Name of your website?JP's Audio Handbook
Your name?
Jon Pitans
Your Location (city, etc)
London, UK
Please give us a short summary of your website?
It is a beginners guide to setting up a recording studio, aimed predominantly at people in bands but is also a useful resource for people interested in sound engineering as a career
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Many things, partly a desire to share the knowledge I have with the world, and partly to dispel the misconception that recording is some sort of black art that only strange disfigured people calling themselves sound engineers can do. It isn't, anyone is capable of a good recording with some simple equipment, some basic knowledge, and a bit of common sense.
Its also a good promotional tool that I can show people when I bid for freelance work.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
In 2001, it was a website for the band I was playing in at the time. I was also heavily into flash animation at the time, that combined with a general ignorance of SEO meant it never really charted in google.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Easy, its my initials
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
I've only seen one other site in a similar vein to this one, I think a lot of producers think their jobs are at risk if too many musicians get clued up on how to record properly. To me that just sounds like a lack of confidence in their own abilities.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I'd like to keep it. I use adsense on the site to earn a small revenue stream but I don't realistically expect to retire off it. I suppose my goal is just to get loads of good traffic, a thriving message board community, and for lots of people to learn something they didn't know before. That would make me happy.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It actually cost me hardly anything to set up the site, however the content took me nearly 6 months to complete in and around my other work. Now I am finished I am getting a lot of messages from people saying how much they like the site and want to spread the word for me, so I am very proud of it and think it was well worth doing.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I wouldn't mess with the design too much, I like it simple and easy to navigate. I think the only thing I would do is employ a genuine SEO consultancy to optimise its content and get some good seach engie rankings. The only problem with SEO consultants is there are so many bad ones out there who take your money and use black hat techniques that get you banned from google, you have to be careful who you go with.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I guess so since its just an information resource, I have enough bandwidth for the time being if I was getting major traffic I guess I'd just upgrade to a bigger server.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
No costs, but I had a lot of fun once the site was finished having to debug every page (50 of them) for w3c validation.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Knuckling down and finishing it, after writing my first 2 or 3 pages of content it had dawned on me what a big project this was. It took a lot of effort to not abandon thewhole project.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Word of mouth, musicians in particular tend to be very fond of the site and are running around telling each other about it.
What is your website address?
JP's Audio Handbook
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