Announcing Six Sites: Six Products in One Year
I had this crazy idea, could I create 12 products in 12 months? I’ve been able to build a successful product in less than a month before, so I thought maybe I could do it again. After crunching the numbers I realized that I wouldn’t have any time to do client work too. Plus I feared that I would be so consumed with the insane pace that quality of each product might suffer.
So I scaled back the idea by half and set the goal to try and build six products over the next year, no investment, no big teams, just a handful of good guys with a half a dozen good ideas.
I have no idea if I can pull it off or not, but I figure it will be fun to at least try. And while I’m going through the trials I figure I might as well blog about it as well. That is where sixsites.com comes in.
So today officially marks Day 1 of the challenge!
What is a Product?
As I’ve been thinking about this idea, trying to figure out which of my long list of product ideas are worthy of the challenge, the question of what is and is not a “product” comes up.
By product I mean to say a site designed to be its own self sufficient brand meant to provide a specific audience or group of users a service or personal value. Each site will have a specific business goal designed to make money, some directly and some indirectly, some short term and some long term.
So by products I really mean websites.
Why Six Sites?
You may be asking, “Why Six Sites?” (not the name, but the quantity)
Three reasons really: The first is that I tend to have a sundry of ideas and interests as diverse. I’d like to explore them and do what I enjoy. Each product idea is something I am passionate about would love to do full time.
The second is simple startup investment logic. If 1 out of 10 startups will be successful, then why not try and increase the odds yourself? Why not create a number of products that each have potential, and see if they are able to reach an audience. If so, invest more, if not, shelve it, open source it… who knows.
The third reason is simply to see if it can be done. Can an agile design and development model work on multiple products in such a short period of time?
I don’t know but I think it is worth trying.
Why not just create one “good” product?
Why spread myself so thin trying to do so many products? Why not just focus on one “good” product? Good question.
I want each product to be released with the same pride and quality that one might put into a product they’ve spent on. I just believe it doesn’t have to take a year. If I focus on the problems I’m solving and nothing else, if I keep decisions, features, designs and code all streamlined to serving its basic purpose, I think I can pull it off without making sacrifices.
I believe that if I stay lean and mean I can create six great products in a short period of time.
Is it Doable?
I’ve estimated hundreds of client projects. I’m gotten pretty good at being able to assess scope and complexity of an idea. You can never be 100%, but my instincts tell me that I can complete each product, each with varying complexity within a year and still be able to do client work, which will be paying the bills.
Some products will be simple and can done over a weekend and some will be complex and take a few months. But is it doable? I have no idea, that’s the fun part.
What’s Next?
I plan to provide more details of Product #1, codenamed “Sandwich” named after a town in Massachusetts, in the next few weeks. In the coming weeks and months I will provide updates and clarify the business goals of each product, though some details are very likely to change.
Stay tuned on this site and my company site. There is a lot more to come.
We had this crazy idea, could we create 12 products in 12 months? We've built successful products in less than a month before, so maybe we could do it again... and again... and again. Well after crunching the numbers we realized that we wouldn't have any time to do client work too. So we are going to try and build six products over the next year, no investment, no big teams, just a handful of good guys with a half a dozen good ideas. 
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