Web Development War Story – Building a Popular Site Sure is Hard Work!
When I first started Namecake.com I foolishly thought It’d be relatively simple to grow the site into a popular destination and have hundreds of eager buyers looking over my domains.
I’d had some experience with running minisites and not only were they a doddle to look after some of them were receiving over 300 uniques a day. How much more difficult could a larger site that’s actually selling something useful be?
Well the answer is: Much more difficult!
Firstly there are the design and development issues. The first developer I signed up did a runner with the $1000 upfront fee I paid, which was very annoying. So I then had to find another one, at which time I was suspicious of everyone I spoke to. Thankfully I found a poor soul who was willing to work with me and who didn’t run away (by the end I think he wishes he had)
So with the developer secured the project was now on and they soon set to work. But It seems that the ideas I thought I had explained clearly hadn’t been understood and when “eventually” the final product was delivered it was a very different beast to what you see today.
Then the wrangling begun as to how the site should have looked and operated which resulted in more delays. Anyway we eventually got there and the site was ready. I loaded the names up, put on about fifty original and interesting articles and sat back and waited for the visitors to come. And come they did. The first week I had 9 visitors, the second week 4. Now I might be a little slow off the mark sometimes but an idea started germinating in my mind that waiting for people to visit my site probably wasn’t going to sell me many domains. The problem is that no one knew I was there and with tens of millions of sites all shouting for peoples attention, sitting mute in the corner was a bad strategy.
It was at this point that the really hard work started and I got involved in directory listings, Press releases, Article distribution, Link exchanges, blog posting, social bookmarking, etc…
But it doesn’t stop there, a website is like a needful child, you constantly have to nurture and develop it if you are to succeed.
Anyway I’m starting to get there now and visitor numbers are picking up nicely, but this doesn’t mean I can just sit back and reap what I’ve sown as web surfers are a finicky lot, so sadly there won’t be any chance for a rest.
Still it’s been a great experience and it’s true what they say, “you lean more from doing than you ever can from reading.” So the next site I tackle I’ll have a much better understanding of what’s ahead.
If you have any development war stories I’d very much like to hear them as I hate to think I’m suffering alone J
James
Totally agree James - RegFeeNames.com has taken only a few month to put together and didnt need developed but it has very stange traffic - Somedays we have 80+ UV and others 6UV.
I have spent alot of time pushing the site on NamePros.com and using the domain in all my comments on sites but I agree its alot harder than people may think.
Regards,
Robbie
Our business site is young, but some of our developed sites like celebritygossip.tv (nsfw) receive 1,000 visitors per day on average. Early on, godaddy shut the site down because we exceeded bandwith during the edison chen sex scandal and visitors flooded the site. Lesson learned; make sure you have a big enough server. It was difficult transferring all the data but the developers got it done quickly. Now were focusing on our business site and marketing our domain names. Happy new year
Great article, BUT AFTER
“It was at this point that the really hard work started and I got involved in directory listings, Press releases, Article distribution, Link exchanges, blog posting, social bookmarking, etc…
But it doesn’t stop there, a website is like a needful child, you constantly have to nurture and develop it if you are to succeed”
I was expecting an explanation as to exactly what you did, and exactly what running a website needs in terms of maintenance…
James, this is a gospel that I have preached so many times on my blog. And each and everytime, there is at least one person who tries their hardest to counteract. A business website is different fom a minisite. Development is hardwork. However it is worth the perseverance in the end.
LOL i sooooooooo know what you are talking about… when my wife started http://www.MysticBoard.com (started it as SunSigns.org becuase the domain name was just gathering dust) it was started as a hobby. i see her pleading with her friends to come visit this wonderful forum etc etc and i am pretty sure people blocked her from MSN/YAHOO Instant messengers back then. CUT 2… i enter the scene and want to help her get some traffic to her first site and so i think what will help … how, when, where, why, what… i cant spend too much and dont want to make it obvious to her. so i rack my brains… i am software guy… have been for 15 years (thought i havent written a line of code in almost 10 years). finally i hit upon the idea i have been looking for… I get a FREE software developed for the site - MB Free Numerology Software. and distribute it all over the net including download site such as Download.com and then one things leads to the other now she has her own development team and arguably one of the world’s largest Astrology, tarot, psychic, numerology, palmistry forums on the whole world wide web. Over 350 softwares in every conceivable category related to Astrology, tarot, psychic, numerology, palmistry - And this is the world’s largest such collection of softwares under one roof. and most of the softwares come in two versions… Online and Downloadable. i can go on and on but i guess you all get the picture. It’ll be 4 years come April and it has been hard journey… i have myself worked till 4 - 5 am at times for this project. but i cant begin to imagine the hours she has put in. but it has been worth every minute of it.
best of luck
Hi James - I am sorry to hear about your war wounds. As a Web developer myself, I have won clients from others who have had similar experiences.
A Web site of any form has a lot of moving parts and requires attention to detail from an experienced developer. Unfortunately anyone can- and does - hang a shingle and say they are a Web developer. And once the site is built that is not the end of the story, as there is the ongoing review and maintenance, not to mention SEO, SEM and ensuring it is in sync with your business.
I would recommend anyone looking to develop a Web site or to develop out their domains to look for someone experienced, and one that comes with references.
mp/m
Robbie - Good luck with your site. I’ll be putting much less into Namecake going forwards as i’ll be focusing on Lawyerz.com and L-A.com (i’m exhausted to think what i’ve got ahead of me.)
littledevil - i really like your site designs. 1000 uv a day is very nice. Not there yet with Namecake but hopefully soon.
