Name of your website?Furious Nomad
Your name?
Jeremy Smith
Your Location (city, etc)
Lakewood
Please give us a short summary of your website?
It's an interactive map where writers submit stories with some location associated with them. The stories are displayed on a world map where users can navigate to locations of their choice to read stories from the places they are interested in. We pay money for top quality stories.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
My website allows me to combine my top three interests: computer programming, travel and writing. The web is constantly changing, adding another element to an already wonderful medium.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first website was http://www.stumpo.net which I launched about 3 years ago. It's the story of a miserly landlord and my hilarious experience I had while renting an apartment from him. Looking at the code I used to write the site is interesting to guage how far I have come as web developer.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I was looking for something unique, short, catchy and appropriate to its content. I believe I have achieved the criteria to varying degrees.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
I've looked around quite a bit and have seen nothing like the concept of furiousnomad.com. What truly makes the site unique is having locations associated with personal stories. This gives users great insight into any place they may be interested in.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I would like to make enough money from the site to support my family and travel the globe.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The site is still very young and I am struggling to drive traffic to the site. I have spent very little money, but a great deal of time to the project, so the scale is still very unbalanced in terms of investment versus return.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would make the site faster and 'flashier'. I think the use of AJAX could achieve this, and I'm constantly writing new code, but hiring another developer could certainly speed things up.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Well, I always assumed that if it got really big, I would be able to afford to hire developers to help me out with coding/maintenance. I might need to upgrade my web server, but that should not present a problem.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
The costs of marketing the site has been a surprise to me as well as the overall difficulty of driving traffic to the site. However, I don't really see this as a headache, but more of a learning experience.
What has been your biggest challenge?
To date, the greatest challenge has been getting traffic, which cascades into a challenge getting users to contribute content.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
I've had a little success purchasing ads on facebook. Not much else has been working though.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I guess I didn't realize how many people are doing this already and how much information about the subject is available for free on the internet.
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 up for about a month. I would continue working with site regardless of big gains, though I don't see how I could not be successful with the amount of effort I invest in the project.
Where do you think the web is headed?
With the recent rise in the use of javascript and more efficient browsers, I can envision a situation where applications are no longer installed locally on users' computers, but served as web applications. This would provide ultimate mobility and allow for easy collaboration across the world.
What is your website address?
Furious Nomad
