Its been a year since launching the Expats Cape Verde website and moving over to this new online business system with Eclipse. The Cape Verde Tips website and the Expats website are developing nicely, still loads to do and even more to learn about how things work in the back office.
Some friends, old work colleagues and family still find it hard to understand what I am doing with the websites and why I have invested money and spend most of my time working on them, and it’s hard for me to explain, there’s many different things been achieved and yet there is so much more to be done. Yes I have been tempted to ‘get a real job’ as one or two people have suggested, but not to the extent of dropping the websites! However I must say, that since I have been back in UK, I have had a lot of support too and am really thankful for that support.
I have been posting articles on both websites and linking the articles across the sites to avoid duplication and time, not sure if that is a good thing or not for googlebots (yes even learned a new word) and some other technical things that either I have some understanding about, but with some things it’s still like trying to see the wood amongst the trees!
Announcements are posted on both sites, but I will be setting up RSS feeds to these and to the Blogs so you can subscribe to receive updates if you wish.
After over 4years of wanting to get the website to be an online business I feel I am at a stage where this is no longer a dream but more realistic. Having decided that this is now a goal I have been spending as much time as possible on trying things out and working on areas that will generate an income. This is obviously something that I needed to do, as most people that know me and the sites will know that up until now the sites have provided very useful information and services, but have been generally free.
With the redesign of the Property Section within Cape Verde Tips, to finally allow people and Property Agencies to upload property that they want to advertise for sale through subscription to a secure zone, has been a major milestone in the site’s development.
People tell me through the queries they send in via the website what they are looking for, or through the pages they hit and the links they follow, forums that are posted as well as many other things. It’s also interesting that more people now want to sell their own items via the Cape Verde Tips and Expats websites such as Sun Blinds and books, so I must be doing some things right. I am also going to be asking the question of you……..What would you like to know about? ……. And …….What services would you like to find on the Cape Verde Tips and Expats websites? This will help me understand my market better.
The book ‘The International Retirement Directory’ has been launched and both Cape Verde Tips and the Expats Cape Verde websites feature in the section about Cape Verde, so I am pleased about this.
There is so much I have yet do and try to understand i.e. its sometimes like trying to understand ‘a foreign language’, but I am still enjoying this challenge.
So for this Bank Holiday weekend I have two newsletter campaigns to start working on and I am looking forward to catching up with friends who visit Cape Verde (on Bank Holiday Monday)………….hopefully will catch up on some goss too!!!! 😉
Regards
Cheryl
