Name of your website? Free Diabetes Alert
Your name?
Evelyn Guzman
Your Location (city, etc)
Clearwater
Please give us a short summary of your website?
The mission is to help improve the quality of diabetes care, increase the understanding of the disease, and motivate people to request for help, change life style and engage in self-care for without patient participation, disease management will be an uphill battle.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
How those symptoms of diabetes were successfully left behind to live a normal life was the motivation in building this website. The scare through the ordeal was something no other people should experience so hopefully the gathered mountains of information, will be of help to other people who are in the same predicament.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
This is the very first real website we launched. We started working on it January 1st, 2007. We were really motivated by my husband having been diagnosed with diabetes. It was heart-breaking at first, but we searched high and low and discovered mountains of information. My husband worked at beating the diabetes and he was able to do so. He has been diabetes-free for over a year now.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It was easy. We wanted it short and catchy so people who need help will at least give our website a chance. We feel people will try to ignore their condition so putting an alert in the title might make them have a second thought.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
It is different because the mountain of information we have is organized into categories. Everyday, we report on news alert so people will take notice if for example if their medication is put on a black label warning, it is there right on the same day the news comes out.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our eventual goal is the same as our primary goal which is to help people who suffer from diabetes. We do not intend to sell it and the only income we want from it is the cost of maintaining the website which is very little because Dr. Ken Evoy of Site Built It made it possible for us to do this on $300 a year. This is our 9th month and we have not even started to monetize yet. Besides, when we started this, we knew the topic was not highly monetizeable. A book? We've already written two books so that idea is not in the horizon. Mind you, we're not ruling it out. But right now, this website is taking all our time and effort right now. There is so much to learn and we are so technologically challenged people.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
How do we balance the time and money against success? The money has been covered; we got it so cheap it does not play a role. The time is okay; we work hard at it but we don't really feel we work a day of the 9 months we spent on it because we enjoyed doing it. It's more like an apostleship anyway.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We don't think we will change much because we like living a simple life. Or perhaps get somebody to mentor us so our website will look better and help other people well.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Of course, we have a great capacity for work. And we have great work ethics. As long as we do our best we will not worry about keeping up with the demand.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
There were no unexpected costs now that we've found Dr. Evoy. Before him we got into trouble with another company who charged us thousands of dollars for practically no help. The trouble with that is that the experience made us wary to sign up for anything else.
What has been your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge really is learning all the technicalities that we never experienced before. The learning curves are steep; our webmail is still not working and there are other stuff we have to learn but these are really not problems, merely challenges. Besides, Dr. Evoy has a forum with such caring and unselfish people where there are no stones left unturned.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Probably getting links and writing articles although we have not done the latter, submitting to directories, posting in forums and blogs although we do only one of each. There are only enough hours in a day.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We thought it would be easier than what the reality is. It was a good thing we chose a topic we are passionate about. Otherwise, it would have been tedious.
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?
We have run it for nine months now and we will continue with it as long there are people visiting our site and getting helped.
We don't really have a question.
We think you've covered everything.
What is your website address?
Free Diabetes Alert
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