Name of your website?For the Love of the Dog
Your name?
Deanna Raeke
Your Location (city, etc)
Chippewa Falls
Please give us a short summary of your website?
For the Love of the Dog is basically geared toward canine advocacy issues but also includes just about anything that has to do with dogs including health, food and nutrition, training, and current news. It is for the dog owner, dog lover and dog advocate.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
To raise awareness on canine advocacy issues.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I've dabble in online marketing and websites for almost a decade and can't even remember most of the sites I've done. This is my most important and enduring one.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
To be honest I didn't 'decide' it was just there along with the idea.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
There are thousands and thousands of dog websites out there, most of them selling something or targeting a specific group but advocacy issues are difficult to deal with and that is what I wanted to do. There are quite a number of people who have called my site sad or depressing but in the very next sentence they thank me for making them aware of issues they didn't know about and they do continue to come back, again and again.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My goal for the site is to keep it a continue to grow it. Since my main aspiration is to raise awareness issues, I just want to increase the traffic to the site and get the word out so that people can learn and know and understand. That's what is important to me.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
My major investment has been my time, very little financial investment as all. I spend many hours a day researching and writing and my success has been a continual traffic growth which is my goal. The more people I can reach, the more people who learn and pass the word along and take action. As far as I am concerned, this is success and so far it has exceeded my expectations.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I think the only thing I would change is probably to hire a designer to tailor my site a bit to give it more of a custom look. Aside from that I am pleased.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I have had some drastic traffic spikes several times, going from an average 500-700 pages views a day to over 6000 a day and have had no problems handling the growth and demand so far. I don't anticipate any problems in keeping up with things as long as I just keep an eye on it.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Guess I've actually been quite lucky no to have run into any real problems. I use a blog platform for my site so it grows naturally and easily at no cost to me.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Sometimes just writing the stories. Being advocacy related, many of them are hard to write. Just keeping my heart intact, I guess.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
I haven't done much promotion, some article directory submission but most of my traffic comes from either search engine or word of mouth. I get about 50% of my traffic actually bookmark my site and have a relatively popular RSS feed subscription. There are a number of other sites that actually syndicate my stories as well.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
The only thing that has really surprised me is how quickly I gained traffic and exposure naturally, without any real promotion and the number of people who come back again and again. It probably keeps me busier than I originally anticipated but when you have a passion for something and it's important to you, you don't really mind the additional outlay in time.
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?
I started this site in March of '07 and as long as people keep coming and keep reading, I will continue to to work. I would probably continue even beyond that because for me this has become an avocation and something I need to do.
What do you want out of this?
This site is not and was never designed as a 'money' site. What I want is for people the read and respond. I want them to be hurt by what other people do, I want them to get angry and upset and above all, I want to encourage them to take action and be proavtive.
What is your website address?
For the Love of the Dog
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