I went on a tour here in Laos last week and became friends with the owner of the tour company. I have had dinner with him, his wife and some of his other friends a couple of times this week.
When he asked me what I do I said, I create websites. His company didn’t have a website, but he was keen to get one up. A company in Vietnam quoted him $500.
I offered to do it for free, as long as he provided all of the text. He has hundreds of pictures on CD-ROM so I thought it would be good to install Gallery2. I also wanted to make it easy for him to update it later, so I decided to install WordPress with a free template.
You can see the final result here. I think he was pretty happy with it. Over a few beers and shots of “la la” (fiery Laos rice wine) he told me about his life growing up in Laos.
His father didn’t have enough money to send him to college, so his father agreed to sell one of the families buffaloes as long as he paid back the money after he graduated and started working. He declined invitations to go out drinking with his friends to save money. When he told his friends why he had to save money, he earned the nickname “buffalo boy”.
After graduating, he worked in various guest houses and tour companies. He was also a national kayaking champion. He eventually started his own tour company, buying a truck and some kayaks from Thailand. At one point his house got burnt down and lost almost everything. He had to sleep outside, because it would bring bad luck to anyone’s house he stayed at. At some stage his wife left him.
He now rents a shop in Vangvieng ($1000 a year) and remarried to a beautiful lady, who is also a great cook. They have plans to take over the shop next door and open a restaurant.
I am not exactly sure what kind of point I am trying to make, but it is hard not to be touched by these kinds of stories. Entrepreneurs everywhere have their own difficulties to face and I suppose the important thing is to keep getting up when you get knocked down.
Twitter Updates
Nice site & gesture keepp up the good work
It was the first time I have ever done a site for an offline business. It is going to be interesting if the site does generate some bookings for him. I hope I can go back next year and see if he has opened his restaurant.
Hi Mike,
You know I was over at that other blog that has your link (you know which one I’m talking about) and it occurred to me that you could use some of his marketing strategy. I, for one, would love to see pics of the places you are going to. Is it possible to post pics of Cambodia etc? That website you did had pics of people etc. which made it interesting. Although, their copy could be improved (I’m being polite). You could even start a new revenue stream selling pics to stock photo places. Just a thought.
I do have one question about building a web business. I am doing a community-oriented one. It’s all built, but I need to get people involved (freelance writers). How do I find that specific demographic and appeal to them to join?
Claire, when I started traveling I didn’t want this to become a travelogue, which is why I started http://www.travelzulu.com. Is that the site with bad copy you are talking about? Another travel site I started is passportonly.com
Starting any new community is difficult. You may need to create some different profiles your self. You could promote it perhaps on linkedin or facebook.
You may need to offer some kind of incentive to join, like running a competition.
Can’t you share the site?
It’s a closed site right now (private). The reason is that I want the members first and then open it. I suppose that doesn’t make sense. I can show you via email what I am doing. It is not public yet. I had interest in it from some freelance writers (it was a joint venture). However, I am in a dilemma trying to figure out how to weed out people who want to freeload and not contribute and those that actually want to contribute. Too many sites get hijacked with people with their own agendas. The concept is very new and that’s also a factor in selling the benefits. I’ll send you info in private email and if you have time, you can take a look.
Claire
Having members already signed up and participating is a good idea before you actually launch it. My advice would be to let people go wild initially and then clamp down a bit later on. I am preparing a PR to promote my new australiaforum. I have a few people participating now – so it should look fairly active.
If you don’t mind sending me the details, I would like to take a look and perhaps can send you some feedback.
Is this your first site? I think it is a pretty good niche to target.
No, not my first site. My first site is linked above. It gets a lot of traffic even though I haven’t updated it in a while. It wasn’t meant as a business, but it turned into one. Helped me to get into the Master’s program too, even though I never knew I’d be applying when I created it. I am learning.
Claire