PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

In today’s Webmaster interview we hear from someone making their mark on the internet in a different way to the norm. Simon Burfield is taking on the search space - and doing OK from his report.

Over to Simon…

If you run more than one website. What is the name and URL of your primary website?

http://www.burf.com

The internet provides access to global audiences and markets. Where are you located and is your market influenced by your location?

I am based in the UK but 90% of my audience is from the US. My audience is worldwide though.

What were the circumstances that led you to start your site/online business?

I work for a software house that makes a piece of software called Equinox. One of the developers said that I could not make a search engine successfully work with this product. So I set out to prove him wrong as a hobby, which developed in to a business.

What does this site do?

It is an organic search engine, which, until the start of this year, was not aimed at making any money. My new years resolution was to see if it could fund itself. It now sells alternatives to ppc and text link advertising.

Is this your only site?

I now own over 50 sites, some template sites, some original for the purpose of building the Burf.com network up. I suppose the second biggest site would be RORSeek.com, which is based on Burf, but indexes ROR.xml files which are like Google sitemap files

Are you a full time web business person or do you have other income as well?

I work full time as a support manager, however I probably spend at least 2-3 hours a day working on Burf and sites within its network. From making a loss of around £50 a month, to making a profit of around 200-400 a month within 3-4 months is not bad

There are many methods of promotion for website. What do you do and which do you think are the most effective?

I am a member of most of the big SEO forums and try to help others out. In return people naturally take a look / interest in my site list in my signature. Many very nice people have offered to help out with Burf and get me out of jams.

I had a very bad hosting problem a month ago and one of the people on the forum noticed this and worked for another search engine. He got in touch and within days, I was back up.

I also implemented a system to email a person when their site was indexed (if they supply an email address), this has been extremely successful for selling other services

Where do you see yourself in a few years time?

I am taking every day as it comes, I could say I wish my website could pay my wages in the next 5 years, but I am not sure I would want that. I am enjoying the ride from peak to peak and just hope the site is as successful in 2-5 years as it is now.

If you could give two pieces of advice to aspiring or new webmasters/internet business owners, what would they be?

1. Never give up, too many people have a good idea but give up. If I had given up after 6 months, I would not be having the fun and income I am now.
2. Make friends, I have always tried to help people out and advised them where I could. This inturn has built me up a network of people who are really nice and usually very helpful in return. It’s not all about making the money now but your long-term goals and for that you need support from others.

If you would like to be interviewed, please just drop me an email an I’ll carefully consider your proposal.

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