Name of your website?A Mortgage in Spain
Your name?
Chris Norman
Your Location (city, etc)
Malaga
Please give us a short summary of your website?
A site offering information about Spanish mortgages and the mortgage market in Spain, with news sources, calculators and regularly updated rates and products.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
With the credit crunch and problems in the property and mortgage markets, it was a drive to gain more business from online sources, rather than other advertising media.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
This is the first. Online since August 2007.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
amortgageinspain.com is a play on the "a place in the sun" and "a place in spain" TV programs. I was surprised and pleased that the domain name was available.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We are trying to build it proactively and keep the information as current as possible. With other similar sites it seems clear that brokers have had 3rd-party developed sites that they haven't maintained and updated.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
It would be nice if it generated a level of leads through search engine rankings without resorting to CPC advertising. It's a key part of our overall business strategy and will continue to be developed thus,
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I have been building and adding content myself. Being a small business in the current market is challenging. I invest more time than money on the site, working in the evenings adding content etc. Ultimately the success will come in the form of providing an informative site that drives business to our company.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I'd get someone to do it for me! Actually we have plans to offer our services in other territories, so I would develop other sites more rapidly.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Our only demand is in terms of the number of clients that come to us for help with their mortgages in Spain. Business is quite tight at the moment so our only limiting factor would be the number of ours in a day. Failing that we could take on another broker!
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
I have been using a site building tool provided by my hosting company. Some of it seems straightforward, other parts might as well be in Chinese. The layout of the menus isn't perfect, but one day we may upgrade the whole site.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting my partner to understand anything about search engine rankings and optimization etc. Answering emails is about his limit.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
We have done some CPC on Google, but hopefully we will get up there in the normal rankings as we add good content to the site
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It takes more time than you expect. I'm finding that the more that I do, the more I learn, and the easier it becomes to get to grips with the whole concept of the internet and how to make it work for us.
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's been running since the summer. If we don't get up amongst the top google rankings we will need to do more paid advertising to generate the leads for our business
What is your website address?
A Mortgage in Spain
