Q&A: Should I start a new site for my food business?

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

So I feel like I'm not qualified to answer today's listener question. And it's not because it's highly technical or in a field that I have no experience in. I just don't take those questions in the first place because I never want to lead you astray. You know, I have no problem saying I'm not sure or I don't know. The issue here is we have a listener asking about an outdated website.

You know, basically what should she do with it? It's a fairly simple question, but it reminded me of all the outdated websites I have, which is way too many. Okay, I'm just not good at tidying up from old projects. Although I think I've closed at least two of them if not three in the past year. So maybe I'm improving, but we'll see. Anyway, I'm going to try to separate myself from the

answer to this question because it's an important one. She has an older food blog that she hasn't updated in a while. And now she wants to convert it to an ecommerce site. So we'll hear more from her. Basically, is that the best approach or should she start all over? As I said, I'll do

my best to answer her question objectively, and also make a note on some more sites I should update myself. Okay, stay tuned. Questions coming up after this. Thank you to our sponsor. Hi, Chris, this is Mary Jo from Shakopee, Minnesota. I've been subscribed to your

blog for years. I followed side hustle school from the start, and I've read all your books. I even brought a couple dozen homemade cupcakes to your barn for this tourist stop in Tampa, Florida. I started a WordPress food blog four years ago to share my love of baking. I soon realized that I didn't like blogging, so I made fewer than 50 posts, and I never made any money from it. While the blog is still alive, I haven't done any new posts since mid 2020. I had two

successful cottage food businesses pre internet, and I loved doing that. So I decided to start a new one. I haven't made any sales yet, but I'm signed up as a vendor at two markets that are coming up fast. I have Facebook and Instagram accounts and a PayPal account for in person and online payments. So I need an ecommerce website. Can you offer advice about the pros and cons of

converting my food blog to ecommerce versus starting a new website from scratch? Thanks, Chris, for your awesome inspiration and encouragement. And if you're ever in the Twin Cities area, I'd be happy to bring you cupcakes. You are amazing, Mary Jo. Thank you so much. It's

good to hear from you again. And now I'm immediately going to book a trip to the Twin Cities for those cupcakes. Thanks for bringing them to Tampa. We've got a great community of listeners in both cities. Okay, so let's talk about this question. Pros and cons, right pros

and cons of updating the old website versus just kind of starting all over. I think it's pretty straightforward. And there's no bad answer. Okay, so ultimately, it's going to be, you know, which way are you leaning? But the pros are, okay, you have some content, you said fewer than 50 posts, that still sounds like a lot, you know, a lot of blogs get started and have fewer than three posts before they disappear. Okay, so assuming the number is, you know, at least in a couple of

dozens, you've got some content, you have some kind of brand already. It was a food blog, this is a food ecommerce business, so it's different, but it's also in the same kind of industry. So all of those points kind of lead towards keeping it, you know, and updating it for the new brand. Cons, you know, is it really relevant to what you're doing now? You know, it's the same industry, sort of, but you know, a blog is different from ecommerce. Is it really relevant? And I think

that's the question relevance, as well as how you feel about the old brand. So when you look at those old posts in the blog, do you think, you know, Oh, I remember this, you know, this was fun, or I liked doing this for a while, but I realized I didn't like blogging, it would be cool to do more with this just on the ecommerce side instead of blogging. Or do you think, Wow, this is really old, you know, this doesn't feel like me, like, I'm glad I tried it, but I learned that this is not what I want to do. So, you know, the answer there is kind of self explanatory. If it doesn't give you a great vibe, then I tend to think start over. The only other consideration I would add, just to

make it slightly complicated, but just a little complicated is SEO. So do you have any traffic coming to the site, that old site from organic search, or possibly from other links, you know, if it's minimal, and that's not a factor at all. But let's say you did have 100 or 200 visitors coming every day because the site ranks well for some particular terms. Well, that's another point in favor of keeping it and converting it over to your new ecommerce model. So those are the points I would consider, you know, is it relevant? How do you feel when you look back on it? And is

there an SEO impact? Mary Jo, good luck. Let us know how it goes. I hope to see you in Minnesota. And listeners, if you have a question, come to situssleschool.com/questions. I'd love to

know what you're working on, what's going on, we'll continue to feature them along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.