Anyone Developing at the moment?

[max99x]

Sometimes you need to know when to walk away and stop wasting your time. Not sure if anyone knew this site but for me it took booking last minute flights to a new level. There's a lot of work in the product, more than any of us could ever dream of pulling off yet they walked away from it ...

http://www.b-reel.com/projects/digital/case/401/escape-flight/

Check out the video at the bottom for a better idea of what it was about.

Nice idea, thing is they may have walked away for various reasons, plus sometimes its about execution and team involved rather than the actual idea, but yes knowing when to walk away is very important.

Take Fab.com for example, it built up a massive team, huge investment and at one point was valued at $1 billion, yet sold recently for just $15 mil (Rise & Fall of Fab.com - nice read

 

[martin-s]

Martin, you seem to have a core product i.e. the camping site but then lots of other thin affiliate sites. I presume your camping site is successful so can I ask, is there a reason you still pursue these other sites rather than putting all the effort into the main one.

I don't other than a hobby or break from the norm - I enjoy creating new businesses when I think they'll fly. I haven't touched the Lake Garda site since Christmas though.

What other thin affiliate sites do you think I have out of interest?

You'll notice I'm not talking about the camping site in amongst all of this and there's a reason for that which will become clear shortly!

 

[Retired_Member38]

That's great. But there is one thing I don't understand, if you don't like techy stuff, why are you involved with domains and websites?

The need to eat or pay rent?

 

[Systreg]

@ Martin-s, I don't care what the audience might like, they can look at what they're given or hit the back button like I do lol

@ BeachLife, I'm not involved with sites and there's nothing techy about registering a domain, which are mostly for selling, not for making sites with. I have very few working sites, most are old or abandoned. When I say I don't like techy stuff, I mean coding and the like.

 

[SF]

Hi Monkey,

Do you know if adding a SSL certificate also improves ranking? I heard that it does these days as google favour it as your website is all safe and secure.

Ive got a design team out of manchester currently building my new company website, where i can sell names from.

Its all custom code full width pages as thats why my design guys said would be best these days to fit all browsers.

Its costing around £1500 + £600 coding.

 

[Murray]

Ive got a design team out of manchester currently building my new company website, where i can sell names from.

Its costing around £1500 + £600 coding.

£2100 for a site to list your domains?

 

[martin-s]

I found a list of sites on the camping site.

None of those are ours. When I bought the Campsites UK network, I left all of those with the old owners

 

[SF]

£2100 for a site to list your domains?

Yes I know Murray but it will be really nice looking and clean and fast to use.

It will require no updates after being built as the code does all the work for me.

I was never updating my site with new names and removing sold names so it was a real pain, ive started from stratch and had everything hand coded.

 

[max99x]

Yes I know Murray but it will be really nice looking and clean and fast to use.

It will require no updates after being built as the code does all the work for me.

I was never updating my site with new names and removing sold names so it was a real pain, ive started from stratch and had everything hand coded.

Sounds quite a fair amount to be honest if it's nicely designed, coded well, saves you time etc.

 

[SF]

Sounds quite a fair amount to be honest if it's nicely designed, coded well, saves you time etc.

Hi Max,

Yes, and also years ago I dropped a bollock because i registered my old co.uk but left the .com for a few weeks and some nugget took it and squatted ever since and I was loosing traffic I am sure.

This time, I have secured the .com and the co.uk and .uk and they are catchy domain related names, so now I have secured all these I am now on with the website, ive had logo done which is really nice and clean.

My designer out of manchester has done so amazing brand work and has totally opposite ideas for the site I never even thought about but looking at his point of view it will be better for the user which he says is most important.

I am about 2 months away from launch.

 

[Systreg]

@ AssetDomains, I found this responsive theme and have installed it on the new site I'm making:

http://themehorse.com/preview/interface/

There's an options that allows you to make it a narrow layout, rather than full screen wide layout which I dislike.

On a WP theme I had ages ago, it was a right hassle removing the image slider, so I ended up having a black box on the page that wouldn't go away, that was another thing that put me of themes with images/sliders. On this theme you just tick a box to disable sliders, done, and no black box on the page where the image would go, so I'll have a play around with this and see what happens

 

[bonusmedia]

I think without a bit more depth to it you're running the risk of falling foul of the quality rater docs (leaked copy here).

