From Concept to Reality in Four Hours!

10 July, 2007 - General Business - 3 Comments

BlogAdReviews.com took me just four hours to create. I didn’t know whether it would be a success or failure, but for four hours work over a weekend, I gathered it was worth a try. Here is what I did.

The first step was to find a domain name (and therefore a name for the Web site). I came up with a few key words that were related to the service I was providing, and then I started performing WHOIS searches on as many combinations of those words as I could come up with. Eventually, I came up with a few domain names with potential and I finally settled on BlogAdReviews.com because it described the service well (hopefully people will know what service I provide before they finish typing the Web address). Had I known about Bust a Name at the weekend (which I just blogged about) then I could have probably saved an hour of looking for a domain, because that very helpful (and free) service does it all for you.

Once I had a name, I needed a Web site. Despite my main Internet skills being Web development based, I knew I wanted to get the Web site launched as soon as possible, while it was fresh in John Chow’s mind, so I headed over to OSWD.org. This Web site includes a lot of free, open source templates.

I then started writing content for the site. This was the hardest part. Right now when new reviews come in I add them to the site manually. If the Web site takes off at any great rate, I’ll move over to WordPress.

Once the site was launched, I emailed a few popular bloggers, including Kevin at BloggingTips, Jane May at Daily Web Ideas, John Chow at JohnChow.com, and Darren at Pro Blogger. So far, out of those four, only Kevin has posted about it on his blog. Others have wrote about the site too, including Jason at Thought Sponge.

That’s how my concept turned in to reality in just four hours. Already I’ve had requests from a few people for sponsored text link ads on the site. :)

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Posted on 10 July, 2007 by Jamie Harrop
Filed Under General Business |

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3 Comments»

Comment by Russell Wagner
2007-07-10 23:46:46

Very interesting website. I can relate to you I created blogmycontest.com in about 4 hours. Now I am spending more than 4 hours promoting it.

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Comment by Erik Karey
2007-07-11 14:46:28

How has your traffic been so far? I think to make the website standout at some point it may be necessary to improve it’s design and usability. Right now I find the website a bit hard to navigate and it hard to get a sense for what its purpose it right from the start.

Either way it’s a good start and nice work on getting your idea up quick. Letting ideas dwell is never good.

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Comment by Jamie Harrop
2007-07-11 14:58:33

The traffic has been about what I expected, Erik. Around 100 page views over the past three days. Having said that, I haven’t had any new review submissions. People seem to agree the idea is very good, but actually getting people to write the reviews isn’t easy.

Yup, the design isn’t the best, and if the site does take off my plan was to re-design it and incorporate it in WordPress. I gathered it was worth having a half-hearted design in place, rather than spending a week creating one myself. :)

Thanks for the comment and suggestions, Erik. :)

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