Name of your website?Real English School
Your name?
Vicky Williams
Your Location (city, etc)
Veliko Turnovo
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We are a private language school offering courses in English and Bulgarian as foreign languages.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I wanted to see if I could learn how to make a website from scratch without any prior knowledge, and it turned out that i could. We are a small family run business and didn't want to pay out a fortune for a site which we would be unable to update, so I taught myself.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Just over a year ago. The same address, but the design was pretty bad! The current version is my second attempt, which was about a month later I think.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It's the name of our business.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We are the only language school in the area offering what we do. We have native speaking teachers and offer both English and Bulgarian lessons.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To keep it looking fresh and attractive and perhaps even make some money from the site (we only make money from our courses currently)
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Fantastic! I made the site myself, taught myself. There was very little outlay and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We get a lot of hits from all over the world, not bad for a little school in the middle of nowhere!
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would put myself through some training courses in javascript and flash, which i know a bit about, and also things that I know nothing about like databases, mysql, php....
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I think so. We are about getting bums on seats, getting people to come into the school and meet us face to face. I think the website shows we are human and approachable.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
No costs. headaches - just my own brain overheating I think!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Learning html was a breeze (joke!). learning css got me going round in circles. Perhaps the biggest challenge was learning it all on my own, at home with a baby yelling in the background and not knowing whether I was going to be able to actually build a site after all the effort or whether it was going to be beyond me. It wasn't.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
getting links on other sites probably. Google ads were quite good but ultimately not for us, as we don't make money from the site.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It hasn't.
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?
Just paid for my second years' sub. I will keep it up as long as the business keeps going, which i hope is a long time!
What is your website address?
Real English School
