I currently have a couple of moderately successful online businesses. Unfortunately, due to my revenue model, and how long they've been like this, I feel I've trapped myself by limiting their potential income. I do realize that I can always add more features and/or change the way my income is generated, but I do that at the risk of losing my existing member base. Also, reinventing yourself can have negative drawbacks, such as your site losing it's simplicity and ease of use. So, lately I've been toying with the idea of creating new web sites specifically targeted towards competing with my own web sites. The newer versions will be feature rich, slick and innovative. I think of it as having a free and a paid version of my products. Any other insights you might have to this business practice? Benefits or drawbacks?
I think your idea is actually great. And I guess this is being done by real companies offering products in the market, they offer a higher end product and a lower end product so that they can target both ends of the market.
I really don't think I need to sell two different price levels of products to still be successful. Either way, I'm saturating the market with my products and limiting the exposure of my competitor's product. I still can't see the downside.
Hy, If you compete against yourself, who will lose? Then, the time is spend to make you to lose. Instead of compete, it's better collaborate.
Changing an existing site is bit risky or profitable. I think creating new sites is more beneficial in long run. It helps to reduce the risk of investment. You don’t need to depend on one project. But the effort t and the cost is high.
I think it's a great idea.. could probably give you some ideas or what I would do if you provide us the old site vs. new site. Best of luck buddy! Keep up the great work.
Considering I would be making changes to my existing site with upgrades, I don't really see how I'd be wasting time/resources. One of my sites is in a very specialized niche. You could say it is now considered an authority in that niche. Because of that status, my members have certain expectations. To go off and change things around so that I can start increasing my revenue will most definately cause my site to lose some of it's status. Think about if Facebook were to start charging. Would you still use Facebook? I likely wouldn't. So, if I were to start a new site, directly focusing on the features that my current site lacks...