Spreadsheet of the 50+ projects/businesses I've started/built/sold/shut down over the past 15 years
Today I got all nostalgic and put together a spreadsheet of the 50+ projects/business that I've started/built/sold/shut down over the past 15 years!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro4QYK1raqu3pNFMAjP9vSOft-WndIS6nn5q4JU8TPc/edit?usp=sharing
2004/2005 were particularly embarrassing w/ all my freaking Amazon affiliate sites. 🤦♂️
2010 is when things start shifting towards more sustainable products & businesses.
Interesting tidbits...
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There's a business in there that I co-founded with @Mubs over 12 years ago.
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You'll find the sale price of a dozen projects ranging from $200 to $75,000.
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There's a site in there about prepping (as in, "the world is ending")
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I was consulting in the middle of most of this. Had over 300 client projects from 2003-2013.
Check it out & happy to answer any questions about what on earth I was thinking at any given time. 😂
This is insane.
All those success stories are always served as a magic. But the real magic is trying again and again for 57 times.
How do you balance between focus and diversification? Like after popsurvey or baremetrics what prompted you to start the other projects? Do you start the projects by yourself?
I'm really not great at this. Always something I'm trying to get better at. I tend to go in waves where I'll go hard on something to get it to a certain point, then go to the next then and then eventually come back around to all of the active projects.
Baremetrics is really the one exception in that I work on it every week day. It takes top priority for a number of reasons, one of which being there's a whole team of full-time employees working on it.
These days my motivation for starting a new project is almost always because I'm wanting to learn something new and now is rarely motivated by the financial side.
And probably 95% of those projects were started by myself.
How would you define that tendency in a person to want to start multiple projects? I've heard multipotentialite, paralell entrepreneurship. Any others?
I only ask as I'm a serial side project starter (whilst loving my main business).
Well it seems that your way of doing things paid off for you since now you have successful products.
I also get obsessed by an idea for a while, generally up to publication and then go back to my main project.
How do you manage baremetrics when you go into obsession mode?
I find my emails pile up very quickly...
I don’t know that I do a great job of managing but I try really hard to compartmentalize my time and use those blocks for focused, intentional work.
I’ve also hired people who are really good at execution which frees me up to spend more time on strategy, which tends to be a mental exercise that can be spread across lots of different work times.
Wow that's a long list! How did you sell your older projects? Did you get a random offer from someone or did you list them on sites like Flippa?
All but TheAppleBlog were me listing them on Flippa.
I was approached for the TheAppleBlog acquisition.
Which plan do you use to sell on Flippa? The standard, show off, or premium plan? I've been curious to know if the standard plan might be all that one needs.
Oh no idea. It's been quite a few years since I sold anything there. Can't recall what I used before.
I've joined up just to say this is one of the best things I've seen on the internet :)
Thanks @antlockyer! 🙌
Thanks for sharing! This is a really important post.
May I ask what you think were the main reasons your Amazon aff. sites didn’t work?
Because there were a million other sites just like them. It was a lame attempt on my part to try to cash in on a trend. Terrible idea.
In retrospect do you see what you could’ve done differently about the amazon aff biz, or was it just a terrible idea from the beginning to the end?
Terrible idea for me. There were undoubtedly people succeeding doing it. My motivations for it were just misaligned which set myself up for doing a poor job executing, and it ultimately just couldn’t hold my attention.
Is your "shell company" an LLC?
It is indeed!
Well, technically an LLC that does an S-Corp election.
Funny how things stack up over time...
Did you try to sell all of them (via flippa?) before shutting them down?
What happened to all the affiliate / content plays - any main reason for closing them?
All (except TheAppleBlog) were sold via Flippa. And really any that I listed ultimately sold (even if it was just for a couple hundred dollars).
The ones that I just outright shut down weren't worth the selling process as they weren't making any money.
As for affiliate plays...I shut them all down b/c they didn't make a dime. :)
Cool👍 @Shpigford How do you manage time for consulting and projects?
Well I don't anymore. Haven't done any consulting since 2013. But when I was consulting I generally split my time 50/50 with consulting and my own projects.
Wow, your perseverance is incredible.
How didn’t you spread the word a snack drive traffic to all these sites in various industries. Like did you write a blog / create social media accounts for each?
Most of this was pre-social media. 👴🏻 Lots of posting in forums!
Are you full time working on these before the success of Baremetrics?
I split my time 50/50 on consulting, but I was full-time self-employed during all these.
Love that history lesson.
I see that you did a lot of affiliate marketing in the early days. How do you feel affiliate marketing differs now?
Also, with all the content SEO projects, was it you who did all the writing? Or did you have a team of writers at that point?
Haha I love it!
BanThat 2006 Community based around what people didn't like Sold 1 year later for $2,000 What a terrible idea...
=> at least you sold it ;)
Well thats fantastic. I have my own list dating back even further but nowhere near as long or with as many "sold it" labels as yours. Inspirational
Thanks Josh. How many of these came about from your client projects?
1: PopSurvey. That started as a client project but then through a series of events I actually ended up a co-founder and CEO.
Everything else was started by me from the beginning.
This is a great example of not giving up and really loving what you do. Thanks for sharing. You could've been the guy who quit digging for gold 2 inches from the mother-load.
Image for reference:
https://i0.wp.com/www.socialprefect.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wpid-wp-1427928876104.jpeg
Anyway, you can really tell that you love creating and building things. Persistence pays off, keep building awesome stuff @Shpigford
Thanks Matthew!
This is incredible and truly inspiring for people like me who feel dishearten after a failure.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Atta!
Incredible! Thanks for sharing this with us. Keep hustling!
Thanks Patrik!
Hey Josh. Thanks for putting this together.
I'm curious about Deck Foundry. Why do you think it didn't take off?
We just didn't like doing it. I found shortly after we got in to it that I wasn't a fan of doing productized services as it was too easy for projects to get out of hand and not be worth the time.
I had the same question as @shalintj and I was wondering if he has any ideas to take it further. And if he does, would @Shpigford have any advice, tips, issues, etc.?
Inspiring!! :)
Thanks so much!
Ha live spreadsheet, I see other people! haha
This is a great list, interesting seeing your thought progression of what to do next.
Thanks! 🎉
Seeing this list must make you feel awesome and productive as hell! It’s an impressive list!
At the very least it reminded me that I've had some seriously terrible ideas (SurviveTheWar.com?!?!?!?! 🤦♂️).
Thanks for sharing, very interesting!
Thanks Brian!