3by9

There are a million great ideas out there, but only a couple of great executions. Many times we come up with an idea that hasn't been executed or not executed the way we imagined so we are walking into new territory. We think about projects that we can start that will have us set for life. Projects where millions of people will come to use and will help us make a name for ourselves.

As you know these projects rarely happen.

Sometimes we spend so much time thinking about the future project that doesn't exist that we miss the chance to improve upon old ideas that haven't been challenged. Could you imagine what would happen if you knew an idea would work because someone has done it successfully already, but they haven't improved upon it over the years? They didn't move forward with new technology or innovations that have come to pass. It seems silly that anyone would let their once great idea flounder like that, but it happens. Usually it happens after it is acquired by a bigger company.

Feedburner

I don't want to say RSS is dead because it isn't. It might not grow anymore than it has, but there are millions of people out there that still use it. FeedBurner is the only RSS analytics company that I can think of and they haven't changed a bit since Google acquired them. If you hear anyone mention FB today it is usually a complaint. FB reports the wrong subscription numbers and the interface is old and clunky. It can be improved upon.

However, improving upon just RSS analytics might not be enough. What if you created a product that also served as an analytics platform for your Facebook fan page, Twitter account and email newsletter? The amazing part is that all you have to do is start with the RSS functionality to acquire users. People would absolutely jump ship to another service that could offer almost real-time stats. Hell, they just want accurate stats. Give them better analytics so they can study their users to find ways to improve. Simply give them a better experience than the one that FB offers now.

FB showed that a RSS analytics company can be successful so you know there is a market out there. They can be beat and you can be the one to beat them. Another great thing about FB is that it isn't a community, it's just a product that you have to take on. The service itself is the experience and when that is the case it is easy to take out.

In contrast, there have been many competitors to step in the ring with Craigslist, but they have all failed because the experience of Craigslist isn't in the service, but in the community. You need Craigslist numbers or do something else exceptionally better than what they can do. Considering what Craigslist does is very simple it can be hard to beat.

King of the mountain

There is always a time when competition is strong and during these times the market leader emerges and tends to fend off any newcomers. Over time though they get sloppy. When there is no one pushing them they stop innovating. Looking at the email marketing field I wouldn't dare try to build a product there. It's way too competitive for my tastes. Not only are you going after the market leader, but you also have to go after everyone that is going after them as well. Unless you have a great team and a guaranteed win product it just seems like you won't get very far in that field.

Don't think that Bing is only catching up to Google because of some pretty pictures. Google got complacent and Bing jumped at the opportunity the same way Google jumped on Yahoo and Ask.com.

If you look around there are kings sitting on the mountaintops waiting to be toppled. I have one big one in mind, but I don't want to share it because I might go after them. Not sure how well it would work now, but there is definitely a better MyBlogLog waiting to be built, are you going to be the one to do it?

Last week I made a change in regards to how drwr.it works. Originally it was only open to emersian+ members because I wanted a closed in feel for the place. I figured if emersian+ built up enough members then over time the drwr.it community would go strong and that is true, I think it could've worked if I had given it a lot more time. I decided not to though.

Instead now I'm going with the Flickr model of allowing anyone to use the site, but emersian+ members get some benefits to it. No advertising and like Flickr can see all of their collections while regular users have a limit to how much they can see in their collections.

Why?

Before last week the only opportunity for anyone to become aware of emersian+ was through Drawar. Drawar itself has a limited community so I was working with a small percentage from that. While I believe that great businesses take time to grow it doesn't mean that the pace has to be unreasonably slow. For emersian+ to succeed it has to reach the largest amount of people possible and by opening up drwr.it I am giving it that opportunity.

I think it would've worked out differently if it was a closed beta with an invite-only system. Those work on hype alone. By opening the site up and allowing advertising I'm also including another revenue stream which is always a good thing.

For one reason or another a million pageviews has always been a milestone mark in my head ever since I started working on websites in 2002. Today you can randomly type in an url and come across a site that does a million pageviews in a day or week, but when you finally get your own site to that goal it's a beautiful thing. Drawar reached the milestone over the weekend and I wanted to talk about it a bit.

