Cutting Your Losses
Being an entrepreneur is all about taking calculated risks, but sometimes are calculations are wrong and our investments tumble. This occurs daily in the stock market and building/buying websites is quite similar.
As an entrepreneur we analyse the potential for a developed site or planned idea and the possible return on investment (ROI). However, we cannot control all the forces involved and can become a victim of a tradegy out with our control, for example when the dot com bubble burst.
Thankfully, the internet is a much more stable market place and this is a rare occurance but every day people register new domains or pour their hearts into an idea that aims for the moon but misses, and lands amongst the stars – plodding along but never reaching the top.
If you remember a while ago I was attempting to dominate the “bar jobs” market and registered about 50 domains which were developed into mini-sites, had BarVacancy.com custom coded and spent hours contacting bar/nightclub owners and managers advertising the free site. Similar to Gumtree, BarVacancy.com was purely for the nightclub industry and I thought if I targetted a niche I may do well.
Unfortunately a site like this needs a large marketing budget and I failed. The idea wasn’t a failure though, the sites plod along and makes enough money but I simply didn’t have enough time to pump more energy into it and re-generate it.
Fortunately my hard work didn’t go to waste and I sold the network to one of my frequent buyers who has a similar network that will compliment his purchase. For me it was about cutting my losses and getting out whilst I still could. I could have easily let the names expire or just broken even with Adsense on the sites but they were never going to be winners in my hands – that doesn’t mean they can’t be.
Sometimes you have to admit defeat and yes I lost money but I learned a lot, I gained experience and I am happy I tried. I think there is plenty of potential let in the network especially as it has been left to mature for 6 months and most of the sites have a good Google ranking but it wasn’t one for me.
Good luck with your persuits,
Khalid.
