Why Am I Failing to Profit from My Own Product?
I built a blog site about failed project case studies. I initially just collected cases out of curiosity, but it unexpectedly became quite popular, with 20,000 RSS subscribers and over 5,000 daily visitors. At its peak, the site generated around £7 ($8.70) a day from ads. I sold it for $500. A year later, the new owner flipped it for $5,000—ten times what I made.
Here's why I sold:
1. Content production was expensive, and there were fewer and fewer interesting cases to uncover.
2. I never set up a submission system for readers to contribute stories.
3. I lacked the courage to hire a steady team of writers to keep content flowing.
In short, the cost of creating content felt like a ceiling. I didn't have the patience to wait and see if it would eventually pay off.
4. There was almost no monetization beyond basic ads—I never explored selling products or merchandise.
5. I never replied to user comments or tried to build a long-term relationship through a newsletter. (Later, I learned that newsletters can be highly profitable for sponsored ads, each one bringing in hundreds or even thousands of dollars.)
Basically, I thought I'd hit a ceiling when I hadn't really explored the possibilities. I got tired and just sold it, rather than trying other approaches.