Although I want to label Drawar with outrageous adjectives at the end of the day it is basically a content site. A damn good one I might add, but still just a content site and community. Because of this getting to a million pageviews doesn't happen without some hard work and patience. I wish I had a secret formula to tell you that will allow you to achieve in one month that which took me seven, but I don't and if I ever did I'm not sure I would tell you anyways (trade secrets and all that).

Scream and Scream Loud

No matter what type of site we are creating there is a line of thinking that if we build it they will come really happens. You have to hit the pavement and spread the news about what you are doing, but do so in a way that isn't annoying and make sure if you are going to promote something that it is of great quality.

Starting off I showed my articles to Tyme White and Mike Rundle and they were kind enough to promote the articles. This got me a tiny bit of traffic and some followers.

The first Drawar article, Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me), was controversial, divisive and struck a nerve with the design community. It spread like wildfire and helped get Drawar in the minds of a lot of people. When something like this happens the natural reaction is to think that it will happen over and over again and that isn't the case. You also like to believe that when people come across your site and they like it, they will bookmark it, make it their homepage and visit it every single day and again that isn't the case.

I was very, very lucky with the success of that first article and it was a great starting point to reaching my goal, but I didn't reach a million simply because of that article.

Use Your Network

If you follow Drawar on Twitter you will notice that I have no problem sharing discussions started by someone else besides me. This can easily apply to your site if you offer comments or have forums. People like to see that you find their content worthy of a link so it's in your best interest to promote your community in that way.

Also be sure to make your Twitter account personable. Too many site accounts are nothing more than glorified RSS feeds. Twitter is a community ecosystem and you only thrive by being super famous or engaging in conversation. It may seem like you are only adding one follower at a time, but over time it definitely adds up.

Search Engines

If a site has a ton of traffic there is a good chance that search engines drive the majority of it. For Drawar that isn't the case. Maybe because the site is still young or the topics aren't SEO friendly, whatever the case Drawar gets very little search engine traffic. Of the 429,000 visits that came to Drawar only 21,446 were from Search Engines. That is 5% of the total traffic. That means 95% of the traffic came from someone seeing a link to the site or typing in the url directly. Getting people to do that every single day isn't easy and I'm not completely sure how I was able to do it, but I'm very fortunate that people find Drawar worthy enough of a visit.

I don't sweat the lack of search engine traffic and consider it a good thing that the traffic from them is so little because it doesn't make me dependent on them. I've had sites that dropped in search engine rankings and traffic tanked as a result. Ironically the only way traffic from search engines can stop is if people stop searching for "Drawar", which was the #1 keyword used in searches.

Look at the chart you can see that keyword traffic grows as the site grows. This is to be expected because new content is added weekly therefore increasing the chances that Drawar will show up in searches. However, the number is still small, but in the long run I would mind seeing Search Engine traffic accounting for 25% of total traffic because the majority of these visits will be from new visitors who have yet to come across the site.

There is also a lot of work that needs to be done in regards to optimizing pages for SEO, but this isn't a priority because a most of the content is produced by the Community.

Be Your Own Best User

Drawar is a community and I'm its most active user. I have the most forum posts, critiques, answers, questions, links and gallery submissions. If you want people to spend countless hours on your site then you have to show that you enjoy doing it as well. I know in the larger communities on the web the founders seem to disappear, but that usually only happens when the Community outgrows them. Look at the history of any community and you will see its founders laying the foundation.

This might mean that you need to write forum topics even when you can't think of anything. I have to scour the web for beautiful sites and great links because if I wait for others to submit them the site would get no where. Just because you have to put in a lot of hard work to build things up it doesn't mean you should feel that your community should be thanking you. It should be the other way around and so at every chance you get be sure to let them know of how appreciative you are of them and all that they offer.

Without the Drawar community the site is nothing more than a 100,000 pageview site at best.

Patience and Consistency

Looking at the original chart you will notice that in February there is a 2 week lull where not much is going on. That is because I didn't write a single article, post a gallery item or start a forum and the site suffered because of it. Maybe by next February I can get away without doing such things and the site will not fall, but with it still being young I don't have the luxury to take days off. The more popular sites on the web are producing content daily. Every single day you create a piece of content is another day someone might find you in a search engine or link to you.

