After Several Failures, A Successful Website Launch

It was an experiment gone bad. Actually, it was proof of how difficult it is to be successful online. About a year or so ago, I registered the domain ChartingYourWealth.com. I had plans on creating the BiggerPockets of Personal Finance. It would be easy: Get some good articles, set up a successful forum, find great information to share, and voila!

I began putting the site together, but was always distracted by the other sites I was operating. The enthusiasm wasn’t totally there. The forum looked to be off to a decent start . . . a good group of BiggerPockets Forum members came over and got the place off and running, but without my full attention, things began to falter.

Many people take for granted what a challenge it is to build a great website. I’ll demonstrate what I’m talking about. When you surf the net, there are always a few cool sites that you find and bookmark . . . once in a blue, I actually go to a handful of the hundreds of sites I’ve saved. Recently, I thought I’d go through my bookmarks to see what had become of these sites. I was off to a good start, but it began. That awesome blog I was hooked on hadn’t had a fresh post in months. That promising idea of a site was now an empty shell. As I went through, I had to delete one site after another. Many great ideas that once seemed like sureties had withered to nothingness.

Since I was in this mindset, I thought it would be interesting to go through my emails. I wanted to check out some of the old link suggestions that I had rejected or ignored. As the webmaster of a successful site, I get tons of link suggestions every week, and can only put the best ones up on our site. The numbers just got worse . . . probably 1/2 of the links suggested to me between a year and 6 months ago were either inactive or had changed hands to be something else. I guess I ignored the right ones.

So, what do you care, right?

Actually, it is a fact of everyday online life. Websites Fail. Many people think it is easy to just throw up a website and you’ll start making money and getting people to visit it. This is far from the truth. That guy you’ve been hearing about lately from Digg, Kevin Rose, who made $60 million in less than 2 years, put in hard work, time, and Perseverance. Every internet entrepreneur worth his salt did it with hard work and Perseverance . . .with a few exceptions like Alex Tew.

It was now my turn. I realized that my original idea had failed and I knew that I would not let it die. A few months ago, I went and turned the site into a blog about personal finance. I was pumped. It would be easy to do. . . just post regular articles about finance and that would be it; I loved talking about finance, stocks, bonds, and money. About two weeks into it I again gave up . . . another failure. This pattern was a little disconcerting to me, but I still had BiggerPockets, one of the largest real estate portals online. I had built it from nothing. I couldn’t let this bump in the road slow me down.

Fast forward to a week ago. It was again time to focus my energy on this site. This time, it had to be different. The reason the previous two sites had failed was because of me. They failed because I did not have the time to maintain them or monitor them. This new site had to be one that was effortless. It should be something that ran itself. I started toying around with some ideas, and began to build what you see today. . .

ChartingYourWealth.com is a simple site that accomplishes big things. On this one page website, you can find everything you need for personal finance. I’ve combed the blogs, the forums, and all the other resources out there to create a Giant, Easy to Navigate, Most Useful and Best Financial Sites Compilation! Now, it is still in its early stages, but you get the idea. Bookmark just one site, and you’ll have every online financial resource you really ever need at your fingertips.

The best part for me is that once it is complete, it will be self-sustaining. Every month or so, I’ll need to make sure that all the links work, but that’s all! I will be taking suggestions for links, but that’s about it. No forums to run, no blog to write in. SUCCESS! I have come up with an idea and implemented it as I had planned.

I realize that I could have just told you to stop by and check out
ChartingYourWealth.com Personal Finance, but doing that would have deprived you of knowing about the blood and sweat and PERSEVERENCE that goes into building a site. Compared to BiggerPockets.com, it was easy, but that’s not the point. My challenges have become a learning experience for me, and for all of you readers.

That said, I believe that this blog, Real Estate News for Real, has reached a fork in the road.

While real estate is very interesting and exciting, I think it might be interesting to start filling you all in on being an entrepreneur. This blog will continue to fill your minds with interesting and timely real estate news, tips, and information, but I will also try to help demonstrate what it takes to be a web-entrepreneur. I think it will help to make this a more interesting and diverse place.

Stay tuned, This is just the beginning!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.