5 Failed Websites From Nathaniell

bynathaniell

101.1K followers

Updated 10 years ago

I finally let some old domains I was foolishly holding on to for too long last week, and it was like a trip down memory lane. Some domains I looked at and though, "Wow, that was a great idea. I wish I had time for it" (like a website about backyard forts for kids).

Other sites I looked at and though, "Wow, what was I thinking?!"

So today I wanted to share with you some of the websites that I actually followed through with building, but never turned out to be anything. Many of them sites I made in my first 6 months of training in WA.

1. plantsvszombiesplushtoys.net

This game was extremely popular a few years ago, and I wasted many hours playing. I was very product-focused at the time, and didn't fully understand what a niche was. I did sell a few plush toys and made about .75 cents on Amazon.

The main issue was that I didn't know what to write about, and most of my posts were basically a 200 word sales pitch for a toy.

2. makemoneywithphones.com

This wasn't a bad idea, but there were no good products to support the idea of making money on a phone - or at least I didn't look hard enough to find them. I promoted a few Clickbank products, but the reviews never ranked, and I didn't look into apps or other possible content ideas. I also outsourced most of the articles, didn't pay much attention to what the writers were doing, and quality suffered.

I still think this could be an OK site for someone that wanted to do the proper research and write good enough content. You could talk about app creation, buying/selling phones on ebay, being an affiliate of phone accessories, survey sites, or other PTC offers.

3. buyediblegold.com

This wasn't the worst of my ideas. It was an OK keyword, and I was ranked #2 for the phrase "buy edible gold" for a few months.

I think the issue here was that I just wasn't into the topic, and it was too specific. I wanted to expand to recipes that would use edible gold, then sell the gold through the website. I just never followed through with writing.

I did sell a few ounces of gold, but nothing substantial. There was also a serious lack of good affiliate programs in this niche, so I was stuck promoting the same companies over and over (mostly Amazon) because they paid me, rather than doing a true comparison of edible gold buying options.

4. hemanklerehab.info

This is a clickbank product I promoted for 3 years actually! I made a few hundreds...maybe a little over $1000 from this site over those years. I guess I can't really say it was "failed".

But the only keyword I ranked for was the actual product name. The product was called HEM Ankle Rehab, so I bought the .info domain and backlinked the heck out of the domain (bad, I know). Anyway, it ranked #2 for about a year, then lower on page 1, then not at all after a few Google updates.

I still got some traffic trickles from Squidoo lenses and articles directories, and made an odd sales every month or so.

In the end, I was making under $100 a year (after costs of domain renewal, my precious time, etc) so I let it expire. I also was not proud of this site since there was literally just 1 page of content that was a regurgitation of the sales page for the product.

5. naturalhorsecareonline.blogspot.com

This one I'm not entirely sure is the correct domain name, but it was something like this. It might be the first "website" I ever "built"...if you can call it building a website, lol. I barely got past putting some pictures up and writing a few lines about some natural horse shampoo, and never returned to the domain.

Back in the day, the WA training recommend blogger as a free way to get started. Boy, was I cheap!

Anyway, the main failure for this one was lack of interest, but also a lack of direction. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time and just didn't know what to do next. By the time I figured out what to do, I had other ideas and was moving on to the next project.

In combination with my niche reveal from a few months back, you can see that I've been through a lot of niches, and a lot of domains. I certainly didn't hit a home run on my first swing!

I hope you enjoyed reading this post!