I started Tim’s Deals (Your Search Engine for Thousands of DC-Area deals) as an “experiment in social media” in late September of 2010, right at 2 years ago.
I ran with it full steam until about 2 months ago when the end of summer, vacations, and some general malaise took over.
As much as it pained me to admit it, I’d done just about everything I could with this project and it simply wasn’t going anywhere.
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Well… I just can’t give it up. I know in my heart of hearts that I have something here.
I can pinpoint a few areas where I know I veered in the wrong direction.
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1) I’ve changed my focus way too frequently
2) I’ve changed my website format way too frequently.
3) I tweeted… and tweeted… and tweeted… (one more time)… and tweeted way too much.
4) I didn’t do much else to get the word out.
5) I let too many people get to me asking how I intended to monetize Tim’s Deals.
Going forward, I’m going back to the basics. Here is how I intend to resolve the previous 5 issues:
1) FOCUS: My concept from the beginning was to build a database of local deals and that’s what I’m going to do.
2) WEBSITE: 1 search engine containing all ~5,000 of my deals to date. Not much fluff otherwise.
3) TWITTER: Deal summaries rather than every individual deal. More substance, less tweets.
4) BLOG: It’s 2012, it’s about time I use blogging as a resource.
5) PURPOSE: Back to my original focus of building a good database, not making money. First things first.
I’m excited to get back to work. Go ahead and peruse my first 5,000 deals and I’ll keep you updated about the next 5,000.
I’d love your feedback at Tims@TIMS.US or below in the comments field.