While I was at TRAFFIC this past week I had a chance to talk with a ton of people, many that I knew, and also many new faces that I met for the first time. I think one of the most common questions I was asked was what to think about when it comes to development. Of course with a beer in my hand I could go on with a list much longer than three, but it’s still early here and I don’t think my liver can take any more beer so I’ll stick to three things for this post:
- Are You Going To Be The Developer Or Are You Going To Pay A Developer? It’s important to decide whether you’ll be spending your time or your money building out a domain. Time is money so these are one in the same in many cases but I find that many new investors have a lot more time than money in which case you might be spending your nights and weekends on the project.
- Know Your Market. Look at who is on the first page of Google for the terms you want to rank well for and make sure you feel like there’s a chance you could outrank them. Sorry but if Best Buy and Amazon dominate the above-the-fold space your site probably isn’t going to stand a chance unless you have a really really big budget, which you don’t.
- You Need More Than Just Content. I said this during the panel I was on at TRAFFIC and I think it is a really important point. The whole idea that you can just build a site with a bunch of articles and watch the money come rolling in has pretty much gone away. Do something useful, provide a service, add something unique but do more than just writing general information articles about your subject, Wikipedia has you beat along with eHow and a zillion other sites.
As always feel free to add your own items to the list, comment on any of mine, or just say what’s on your mind!
