You may want to have a website so that you can group together individual items in one convenient place—such as photographs, videos, MP3s, PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and so forth.
Using a website as a collection or archive is a very smart idea. You can delivery other people a special service by pulling together your collection or archive because your efforts can lead directly to being the first or only way others get to know about and enjoy what you are presenting online. If you have exclusive rights to material that otherwise would never be known about or seen by other people, by presenting that in a collection or archive online, you can make a significant contribution to other people’s lives.
Setting up a website as a collection or archive but not following up by promoting the existence of that website to other people is the equivalent of having special and valuable information, but never telling anyone about what you have. This usually means that you must pay somebody to promote your website.
You may have thought that if you spent time and money to get a website that you would not have to spend any more time or money beyond that initial investment. Sorry, but real life in the business world of the Internet does not work that way at all.
Either you have to pay for advertising in one or more of the mainstream media channels (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, etc.), or you will have to pay for marketing your website using the Internet. Either way, you will have to pay money to somebody, or, you will have to spend your own time (which is worth money).
The honest truth is that there is no way to avoid this additional expenditure of money for promoting the existence of your website above and beyond the initial investment to get your website in the first place.
This is why I recommend getting a website that ATTRACTS VISITORS as part of why it exists. You would be wise to use a website as an online collection or archive, but as I have shown here today, you are only doing one portion of the work of setting up a website unless your website is built to promote itself to your target audiences actively and on a full-time basis.
Remember: No matter how unique and special your online collection or archive may certainly be, unless that website is actively promoting itself on a full-time basis, that website may end up being a well-kept secret and very little else.