I recently spent some time working on the development of one of my key word domains. I started by picking up the name after hearing the topic discussed over a period of weeks among my wife and her friends. Seeing that there was interest here, I thought it might make a good directory site so I did some searching and found a memorable, generic name that fit the niche. I invested a couple of weeks kicking around different logo concepts and after much input from the target demographic, I selected a final logo.
At the same time, I spent hours researching the possible categories, parent companies, individuals, related products, ideas, etc. I then worked out the details of how the site would work, how I planned to promote it, possible articles to include and what the break even point would require. Still looking promising, I invested some more time and money into a layout concept for the site. At this point, I asked myself the key question, “Is this where I want to spend my time?”
The answer was a clear “no.” While I think the idea is a good one with a great market demographic, I am not ready to invest the time required to get this off the ground and running. I don’t have a lot of personal passion around this particular topic (it’s really more of a women’s product). I’m not saying that I won’t pick this up again at some point in the future, but time is precious. I have other ideas and projects where I would prefer to spend my time right now. Another option is to possibly sell the name and logo.
Should I have thought this through before I started and saved myself some money? Probably. But I made the decision and the point that I think was best. I started moving forward and reassessed the situation as I did. I didn’t feel committed to the project to the point where there was no turning back, that could have been a bigger loss. I think it was the best decision for the movement. The time and money invested can still be leveraged in the future if I chose to pick it up again. Developing a site with passion far out weighs the “work” involved in a site developed for the hopes of profit only.
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/4649947/
1 comment
I was doing the same thing you were, kicking the bucket around, doing market research and putting my heart and soul into making the most perfect site. Only to realize, why? What a big waste of time.
Want my advice? Make 3 types of templates. Mini Site. Mini Shop. Directory.
Epik has a model of acquire, develop, sell. (simple, I know)
Attila has a business model of create pages, insert articles, modify logo. upload site, submit to search engines, make 25 back links and within 3 hours, you are done. Within 3-4 weeks, you should start noticing decent amount of search engine traffic.
Outsource the tedious tasks like article writing.