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After A Year, I Guess a Few Duds Are to be Expected
August 04, 2005
I'm procrastinating as usual, and was doing some catch-up browsing through blogs I like to read as regularly as I can remember to. Kathy over at Guru Gazette has a post up at Guru Gazette on letting go of sites that aren't working which really suits my own thought processes at the moment.
In her usual well-written, interesting way, she talks about niche blogs that she had set up a while ago, and trying to let go of the ones that just don't work for her. Most of these blogs were set up based on monetizing the topic, rather than things that interest her, and now she's considering setting up blogs on topics she does find interesting.
I am actually going through this very same process right now - both in terms of looking at sites I already have up and running, and sites that I have on my to-do list.
I've been building sites now for almost a year, so a lot of domain names are coming up for renewal. I had a tendency a while back to grab domain names as ideas hit me - I don't do that anymore, thankfully (my poor credit card is very appreciative of this new tactic, too). The renewal decision for most of those domain names was fairly easy.
I do, however, have a handful of domain names that recently came up for renewal that I'm actually using. And some of these are sites that I would definitely call duds. I classify a site of mine as a "dud" if (1) it makes less than ten dollars a month and (2) it isn't any fun. I have lots of fun sites that don't make me anything, and I'm keeping them ... well, because they're fun, of course!
But the dilemma was, what to do with the sites that aren't fun, and don't make a lot of money?
The thing is, just like Kathy, these dud sites of mine are always on a topic that has monetizing potential.
Luckily, GoDaddy sent me a nice promo code, and I decided to renew these duds. I'll keep the sites up, but what I'm thinking is, sooner or later I'll get the perfect idea for one of them, then I can go in and change the content, and since these sites are already indexed, maybe I won't run into any sandbox problems. It's not like I have a ton of dud sites, so it's not costing me a lot to renew and just let them sit there.
But I have one site that is very much like Kathy's general debt site. I find it absolutely boring. It's run using blog software, and it's got about 90 pages on it so far. Since it's in a high money area, the Adsense clicks are worth a nice bit. So here's what happens with this site. I've gotten to the point where I only add material once a week. When the time comes to add more content, I'm really dragging my feet.
(Have I mentioned, the topic is really really boring?)
And then, inevitably what happens is, I'll get a few clicks and I'll look at the amount and next thing you know, I'm scurrying to add more pages (now you see how I've managed to put those 90 pages up, right?).
This site is really hard for me to let go of. I wouldn't mind just leaving it sitting there, merrily attracting its few clicks a month, except that when I see those clicks, I just can't help myself. I've just got to go in and add more content whenever that happens.
Well, enough rambling about duds. I'm also developing a few new blogging sites, and I've decided that any new niche blogs I put up have to fit two criteria: the topics have to have some money-making potential and I have to find them interesting.
Unfortunately, that actually doesn't narrow things down too much.
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Posted by BJ at 03:06 PM in Niche Marketing | Permalink
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Comments
I think every webmaster has the same issues. The problem I find is when do you decide it's a dud and not worth yuor time.
Maybe in a months time the site will take off?
What to do. I have just renewed my main domain for 2 years. I guess I just can't let go, all that work.
Posted by: Allan Burns | Aug 5, 2005 2:54:18 AM
I have some sites I have no interest in, and even if they were making 20 bucks per click, I don't think I could convince myself to add more content. I'm terribly lazy when it comes to uninteresting (to me) topics.
Have you thought about selling your unwanted sites? Maybe you could set up a marketplace where abandoned and unloved sites could be sold for the Google PR and pages indexed value... whatever that might be.
On the other hand, maybe there already is a site like that, and I've been too lazy to find it.
Posted by: Wendy | Aug 9, 2005 11:01:48 PM
Surfed in to your blog through a link on another blog. Just wanted to say hi. I've seen you before on the SSWT forum. :)
Posted by: Hock | Aug 10, 2005 7:52:07 AM
