Name of your website?Blood Pressure Reviews
Your name?
Robert Black
Your Location (city, etc)
Kendal
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Blood Pressure Reviews is a site about treatments for high blood pressure. There are reviews on some of the most popular prescription drugs, weighing up the pros and cons to enable the person reading them to make up his or her own mind.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I enjoy writing, all the content you see on that site except the main page is my own. It's also been very interesting to learn the technical sides - how to put up a web site, design the pages, the content, the graphics etc. Everything you see on there is my own work. The site is a long way from perfect or complete but it's a very fulfilling process.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Blood Pressure Reviews is, believe it or not, my first web site! I launched it about a month ago.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I wanted the word "reviews" in the title because I believe that people are using the Internet to get information - is this the right product for me or not? I chose the blood pressure niche because members of my family have had problems with this and I felt there was a lack of unbiased information on the specific drugs.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
You'll notice that at the time of writing (November 22nd 2007) there is no Adsense on there. This is deliberate - I want the site to not be another "made for Adsense" site but to be of real value to those who read it. Of course I will no doubt take advertising later on, but I want the site to be established in its own right first.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I certainly intend to make an income from it, whether I succeed in that or not depends on if I can offer them value. By this I mean that reading the articles on my site should add to their knowledge, rather than just bombarding them with "buy this buy that". Once readers realise that the site is there to stay and it is a source of information, as well as a place to get good deals, then hopefully the income will come. But I know from 22 years of offline selling experience that no-one will buy from you unless they trust you. So that is my challenge - to be trusted by people who have never heard of me before!
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It's early days, if I was to make that calculation today I would probably give up! But seriously online businesses are no different to offline businesses in many ways - you have to make that investment of time and money at the start and not necessarily expect the rewards right away.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I think I would like to add my own information products - ebooks, audio interviews that kind of thing. I would also like to add a forum so that visitors can interact with each other.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes I am pretty sure I would. I would probably outsource some of the more routine tasks to free up more time on managing and marketing the site.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Lots of technical problems, but that's because I have had to learn everything from scratch. For example, I made the header graphic myself by following a series of how-to videos. That was fine, but when I came to upload it to the site it wasn't centered. It took me a whole weekend to figure out how to move it from the right of the page to the middle - CSS isn't easy for the newbie!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Keeping motivated when doing non-creative work such as submitting articles to article directories or submitting the site to site directories.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Writing articles
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be - I'm not a technical person but I've resolved most technical issues so far.
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?
I've had the site about a month, it's difficult to say what I will do if I don't get the traffic I want. I do know that many people give up too soon, I am certainly going to persist with this until it succeeds. If I don't get the traffic I want, then I'm doing something wrong so I need to change that. If I don't get the income I want then I need to have another look at my sales offer and my marketing strategies. However, once I've got the search engine rankings I'm pretty confident the income will follow.
Do you intend to run other web sites?
Yes I do, Blood Pressure Reviews is very much a learning curve for me. Almost everything is new and it takes time. No doubt I'm making mistakes, but that's all part of the education process. I am sure the next site will be easier and quicker to do. By the way thanks for giving me this opportunity to write a few words, it's been an interesting and novel experience!
What is your website address?
Blood Pressure Reviews
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