Name of your website?Fancy Fiber Farm Alpacas
Your name?
Dennis Parker
Your Location (city, etc)
La Center
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Fancy Fiber Farm is a small alpaca farm located outside of La Center, Washington. We specialize in alpacas and alpaca products, with both for sale directly from our website. We are dedicated to the alpaca industry and increasing the quality of the North American alpaca herd. We provide many services related to the alpaca industry including, shearing, boarding or agistment, training, and breeding.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We have a valuable product to promote and hopefully sell. We believe that the web is one of the best means to promote our products and services right now. The creation of the website has also been an enjoyable experience over all. It's a lot of fun for me.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first website was launched back in about 1995 and it was a personal web site just about me. It has been taken off the Internet for a couple of years with this new Fancy Fiber Farm website taking it's place.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
That's a pretty simple answer. It is the name of our business. How we came up with the name for our business was a long and drawn out process. Fancy Fiber Farm's breeding program has been designed toward breeding for fancy, or multiple colored, alpacas. We therefore decided upon the name to be Fancy Fiber Farm.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Our breeding program and our involvement with our animals on a daily basis. Many farms do not work with their animals other than for basic routine health. We train all of our animals and believe that they are our pets, not just livestock.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My goal for the website is to promote my business of rasing alpacas. I intend to keep it functional to secure income from my business ventures.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The site isn't fully complete, but then I don't think it ever will be complete. The areas that I spent time on in the beginning did not have a very good return on investment. The areas I am working on now, have been hugely successful and I have been devoting more time to them to improve them. This devotion to one area has meant that some other areas have been lacking and not getting completed. An uncompleted secion doesn't generate any income, so I need to focus energy there too at some point.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I really like my site design and layout. If I had a budget for programming staff to assist me, I would have them creating additional features like a forum and information pages, as well as completing the areas I haven't gotten to yet.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I could only be so lucky! I am certain I could keep up with the demand, so long as it was generating the income.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Nothing really unexpected cost wise. I have been putting a bit more money into advertising that I was before, which has really helped my site exposure. I am surprised at the number of people that visit on a daily basis with just a little bit of cash outflow from me. My biggest headache I guess would be dealing with my own mistakes in programming, some of which have cost me sales. Not a good thing!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting agreement from all stakeholders in the farm on what the site should look like, then getting the information that is needed posted. The technical side has been easy, it's the information behind it that's challenging.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Google AdWords right now, but Yahoo is creeping in there. I am trying out a few other avenues as well, but haven't had time to evaluate their effectiveness yet.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
More difficult to get people here than I thought. Trying to get page rank in Google is more difficult than expected. Advertising works better than I thought it would.
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 around for about two years. It has only recently been developed and promoted. If we can make a profit at the site, it will stay around as long as the Internet is around, in some form or another. I will continue to improve it and work on it as time goes on. Fancy Fiber Farm will hopefully become a premier breeder and provider of alpacas to the North American herd and the alpaca industry in general. We have big plans for the future, if we can come up with the funding.
What is your website address?
Fancy Fiber Farm Alpacas
