Name of your website?The Upstate New York Shopping And Business Directory
Your name?
Mike Bova
Your Location (city, etc)
Utica
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Upstate New York residents can register to get free classifieds, free business listings, participate in regional forums, check out the events calendar and more.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I couldn't find a site that was tailored to upstate New York residents.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I launched my first website many years ago. It was ineed2shop.com, a site that sold products.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I wanted a name with the word upstate in it and upstateshopping.com miraculously was available. It's a great name!
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
The site is a work in progress, but we will be a complete website. Everything you can think of when you think of upstate New York, we'll have. It will be a one stop shop.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To have every business in upstate New York list with us. We want our site to be on the tongues and in the minds of all upstate New York residents and be the choice when someone is searching for a local business.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
We are having good success for the amount of time we've been doing this. The site is only six months old, and we've made lots of head way. We haven't had to invest much money, just a lot of time.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We'd hire a monster coder to speed up the development process. We have about six more months before we are fully done developing the site. My partner and I have kids, so our time is limited.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Definitely, we have a plan for that. A lot of the work will be moderating and editing. We have people who will give us their time to do those things.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Nothing out of the ordinary. We knew there would be costs for hosting, domain names, etc., but we pretty much planned for it.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge has been finding the time to develop and promote the site.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
SEO. I am very schooled in what works and what doesn't. Most of our traffic comes from people finding us in the search engines.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It hasn't differed really. The site basically runs itself. It's users submitting info. It's a great concept.
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 site has been live for 6 months. We just switched over to the new format at the end of June. Because it doesn't cost us much for hosting and all the marketing we do is free, upstateshopping.com will be live forever.
Why would people visit your site? What's in it for them?
Visitors get free classifieds, business listings, they can get info from and post to our forums, check out events calendars and they'll be more to come.
What is your website address?
The Upstate New York Shopping And Business Directory
