Name of your website?Started Sailing
Your name?
Alex Dotsch
Your Location (city, etc)
London
Please give us a short summary of your website?
One teenager's dinghy sailing experiences and boat racing in the UK.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I am passionate about sailing and found some really good website hosting to use as well as software to build it on. All I have to do is write and click submit and my words appear on my website. I have seriously enjoyed and will continue to this website for years to come. it currently has 40+ pages and has been online for only a few months.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I launched my first website a very, very long time ago called myencyclopedia.org.uk It was a little experiment of mine when I was about 9, to build a website out of HTML.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I used MakeWords.com to help me as well as the yahoo suggestion tool. The thesaurus was also very useful!
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
There are no other websites about sailing from a teenager's point of view, nor as personal as mine is. It is mostly about dinghy sailing, but some yachting and catamaran sailing in there as well. it is about my experiences of sailing.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I will eventually monetise it, when I reach 100-200 visitors a day (I currently get 50 visitors a day on average) using adsense. I will also use affiliate programs from sailing shops and eBay to get higher commissions. I hope to at some point make £1000 a month from it or more.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I have spent alot of time and some money on it, with no actual success yet. However this is a long term project and so the success will come over time. Directory links are the same as many of them are not added for months, but since this is a long term website, it doesn't matter.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would spend it all on advertising on Adwords and paid directories such as Yahoo. I would get some more professional photographs and have some videos of sailing on my site or videos of actual things that I writing about in progress.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, even though I am still at school, I would be able to write more content. I would try and have the visitors post their own content using a kind of MySpace/Flckr/Twitter hybrid in which they can post photos and content themselves.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
None yet thankfully! However I have tried to get listed with DMOZ (which takes forever) and Joeant, which was the most expensive directory listing I have done yet.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Trying to get the website known as soon as possible, by submitting to as many directories as I can for free.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Word of mouth over Facebook and niche related forums.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It is easier than I expected as I write about one page a day. The technical side is taken away from me by the software I use, so all I have to do is use my brain to come up with more great sailing pages.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
It has currently been up for about 2 months, but this is a long term project and so I will continue to maintain it and post to it, till I get bored or I have run out of things to write about!
What software have you been using?
I have used a software called Site Build It (or SBI!) to build my site. It takes away the technical side away from the person writing the website and leaves you to do the content. It has step by step guides on everything and a close nit community forum to ask and answer questions.
What is your website address?
Started Sailing
