Turning a corner with my web directory: a change in focus and attitude
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Background: I’ve been launching and promoting Stairway to Devon, a Web 2.0 Devon directory, which promotes arts and environmental concerns alongside general clubs, blogs and business listings. Things had been through a stressful and stormy patch, but I think these few days in the diary mark a turning point, during which my attitude changed and became tougher.
Click this link to view all posts about launching the directory
28/9 Drafted a letter to the school asking for a similar business partnership (to my local competition), but then held back, thinking, firstly, what do I want to do with the front page, secondly, is the site stable enough yet, and thirdly, do I really want to be tied into a relationship with the school that could require a lot more from me when the site isn’t even making money yet.
Created a couple more e-cards and sorted out the php files again as they seemed to be not quite doing what I wanted again. Noticed the ‘Highlight Code’ Javascript buttons on the Link to us page has stopped working again - very aggravating. I can’t believe the capacity of things on this site to just go wrong all by themselves.
Spent more time doing lots of work on the B and B website instead - it’s paying work for other people, with deadlines and so on.
29/9 Saturday. We were offered a TV on freecycle, so we went to Exeter to fetch it. It turned out to be too big, but I also put my last few cards and postcards around Exeter and spent some time with the kids in the process. Here’s where the cards went:
1) One in a very busy newsagents window in Exeter St Thomas for 4 weeks - the most expensive yet at 4 pounds for a month but at least I got a receipt for this one.
2) Business card and postcard in Herbies vegetarian restaurant, where we also had a very nice lunch.
3) Business cards on the counter of the art materials shop on South Street. Nice chap was very patient considering I was standing there holding a loud squirming toddler.
4) Last few went to the arts centre.
Devonwoollies, who I had spoken to at the craft fair, registered and edited their listing. I also got a new one from Devon Social Club, who didn’t like the categories I put them in, so I created some new ones - hopefully those will be more appropriate. I guess they know how to describe themselves better than I do.
30/9 Sunday. Thankfully, I get a new listing, ‘Original Paintings and Celtic Jewellery’, which nothing goes wrong with at all.
Added a lot more background colours and images. Went for a couple more free directories. Decided to start a blog (separately) and possibly a related but international and simpler directory.
Comments:
I came to the conclusion around this time that the extra ‘Web 2.0′ features for user submitted content were probably not worth it: they add so much to the maintenance work and hardly anyone will use them unless it’s a very simple interface and the site is already successful. Even then, the majority just want to add a link quickly and move on to the next one (but isn’t that the kind of thing Google is frowning on these days?)
In any case, I decided to stick with my great Joomla experiment and give the extra features at least a year or two as a proper chance to succeed. After all, although I’ve read that Facebook itself hasn’t been as much money yet as the hype would suggest (Is Facebook really worth $15bn (Money Week, 31/10/2007: http://www.moneyweek.com/file/37176/is-facebook-really-worth-15bn.html), Facebook Really does make money: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/facebook-really-does-make-money.html), many entrepreneurs and venture capitalists still believe enough to put billions into Web 2.0 applications for Facebook (The Facebook economy. CNNMoney.com, 23 August, 2007: http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/22/technology/facebook_economy.biz2/index.htm - Note how the people in the photos are all about 12)
Not sure what the blog was that I was talking about, but it wasn’t an addition to the site: there always seem to be other projects in the pipeline.
Looking back, I think this couple of days also marked a turning point for the better: in holding off on writing to the school, I stopped frantically reacting to competition and turned back to planning a more sensible and manageable course for the site. I believe it is much more sensible to allow the site a lot more time to grow rather than hyping it up without substance to organisations with authority and risking an influential early rejection that would be hard to turn around later. I do think I gained a lot more name recognition locally with my widespread (yet budget!) offline advertising, but turning my focus back to the site itself at this point was definitely a change for the better in the long term.
