This morning I had to go through the somewhat painful process of retiring some older, inactive projects and programs.

Our mainstream online busines operates with one primary employee: me. I have one part time employee and do some work with other programmers here and there so I sometimes it is correct to use “we” instead of “I/me/my” when describing our mainstream online projects. This got me thinking about how to retire some old projects/programs. You see lots of how to start articles, but not as many of the converse situation which became the genesis of this piece.

Looking over my home site tdscripts.com, there were a few older programs (5+ years old) that hadn’t been updated in awhile. One of them the company that the program specifically worked with is now out of business, so the usefulness of the script was negated the date that third party company went under. I’ve continued to carry the script with a link to it on the homepage and a message saying it was no longer available, knowing that the day would come that I needed to officially retire the program.

As my script site enters its eight year anniversary, this morning I went through the list meticulously and pondered our small business strategy:

- scripts retired that were previously for sale would just be put under a ‘retired’ section. They would not be given away. While I won’t say never, I don’t really like the idea of giving something away that was previously for sale. Seems like a slap in the face of those who bought the program. I wouldn’t like it as a customer and I like it even less as the owner.
- we will continue to offer support to customers on retired programs with no given expiration date. I suspect there will be some date in the future that the scripts will be obsoleted before the need to cut off future support inquiries. I don’t believe in cutting off support options to customers and would recommend against a policy that eliminates or greatly diminishes support for retired products.

I realize big companies like Microsoft have product lifecycles but this is one place where a smaller shop like ours can be more nimble and less corporate. Our offline business has operated in a small town for over 13 years now and we know a lot of people in town. Similarly I have a small town mentality with running our online business even though I don’t know as much about most our customers online as I do offline and despite it extending to the world. By that I mean I’d like to keep any policies customer customized friendly as possible. It still fascinates me in our small business offline when I see people at the grocery store and ask them how somebody in their family is doing and they seem surprised that I remember their name and family.

Being a number sucks and we try and run our business so that customers don’t become numbers. I like doing business at the local small town bank. They know my name and a little bit about my family and never make me go through the whole show me your ID routine. They also will watch out for us if something weird happens on one of our accounts and call us personally about it. Big bank chains don’t do that. We have accounts at big banks, but mostly because we travel and need to be able to access money in other states too.

It gets harder and harder every year keeping that direct connection with customers. It’s something that big corporations don’t do very well. They have much higher turnover rates and customers rarely identify with customers directly. In all too many cases, the customer can’t even access the higher level officers in a corporation. Advantage for small businesses.

- for projects, I added a current status update and then went through where things were at with each major/flagship mainstream site.

Retiring projects/programs a negative? Not always
Some might see retirement of projects/programs as a negative and I’ll admit feeling that way somewhat. The more I think about the process, however, it reminds me that I’ve worked on some projects/programs that have lived very good lives. One of the programs retired today earned more than $50,000 USD. There are many, many programs out there which never make that kind of money and some which make a lot more and still someday face an inevitable retirement. Big or small, eventually every project/program ends.

Inching closer to the 10 year mark at tdscripts.com (still 2+ years from this writing) it’s important to analyze and utilyze the most important resource I have: time. I enjoy working on new projects and programs, especially where/when I’m able to learn something new and part of staying young mentally is to continue working on new projects and programs. I also enjoy updating older programs/projects with fresh ideas. It’s a refreshing, rejuvenating process.

Retiring a project/program feels a little bit like reaching the end of a fiction novel. I remember being somewhat sad to see the characters I created end their journey. That might sounds strange, but those who have spent time creating people to live in a world, the end means you probably won’t get to see them again. Unless of course you do a sequel, but I’ve never been a huge fan of sequels.

Just in case anybody is curious about the project you are reading now — makeyougohmm.com — awhile back I admitted that it is a five year project that probably (but not guaranteed) will be renewed in July 2008. It continues to grow in traffic, scope and my own interest level but it’s not my flagship site, as was suggested to me recently by a few folks. Some people see this site and think it’s my biggest site when actually it’s not. It is the biggest blog our company owns that I contribute to, but it’s not the biggest site in either traffic or income.

My flagship site is tdscripts.com and will probably be the last site I retire from on the web. Then again, I’d like to get back more into fiction writing someday so it’s entirely possible that a writing site, perhaps one not yet even officially launched, will be the last site. One of my goals remains launching at least one new website every year. This means at some point unless we add more online employees retiring some older site(s) will become necessary someday. Haven’t had to retire any mainstream websites yet but someday I probably will. I’ve killed off a few domains I registered where I had ideas but never actually launched sites, but then I don’t call that ‘retirement’ because something has to actually live and breathe before it can be retired.

For those who think: why retire a site? I’m not saying retirement as in taking completely off the web, but there does come a point when the dust is pretty thick on some site(s) and one has to look at things objectively and realize work on X site is no longer continuing and admit that the project is retired. That’s what I did today with a few programs and projects but not actually with any websites we own. Someday that will happen too.

There remains a major difference between retirement and death worth noting: a project/program/site can always come out of retirement.

Your turn.

Have you retired any previously active projects/programs in your business or personal life online? Started a blog and realized: bummer, I don’t have time for this any more? How did you handle the retirement process and move forward? Any tips/tricks to share?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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