Weekend Musings – Build, Measure, Learn

Hello, happy Sunday, and welcome to my weekend musings. This has been a working weekend for us at Fashion Metric and we’re loving every minute of it. I think I’m going to have to stop using the word work since this has such a negative connotation for most people. We just added two new independent designers from London and have some sample shirts we’ll be shooting this weekend.

Build, measure, learn, that’s what we’re all about and that means we’re making small tweaks to our platform every single day. Things to amazing tools like Crazy Egg and Optimizely we are able to A/B test and learn from user behavior. User feedback is incredibly important, but actions speak louder than words so if someone says they want something, test it.

What I’m talking about here also applies directly to Domaining when it comes to monetization and sales alike. I’ve seen many new domain investors buy hundreds of names all following the same theme. Names like DentistsIn[CityName].com or [CityName]IsCool.com. They usually register all these names first without testing if anyone actually wanted to buy one or two of them first. Build, measure, learn, it still applies in much the same way. If you think you’ve found a hot new trend, awesome, now prove it. Being able to hand register a bunch of domains sure doesn’t prove a trend, being able to sell a bunch does.

When it comes to development and monetization you can usually do better than AdSense, but you’ll have to test to find out. Also just because you own an exact-match product domain doesn’t mean that people will buy products from you. You’ll need to provide a better experience than Amazon of whatever site most people buy from. Traffic is only one part of the equation and while traffic is critical there are many other factors that come into play when you’re monetizing a site. That being said, without traffic you won’t make a dime.

The idea of build, measure, learn is not mine and it’s not new. What I’m talking about are the Lean Startup Principles pioneered by Eric Ries. When most people hear about “Lean Startups” they confuse this with bootstrapped startups. Lean doesn’t mean saving money or building a business with what’s left in your savings account, lean actually comes from the Japanese Manufacturing process and means learning from your customers and constantly iterating.

If you’re digging this lean stuff there are two awesome books that I highly recommend:

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lean_entrepreneur

Okay, enough about Lean, onwards with the rest of my weekend musings!

Next week we’re heading up to the Bay Area for the week and I’m excited to be celebrating my 32nd birthday wine tasting. Really looking forward to a day of wine tasting and catching-up with some good friends that will be joining us for the adventure.

As some of you know Daina had foot surgery – yes, too many heels, and the recovery is going very well. Two more weeks and she’ll be back to normal, but until then nurse Morgan is in the house!

We are still looking at homes in Big Bear, it’s amazing how many similarities physical real estate has to virtual real estate. For those who don’t know about Big Bear it is an awesome resort community just about two hours from Los Angeles. There is snow there during the winter and great skiing. During the summer a huge lake makes water skiing, kayaking, etc. all possible. It’s amazing that we can leave our house at 7PM and by 9PM be on the top of a mountain in the middle of the snow.

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While we’re both city people we’re really looking forward to the freedom of living between Marina del Rey and Big Bear, feels good for the soul and as many of you know, an Internet connection is all that’s needed for us to work!

Okay, I think this might be one of my biggest weekend musings yet, what can I say, sometimes I wake-up with a lot on my mind! I hope you’re all having a great weekend, as always feel free to share your own weekend musings or comment on any of mine!

Photo Credit: John Lemieux via Compfight cc

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton