Development is actually a mis-used term, bandied about like a badminton bird as if anyone can pick up a racket and achieve greatness. We’d all be Mark Zuckerberg if that were the case.

No, what we consider ‘development’ is really scripts and templates and WordPress – all great in varying ways but lacking the singular quality a site needs to succeed: uniqueness.

But that is also a word that gets tossed around the lawn like bocce balls because in basic reality, ’unique’ means doing something no one else has even attempted.

So while I do love and see benefit to many things like directories and e-card shops and Amazon stores, true development means going where no man, woman or animal has gone. Means building something that truly stands on its own, builds a base and gains value to the upper echelons.

Because, let’s face it, even a great mini-site is only worth the value of the name behind it (which feeds things like SEO and so forth).

Reaching higher involves much more effort and ingenuity and focus. In modern times, it requires consideration of difficult questions and a hard, straight answer in each is key.
1. Are you the only one?

There are perhaps a million sites giving away free e-cards, do we really need another one? Unless yours is the first 3D card of course.
2. What are the barriers to entry?

If it takes you five minutes to build your site and a couple hundred bucks, that is a warning sign. Boxcar took over 18 months and a tremendous amount of sweat and finance to realize. And yet we have little doubt much will be copied but putting a lot auction platform together is a monumental task that many have already tried and failed. Others will too.
3. Does it rely on ‘free-loaders’?

It is a wonderful thing to create an informational site and watch the traffic grow and hope that AdSense goes up…this week. But the truth is that ‘free’ is dead so if your new fangled idea relies on ‘giveaways’ to sustain itself, you should think again. Something like YouTube or a URL shortnener pops to mind.

Bottom line is your web site must sell something – anything! Even if it is for $0.50. Just make sure you don’t cater to the free-loader from the get -go, better to get fewer but buying visitors. Free-loaders? They are Internet vampires, sucking up our bandwidth.
4. What’s the real cost?

I hear ideas daily from people who have no clue how expensive and time-consuming it might be to set up a video camera in every high-school football stadium (true one). Or the levels of planning and finance that might be involved to make it real.

A friend recently spent $250,000 developing a web site – despite my warnings and although I admit this was a very good, niche idea. But the real cost and devotion was too much or more than they expected and it lasted less than 6 months before being shut down.

Take good inventory of what it might take UPFRONT to get it done and don’t be shy – add a 25% ‘fudge factor.’ And that means money, yes, but perhaps more importantly, it means your time and emotional and physical resources.
5. How far will you take it?

It can mean losing money for years before a profit is seen. Are you truly willing to devote?
6. What’s the end game?

This is where you can witness the differences as a mini-site is meant to increase dying parking revenue while full and true development’s aim is higher – towards an end-sale. And that is what makes #5 so palpable, the feeling that a large payday awaits down the raging river.

If this piece has scared you – good! You should be afraid, very afraid! Like I said, there should be a sign outside the Internet warning people of the risks like those at Space Mountain in Disney.

And I speak from personal failure and loss, no doubt. I have been developing them on a true level since 1997 and have had many bombs but several successes as well. At this point my focus is entirely and solely on that which is ‘new’ and without sibling, like Boxcar and Soundboard.com for instance.

Soundboard is a personal favorite and love – launched in 2007, it is a top 10,000 site that took mountains of resources to build and improve but ultimately became popular, viral and profitable. Now its the largest audio resource on the web – and it’s not even close. There are over 600,000 incoming links to SB. How many does your mini-site have?

Yet that is not to downplay lower-levels of development, it can be quite profitable and far easier – but let’s call it what it is while also warning others of the pits in going further down the path.

Your choice.

But at the very minimum, let’s level the argument and stop bouncing the word ‘development’ around like a beach ball at a Phish concert.

And not just because it helps us all develop better but also because I am fresh out of analogies.