Your sites that have failed.

[lludawg]

I am interested in hearing some stories about any sites you may have invested time into only to have them fail.

Here is my quick story.

I used to own a skateboarding forum but it did not work out because there are just so many other bigger forums that are better and already well-established. When this failed, I tried to create a blog dedicated to making money online. Unfortunately, I did not know much about the subject so it ended up failing.

These experiences definitely gave me more knowledge about being a webmaster!

 

[Kleineganz]

I don't know if it was necessarily a failure as much as I lost interest in it - but I have one site that I still own but haven't updated in forever that was focused on restaurant reviews and recipes for low-carb conscious dieters. I just kind of ran out of things I wanted to write about, but I keep the site up for reference if anyone wants to read it.

 

[Soulwatcher]

I have had plenty of failures and lost thousands of dollars in the process. The big reason why I have had so many failures is because my websites run out of steam. They start off great and get tons of posts and then I start slacking and the posters go away. Running a website is hard work and its work that goes unpaid. I would probably close my website right now. If I added all the time I have spent on my website and not made a dime vs the same amount of time working a minimum wage job.

I now realize if your going to run a website, do it because you enjoy it and do not expect to make any money off of it. Because you have a better chance to be struck by lighting then making enough money to live off your website.

Greg

 

[Kleineganz]

I now realize if your going to run a website, do it because you enjoy it and do not expect to make any money off of it. Because you have a better chance to be struck by lighting then making enough money to live off your website.

Yeah if people are trying to make a living off the ads on their sites, they will be in for a disappointment. However, my business website is meant for lead generation and so every person who contacts me through the site and becomes a paying client, earns me money I can live off. So it also depends on the kind of site and how you use it too.

 

[cyberpuppet]

I lost my most successful site through failing to realize that the the increasing understanding of websites and the internet had not been mirrored in my members - and forgetting some basic human behaviours. I tried to change too much too fast (new domain, new host,new software,new rules) and the membership did not like it - someone set up a site similar to mine and they went to that instead of my new one because it was familiar. The fact that I could rip it to pieces critically and point out all the problems with it did not matter to the users - they wanted what they knew regardless of how good it was.

I learned not to over estimate how well people understand technology and the net - just because they use something does not mean they understand it and if you are going to change do the changes slowly and give people lots of time to get used to each change cause otherwise they will leave.

 

[Shawn Barton]

In the beginning of this year, I spent almost two months and quite a good sum of money starting an online business related to affiliate marketing. The main purpose of the website was to provide information to potential clients regarding specific products that would make it easier for them to do business online. My plan was to get clients directly online by getting their contacts and sending them emails about the business services. This turned out to be a lot work. I actually gave up down the road when I din't get any results. I am however planning to revive the website and try a new strategy.

 

[kfander]

I had an online news site for several years that was very popular in northern Maine, and particularly within the three-town area that it primarily covered. Connected to it was a forum that was also very busy, and a Wiki that profiled every town without sight of Mount Katahdin. I spent hours every day on these sites, and enjoyed doing it, but they made no money at all. I tried every type of affiliate marketing that I could think of and, while I did well with AdSense on nearly every other site I have had, no one ever clicked my Google ads on these sites. After about eight years, someone hacked the Wiki, and it didn't make sense to recover. Still, I hated to let these go.

 

[FPForum]

I've never really had any sites be complete failures. The ones that have were because they were niches I really wasn't as interested in as I initially thought. My advice would be to always start websites you will enjoy working on and writing new content for on a regular basis.

 

[wallcat]

I struggle when it comes to getting active users to my websites. When I was younger my first attempt at web development was to set up a fan club, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get anyone to participate in it. I recently tried to put together a baking website where users could share recipes, but again I couldn't get any active users. I also built a website and blog for a business my friends wanted to start up, but I think they set their sights too high and there was too much competition for me to be able to attract enough visitors. I did however, create a new webpage for a band I know and they seem to be receiving more traffic now. I think the main problem is that you need to have the right idea and enough quality content to attract visitors. As you say, you didn't know enough about making money online to be able to write about it. I keep trying new ideas as I'm still searching for the right one that I can happily maintain. Of course, I could also do with learning a lot more about how to get my websites promoted too.

 

[pwarbi]

I'd imagine that most of us would have had sites that maybe haven't been a complete failure, but just haven't done as well as we expected.

When this happens instead of giving up, the best thing we can do is to try and learn from any mistakes we've made. I believe that most sites can be rescued if we just take the time to evaluate what we've done, and while some sites might not be worth wasting our time and effort on, I still think we can learn lessons from where we've gone wrong.