Name of your website?Brown Lures
Your name?
Jason Brown
Your Location (city, etc)
Houston
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Brown Lures is a local manufacturer of saltwater fishing lures. On our website we provide a wide range of free info for anglers like local fishing reports, videos, fishing tips and more.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We wanted to be able to reach and interact with our customers directly. The website lets us get feedback on what types of products/colors people want, and also to give them info that they are looking for like the fishing reports.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
3 years ago it was a simple placeholder website that just listed our products. Now it has been expanded to include a blog, videos, photos and more.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It is the name of our company.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
Other companies that sell the same products offer none of the free info we give out. People buying fishing lures also want to know what is working, where and how so we give them that for free.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Keep it to keep building a relationship with customers.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The blog and content we provide to the website has probably been the single most effective use of time and money for our business.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Better shopping cart integration for sure, and allowing individuals to submit their own reports or data for fishing would be nice as well.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Sure, that's what we hope for.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
We have had trouble getting the shopping cart to mesh well with the blog and content on the website. More integration between those two would be great.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Keeping up with product supply. Demand online has grown far faster than we expected so we had a whole year or products being on waiting lists while we tried to up the supply.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Getting local fishing guides involved and getting them to contribute content has given us a steady stream of relevant info that no other company was even going after.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Not much really, I wish I could spend more time on it.
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?
Will keep it up as long as the business is stil rolling.
What is your website address?
Brown Lures
