Name of your website?Albufeira Rentals
Your name?
Ted Ellis
Your Location (city, etc)
Grantham,Lincolnshire
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Albufeira Rentals features a privately owned self catering holiday apartment on the popular Club Albufeira public holiday resort.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Being the owner of a holiday rental apartment on the Club Albufeira I needed to publicize it in order to generate bookings.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I launched my first website in 2002 and chose the domain of http://www.holiday-rents.com
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I decided to have a name that people could remember easily and was relevant to my objective of acquiring enquiries for reservation of my holiday apartment.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
My first website holiday-rents.com offers to research a list of other owners availabilities if mine is already unavailable for booking.I maintain a list of other privately owned apartments on the Club Albufeira and try my best to find alternative accommodation to an enquirer to ensure that he or she is still able to make their holiday at Club Albufeira. This website is still running and I always reply to any enquirer, however in the high season months of July and August most owners have already secured bookings and in such cases I refer them to the Club Albufeira Booking Center with a note that if they wish to book a privately owned apartment, they should reserve it early - no later than March of each year.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My goal is to produce high ranking code compliant websites to gain publicity for Club Albufeira and for my own holiday rental apartment to ensure that it is a profitable investment.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I am always eager to learn new techniques for website design and so I spend rather too much time experimenting with them on my computer - it can be hard to convince my wife that this time is worth it when the garden has weeds and there are other jobs to be done around the house.The time spent far outweighs the money balance, but then I gain so much satisfaction when my sites are listed on the front page of the major search engines.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would probably employ staff to do the routine webmaster tasks of link building,rss feed and website submissions.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I find the demands of running several holiday-related websites are already too time consuming.Time is a resource that is extremely precious.If one needs more money then a trip to the bank manager`s office can resolve the problem ,but time once past, is irretrievable.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
My wife and myself frequently visit our holiday apartment to inspect it for missing items,damage,need for redecoration and refurbishment. Often we are faced with some unexpected costs and shopping for replacement or broken items again is time consuming.We always return vowing that someday we will have a proper holiday!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Always my biggest challenge is to be at the number one position on Google for the search term "Club Albufeira"
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Google and the other major search engines love updated and good quality content. I have used RSS Feeds,Articles,bio linking,3 way and recipricol linking,and personal blogs to achieve this.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I am retired and expected that I might beable to pursue my original hobbies of playing golf,playing my keyboard and reading novels.However all of those things have taken a back seat which is somewhat frustrating!
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?
My interest in website design and running websites started 6 years ago and as new technogies develop, I fear that if I lived until I was 200 years old, I could never be the expert that I want to be. I think that soon I shall have to recognize the on-going demands of keeping up with these new technologies and attempt to regain a proper balance in my life at some stage.
What is your website address?
Albufeira Rentals
