I plan to start my own website what is the best advice you guys can give me on how to make sure its successful?

[Jake]

"start my own website" is rather vague, a website is a tool used as part of a business, you don't mention if it will be for selling products or services and affiliate marketing site or a "publication" that would be selling ad space.

It's common to start out by creating a blog based publication in hopes of eventually getting the search engineer ranking and traffic that can make it practical. It can require a long term investment to see profits from such a site, it might be wise to defer monetizing until it develops a following, writing about a subject you have a passion for can help one stay motivated for the month it can take to build up such a site, the ability to write engaging full length (500+ word) articles may be the most important skill, though writing can be outsourced.