The Slow Grind

Self financing any type of business has its ups and downs. On the upside, you have complete control over what you're doing - no one can tell you what to do, how to do it, or when to do it. That's a pretty cool thing when you think about it. No investors pushing for silly development. No executive trouble makers forcing change that just doesn't matter. The list can go on, but you get the idea. On the other hand, being self funded has one big drawback - the funding. Unless you have plenty of expendable income or were born wealthy, you have to be really careful about what you do with your money. You don't have VC pumping millions of dollars your way, so you can't simultaneously advertise everywhere you want to be while also paying a team of developers to kick ass for you.

List Here is in that spot right now where tough choices need to be made. Now, this isn't rocket science, so I suppose it's not really that hard. The site needs some definite development love to clean things up, tighten up the process, and make it a better experience overall. The trade off is that there isn't a lot of "cheddar" (I'm so gangsta!) left over to drive more users to the site. This is really tough when you consider that at its core, List Here is a classified service. This was a problem that I envisioned early on, a true "chicken or the egg" scenario: If you don't have listings on your site, why will people visit and ultimiately come back? Conversely, if people aren't visiting the site, why in the hell would they post their stuff for sale?

It's been a damn tricky thing to balance. The good thing is that the updates I mentioned a few weeks back are right around the corner, and at that time there will be some actual marketing of the site! There's a little bit of that right now, but not a whole lot - and that's going to change. Hooray for progress, even if it's painfully slow!

On another note, I am reminded of some of my interactive counterparts that I've talked to over the past months, and I realize how many of them need to be slapped. "Why not just make a service that's so social-media-integrated, so blindingly awesome, so "ahead of the curve" that you will instantly be blessed with kazillions of visits?!?!" they ask in exasperation. Apparently, to be a successful business these days, most people think that you need a huge Facebook icon, you need to re-tweet crap to Charlie Sheen, and then do a viral video that goes crazy on YouTube, while simultaneously being embraced by the likes of Reddit and Digg. The reality is this - a lot of businesses, even those online, are kind of boring when you think about it. I consider Craigslist, eBay Classifieds, and Oodle to be competitors (I'm sure they don't think the same of me), and they're pretty boring businesses. No shiny, no awe, no social awesomeness. Just a solid business that can be done better.

So to all of those weirdos who were flabbergasted at the lack of a List Here iPhone application, or the site not having the ability to send to Twitter, or whatever other stupid things they suggested, suck it - List Here is growing bitches!