Name of your website?ChapalaClub.
Your name?
Sid Grosvenor
Your Location (city, etc)
Chapala, Jalisco. Mexico
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Chapala Club is an interactive on line magazine format website all about living working and playing at Lake Chapala Mexico. Website headings include: Announcement, Club Radio (Pre-recorded audio), Living (Tips on living in Mexico and more), News (Selected Lake Chapala, Ajijic & Mexico news reports), Real Estate (No listings, but information articles), Travel (What to bring to wear, Travel destinations close to Lake Chapala), Videos (Selected You Tube)& More
What inspired you to launch your own website?
As a local Realtor I want to introduce people from all over the world to Lake Chapala, to make new friends, and give potential buyer's the choice of using a Professional Exclusive Buyer's Only Realtor who has only their best interests in mind. To explain just why a Buyer's Realtor can represent their interests better than other Realtors who also represent seller's.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I think it was 2003 or early 2004. The website was www.ChapalaRealEstate.com and it too had tons of great information.
It was more directly focused on Real Estate. At the time I was not an exclusive buyer's only Realtor, but did my absolute best to truly represent my clients best interest.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I've never liked hard sell, pushy sales techniques. I prefer to be informed and then make my decision. My first site was informational, but recent studies show that we're all bombarded with increasing amounts of advertising and that the trend is toward Social Sites to learn peer to peer about what we're interested in. So, I wanted a site that appealed to the desire to join in a like minded group: A Club!
Don't like hard sell/pushy selling. New site is informational
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
The site is not not hard sell, but Solid in depth information.
It has a lot of videos taken by visitors and residents of the area and about 15 or so I've made to provide information on topics people considering Lake Chapala would want to know about. It's a magazine format and has an RSS Syndication and/or automatic e mail updates sent to members, because I don't want them to miss out on even a single article.
All articles allow comments and feedback.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To Keep It as a continuing Source of potential clients.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The site allows me to update the content easily and often which is usually several times a week. This translates to members coming to the site on their own on a regular basis or opting in to automatic e mails or to an RSS feed to see what's new. I believe the site pulls many more potential clients at a much lower cost per client than my previous site. I'm my own webmaster now. I get many rave reviews from clients who in turn send others to the site.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Have a staff to research, write articles, coordinate with local charitable groups and make the site "The Go To Site" for all things "Lake Chapala" substantially adding to it's value as a client resource.
Set up a professional recording and video taping studio to produce more professional sounding and looking videos. Produce a professional 30 to 45 minute down loadable DVD.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
It would be a challenge, but with prior planning it could be done.
The current site gives me all the clients now I can handle properly.
I'm beginning to study now(even in this down market) for the time that will surely come when the site will produce more clients than I can personally handle and will need to hire and train others to assist or set up some sort of referral system.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
No unexpected costs. No totally unexpected headaches.
Lack of sufficient number of quality webmasters in the Lake Chapala area who are fluent in English.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Not spreading myself too thin. Trying to be all things to all possible clients.
Lack of modern real estate tools like Lock Boxes resulting in wasted client and Realtor time... and the resulting monetary costs in loss of productivity.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Lots of good solid content the search engine robots love to gobble up.
Referrals from the growing list of Chapala Club members
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
After the initial learning curve was over I've been amazed at how many ideas I've generated for good content.
Sometimes I've used content that I created just to have fresh content, but which I doubted would generate much interest, but which generated rave reviews and struck a chord with members.
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?
The current site is I think close to a year old. I will keep it up if it just maintains the current traffic and resulting income.
It's helped me to make numerous friends from all over the world. You can't have too many friends.
You sound like you're a workaholic. Are You?
Well, I love feeling productive and I truly enjoy people. My former lives include being a police officer for 35 years, a part time Real Estate Borker/Investor, and finally a part time attorney for the last 17 years of my police career, and before that 5 years of law school while working full time keep me busy. I guess I would have qualified back then as a work workaholic. Now, I'm down to about a 40 hour week if you count Realtor related work, Webmaster, and Studying Marketing.
I relax by playing guitar and watching adventure movies.
What is your website address?
ChapalaClub.
