I can understand why, too. Everyone, by intuition, tends to imitate what’s successful, and what has already worked for others. It’s human nature. Webmasters, in particular, tend to copy others. In many cases, they literally copy others, word for word, but even in less extreme cases, it’s not hard to see that certain ideas tend to proliferate.

Now, it’s okay to model your website after ones you see, but what happens when you’re essentially a copy of what everyone else is doing? It makes your promotional efforts that much harder. When your website is something that everyone feels “they’ve seen before”, it lends to a sense of boredom, when you probably were hoping people would have a sense of excitement. If people are so bored they hit the “back” button, you may be in real trouble.

Everyday people launch derivative websites into an uncaring world. The indifference of the outside world will make your job of internet marketing that much harder. When people figure you’re pushing crap product, they generally will recoil at the idea of helping you market. If you could get people to actually somehow like your website, your job gets simpler.

Customizing a template is a step in the right direction. But frankly, just downloading a CMS and launching a website just LIKE all the others out there, has to give make you concerned. How are you different? What’s unique enough about your website to make people become evangelists for you. You could always try and win on customer service and price, but if your execution was more interesting, it would make your whole online business function better. How many people have this type of integrated logic built in upfront when they start websites? Generally not people who are inexperienced.

Even if you decide to enter the competition with a similar website, be original with your actions. Certainly you can customize the appearance of a VBulletin Forum, or a WordPress Blog, but the biggest boost to your website’s esteem will come from some original feature that isn’t offered by others. It could be a contest, it could be specific content, or progammed tools. The “what” doesn’t matter, but the fact that your certain something is truly yours can make a big difference in the end.