It’s not often I do this, but being self employed and working from home (alone) I don’t have the luxury of bouncing ideas off other folk, which is invaluable in creating something better. I rarely make use of my Twitter followers in this respect either, but today I find myself needing opinions before I can push forward with something.
Many months ago, being the procrastinator extraordinaire I am, I abandoned work on a blog that was designed to be a fun side project relating to my main business. There was a TV show many years ago built around this idea, so I knew there would be an audience. Basically it was a blog enabling submissions from people who had horror stories regarding tenants and property they let out.
I know, I’m trying to make a living selling landlord insurance, then rallying up a bunch of stories that raise alarm bells in the world of rental property. I like to make things difficult for myself, don’t I?
Initially I thought the site had the potential to be a bit of fun, maybe some theatrical tales of ridiculous tenants and how these scenarios could be avoided in the future. While I never promoted it, for the few weeks I had it online people were submitting stories. But these stories were angry and full of hatred. I often had to edit out swear words, as well as protect tenant’s identities by removing their names the landlords were fixated on tarnishing. This wasn’t quite what I had wanted from it, and I pulled the plug until I could think about it some more.
That time is now.
I’m not sure whether I’ll go ahead and launch this or bin it entirely (if I do launch it, I already have an existing user base at my fingertips). The question is, what direction should I be taking? From past experience submissions were bitter, when I had been leaning towards something more lighthearted. Either way, I want this to be useful and possibly educational to people.
Help me. And don’t laugh at my temporary usage of cheesy stock illustrations.