Personally I'd probably keep all the affil links out of it until you were comfortable with how it was content wise. As you're losing no income while it has little traffic anyway surely?

I know a lot of people prefer to get sites ranked first and then monetize later but I don't see any need for the 'bait and switch', it's just quicker and easier to do it as we go.

You may be right, but I don't view it as high risk. If it was in a highly competitive / spammy market I would want a more complete 'product' before going live but for this we're happy to get the basics up and running and build from there. By the time we start active promotion it will have a lot more content.

I do think anything that involves gaming the system is not going to work in the long term. We're looking for steady growth over quick wins.

For critical stuff of course you would want to plan, execute and test thoroughly but at this level it's much quicker and easier to just get started and iterate rapidly, it's also useful learning experience for my brother

Interesting to note that it went straight in at #6 for 'flying lessons' in Bing/Yahoo - I find they still put a lot of weight on EMDs. It may only be a 10% share of search but it's still nice to have.

 

[bonusmedia]

£2100 for a site to list your domains?

Whether that's expensive probably depends on the quality of your domain portfolio and the time and effort saved down the line

 

[bonusmedia]

You have to credit accelerator for at least posting his site.

Here's an unfinished site I've been working on - on and off - for a couple of months. It needs a whole lot more content still and I'm yet to integrate the accommodation details (that's the earning element), but I'm happy to put my head out of the trenches if anyone wants to give feedback.

Lake Garda Holidays co/uk

A couple of points to bear in mind:

1) This site is unfinished because it's well down my list of priorities right now.
2) Robots is set to disallow all currently, because I have no interest in any traffic until I am ready.

Thoughts?

This looks great, very clean, simple and intuitive and it has the luxury feel that people want from high end holidays.

I also think it's a great size of niche to go after, not so competitive that it will take huge resources to rank, you can realistically become an authority on the subject and most content will be evergreen.

Also plenty of relevant affiliate programs available and a high value product targetting customers with money - always helps.

Can't remember where I read this but it seems sensible - when the middle class is getting squeezed the money is in luxuries for the rich and cheap products for the poor.

 

[accelerator]

Can't remember where I read this but it seems sensible - when the middle class is getting squeezed the money is in luxuries for the rich and cheap products for the poor.

Now is a very good time to be targetting the luxury sector. Monetary policy has created a rich elite. They will be increasingly keen to spend money rather than leave it as cash, because the well-informed will know that there could be some major issues coming up regarding holding cash. Look what is happening in the art and classic car market, business is brisk because those with a lot of cash want to diversify.

I am thinking of starting a site promoting luxury goods. However, I haven't taken the final decision yet, because I have very modest tastes myself so I'm not sure whether I could cope with the extravagance!!

Rgds

 

[max99x]

I am thinking of starting a site promoting luxury goods. However, I haven't taken the final decision yet, because I have very modest tastes myself so I'm not sure whether I could cope with the extravagance!!

Rgds

I reckon you'll do really well with a site design like you have selling luxury products

 

[accelerator]

I reckon you'll do really well with a site design like you have selling luxury products

I would probably use a new site design with the latest design standards if I did a luxury site. That said, the main reason to update would be for technical maintenance reasons as opposed to design reasons.

Rgds

 

[Systreg]

I found this responsive theme and have installed it on the new site I'm making:

http://themehorse.com/preview/interface/

What a waste of time that theme was, I've been working on it, I happened to look at the source code last night and didn't see the Google Analytics code or StatCounter code, and there's nowhere to add it that I can find on this theme. I had a look at the support forum for the theme and they don't allow analytics code in the free version, ffs, that's so basic , now I have to find another theme and start again.

 

[Admin]

What a waste of time that theme was, I've been working on it, I happened to look at the source code last night and didn't see the Google Analytics code or StatCounter code, and there's nowhere to add it that I can find on this theme. I had a look at the support forum for the theme and they don't allow analytics code in the free version, ffs, that's so basic , now I have to find another theme and start again.

Can't you just edit the theme PHP page and add it manually?

 

[Systreg]

@ Admin, on their forum, there was a post about where to add analytics, the person who made the theme said it can't be added anywhere, and the person asking would need to buy the pro version or hire a programmer to do it.