Every day you go without doing anything is another day lost. Success rarely happens instantly. It takes months, years or decades to achieve and because it takes a while it also requires patience. When looking at Smashing Magazine or Abuzeedo I want Drawar to have their traffic levels and revenue, but they didn't achieve those overnight so I shouldn't expect to either.

I will though, just give me a little more time.

Goals

To make sure I am constantly climbing towards these levels I make sure to publish at least two articles a week and try my best to get new stuff in the Gallery and Links sections daily. I continue to participate in the Forums and Questions sections and provide Critiques when they are needed. Set weekly goals and be sure to reach them. Some people only like to write when they feel inspired and if want to go this route then understand you won't get very far.

The very first traffic goal for Drawar was 100,000 pageviews in a month. I was able to do that the very first month and after that I made sure that there was never a month with less than 100,000. Each month after that I simply wanted to top the previous month. No easy feat because I never know which articles are going to be a success and catch on versus which ones will be duds. I do know though that the only time traffic beats out the previous month is when I work harder than I did the month before.

My next traffic goal is to aim for 250,000 pageviews in a month. In June, Drawar crossed the 200,000 plateau for the first time so it might take 2-3 months before I can pull off 250,000. That's the number on my dartboard though and if I keep on throwing darts at it eventually it will hit.

One of the hardest things about going into business for yourself is that there is nobody else to pick up the slack for you on your off days. Today for example is an off day. I don't have any material to write on Drawar, I have a slew of improvements to make which are collecting dust and overall my body just feels tired.

The people working for others will say that we have it lucky that we can take a break whenever we want, but usually if we are taking a break then that means we aren't helping our business grow or making money. If you feel like crap and go into work you are still getting paid to be there and if you are lucky have a sick day to use where you still get paid.

If you are in a field with competition then you have to figure that they aren't taking the day off. In fact, they are probably working twice as hard today for some reason. It sucks to know this so you have to find a way to get back in the groove. Sometimes though you need to take a day off or a couple of hours to do something completely non-work related. This way by the time you are done you will be refreshed ready to go.

Don't be like me and stare at the computer for hours on end trying to push yourself to get stuff done only to realize another hour has passed.

This is an emersian+ entry.

First weekly report showcasing some numbers behind the first couple of weeks of emersian+ along with some of the plans moving forward. This is the first real look into how well things are going.

This should be one of the first questions you ask yourself when you go into business on your own. I definitely don't do it enough. I have a product that people can subscribe to and yet I don't push myself to make money with it every single day. It doesn't make sense. The goal of a business is to make money and yet I don't ask myself what am I going to do today to make that money.

If I asked myself that every day for a week, then by the end of the week I should have more money than I started with at the beginning of the week. If I don't ask myself that question and assume that the money will come in then it is a crapshoot with regards to how my weekly revenue statement will look.

When I am supposed to be working if I find myself doing something that isn't at least indirectly related to me making money then I shouldn't be doing it. If I take a 30 minute break to do some reading then I do it with the intention of spending the next 3 hours hard at work trying to make money. This doesn't mean I'm going around pimping out emersian+ every single second of the day. I could be improving each of the sites, fine-tuning my landing pages, replying to users' emails or writing this entry.

The catch to this question though is that you don't want to get caught up in the money. In fact the question almost becomes secondary because the first questions you ask yourself might be how you are creating a greater customer experience today or something similar. In the end though they all come back to how are you making money today?

Time for me to go figure that out.

While ignoring any work that needed to be done I decided to do some weekend reading. I visited TechCrunch because although I know I'm going to come across 99% garbage mixed with large doses of bullshit they have an amazing quality of still pulling me over there for the one piece of news that might intrigue me. I do the same thing with Yahoo so don't ask me why because it goes against every principle of quality content that I have.

While browsing TC I saw that Plinky was scooped up by Automattic. I didn't know what Plinky was before today so I had a quick glance and to my surprise it was the exact same thing that I had created a couple years ago.

You must understand that I come up with brilliant ideas often and back in the day I had no problem implementing these ideas immediately. One of the ideas I had was for a site that asked a question once a day and bloggers around the web could answer the question on their own sites while pinging my site. The site was called Quofda (don't go there now because it's a spam site). Me (or Tyme) would ask a question and write a short blog post answering it ourselves and then others would join in on their sites. To me the idea was brilliant because people like to answer questions, always need something to write about on their sites and Quofda would be the central hub of it all.

