Name of your website?The Chocolate Factory
Your name?
Peter Marinacci
Your Location (city, etc)
Hamilton
Please give us a short summary of your website?
The Chocolate Factory sells gifts and apparel (mostly t-shirts, hats, and mugs) that have chocolate inspired sayings on them. They're designed for people who love chocolate and aren't afraid to admit it!
What inspired you to launch your own website?
The Chocolate Factory is part of Wombania's Gift Shop, which in turn was an offshoot of my primary website, www.wombania.com
Wombania is the official website of the weekly comic strip of the same name, which is internationally syndicated to a number of weekly newspapers.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Wombania.com was launched in Aug of 2003, though I did have a couple of websites before that.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Wombania is the term I coined to represent Wombat-mania, as the main characters in my comic strip are Wombies--genetically engineered wombats from Australia.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Though other sites offer chocolate t-shirts and gifts, the sayings and slogans I have on my designs are original I believe.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I hope to syndicate the Wombania comic strip to a much wider audience. I also am working at getting more recognition for the The Chocolate Factory as there are a lot of chocolate lovers out there.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Much more investment than payback at this time, though sales and exposure are increasing.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Make the site larger and more interactive, and offer a lot more designs and products.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Hopefully there would be enough of an income that I could hire help if the upkeep of the site became too much to handle personally.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Finding the time to keep everything going.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Website SEO as my main site (wombania.com) drives customers to the shop. Wombania ranks fairly high for "wombats" and "wine gums" on Google. I need to work on the "chocolate" part, though.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
A lot more time is needed to keep things going than had originally anticipted.
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?
Wombania has been up for over four years. The shop part was a small, limited shop for three years, and has just recently been expanded. I hope to keep them both going for a long long time.
What is your website address?
The Chocolate Factory
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