Emerald Nova: Alpha testing now

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Emerald Nova was a domain I bought because I liked the name. It was a name that had been stuck in my head years, and I longed to do something with. Didn’t know, and didn’t really care what, just as long as I used it. Sounds lame, I know. It’s really not even a great name. But I like it, so I’m keeping it.

After getting kicked off Tumblr last weekend, and having a hell of a time finding a new free blog host that didn’t discourage commercial blogs (And wasn’t really awful like Blogspot), I came to the realization that, if I started right now, I could probably have a PR5 free web host by the time next year’s Thirty Day Challenge came around. If I could just keep the site going for eleven months, that cold be ten to fifty thousand people interested in joining up next August.

Getting it online and keeping it going are the easy parts. Making sure it’s ready to handle a huge mass of new content.. well, I’m sure I still have some work to do there. With some paid marketing and (hopefully) word of mouth among other 30 Day Challengers, I think I can achieve PR1 reasonable quickly.

I’ll then closely monitor performance as the site grows from a few dozen users to a few thousand. When I see average page load times become unacceptable, I will move the site to a dedicated host. IF I am making any money, that is. Obviously I won’t be shelling out hundreds of dollars a month if the business model is clearly unsustainable.

Now, on to the marketing…