Part 2: Cross advertising, redesign and future plans

Where do most of your users hear about your site? Do you advertise?
Mostly it's word of mouth, links from other major film sites and search engines.

I haven't done any advertising yet. The only advertising that I do is cross advertising on my own sites. Like put a banner from "Cast Away" on the "Gladiator" site and vice-versa.

How did you reach so many fans?
Oh boy, that took almost four years. But to answer that question I think it comes down to the fact that since I have a fan site on every movie, DreamWorks brings fans of different actors, directors, and music composers involved in the films to the sites. For example, if a Tom Hanks fan is looking for a "Cast Away" site and ends up coming to mine, he/she gets curious to see what the main site is about.

How has your website evolved since it started, in terms of design and attracting a larger audience?
Let's just say that I never thought I would come this far. When I started in October 1997, I thought it would be a simple Steven Spielberg Page reaching a few hundred fans per day. Back then there used to be another 'Steven Spielberg Page' getting all the visitors, with frequent updates.

This was when I decided to add a DreamWorks news component to my site. That gave the site more market, more movies and news to cover, and thus attracted the other Spielberg Page visitors to mine.

Then in summer 1998, I decided to launch a separate fan site on "The Prince Of Egypt." Since I had been looking forward to it for almost two years, I thought it would be a nice addition to my small site. I would say that was a big step towards the success of my sites. My visitors increased and the response was so great that after "The Prince Of Egypt" came out, I decided to dedicate a fan site to every DreamWorks film.

This is the third redesign for the main site. But since I am constantly making new sites, I would say that I have done over a dozen different designs for all my sites and have learned a lot in these past four years.

What strategies do you keep in mind when working on your website to ensure people return?
No matter who you are, everyone is fascinated by news, gossip and rumors. People want to read, listen or watch the news as much as possible. So there is a need to keep visitors updated.

That's why when I saw the potential of my site back in early 1998, I decided to update it every day. Part of it was due to the fact that I wanted people from other Steven Spielberg pages to come to mine because none of them offered daily updates, probably 2-3 times a week at the most. That actually worked. The fact that I update it everyday - or try to at least - keeps bringing people back.

What advertising methods do you avoid? Why?
I hate pop-ups. When I was at Geocities in 1997, my page used to have a pop-up banner, which was frustrating. It prevents people from visiting a site.

What are your future plans for this site?
I am going to launch a newsletter within the month. This weekly yet-to-be-named newsletter will cover the past week's news with links to the news items along with upcoming promotion and contests.

I also plan to keep offering fans unique coverage, attract more visitors and keep going at the rate I am going now.

All that and you have three novels in the works! What inspired those?
Well the idea was originally to do novels. But once I finished my first one and read it, I hated it. That's when I decided to make it into a screenplay. For now, I only have three planned (all part of a trilogy with different stories and characters.)

The first one is completed and I am going to start the second one in summer. The base of all three is relationships. All three are about different relationships under different circumstances.

Like any writer, inspirations came from small issues that have happened to people I know. For instance, a friend of mine would mention one of his/her problems to me and aside from giving them advice, I would work a story around it. That's how my first script was done.

Thanks again for your time, Jawad. Maybe we'll meet the webmaster of your own fan site some day, after those scripts become movies.