
10 % No negative experience
3 % Picking unsatisfactory ISP
3 % Being cyberstalked
3 % Not getting enough hits
3 % Loss of privacy
1 % Frustration because can't figure out how to do something (technology/webpage)
1 % Plagiarism
2 % Hacking into account

What surprised me here was how many people said the worst thing about having a PH was the updating of it. Updating is a time-consuming chunk of maintaining a PH and should always be taken into consideration when creating a new webpage.
And surprise, surprise on the growing number of people getting fed up with SPAM. Personally, I think it's time to form a posse and kick a little Spam butt around the Web. And I don't want to have to put "Remove" in some header to do it.
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