Tom - I’m not very skilled when it comes to development so anything tricky i have my webmaster take care of. This guy is excellent and takes care of anything and everything technical - leaving the writing and marketing to me. I’ll go into the nitty gritty in another post - but don’t let that put you off. Building a site is both addictive and very rewarding.
BookMarc - Wow - i’ve checked mysticboard out - very nice site and congratulations on your success there. I see ther have been over 850,000 downloads of your divination software. Very impressive. You’ve actually given me some ideas for my next projects, as i think blog writing can only provide so much value, software, games, scripts seem to be the way to get good backlinks and attract visitors in their droves.
It would be great if you could expand a bit on the software you had created and what it’s purpose was and also the strategy behind it.
Mike - the wounds are healing now - but now i’m about to go over the top again. Namecake has been a great site to learn on, but now i’m ready for slightly more complex challenges.
I won’t make the same mistakes this time around.
>> i’ve checked mysticboard out - very nice site
>> and congratulations on your success there.
Thank you. the credit all goes to the wife. i just lit a small little spark.
>> I see ther have been over 850,000 downloads
>> of your divination software. Very impressive.
the figure is actually closer to 2.25 million but that another story why the count showing on the site isnt perfect.
>> You’ve actually given me some ideas for my
>> next projects, as i think blog writing can
>> only provide so much value, software, games,
>> scripts seem to be the way to get good backlinks
>> and attract visitors in their droves.
Giving you all the “idea”… was my reason why i posted. i’ll be honest, i dont read blogs - let alone comment on them. i read a few lines of your post on DNF and came here. your this post reminded me so much on my wife’s struggle. people have to start thinking out of the box. directory listings, Press releases, Article distribution, blog posting, social bookmarking et al. are good for getting backlinks but what good are the back links without traffic? Yes, we also do them all but that’s not our bread and butter. We dont care shit about alexa ranking, google PR and the likes. I own a site which ranks 3500 on alexa but nets me less than $100 after i pay for the server… you get what i mean?
>> It would be great if you could expand a bit on
>> the software you had created and what it’s purpose
>> was and also the strategy behind it.
the goal was simple… to me #1 in some cases we are (world’s lagrest divination/mystic software portfolio, the world’s largest Mystic forum with over 30k members) and in some we are not (largest astrology, tarot site)… but we will get there. Its very very hard but we know what we want and we built a team to get us there.
I would like to believe that today there is less than 5% esoteric related search term on the “MB” doesnt figure. you’ll find us or you’ll find one of the hundreds of sites which list our softwares. I wont say we always figure in the top 20 but we are there. Go ahead and try the wildest esoteric search term you can come up with.
Anyways, getting back to the point these four years have been a learning experience. After creating one software we realized there was a gap and we needed to create more softwares to fill those gaps… so the second software “MB Free Tarot Reading Software” was created and then the next and then one more… the rest is history as they say… today we have 350 live and 105 in the works.
We also launched co-branding and full branding of softwares for those who would like to have our softwares on their site along with their own name. co-branding - this would help drive traffic to their sites for offer free softwares and build up their good will amongst their users when the users saw their website name within the software. co-branding now cost $20 (before it was free) full branding is like having your own software with only your name / web site name and link on it.
We realized it not only earned us money from google ads but a few people wanted to donate because the softwares were good. and of course the traffic kept inching upwards… some came from SE due to the content of the forum, some came from software, some came links.
We also realized that people download the software after software and dont bother to show up on the forum. so we restored to locking it till you register and post. Today, our softwares are no longer free as they used to be… instead they became POSTWARE. you post on the forum to get unlock keys or you donate to help the forum. so we still get the traffic from thousands of downloads a day and at the same time grow the forum.
We also realized that some people maybe mad at us for making the softwares postware so for people who could not pay or did not have time to post on the forum we developed all the softwares to work online (http://www.mysticboard.com/mysticscripts/) with option to put the mystic script on your site for free … making it more interactive and with over a 100 scripts to choose from the sky was the limit.
the ultimate strategy is that if you think Astrology, tarot, psychic or anything else esoteric - Then think Mystic Board. but we have a long way to go yet………..
can’t say more at this point but i hope the above shows thats there are many non-conventional ways to get traffic. Best Of Luck.
namecake - thanks. we’re finally on focusing on our business site to start selling some of our domains. we don’t own premiums and it took us awhile after getting started to realize how much garbage we owned. Now we’re focusing on our core semi premium names like fieldsales.com, limitededitionbooks.com and more. but driving traffic to a business site, especially when we don’t blog is a challenge. our sites like celebritygossip.tv are alot easier, but unfortunately we’re losing on search engine results because of the .tv although the site still gets 1,000 plus per day. but tough to monetize adult/celebrity sites. anyway, we’re working on studentloancenter.com and pocketpair.com to develop, so if you ever wanna bounce ideas shoot us an email. we’d love to hear your thoughts and would be happy to provide input on lawyerz.com.
One of the key learnings for me was to build around a core of evergreen content and this minimized the pain to a large extent. Each one though has its own “personality” and some need more attention than others. It is like raising a kid - some will be successful and well behaving, others require constant nudging in the right direction.
Bookmarc - thanks for your superb response - again you have given some excellent advice. I’d be interested to see your site that is ranked 3500 in Alexa. Anyway good luck with your.
littledevil - i’ve sent you a mail
barry - mine are a demanding bunch - all of them seem to need attention.
Good article and I can definately relate. I am 3 weeks into the launch of http://teenjobscene.com which is a job board for teenss. I can’t seem to get past the 100 per day hurdle. I am doing just what you suggested, article marketing, sig links on dp, name pros, teen sites, and blogging are my top 2 techniques. I will keep plugging away..