Name of your website?Homeopathic Medicine and Remedies Store
Your name?
Sanjib Sarkar
Your Location (city, etc)
Charlotte
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Homeopathic medicine and homeopathy shopping site and information source. Hmedicine.com Includes a wide selection of homeopathic medicine for purchase online and forums, faq, and buyer feedback sections for these natural remedies.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I was on the Internet about 8 years ago looking to buy some homeopathic medicine online. Guess what, I could not find a single site back then. I started really the first one. Now you can find sites similar to mine all over the Internet.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
We launched at the beginning of 2001. This was just after Y2K. The website does not look to different than what it was 8 years ago. The size of the site has grown dramatically. Our website maybe had 300 products 8 years ago. Our site now has 7000+ products and growing.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We were selling homeopathic medicine so we abbreviated to hmedicine.com.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We are the oldest is the biggest difference. We also carry more products than our competitors. Most health food stores carry a limited number of homeopathic products like Zicam. We carry a whole range of homeopathic products.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our eventual goal is to really get the website traffic up to 1000 people per day. Have people ask how I got that many people come to my site everyday.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I have made back my investment several times over with this business. It has been a wonderful success story.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would make the website more content managed. I would redesign the entire site to more SEO friendly.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, our site is set up to handle tremendous amount of traffic. We handle 600 hits per day currently. If our traffic is multiple 10 times, we could still handle that load.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Search Engine Optimization is a big headache. Our site is 8 years old and we never had an SEO ideas in mind. We were on top of Google because we were the only ones in the industry. Competitors built their website with SEO in mind since they were new. They also knew they needed to know us off our top spot.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Keeping me with my competition. They are tremendous company at marketing their products on the Internet. They copied our idea but they have made their website great. We always have to come up with cutting edge ideas to stay in this race.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Google marketing by far. Not adwords but organic search. When you type homoeopathic medicine, we are always in the top 3. I would say 33% of our traffic is from Google search via organic search terms such as homeopathic medicine.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I was not having great expectations. I would have been just happy to get my money back.
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 ran it from 8 years and we plan to keep the site indefinitely.
What marketing tips would you give someone running a new web site?
I would recommend to create great content. That is what Google looks for now. I also would strongly advise creating forums and blogs to have discussions on. These really help your search engine raning. Creating useful tools people could use on your website for free found be great as well. Lastly, I would say be patient. Websites do not reach the top overnight.
What is your website address?
Homeopathic Medicine and Remedies Store
