Name of your website?Hawaii real estate / Honolulu homes / Oahu MLS
Your name?
Mike Bates
Your Location (city, etc)
Honolulu
Please give us a short summary of your website
Homes throughout Oahu. Also featuring properties on the Big Island, Maui, Molokai and Kauai.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
The internet is a great way to advertise to the public and let them view Hawaii real estate in a low-pressure environment.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
http://www.oahuhomefinder.com in 2003. Subsequently changed to http://www.oahumls.net and wrote my own pages with my own first hand information and experiences.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
The name plays on Oahu's Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which reports the majority of Hawaii's real estate listings.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We've designed webpages by neighborhood, with maps, driving instructions, public schools and area information. We like to include some neighborhood history too.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To provide outstanding real estate services to customers on Oahu and the neighbor islands.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It's been good but providing a quality website is an ongoing project. We're constantly looking to make the site more user friendly and give customers information they want to see.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would add more homebuying statistics for users to study.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes. Our company has a large staff and we can service all of the customers that want our help.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
The main headache is spam e-mails. The more popular a site becomes, the more spam it attracts.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Learning how to write webpages.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Providing quality content that brings customers to the website.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I did not have a lot of expectations, except to find real estate customers. The main difference, I guess is that business goes up and down with the seasons. Late in the year is usually slow and things pick up in the beginning of the year. Summers are usually good.
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?
oahumls.net has been operating for about a year. The site is fairly popular aleady and we'll continue indefinitely.
What are your plans for the future with this website?
To continue adding neighborhood information, along with expanding the site to help users as much as possible.
What is your website address?
Hawaii real estate / Honolulu homes / Oahu MLS
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