Like most of my ideas though I figured that just by putting it out there that it would catch fire. While people did participate I didn't give it the love that it needed to really blow up. I did zero marketing and sometimes went days without a question. Execution is everything and I executed, as in killed, a potentially great idea by doing nothing with it.

Now the makers of Plinky get a little more cash in their bank accounts while I am left here pondering what could of been all thanks to my need to check TechCrunch. I won't let that happen again...at least not until next week.

If you didn't know, Posterous is running a campaign to get users of other services to move over to them. They are referring to many of these services as dying and they are the life vest that comes along to save the drowning. The first victims were Ning users which makes sense since Ning is a paid service now. Probably would've been better announcing this one right when Ning was kicking out all the free loiterers, but better late than never I suppose.

Next up? Tumblr. Tumblr is interesting because this is the service that Posterous gets compared to the most. They have their similarities and their differences so I won't go into them and you can avoid lecturing me on how they differ. Point is that Tumblr is the enemy and it's okay to have enemies. Having an enemy in business doesn't mean you are evil, it just means you have something to aim for.

You need a target not because you want to emulate them, but because you want to differentiate yourself from them and be better. Microsoft needed to invest in Apple so that they could avoid further monopoly lawsuits, but they missed the chance to really consider Apple the enemy. Instead they laughed at both Linux and Apple while both of their enemies were taking away marketshare. Now they are in a downward spiral and it doesn't look like they will correct themselves anytime soon.

Apple on the other hand has no problem pointing out their enemies and going right after them. Business is cutthroat and only the strong survive. You shouldn't bad mouth your competition every chance you get, but if you really believe that you are better than them then sometimes those words will come out and this is why I respect what Posterous is doing. Some people believe they should go about the migration strategy, but do it in a nice way. Fuck that. If you have balls and believe you are the best then there is nothing wrong with going around and saying it...unless you really aren't.

It's when your mouth walks faster than your feet you find yourself in trouble. People don't like to be fooled. They will listen to the grandstanding, but if they come to find out that it's nothing but bullshit you will lose them. Verizon goes after AT&T in their ads because they do have better service. AT&T claims to have better coverage, but do you think people care about that when their calls keep getting dropped? Verizon hit AT&T on the chin and AT&T didn't have the service to back up their retaliation.

I have no problem saying that Drawar is one of the best web design communities on the web. I have no problem saying that the articles there can compete with any articles on any other design blogs you will find. I have a belief in that and I bust my ass everyday to ensure that continues. I want Drawar to be better than the rest of the sites in the design community. Yeah I want to work with them as well, but that doesn't mean I can't be better. I put targets on their backs and go after them. This doesn't mean I do it with verbal jabs, it just means I know what to aim for when I am gunning for the top.

So with that I have no problem with Posterous's approach. If you have the balls to talk the talk then do it and don't pull back. Just make sure your product can back it up or you will be the one receiving the knockout blow.

Today 37signals released an iPad app called Draft. It's nothing special, but nothing anyone does today is special. I'm just that cynical. I think we all are because we hate that we didn't create most of the stuff that others have created and are getting famous for. But that isn't what I'm trying to discuss here so please stop distracting me.

Let's have a look at the features.

1. Draw in white or red large marker.
2. Post to Campfire.

Idiotic.

If there is something else that can be done I'm not sure. My immediate thinking is that this only helps a small set of people (Campfire users) and they are already paying monthly to use the service so 37signals is making them pay again to use a tool that connects to it.

Idiotic.

37signals is all about being small so you can move fast. It's not about adding features and is all about underdoing the competition. They keep on adding employees and will continue to do so in the future because they want to grow. They will say they are going to halt hiring, but they will still do it in the future. You can see it in their DNA, they want to grow at the risk of going against their own philosophy. Then again if you compare them to larger companies, 20 employees should be considered small.

They continue to add features to their products. They don't do it often or in mass, but they do add them. They don't say you should never add features, but you almost get the feeling that 37signals from '96 would look at 2010 37signals and shake their heads wondering why in the hell they have so much stuff going on.

