So I was looking for something to distract me today and I came across some new podcasts about a topic near and dear to my heart. Websites! :)
Anyway, the topics of the podcasts were pretty standard stuff, but the content was really good. If you’re into building websites, especially the kind that focus on one or two main topics and branch out from there—as in not just a blog of whatever’s going on in your life—you’ll probably enjoy listening to these.
I needed a break from real life for a few minutes, and I had a drive ahead of me too, so I queued them up on my phone and listened. The guy has a really nice voice too so that helps. ;-) Apparently he runs the site Universe Today, a site about space and astronomy, a topic I’m halfway interested in. Space, not astronomy. LOL.
What I found most compelling, and most vexing, was his assertion that working on multiple websites is going to mean you create sites that are only good enough, and that’s not good enough, according to him.
I actually agree. But that’s not what I do. I’ve gone back and forth with this issue for the last 5 years and I keep ending up back at the same place—with too many websites to keep even half of them straight in my head.
The only problem is, I didn’t see any real income growth with my hobby turned business until I started building all these other sites. I spent years chasing my passion with a site that now gets almost a thousand visitors a day and I haven’t updated it in over a year at this point. But I grew away from the topic, and where does that leave you? I mean, I have a short attention span, really. How do you deal with building up only one site over the span of 10 years and then deciding you really don’t like it that much anymore after all? What’s the point? That’s what happened to me a few years ago, and no, this wasn’t some whim. I had loved that industry, that topic, for 10 years before I ever started a site on it. I could never have imagined I would outgrow my passion for the site. But it happened.
So although I agree with him in principle that if you want to build something that stands the test of time and is really the best it can be, working on one site at a time is about the only way to go unless you have money to burn and can afford to hire lots of help.
In actuality, it’s a lot more complicated than that. It takes a long time to get a site to the point that it will earn a living. I never got that monster I created to that point.
Listening to: The Cure – Just Like Heaven; Eric Church – Homeboy; Pink – So What