Have you ever had a website idea completely fail?

[zulufox]

I have successful content site on a particular niche.

I am pondering diversifying into another niche to give my income more stability.

Right now I am still just brain-storming some good niches and I can't help but wonder what would happen if my website niche completely fails.

Has anyone built a site for a niche and the site never took off?

[Frequent]

Just a guess...but I would say this has happened about a billion+1 times.

There are tons of sites that simply don't perform and are left by the wayside for any number of reasons.

Freq---

Perhaps I misunderstood your question.

[bcolflesh]

I haven't given up yet - but my Guns for Children donation site is still barely hanging on...

[oneguy]

Has anyone built a site for a niche and the site never took off?

Yep. Sometimes, I do a lot of work for absolutely nothing. Sometimes I get a little, but then decide that it's too much work for the money.

Babe Ruth struck out a lot. When he was at the plate, he had an opportunity. As an economist... I look at trips to the plate as worth something each time, on average. So, I keep going to the plate.

When you find a new technique that helps your swing, you use it until the pitchers learn it and nullify your advantage.

If you build or try something new and it fails... try something else.

[mikko]

Yes, I have been in this situation before and quite frankly it sucks. As they say, you learn from your mistakes but who wants to hear that after many, many hours of hard work.
My answer was add a back up along with the main master plan. I tended to add a few variants to the site as i was adding content. Check your stats and if you see the variants taking off more than the original plan, go down that route - that way its not been an entire waste of time

[yosemite]

I have a site that I thought would be doing better by now. I'm proud of its content and I haven't given up on it yet. But I accept that it might not be as "big" as I had hoped. Early days, though—things could still turn around.

Looking at the states of this particular site, I see that the most popular pages are not the ones I had anticipated. Which gives me an idea to add more content with a slightly different focus.

[Essex_boy]

Oh sure I have, if you dont fail your not trying.

I spent a fortune having a site built (only time ever) and I didnt get one sale! Adwords etc were sending me upto 500 people a day who were spending upto half and hour on the site but still not one sale.

It happens.

[cyberair]

I spent years and over $50k of my money developing a site I was sure would be great. The site received great publicity, visitors would send thank you e-mails for making such an informative site, revenues were horrible. The site is a total loser at this point.