Name of your website?Amsterdam apartment
Your name?
Alec Behrens
Your Location (city, etc)
Amsterdam
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Amsterdam apartments offers temporary housing in fully serviced apartments, long term rental apartments and apartments and houses for sale in Amsterdam.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Amsterdam real estate agents that were not doing a great job.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
In 1998, www.bookings.nl
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Cllectively with friends and business partners.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We offer more content (apartments), listed in 3 very distincitive property categories: short term rentals, long term rentals and property for sale.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We would like to become a real property player on the Amsterdam real estate market. We would like to revolutionise the way people rent, sell or buy their property in Amsterdam. We would like to give If and when we become a player, we would like to expand our way of thinking and doing business to other cities.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Not bad.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
New design. Additional functionalities. More affiliate partners. Additonal personel. Improve aftersales services. Expand geographical position.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
No, we would need more people.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
We changed our course / strategy. We moved offices 3 times in the last year. We did not correctly see the enormous amount of time and energy we had to put into the technology of the website.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Building the right team people.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
SEO and affiliate contracts.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We had to change our focuss several times.
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?
We have been uo and running for slightly more then 1 more and will contiue for years to come.
What would you do differently if you had to do it again
More research before deciding on a strategy. Made sure we had more finance in place before starting. Made better and more clear written contracts.
What is your website address?
Amsterdam apartment
