Someone has launched the same niche website idea as me. Do I abandon the idea?

I would ask yourself a few (perhaps obvious) questions:

1) Can you differentiate yourself easily? Better looking site, smoother UI, and better performance are potentially low-hanging fruit. Better customer service (if it applies) can also help set you apart.

2) Were you planning to add features, or just go with what you've got? Your Same Niche Idea can become niche plus X, Y, and Z, making it no longer Same Niche Idea. Harder than #1, but worth considering. Evaluate, and perhaps go through another iteration of features (or two.)

3) Final one: can you simply outmarket them? Perhaps they're just as good, but you have a larger marketing budget, have better SEO, a stronger professional network, whatever. They've had some coverage, but that's not the end, obviously.

HTH.

LAUNCH IT! Because if you don't, you just don't know what might have happened. The same thing happened to me one week before I lauched my site. Had two days to get over it. I wish I can get those two days back! You spent all your time working on it and now let the world see it. There are always some people who will try out your product if you think you've built a good one!

Thanks for the feedback. I know that my product is better than my competitors; both from an aesthetic and functional point of view. This is the first "real" website I've started that I've run like a proper business.

My primary concern is that the idea up until now has cost me only a few hundred dollars for registrations as my business partner and I have done the coding and UI ourselves. Obviously the next step is the big jump into marketing which isn't going to be cheap.

I'm happy to spend the money on marketing (paper based primarily), however having someone else enter the market in the same space has made me a little nervous about how this could impact me.

We're actually based in Australia, so our market is much smaller than the US market.

For some reason, we tech geeks, give way too much importance to the uniqueness of the idea. If your idea is any good, there will certainly be competitors.

Imagine this - You launch first. This competitor of yours launches the next day. If they still kick your ass by having a better product or marketing, then it doesn't matter if you launched first.

If the thought of a competitor entering the market makes you want to run, then you need to toughen up.

It's better to focus on your users anyway. The only way to think about competitors is to learn how to serve your users better. Competitors exist to do free market research for you.

Sorry to invoke a cliche, but at the stage you are, execution is all that matters.

What do you have to lose?

If you are close to finishing, you might as well launch.

Competition means other people see an opportunity in your market too.

Who knows what the results will be? Maybe customers will resonate with your product. Maybe your product can be differentiated by better performance, better usability, or better service. Maybe customer feedback will lead to a pivot. Or maybe your site will lead to other opportunities.

The point is you are almost there. Make the jump and don't look back. If you haven't launched products in the past, the experience alone will be worth it.

I'd say, launch it and keep close watch of your competitor. There almost certainly will be future opportunities where you can make a name for yourself, either by learning from your competitor's mistake or by generalizing and grabbing a bigger market share or perhaps by having better filtering and therefore more refined content or the like. And if you are planning to take away some of his market share make sure that switching will be a sweat less action.

You should not abandon the idea. Keep working on it and do it better. Your goal should be 1% of US market and you'll be fine.

Competition is good, it'll make you work harder to succeed and you'll have a better product as a result of it.

Ignore the other site and launch... Full steam ahead! You never know what may happen, and two companies are never exactly the same. Maybe you'll appeal to a different set of customers. I think it's too early to give up especially since you haven't launched.

I guess an "Idea" is much more than a website. If you are fully convinced with your idea, and have a in dpeth understanding what needed to be built, I don't think it can ever be replicated in exactly same form as you wished it to be. Just a thought. :)

Was google or Facebook first?

If you're passionate about the concept then push ahead. The fact you have one competitor (or more) just validates you have a market.

Surely the worst case is that you launch a product and learn some valuable lessons about competing with similar offerings?

Ignore the other site and launch... Full steam ahead! Watch your competitor closely. Learn from what they are doing well, what they are doing bad.