Startup Stories – TheFWA’s Rob Ford

The FWA: Favourite Website Awards is a site founded in the heady days of 2000 with the goal of showcasing brilliant web design on the cutting edge. Now approaching a decade online, the site has become something of an institution in its field and to have one’s work featured there is high praise indeed. Thanks to paid submissions, a popular job board and advertisers to the 80,000 odd daily visitors, the site has not only achieved popular but also financial success.

TheFWA’s founder Rob Ford comes from a background in finance, sales and project management and created the site without external funding. Rob took time out, 9 years on to tell us about his experiences building not only a respected awards site, but a solid business around it.

Netsetter:
As an unfunded venture I thought it’d be great if you could tell us a bit about how the FWA came into existence. Did you plan it to be a business from the start, or did that evolve? How did you fund the site, bandwidth and growth?

Rob Ford:
First of all, thanks for inviting me to do this interview!
Back in 1997 I was trying to establish a web presence, playing with animated gifs and lake applets. I can remember rocking one design that had a neon flashing sign that said “open 24 hours”. I dare to admit it but I even had a virtual creature on the site… it was a tarantula and I suffer with arachnophobia!

Anyway, as I progressed through HTML and eventually on to Flash, I finally started to make some sites for small companies and established my own agency called treecity. In early 2000 I received an email from Yellow Pages in the UK saying I had been nominated for an award in the Yell UK Web Awards and was on the shortlist with the likes of the legendary Deepend.

I got such an amazing buzz from the experience, whilst also noticing the surge in cool Flash sites at that time that I decided to start up Favourite Website Awards as a showcase for creative websites.

There was no intention or even thoughts at that time to turn it in to a business and even nine years later I don’t see it as a business, even though it effectively has to run like one. FWA evolved in to a business after about six years in existence, mainly as I was getting a lot of advertising enquiries and traffic was going crazy. It was a natural progression.

Up until 2006 I funded the site both financially and with my time. I ended up having to give up everything else I was doing to support myself financially as I could see the growth potential. In fact, I didn’t have a choice, it just took me over whether I wanted it to or not. The snowball syndrome.

For years I tried to get sponsored hosting but was always turned down, most often my emails went un-answered. In recent years that all changed and now I have to turn down hosting offers as, for the last number of years, Jared Wray’s company, Tier3, has handled thefwa.com’s massive bandwidth and traffic. The site will receive its 50 millionth visitor within weeks. Thefwa.com does almost 2 million site visits per month, with around 400,000 unique users per month and almost 100 million hits per month on Tier3’s servers.

Netsetter:
9 years is long enough to have seen ups and downs on the internet, what sorts of challenges have you faced in running the FWA over such a long time period?

Rob Ford:
Luckily, being your own boss you can pretty much make up the rules as you go along. Thank heavens I don’t have the structure of a major corporation as the levels of red tape I have personally witnessed is often ludicrous. I’m still trying to figure out why I need to sign a ten page contract to write an article for someone. Note to Collis, thanks for not getting all legal on me for this interview!

The biggest challenges are always the business side of things. Kind of contradicting my above statement. Legal issues, like people trying to steal your content, or any intellectual property issues. Accountancy issues, VAT etc. All those mundane business items we all have to deal with and get right. VAT is a classic issue as it seems that the internet is redefining the rules of the likes of VAT and it’s often difficult to get a definite answer on international trade when handling electronic services etc.

I guess I am a creative entrepreneur. I love to launch new showcases, like FWA Theater and the brand new FWA Photo but I hate the business side of things. Having said that, I always make sure I get the best advice and that my house is kept in order. A clear conscience is what helps me get my 8 hours sleep every night.

In terms of the ups and downs of the internet in the last nine years… I just keep doing what I do best. It’s almost like living in a bubble. Just ignore what is happening around you and keep ploughing forward. Seems to have worked for me.

Netsetter:
Being in a similar industry, I’ve seen dozens of competitors try their hand at the awards niche. What do you think has kept them at bay and the FWA at the top of the ladder?

Rob Ford:
Good question! Yes, I have seen many awards come and go over the years. I have even sent a few of them cease and desist notices after they copied our site and/or our content!

What keeps them at bay is that I know how much time I have to put into FWA. It’s a labour of love, 24/7 x 365… literally. I even do site updates on Christmas day. I haven’t had a day off for holidays or ill in nine years. Working with food poisoning and a temperature of 102.7 is how I define dedication! The only time out I have had has been in the last six months when I have been away from my desk a few times to talk to potential investors and acquirers.
What I am saying is that you really do need to put a massive commitment into a project to make it work. Can you imagine working for six years without drawing a wage? Exactly.

The other reason so many have come and gone, tried to compete and failed is because they are not doing anything different. Just look at the likes of Digg and Twitter, simple ideas, never done before.