Idiotic.

Back to Draft. They are going to charge $9.99 for it. You almost get a sense that they purposefully didn't add any features and charged that price just to prove a point or their next book and blog entry. Look we made a dead simple app with no features and sold it a made a ton of money, told you we knew what were talking about suckers.

Idiotic.

But Then Again...

What if the application sells well? What if their growth rate was the smartest strategy for them? Everything they have ever done you can find someone calling it idiotic, but we know they are successful. Sure they are arrogant pricks a good majority of the time and feel almost cult-like from time to time, but Apple is the same way. Hell, a ton of successful companies are like that because sometimes you need that ego to push you over the edge. Sometimes you need that ego to laugh in the face of common sense and go your own route.

By no means do I think that everything they do is the right way to go, but it's definitely right for them because they are comfortable with it and that is all that matters. When you get too caught up in what others feel about your business strategy then you stop controlling it.

I'm sure most of us could only wish to be as idiotic as 37signals.

This is an emersian+ entry.

The hardest part of running a business is probably the one part that many of us don't like doing.

With the release of Safari 5 and its Reader utility, there is now a mainstream version of Readability out on the web and it has gotten some publishers in a tizzy. Considered by them as an ad blocker they fear that their ad revenues will plummet because of this technology. In reality, you have to visit the page first where the ads are loaded if you even want a chance to use Reader. Common sense dictates that if people choose to use Reader they are doing so because they see it as a better alternative than the site they are trying to read the article on.

Of course in the eyes of publishers they see this as being wrong. The customer is always right is one of the greatest fallacies in business, but at least the customer knows what annoys them and how can you blame them for simply wanting a better experience?

When running 9rules our sole source of revenue was from ads and I hated that. I knew that sooner or later the revenue would stop coming in because 9rules isn't a traffic giant. It was a brand giant at the time and I should have done a better job of capitalizing off of that. However, ad revenue is the easiest form of revenue because all of you have to do is convince a business that you have enough eyeballs on your site for them to place a banner on. Once you do that you collect a paycheck.

Also, businesses are looking to advertise. They want their products and services to be seen by their potential customers.

The harder revenue model involves getting your audience to pay for something and many companies online shy away from this because this means you have to create something that people are willing to pay for.

People don't like to spend money

This is what I was told when I mentioned to my friend that I was going to start a subscription-based business. I'm well aware of the fact that people don't like to spend money because I don't like to spend money. If I can get something for free then I am going to go for it.

When content companies hide content behind a paywall they usually hide their best content. The idea behind emersian+ isn't to hide the best content and make people pay for it, but to simply offer complementary content to what is already being offered in the hopes that people find it useful enough to pay for. So far people have been jumping on board so that is a good sign.

Sense of entitlement

I'm not sure when it happened, but along the way publishers started to feel a sense of entitlement with regards to their content. Smashing Magazine published an opinion piece that talks about why designers shouldn't use ad blockers and the comments are predictable. I agree that the web design community should support each other, but that doesn't mean everyone deserves support. Not every site that I visit offers me enough value to not use an ad blocker (for the record I don't use them, but not because of a moral principle), while some have such great content it makes sense to make it pay only.

One of the best examples that I can give is the tuts+ network. They offer a mix of free content that is paid for with ad based revenue and premium content that can be viewed by subscribers only. The key is they are confident enough in their content to believe that people will pay for it and they are correct. If you believe their numbers they have over 10,000 subscribers currently and at a rate of $9 per month that is no small amount of revenue happening every month on top of the ad revenue they are already bringing in.

If you really feel that ads are the only way for you to make money then you need to create a better product. For some products ads make perfect sense, but we are too quick to jump on the ad bandwagon because they are easy to implement.

In our minds we think that millions will visit the site generating millions of pageviews and advertisers will have no choice but to advertise with us. That may be true initially, but when people stop clicking on the ads and the advertisers stop seeing value in your brand then what are you left with?

When I was younger and played competitive soccer I was always one of the fastest and tallest players on the field. This was great because it gave me an advantage over everyone. I was also decently skilled so that helped a bit, but whenever I encountered a better player my physical attributes more than made up for any skill he might over me. The only problem was that I knew this and took advantage of it. I always knew that I could catch up to someone if they got by me or instead of having to do a tricky move to get by a defender all I had to do was push the ball and run.

