New Web Site - Will It Also Fail?

**"Jeff Ball" j*@starband.net**

Yo gang of writers and others trying to make money selling your very own
ideas,
I have spotted a new gardening web site and would love to hear some
reactions to it.  As many of you know, Plant America bought the rights to
the Etera.com database last year after Etera went bankrupt.  Etera had spent
well over $15 building the site.  Plant America has been working on getting
the site refined and it is now on line, I think it is new; at least I just
noticed it.  It is called www.mygardenguide.com.  As best I can tell it is a
hodge-podge accumulation of stuff from Etera, from Ortho Problem Solver, for
the American Hort Society, and probably National Gardening Association.  As
they advertise, it is one heck of a large pile of content.  I believe they
will be trying to sell the site to independent garden centers as an add-on
to the independent's sites for a monthly fee of $80 to $100 a month.  Etera
had been in 1800 garden centers when they folded.  That number was down as
low as 500 by this spring I heard from the grape vine.  Remembering that I
still am trying to find a way to make some money on the web, and have been
working for only 8 years to develop a site for independent garden centers,
here is my biased view of the new site.
I think it will fail in two years if it keeps its current format and design.
While there is an impressive amount of content, like Virtual Garden and
Garden.com, it has little internal linking amongst all that content.  That
is the power of the Internet but all they have done is copied the model of
the town library, a pile of databases.  Their biggest problem is the same
mistake that Etera made.  They are selling plants and products in direct
competition with the very independent garden centers they are trying to sell
the service to.  Yes, the garden centers get a small percentage of sales
made directly through their site, but that is not enough to overcome the
feeling of competition.  Finally, there is no linkage between the product
line and the content, another powerful Internet opportunity overlooked.  The
site is slick and I assume they are throwing big bucks at its marketing.
They have apparently dropped the newsletter that Etera had launched.  What
do you all think?  Is this another multi-million dollar loser?
Jeff Ball

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