idea

So how did we come up with this new concept/idea for Project X you may ask?
Did Simon & I just woke up one day and said, yeh we should do this?
Actually what did happen was that through visiting people's websites (courtesy of Entrecard) and just surfing the net in general (eg: using digg, reading the news on line, checking out google hot trends, etc...) I could see there was an area that could be improved on.

I had spoken to Simon about what I thought would be a nice feature and he also did a bit of research to see what was out there (thanks to the internet and google, the world becomes a small place with information close at hand). Do you ever wonder how we got by before the internet and using search engines? Okay, I'm getting off topic here...we can look at this another time :)

So where was I...oh yeh, Simon found that the concept I wanted implemented, there were already sites/companies out there that did provide what I wanted (to some extent). However, after assessing what each site had to offer we realized that there was still a gap. From this, we built on how Project X would be different and what it would offer that was not being provided out there. This is what we did for our initial research and gap analysis. I am still on the look out each day as I surf the net to ensure our idea is still relevant and that no one else has implemented our concept - so far, I haven't seen it yet so our idea is still alive and kicking. This is important, because if there is too much competition out there already, there is no point in us investing a lot of time, money and effort on this project.

When we decided that this new idea was worth pursuing, we then searched for a new domain name. To help us come up with a new domain name, we followed the existing processes we utilize at the niche warehouse. We searched for keywords using Google Adwords.
I then downloaded the text file of keywords and put it through our niche warehouse analysis tool to obtain the approximate google traffic and competition. Based on our analysis using the niche warehouse we came up with a few long tail keywords.

Once we had a few keywords/names we liked we then visited a site to ensure that the domain name we wanted was available. We only tried a handful of potential names, but as soon as we found the one that represented our idea we bought it as we didn't want to lose this domain name. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, because from our past experience we searched on domain names we liked and they were still available. Unfortunately, because we didn't act on it straight away the next day or two the domain name was taken and parked by someone else (it ticked me off, but lessons learned). I've heard stories of people/companies out there that are just buying off domain names and sitting on them waiting for someone to buy it off them. Simon heard a while back that all 3-4 letter words in the english language have all been taken up as domain names, (admittedly, some are legitimate sites) but majority of these sites are being parked on. I guess there will always be opportunists out there.

So now we are the owners of a new domain name...this was actually the easy part, now comes the hard work!

As you may or may not be aware, at Vividlamp we offer a free search tool for finding long tail keywords called Niche Warehouse. If you look up to the right hand corner there's the tab just there to take you to the free search page (if you're interested) in using it.

We've just reached 13,000 of analyzed long tail keywords. When I say 'analyzed' this means we have done all the leg work for you and we have found the traffic and competition for a particular keyword and have rejected those that do not fit the bill, so to speak.

Recently, Simon and I have had a discussion on again putting into practise our niche warehouse tool and the concept behind Vividlamp. We enjoy hearing about great ideas and we also enjoy promoting these ideas. In additon to this, we want to be innovative and to create something that we can give to people so it may meet a need.

Through our discussions, research and utilising our niche warehouse tool we came up with an idea. We think it's a great idea and it is something that we both know we will enjoy working on. So I guess this is a good start :) I cannot divulge too much at this early stage, but for now, I will refer to it as "Project X" (I know it sounds a little cliched, but it does have a nice ring to it!).

What I would like to inform our friends that visit our site, is that I will be documenting our progress in these pages. The reason for this is so that we at Vividlamp can apply what we believe into practise, monitor the actions we take as we progress through with this project, release our idea and continue to evaluate it's performance. In this way, we and our friends can go on this journey together and find out the things we have learned from this experience whether we succeed or dare I say fail. Even in failure I still hope that we can take some positive points from this experience. And more importantly, once we have completed Project X, you our friends will be the first people to know about it.

So stay tuned...