My planning from scratch:
- Have an idea for a topic
- Do some keyword research
- Buy a domain
- Create a simple but appealing design
- Creat on topic content (remembering the keyword research)
- Link it from my other mainstream sites
- Wait to be indexed / get PR
- Ask for link trades on mainstream webmaster boards
- Add content every few weeks
Unfortunately I never follow my own plans, and I have never done all those steps in order. I've found to miss one step is to kill the whole plan. You can vary everything, but to target the wrong keywords, or not have inbound links will kill it for sure.