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Doin' it.

(3 minute read.)

This. And that.

My preferred initial activity when developing my projects is simple and straightforward.

Not unexpectedly, it's become increasingly difficult to get decently-named .com domains. (And I'm not interested in any alternatives (.biz, .co, etcetera), however popular they've become.)

Many good ones are registered but unused—for sale at speculatively inflated prices much higher than they're genuinely worth or likely to be sold.

And I'm happy to buy after-market domains, if the price is appropriate.

As some of my projects won't get beyond 'good idea, but currently too busy or no longer interested', initially if the preferred .com is unavailable at standard pricing I'll often choose a less-than-ideal alternative. Then, if the project does get developed, or I decide to pay a premium, I'll get something more appropriate.

And sometimes, the project branding/identity may initially be something temporary, to be subsequently changed too.

So… 'get a name and domain—the most appropriate you can—for now… start with something and if appropriate change them later'.

I've increasingly noticed businesses operating with .com domains in which '365' has been added to the end of what would likely have been the business name/domain had an appropriate .com been available.

And similarly, with 'this is' prepended. Both are acceptable, and I sometimes use them myself. I'll also append 'guide' (rather than '365') where appropriate.

Plonking '365' onto the end of what would have been the preferred domain/name if it had been available can have definite benefits/advantages:

Not only does one get a domain/name one can use, but it enables a project to become more niche/specific, and potentially launched and operated with relatively less work than might otherwise be the case.

The clever wheeze here is to be unapologetically upfront about and focus on how you're offering/providing one thing a day, just one.

This avoids direct comparison with sites which might be doing similar stuff and which have been active for longer and hence have a significant amount of existing content.

There's often a decent—and underserved—market for a relatively small 'daily dose'—whether it be digitally-delivered information or physical product.

It's also an easy and effective way to begin a project which is intended to subsequently expand what it initially provides.

It's relatively straightforward to start and position a business/project with a format of digitally delivering a variety of information which links to existing third-party content elsewhere: quotes, clips (extracts of published stuff), books, stuff to buy, etcetera.

Anyway…

My initial marketing is often 'rudimentary'—as in 'limited to basic principles'—with a major consideration being 'one can either go to where the people are and/or bring them to you'; obviously, both are desirable, and this is relatively easily and effectively undertaken and achieved with an appropriate Facebook presence.

SEO is often ineffective and almost always complex and expensive, so I rarely bother with it. Instead, I'll predominantly focus on Facebook. I don't use Instagram and TikTok, and Twitter only rarely.

What I need and want to do can be done effectively through Facebook, the world's most 'active' social media platform and still growing.

  • It has the people traffic.
  • Users will relatively willingly engage with and share content. (I've often seen specific-interest pages/groups with 100k users, and sometimes many more.)
  • Being predominantly text-oriented (rather than images and video), it's suited to engagement and discussion (albeit often relatively basic).
  • It offers good targeted advertising.

Although I'll often 'parallel publish'—identical content onsite and at Facebook—I'm entirely serious about how, if I had to choose just one—site or Facebook—I'd choose the latter, and limit a site to something very simple—maybe just a single page intro and overview which explains 'it all happens at Facebook' and with a link to the appropriate Facebook page.

So this has been a simplified (though, of course, incomplete) intro to and overview of my initial development activity.

Ethos… »