If you intend on doing something sandbox-y you really need to be wary of the options your players are going to want.
Do you plan on doing something Golarion based? If so, make sure your players know it, and know to make their characters appropriately.
Home brew game worlds offer an infinite amount of more freedom, but also an infinite amount of more work.
If you really want a good way to look at things, the Game Masters Guide has a lot of really good stuff in it, I especially like the sections on linear and non linear stories and events, there are also sections on dungeon crafting as well.
I also recommend checking out the downtime stuff from Ultimate Campaign, or at least otherwise have it available to check out on the fly.
I keep it simple and invest a lot of detail in local places, but it depends on what your group's in the mood for. Do they want combat, intrigue, exploration?
I'm trying to make a small corner of a homebrew world interesting enough that they don't want to leave it. You'll have more luck with that approach if they're low level, though, as a small group of goblin raiders or a necromancer with bloody skeleton goats and a bulldog familiar (that likes to gnaw on his creations when he's not looking) are credible threats and take a lot less time to put together.
I started my group off in a tavern purposefully, and tried to salt the place with enough colorful characters and detail that they didn't want to leave it. Its worked, and they now consider the place home base, even going so far as to defend it when the town was raided by a local tribe of hostile goblins. Some of that might have to do with my being a pretty good character actor, though, and the party loving "Mama Bliss", the half orc tavern owner/torch singer.
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Start off at level 1 - it's easier to design encounters for low-level PCs. If the campaign goes on it will allow you to get plenty of practice coming up with interesting challenges and you will "level" as a GM, so to speak.
Keep your storylines and plots relatively simple, especially at the beginning.
Don't be afraid to drop random vague hints and details about things that you haven't even planned or written. See wich ones the players focus on and then develop those ideas. A disappearing village, a mysterious death, a raided caravan, an abandoned tower... just vague rumors and obscure details. Then when the players start off in a particular direction, "fill-in" the territory ahead of them.
Having a VERY general outline of what your game world looks like will help. Mountains to the west, river to the south, forest to the north. There's a big lake over that-a-way. The capital is north and the farmland is south, etc. No need for detail until the PCs decide to go there.
I'd do this the other way. Start with an idea for a campaign, like knights with a quest, or defend the people vs. the hobgoblins...
Then share that with the players, so that you get a party of people inclined to cooperate, and not just a bunch of characters who have no earthly reason to cooperate.
Then start looking for resources. Why bother writing everything yourself? No reason for that. Adapt what's already there instead.
And start reading the gaming blogs. I recommend Gnome Stew and the Alexandrian to start.
Resources I love:
Gamemastery Guide - all manner of ideas as well as terrain, environment and even chase rules here
d20PFSRD- same as above, with a lot of 3rd party goodness starting to appear and fill in gaps or expand things from the Paizo sources
Alluria Publishing's Cerulean Seas - Underwater Goodness
Fire As She Bears - Above water, ship stuff
Companions of the Firmament - Aerial rules. My group has a strix, a beastmorph alchemist, and a sky druid. They're all going to be airborne by level 6 at the latest, so this is proving very helpful.
The Very Last Book of Mounted Combat - Mounts and cavalier-y goodness. The group I GM for and the main group I play feature mounts and animal companions, so this is helpful. Its also by Wolfsnap, who posted above.
Other stuff:
Zombie Sky Press - Their 2 books on Incantations are pretty cool and I'm adding them to our campaign rules. Its adapted from the Incantations stuff from Unearthed Arcana, and those rules are available for free on the d20srd
Worldbuilding goodness - Open Design's guides, Expeditious Retreat's Magical Society guides. If you're wanting to build a homebrew world, these are very helpful.
Raging Swan puts out all manner of GM aids, that I've found very useful, too.