A Complete 180 Approach

For the past 2 years, I've put a lot of time and effort into developing my little restaurant site, FoodFinder.net. This past weekend, I added another site to my portfolio. Unlike FF, which is completely custom built using the Microsoft stack of technologies, the new site, which is a wine guide called Wine Guidelines, goes against every motivation I've ever had when building sites.

For one...I won't be doing any building. I purchased the site in a Flippa auction for a couple hundred bucks. It really was an impulse buy. See, I just finished reading Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup (Amazon affiliate link), and a host of other resources on the topic of building a small software company. It has really altered my perspective from that of a developer (focusing on perfect architecture and pristine code) to that of a businessman (release the product as fast as you can, and refine as you go BTW...this only works for web-based products). I think this change in mindset has been slowly going on over the past five years or so.

So Why This Listing

Anyway, a few things attracted me to this particular listing.

• It's based on Wordpress: I've been more and more intrigued with WP as a website backbone, and wanted to dig in a bit.


• The content is automated: Using various Wordpress plugins, the site gathers content from various sources. I'm very curious to see if a site can run on autopilot and have any success.


• The topic is a hobby of mine: I'm actually a bit of a wine drinker (as are many of my friends). Plus, it ties in to a wine/food pairing algorithm I've been mulling for FoodFinder.net


• The cost to run and operate this site will be small: I've already got a hosting environment built up and ready to host that is a fixed expense. Other than the purchase cost, and a few hundred more bucks I'm going to throw into a new logo and custom theme. There shouldn't be any more cost.


• The BIN came with a ton of perks: Between the content and software that was included in the auction, it was pretty much a no-brainer

So What Now?

Unlike FF, which I have intentionally avoided loading up with ads so users would have a better experience, the new site is loaded with ads and affiliate links. My intention is to put in about a week or two of refining the content, tweaking the design, and doing some light marketing (link building, social media, word of mouth, etc), I intend to leave the site alone except for writing the occasional wine article. I have a new project in my sights, and will be getting that underway tomorrow, with the intention of launching early next year. Plus, I have a few FF enhancements I'll do on the side.

Stay tuned.