I'll start my first entry with introducing myself and my husband.
We're Steve and Danica, we've been married for almost six years and we've been together for 13. Last Summer my dad came up with a business idea... buying a sailing boat and chartering it. (We live in Malta, surrounded by the sea, and tourism is our biggest industry).
Steve was an estate agent who, thanks to the recession was not making much money, so when my father proposed he become the skipper of the yacht he jumped at the idea.
First step was to buy a boat. We visited the annual boat fair and fell in love with a brand new Dufour 405 Grand Large and after a few talks with the bank she was ours! Next Steve had to get qualified so he quit his job and started a Yachtmaster's course at The Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology. He finished his course three weeks ago and now we're ready to work work work!
While Steve was getting ready to get qualified we worked on our website (www.dominacharters.com)... I prepared all the content and a friend of mine from Florence came over to Malta for a few days to get a feel of things and get it constructed. It wasn't easy but finally after a couple of months of hard work it's finally online... and that's how this blog started.
We have this really amazing website, but now we want people to click on it! We got a couple of quotes from webmasters who know a thing or two about Search Engine Optimisation to get us ranked on the first page of google. One person quoted €700 for administration plus €1200 for keywords, another guy quoted €500 for the lot (seo, facebook twitter, etc). We can't afford either!
We're a new company and we haven't started making any money, so I've started doing some research on the web and asking around to learn more about search engine optimisation and I came across a tutorial by Matt Cutts. He suggests that the first thing to do to optimise your website is to create a blog like this one. So, here we are!
Steve today is out with his first charter and we are all very excited for him. He's taken out a film crew of 7 who first wanted to film the Grand harbour (easy-peasy) and then wanted to go all the way to Comino (not so easy-peasy coz the sea was quite choppy this morning). The charter was meant to start at 9am and they were meant to return by 2pm, however I spoke to him half an hour ago and he told me they were still in Comino. I imagine he'll be home at about 6pm.
We'll keep you posted on how the day went.
In the meantime I'd like to thank Google for the opportunity of having a free blog (we love freebies!) and I'd like to invite you to visit out beautiful country, Malta and charter our sailing boat, Domina. To see our range of services and to see the yacht visit www.dominacharters.com
Happy sailing everyone x
Danica
