Starting on the new SportsLizard

I spent the end of last week wrapping up some of my more time consuming client work to free myself up for working on SportsLizard. Going forward, I'll be spending ~40% of my time servicing our existing client base and the remainder re-launching SportsLizard. I see this as an opportunity to validate myself (if I'm such an "expert" in SEO/web marketing, then I should be able to grow my site if I put the effort into it) and also bring our company a step closer to making the majority of our revenue from our own sites and only take on the clients we want.

That said, there's some guilt on my part because I know for the next 1-2 months my revenue contribution to the company will be less than it has been. I know that if I fail, I can just pick up more clients and we'll be fine - but anyone who knows me knows I want to innovate for myself and not a client...so I'm looking at this as a HUGE opportunity to prove myself. If I fail, it could be a few years before I can jump off client work like this and delve into a project, because we have a lot of expenses coming by the end of the year (most notably we are in the market for a warehouse for Detailed Image).

So what's my brilliant idea to re-launch SportsLizard? I want to unite all of the small and mid-size collectibles businesses that currently sell on their own site to syndicate their items on SportsLizard for free. By building this unique data source of hundreds of thousands of items, I will provide VALUE to collectors - something I don't do now. Add in the customs section, the news section, the announcer ratings, and the news reader that are already in place, and I think I have the recipe for a massive collectors site.

I honestly don't think I could have done this a few years back. But now SportsLizard is large enough that I get contacted by 4-6 advertisers a month so I know I can support the site with advertising. Right now I have several on a "waiting list" for this new launch. I couldn't have had that a few years back. It takes pressure off knowing that we'll increase our revenue immediately without me doing any marketing/promotion.

I also now know a lot more people in the industry that sell online. I just finished sending out emails to 8 mid-size collectibles sites and I've received 2 "yes" emails in the first 10 minutes!

I also want to point something out that I learned with experience this time around: don't build your site/product/service based upon what YOU think will work. I've only begun templating the new site, and purposefully chose to contact other site owners before developing the database. Why? Because they give you insight that will save you time. For example, both of the replies I've gotten thus far mentioned that they currently syndicate using Froogle. So it would behoove me to accept Froogle feeds and make their lives easier....now wouldn't it? That's something I hadn't thought of, but can easily do now that I know about it.

I've honestly never been this excited in my life about a project because I feel it's the culmination of all of my skills and interests into something that can really make a difference in a hobby that's falling behind the times.

Next up - designing the database and search function. Once that's done I get to migrate the site over to Pure Adapt's server, contact more dealers, contact my advertisers, and begin marketing the sh*t out of the new site. Man I can't wait...