Name of your website?Exit Kampala
Your name?
RS Elvis
Your Location (city, etc)
Kampala
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Uganda's premier Entertainment news portal, exit kampala is an online extension of our quaterly print entertainmemnt guide. Expect entertainment news from Uganda and beyond, celebrity gossip, analyses, critiques and mobile phone contend downloads. While you are here, you can also send free sms to cellphones in Uganda.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
The lack of a product that comprehensively offers entertainment news and mobile content in one stop. To satiate Ugandans and people interested in Ugandan entertainment within and (especially) outside the country.
exitkampala.com was also a portal where we could upload a soft version of our print entertainemnt guide for readers that could have missed the current issue at distribution points and also for Ugandans in the diaspora to whom the print copy can not reach.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
the website has been up since february but we were finetuning a number of things and just officially went out in July 2007.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It was right there! exit. n. a way out. v. to go out. Check in any dictionary! There was no better name for an entertainment guide other than exit. going out!
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
exit is more dynamic than any other site offering entertainemnt news in Uganda. Most of the other sites that give news more often are not dedicated entertainment sites but just general news sites that tackle entertainment bits here and there. The dedicated entertainment news site are not updated as regulary and do not have fresh news. Also, the writing style as depicted in exitkampala.com's articles set it a league apart. Positively.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
exitkampala.com is to remain the mainstay of Slice Entertainment Inc, the mother company and in the short term, to support the growing print publication through cross promotion. Eventually though, the online version is to become a fully fledged media outlet with revenue streams not necessarily connected to the print entertainment guide.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
exitkampala.com had a bit of a slow start but mainly due to other projects that were occupying the directors. Otherwise it has reached many of the goals it was set out to achieve.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We would add a shop dealing in Ugandan artifacts and patritic apparel with a naughty/humorous touch.
We would also like to see a site that merges mobile telephony with service provision and financial utility. For instance, we would like to see a day when you can send an sms from yoour phone thru the exitkampala portal and have a pizza delivered to your office and the money deducted directly from your bank account. Please remember to tip the delivery guy!!!!
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes!
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
We've had to deal with a hacker who took advantage of a loophole in our security. Luckily, we've since covered that.
Earlier on, we had to deal with a webdesigner who run off with our money to Italy withoout designing the site after we had paid him to.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Gathering the entertainment news especially during a dead season.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website and how else do you intend to promote it?
Advertising on other sites has driven much traffic to our site. We are promoting it further by sponsoring and being associated with entertainemnt events like music concerts, we are appearing more in the public and are coming out with joint promotions with other industry players especially targeting young college students in a bid to drive traffic to the website.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It is quite more taxing that we thought and requires a lot of time than we thought.
On the bright note though, we get more hits than we imagined we would.
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 or income?
we'll keep it up regardless of what happens and make sure we make what is not happening happen.
In our words:
The Japanese have a saying, 'want of a nut caused the loss of a horse shoe. Want of a horse shoe caused the loss of a steed. Want of a steed caused the message not to be delivered. An undelivered message caused the loss of a war.' In this war, we shall not overlook the small nuts and pride ourselves in our reknown attention to detail.
What is your website address?
Exit Kampala
No trackbacks.
Comments