Thirty Six Web Sites in Thirty Six Months

Changing the way your idea becomes reality

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An Example - Super Teacher Worksheets, Tonawanda, NY

You may have seen in the Buffalo News (Business Page, May 5, 2013), an article about a local web site that went from an ad-based site, to a paid subscription site with over 250,000 paid customers.

While the article describes the success Tim has had, it doesn't deal much with HOW it happened. Let me go into a bit more detail, so that you might get an insight that will help you achieve a similar level of success.

January 23rd, 2011

Just a month before, I had left Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center where I was a Senior Systems Analyst. While I enjoyed my time there, I looked forward to being able to develop software for customers as an independent software developer. I had a number of customers, and a number of independent projects that I was working on. But ask any independent consultant, and they will let you know they are always keeping an eye out for new customers. On this day, I checked the project listings on Craigslist. On January 23rd, 2011, I sent the following email to a Craigslist posting.

Sounds interesting.

I'm a Buffalo based .net application developer. Been doing it for over 20 years, mostly healthcare related.

I'd be willing to work with you on this, perhaps pulling in a couple other people if it's warranted (if you're in a hurry, that might be necessary).

Do you host the site?

In the ad you mention (among other things) ASP or php. Considering both of these are server side, do you have a preference?

I'd focus on you getting what you want/need...without a suit-wearing-power-point-presentation.

Even if you go another direction on this, I'd be willing to stop in and give you my two or three cents.

Good luck with the project.

We exchanged emails, and had an initial meeting.

Lessons Learned

Probably the single best way to build a successful service based website is to solve a problem you personally have faced. In this case, Tim developed worksheets for his class, but realized other teachers might be interested in what he had created. By word of mouth, his site grew. Later, Google's high ranking of his page helped him grow even faster.

Common Elements

One of the advantages of 36in36, is we have common code that can be used across many sites. Most sites will have a membership component. While this isn't that difficult to write, we already have the necessary components developed.

The Financial Markets Weren't Created with Websites in Mind

Traditional Wall Street Investment is great for a company that proves a concept in a small scale, then goes to the financial markets to scale up production. 'Scaling-up' to a manufacture means adding buildings, engineers, tooling, possibly production or assembly lines. That's expensive stuff.

Today, once a prototype of a website is created, scaling up may mean nothing more than a click or two of a mouse to add an addtional server.

The point is, by the time an investment is made, it's fairly well established whether the website will be successful or not.

In some ways, we see the greatest risk in website creation is putting all your eggs in one basket. By participating in 36in36, we hope to reduce that risk, as well as move some of the risk to the developers.

36in36 is a different way for you to bring your idea to the world. Reducing the cost by using a system that's in place, and allowing you to participate in the potential success of the other 35 sites.