As I got older this got a bit more complicated as players started to catch up with me. Instead of focusing on the skills that I needed to improve upon to make myself a better player I tried my best to ensure that I was the fastest out there. When I got to college I was still a decent player, but my physical attributes could only carry me so far. There were more skilled players out there who had been fine-tuning their game and it was beginning to show.

Anyways, what in the hell does this have to do with your product and ads? Plenty actually.

You might have a product or service that has a ton of traffic and ads are your primary (or only) source of revenue. It's the advantage you have over all of your competitors. Instead of finding ways to improve the product overall you simply look for ways to increase pageviews so that you can bring in more ad revenue.

Your traffic is the speed you have over everyone else and so you think that this will carry you to the top forever. In the background there is a competitor that is fine-tuning their features and making their product a better experience for their users. Sure they would love to have your traffic, but since they don't they are trying to take advantage of the other factors that they can control.

Eventually they catch up to you and since you have spent all of these years doing nothing but worry about your traffic you are caught with your pants down. Ads can distract you from what is really important and that is improving the user experience. When your focus shifts to simply making your advertisers happy and bringing in more pageviews the whole concept and vision behind your product starts to change.

By no means am I saying you should avoid ads. For some products they work wonderfully, but be careful in how they influence the progress you make with your product. When they become the driving force behind the changes you make then you are heading down the wrong path. Provide your customers with a better experience and the ad revenue will follow.

The first idea for Drawar was for it to be another website gallery. That was it. It would be a little bit different in that the images would be larger and you could save items to your personal dashboard. This isn't that much different than the hundreds of other galleries that already exist, but in my mind it was different enough.

I needed a way to generate traffic to the site and get some links so I figured I would also write some entries. I sat down and on a piece of paper made a list of list posts that I could write. 50 this and 99 that. It was just like the other major web design blogs. If they could be successful and pull in decent revenue then why couldn't I? There was just one major problem.

You don't win by being the same.

Not everyone wants to win. Some people merely want to be in the race because being in the race can be good enough. You see this mentality clearly with the copycat sites in the web design industry that also post nothing but lists. They pull in decent traffic and revenue. You just can't win that way though. Eventually you fadeaway and die. It becomes tough to compete on features because your competition has the exact same ones and in some industries it starts to come down to price. Look at the PC industry. You think most people care whether they are buying from Dell, HP or Acer?

37signals says you should underdo your competition. I say you should flip the script on them. Be the opposite.

The competition builds ad networks that have unlimited ads and anyone can sign up? Build an ad network where only one ad will be shown on a page and you hand select the sites that can advertise. Take it a step further and only approve products that you are secure about endorsing.

The competition is an image hosting service where the focus is to just link to the image? Build a hosting service where the image isn't meant to be used as a prop, but becomes the focus of social interactivity.

The competition is a social news site where you can post links to anywhere on the web about any given subject? Build a place that not only restricts the type of content that can be posted, but purposefully doesn't promote itself to gain a larger audience.

What is the leading IM service? I don't know and I don't care because they all do the same thing. Each might have a feature or two that their competition doesn't have, but in the end they are all the same in the eyes of the public with the only real difference begin which one their friends are on. Eventually they all lose out when the upstart comes in and handles messaging in a completely different way (maybe this is Twitter).

The advantage to being the opposite is that the competition won't notice you and many times when they do they will laugh because you can't compete with them. They are worried about the people going head-to-head with them on features and pricing. They aren't worried about the new guy that likes to do things differently.

Sooner or later though they start to worry because when you don't compete with them on features or price and still take customers away from them how can they compete against you other than by copying you?

Be the opposite and clear your own path for those to follow.

This is an emersian+ entry.

Providing a bit of background on previous jobs, Business Logs, 9rules, making $15,000 a month and how I got into the position I am and what led me to start emersian.

In product development the term Minimum Viable Product has really been catching on. It's meant for lean startups to produce something that has its main functionality already built and can be put out in the real world for testing. If they don't like it then you can scrap it without worrying too much about the costs. It has just the features needed that allows the product to be deployed.