In summary, if you are going to start up an awards program, make sure you have no social life first, or give it up if you do and then do not emulate something that is already successful, do something different or at least with a twist on it. Competing with established websites without offering a different experience will be very demoralising.

Netsetter:
Has the FWA always charged for submissions? If not, how did you go about introducing the charge to the audience? Was there a backlash?

Rob Ford:
No, it was never my intention to charge people for submissions. In fact, I think in one interview I did many years ago, I said I would never charge anyone to submit a site.

In May 2006 things had to change because I was receiving up to 200 submissions per day and, at that time, I was judging sites entirely by myself. I spent almost every waking hour judging sites and it got to the stage where I couldn’t cope. I was also receiving submissions from sites which had absolutely no chance of winning and they were just wasting my time.

With a very heavy and nervous heart, I took the plunge in May 2006 and started to charge £10 GBP per submission. I was terrified at that time that submissions would dry up but, of course, they didn’t. What happened though was that submissions plummeted to a manageable level immediately. And, to my delight, the quality of submissions, as it is still today, is top class.

Now, three years on we have 30 judges on the SOTD (site of the day) panel and over one hundred industry experts judging SOTY (site of the year).

We now have a two tier submission option. The basic is at £34.50 GBP for a submission for SOTD consideration. Then we have the option2 submission at £69.00 GBP where we judge a site for SOTD consideration whilst also sending the submitter’s site details to a world class distribution list which includes some of the leading publications from around the world, including journalists from the likes of: The New York Times; Chicago Tribune; The Guardian; msnbc; Computer Arts and many more. The option2 submission is what most people opt for these days. I think one of the main reasons we still get so many submissions is because the level of exposure we can offer is huge. FWA is probably one of the top 10 websites in the world for sending traffic to sites.

As for the backlash, yes there were some emails and some forum posts but I expected that. The reality for me was that I “grew up” on a free internet when you could download everything for nothing. As the internet has matured we have all realised that you get what you pay for and that we do actually have to pay for some goods and services. Life is not a free party! Most things can start out for free but eventually are driven towards being paid for by market forces.

Netsetter:
I was surprised to learn that you have a background in finance, sales and project management, how do you think this has helped or hindered your work on the FWA?

Rob Ford:
My background has been extremely useful and beneficial. Having a strong work ethic and being a very honest person with extremely high ethics, unwavering at all times, has made me and FWA very successful. I am very organised and excellent at managing projects. I am a perfectionist which is often as good as it is bad. If something is not exactly right, it has to be and this can cause stress but any perfectionist will understand what I mean. Being a good salesman always helps as well but my skill at being good at sales is basically simple… just be nice to people and follow up your leads.

Netsetter:
Have there been any crises you’ve experienced, with the site, with the business, with hosting? How did you respond and how did it affect the site?

Rob Ford:
I can’t think of an crises relating to FWA at all. It’s been a smooth ride but very hard work. Turning in to a formal business was a bind, setting up the accounts etc but everyone has to do that. There have been a number of “moments” but they have been incoming bombs rather than outgoing ones. I make sure everything is in order and that every submitted site is treated the same. No favours for anyone at all. Every site is judged on its own merits no matter who made it. Basically, using a tried and tested format and not moving from it for anyone.

Even after nine years, we seem to do record traffic almost every week. So, it’s still an upward curve, even in this recession. Year on year we are growing by 50% in all aspects.

Netsetter:
If you could go back and do it all again, is there anything you’d do differently? Anything you wish you’d known?

Rob Ford:
Yes, I would like to have not wasted my time chasing Macromedia for a sponsorship and since then, Adobe. It’s very draining trying to convince a company that you need and deserve their support. Crazy thing is, I am still doing this right up to today. So, Adobe… I’m over here!

Netsetter:
Recently the FWA went up for sale, do you have any updates? I’ve never had experience selling a large site and I’m sure our readers would be fascinated to hear about the process of finding and negotiating with buyers!

Rob Ford:
Hopefully, having read what I have said so far, you’ll appreciate how I live for FWA and that putting it up for potential acquisition was a very difficult thing to do. The reality is that FWA has grown to be a very big project with huge potential and even though I have an amazing team of judges and volunteers now, a big injection of business acumen and financial clout could see FWA become what it deserves to be.

I’ve also spent my entire thirties without seeing daylight so I would appreciate some sun on my bones. I personally spend too much of my time still doing the mundane jobs relating to FWA instead of pushing through new initiatives.

After putting up a “for sale” sign I received a staggering amount of emails. Many were well wishes and some worried fans but there were also a large number of good approaches from all over the world. I am actually still in discussions so it’s hard for me to go much further here. All I would say is that FWA is in my blood so rest assured if it does get acquired I will remain in a strong advisory role at the minimum as my FWA dream is still in its infancy. I want to make it far bigger and better, with many offshoots, new showcases and exciting developments for years to come.

Thanks Rob!!