Name of your website?AdCafé
Your name?
Marc Salvetti
Your Location (city, etc)
Phnom Penh
Please give us a short summary of your website?
AdCafé is a cambodian community oriented website that also has content about Cambodia. You can find videos and articles written by our editors and rated by our users and an open forum oriented toward Khmer people.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
An original idea from one of my friends which was to do a partnership with internet cafés in order to rent their homepage. Today AdCafé is present as the homepage of several internet cafés in Cambodia.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
It was 5 years ago, it was a community website for my family, coded first in php, then i re-coded it in java (STRUTS) because i had a proffesionnal demand for this framework, and it finally ended with a couple of php apps like phpbb and gallery
How did you decide on a name for your website?
That is our worst marketing mistake, at the time we were not very sure about the strategy to use for our site, so we figured something with "ad" and "café" would do the trick. I would probably not choose this name today, but i guess it's a bit late to change.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Well, there is no similar offering for our customers. We can guarantee them advertising targeted down to a certain area of Phnom Penh ! I'm positive that nobody offers this in Cambodia.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Right now our goal is to interest people to the site. Considering most of the people who see the site are coming to the café to check their email, it's an interesting challenge to try to get them to browse our site before jumping to yahoo or google.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
This is Cambodia, time is cheap and money have a different meaning here :)
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would tell to the devs i want it more funky and web 2.0, but so far i just tell this to myself ;)
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Sure, why not ? I don't sell anything, so my only issue would eventually be the hosting package.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Internet cafés formatting constantly. I had to develop a software to maintain the browser settings and then i have to go around the cafés regularily to re-install the soft.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting the bounce rate below 90% !
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
By far this internet café deal. But as i already said, it's a real challenge to get them to actually surf the site.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Well, i did expect a better understanding from potential advertisers. Most of them just don't seem to get the concept, which i admit, is a bit unusual. Apparently, it take some time before one can understand the difference between beeing present locally in the cafés and virtually on the web.
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 started about a year ago, but the software part took much of my time, so most of the website developpement and content writing has been done in the past few weeks. i'm not the kind of guy to take a failure for granted, so i guess this is a lifetime issue :)
Why did you choose Cambodia ?
Because it's the most relaxed and sweet country in the world ! If you are not here already, you should seriously consider coming over and enjoy with us !
What is your website address?
AdCafé