My thinking goes that no product should launch with more features than that anyways, but over time and usage you will find that your product can do for another feature that will be beneficial to your audience. When this happens you stop having a Minimum Viable Product, but that isn't a bad thing because you are working towards something even better.

Maximum Viable Product

Yesterday I read an entry that talked about Maximum Viable Product.

A maximum viable product doesn't fail fast - it succeeds slowly as you iterate toward it with minimum viable products and learn along the way.

I love this line of thinking and it's exactly the way Drawar is developed. Quick feature releases and design iterations cause the site to inch its way to the point where it can settle down. Too many content sites fall into a pattern of big redesign cycles. They settle on a design and format for content, then maybe 8-12 months later decide it's time to overhaul the whole thing and basically start anew. They are constantly playing catch up with their last design when instead they should be adding on top of what has been laid out before them.

Drawar had no chance to compete head-to-head with the likes of Smashing Magazine and other established players in the web design community so a different approach had to be taken. By using the Minimum Viable Product logic I can try out new things that other sites might not be willing to try because it would require too much change within their site.

When I say Drawar can't compete there is a misconception that every site is welcome in the community. While I am all about the sharing of ideas and the good nature harmony that exists in the web design community there is only so much attention out there and we are all fighting for it. Every second a person spends on Dribbble is a second that they aren't spending on Drawar or drwr.it.

Drawar is fighting for mindshare and there are too many examples of sites that produce great content periodically, but make up no ground in keeping users. Your site (product) has to become more viable than the next site to an individual or it will never grow. That is what I'm working to do on a daily basis.

Adapt this mentality. When you do you become agile. You then try your best to improve upon your product as quickly as possible so that it becomes more usable and feature complete. Feature complete in this case doesn't mean you have every feature in the world, but every feature that you need to get your product working its magic.

Being in constant beta means you are always running tests and looking for ways to improve your product. This might mean streamlining it so your customers can get the tasks done quicker or finding ways to increase your conversion rate. Either way you are constantly pushing out small improvements and changes.

Once you get out of the beta mentality you start to ease up a bit. It's great to have a well-oiled machine, but even well-oiled machines can be made better.

I've done a lot of online launches in my life and there is always a bit of hesitation with each one because you are worried about how the public will react. Friday I did a small announcement for emersian+ and I was once again worried about how the public would react. In contrast to how I felt to the days leading up to the launch where I was confident everyone would love it and sign up.

That is the thing when it comes to working on your own product or service. In your head it is always going to work out, otherwise why would you waste any time working on it? When it comes to launch time though reality sets in and you begin to understand that it could be a complete failure and failing sucks. I have done it a couple of times and even though they say you can learn something from it that doesn't mean you want to experience it.

The hesitation that a launch causes means sometimes you don't pull the trigger when you should. Too often we find ourselves aiming for perfection at launch and put so much time and energy into making that happen that when we do finally launch and find out that there are now a million things to fix it can be a huge letdown. When you are launching an online service to the general public there are always going to be changes that you need to make so in most cases the best thing you can do is launch now. If what you are working on works then launch it. There might be a ton of features missing, but if you can use it then other people can use it as well so let them have a crack at it.

I know it isn't the most ideal thing because what happens when someone visits and they are disappointed in what you are offering? There is a chance they may never come back and you hate to know that you lost a customer, but understand you are going to lose customers anyways. The odds though are that your first audience are going to be the early adopter types who are a bit more forgiving about features missing or bugs creeping up. Just be honest with them.

Honesty

With Drawar, I am in constant communication with the community about what I'm working on and what features will be coming and what is missing from the site. I set the expectations for them before they have a chance to set themselves up for disappointment. I don't promise them the world, I simply promise them what they see right before them. They respect that and have come to understand that the site is a constant work in progress. This has taken away a lot of the pressure. I'm not caught up in broken promises or false hopes, I'm simply sticking to what is being said.

For this site I can tell you that there is a lot more to come in the upcoming weeks. At least two more sections along with entries happening frequently. I can say that because I know it will happen. That's all you have to do with your audience, tell them what will happen. They don't need to hear about your plans for world domination or how great you are going to make their lives. They want to know what they should expect.

I will talk about launching your product more in the future because I could ramble about this forever, but then that would prevent me from actually launching.