Name of your website?Cheap GHDs
Your name?
Richard Osbourne
Your Location (city, etc)
Reading
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Our site is all about the very popular brand of hair straighteners GHD. We check the prices of GHDs at lots of approved UK GHD stockists so our customers can find their new GHDs at the best price.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
My girlfriend owned 3 pairs of GHDs and was looking for a 4th! When I relaised how popular they are I thought that I could build a better price comparison site for them than the current ones.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
January 2009, it's pretty much the same now as it was when it's was launched since it's very new.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Are site is all about finding the cheapest price for GHDs so the name Cheap GHDs was the obvious choice!
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We hope the useability is better and that the information the user is looking for can be found quickly and easily.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
The aim is to generate some income out of the site, I'm not sure I would want to sell it in the near future as I'm really enjoying the work.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It's early days for this site but I would hope that it will generate a reasonalbe income within 6 months. Updating the prices from the various different stockists is quite time consuming. I think the more time I invest in promoting the site and in SEO the better it will do so I would say there is a direct correlation between time invested and the success of the site.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would have more fresh content added to the site on a regular basis since this is time consuming and it can be tough to keep coming up with fresh ideas. I would also employ someone to keep the offers updated each day as this is the part I find least interesting!
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I think so, more visitors shouldn't create that much more work other than answering a few more emails.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
None so far though I'm sure there will be. Myself and a friend designed and built the site so it hasn't cost much other than hosting costs!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Updating the offers on the site every day is very time consuming and not very interesting.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
None so far! Paid search proved to be very expensive so I'm hoping that SEO will work well.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It's taken more time than I thought and it's been hard working with two people working on the site when you are based in different locations.
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?
Only 2 weeks. I'm confident it will do well as I've worked on the online industry for 6 years so hope I know what I'm doing! If it was not meeting expectations in 18 months I wouldn't put much more effort in though.
Are you planning on starting any more sites?
If I had the time I would definitely like to. I have a full time job and this site is maintained in my own time. If the site does well enough I woud consider giving up work to build more sites though this feels like it's a long was away right now!
NB: I've just re-submitted this as I have noticed a typo in my email address.
What is your website address?
Cheap GHDs
