>...don't make it about your product make it about them!

Truly well-said.

> I think that automated domain name valuation services are useless

You could say that again :)

You might want to check out moniker.com - I think they (still) offer an appraisal service. You'll need to shell out some change but their appraisals are generally considered to be quite authoritative in the domain/domaining industry: http://www.moniker.com/

All the best with the sale.

try http://www.webmasterworld.com for deep down, in-the-trenches type discussions and http://www.searchengineland.com for more editorially fashioned coverage

> Do you think people would be interested in selling their apps or other projects on Swym?

I think this should work. Here is a quick-thought blue print of what I'd do:

1. Create a 'Marketplace' type section (with WTB/WTS tabs or something?)

2. Create a (separate) profile page for the apps for sale

3. Those who wish to sell can specify the sale-specific aspects (e.g. asking price, traffic/user base/revenue numbers etc.) which will be displayed on the marketplace profile (with crosslinks to/from the app and owner profile pages etc.)

HTH

Thanks for your suggestions!

May be, try here: http://thejun.to/

All the best.

Great Chris. Any suggestions and additions to the Resource Directory section also welcomed. :)

Great going. Congrats and all the best moving forward.

> In terms of revenue for 2011 we got paid from Google AdSense $125.

For the whole year 2011? Do you run Google Ads on all the pages? What were your total traffic numbers? Does that tell you anything?

Thanks. For the year we had a total of $2,243 in billable ad revenue but since we didn't collect any of it except for Google AdSense, it's not being counted. Every ad company that we use has 60 day terms.

As far as traffic 2011 total traffic was 670,587 unique and 1,013,611 page views. For the longest time we had only 3 ads per page then upped that to 4.

That total revenue is not for just ad impressions but paid placement. On average our CPM for ads is only $0.50.

We could be making more with pop-ups/unders and full page ads but we don't want to be that type of site.

We know nothing about the online advertising game except it feels like we should be making more. Right now we are working with a pretty large ad network to hopefully bring us more ad revenue for 2012. Our goal is to be able to work for the site full time which means at least $15,000/month in ad revenue is needed.

How long is a piece of string? :)

[IMHO, it is the hackers who keep the world/universe going, because they are the ones who cause chaos/disruption (in absence of which, the 3rd law of thermodynamics would fail, causing the universe to implode).]

Been thinking of making iOS and Android apps, looking for feedback.

> If you haven't been spending time thinking about marketing and getting users as part of the process of building your product, then you've already lost.

How is this so? Care to elaborate upon this a bit?

I wouldn't say "lost", but I would say "seriously far behind".

You should start marketing the product as soon as you start writing code. Start collecting email addresses, writing blog posts, talking to people, etc etc.

When you launch you should ideally have an email list which are already interested in your product. These people are your lifeblood. They will tell you what sucks about your product and what to change. They will tell you that your product isn't what they need...but they will provide critical information about what they really need.

Code is only 20% of the battle. Marketing is the other 80%.

Totally agree, polyfractal, and this is exactly the point I was trying to prompt/cadge out of someone :)

I'd say the difference between "lost" and "seriously far behind" is comparable to a "broken heart" and a "not-so-broken heart".