I often have ideas for little web sites, stuff I just get the urge to create for the fun of it.  Some of them have done rather well, like langpop.com but even that doesn't make any money, and, sadly, as I age, that is becoming a more important factor in life.

So I decided to try a little experiment.  I was thinking some about "value" stocks, and fiddling around with Google's stock screener, and thought of the idea of a site that highlights underperforming stocks: http://underperformingstocks.com – so far so good – I went ahead and registered the domain, and put together the beginnings of a Rails application.  At the same time though, I decided I have enough things to do in my evenings and weekends, so I decided that it might be interesting to start selling the site at the same time I'm building it.

I'm not really sure how it will work out: perhaps people will see that there's not much there and not bid for it.  Perhaps someone likes the idea behind it and is willing to buy on that.

My idea, in any case, is to keep working on it as the auction progresses.  As an additional twist, there are obviously a lot of features that could be added to the site, so I'll prioritize work on features suggested by users who have bid on the site.  Here's the auction listing on Flippa.com:

Edit: I'll also be posting updates to the twitter account I created for the project: http://twitter.com/#!/underpstocks