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19 downloadsHe's an institution: George, founder and owner of Thaivisa.com, Thailand's probably most popular website among foreigners with its unique forum.
George is the brain behind the success, but success invites envy and jealousy, so not all you read about Thaivisa is milk and honey.
I recently had a talk with George and here is what he says about Thailand today, Thaivisa's sometimes debatable moderators, politics, etc.
George say, how did it all start with Thaivisa?
It was an accident! It started with an experiment with SEO (search engine optimization) in 2002, I wanted to see if a forum like this would be able to reach the top of search results without any cheating (it's called "white-hat SEO"). As we only had myself and a few friends in the very beginning, we started to ask each other questions and answered each others topics. Most forums actually start this way, even if it does sound a little strange. At that time there were not many Thai related forums around and mostly they covered the bar scene, and we weren't interested in that and wanted to offer something completely different. I invested a lot of baht in marketing the site during the first three to four years.
Thaivisa has some dream stats. Can you share some of the Google Analytics data?
We have around 35-45,000 unique visistors per day, and we are approaching 6 million page views per month. We grow approx 10-15% per month, but some months are more or less due to seasonal variations and how much we spend on marketing. Around 50% of our traffic is from within Thailand. Most of our revenue is reinvested in server infrastructure and online marketing.
You seem to be constantly online. You're hooked? Can you ever take a day off from your site?
Well, I do try to take days off, but yes, I am hopelessly addicted. However, we have a great team on Thaivisa and I know that it's in good hands. My normal working day is between 12 and 16 hours per day, a bit less on weekends or when traveling. I went to China for a week recently and had severe withdrawal symptoms. smile.gif I have promised myself to "get a life" soon though …
Who are the key players within Thaivisa?
Our members, and of course the moderating team which help keep the forum a welcoming place for newbies and older members alike. Also our admin team take care of servers, sales, marketing and support. The sponsors pay our bills and bandwidth, a big thanks to them.
Thaivisa has become a remarkable enterprise with an innovation every few months. You sell insurances, organize parties, now the cooperation with The Nation. You're way ahead of the competition, if there's any. Has it become too stressful to manage Thaivisa?
No, not really, I have a great team backing me up, its certainly not a one man show. Some of the services we offer are outsourced to third parties who do an excellent job.
You have any competition? I mean the hate and distrust between the major expat forums in Thailand seems to be deeper than between red and yellow Thais.
We don't hate any other forum, we don't really have the time or energy to worry too much about what other forums are saying or doing. More than 87,000 members keep us busy!
What local sites are you reading? Nah, you don't have to mention absolutely Bangkok.com ..
Most of the English Thai dailies and blogs. A lot of good content ideas comes from social networking like Twitter and Facebook. Thaivisa takes most of my time really. I've been a member of webmasterworld.com since day 1. I read 2bangkok.com and Stickman's weekly column to name a few examples.
Thaivisa's commercial tie-up with The Nation, a newspaper quite often so one-sided it asked for the creation of Not The Nation: Wouldn't the Bangkok Post have been a more appropriate partner of choice?
Our tie-up with The Nation is strictly a marketing/media issue. We have a few new exiting things in the pipeline with them.
A recent example with our tie-up with The Nation and The Phuket Gazette is the new SMS service we started a few weeks ago, targeting expats and their need for news in Thailand. We already got a few thousand SMS subscribers and the feedback has been very positive. We wouldn't get rich of premium SMS services, but we will be able to employ one or two full time native English speaking editors in the near future.
The Bangkok Post is not willing to cooperate with Thaivisa on posting news so, unfortunately, they do not have a voice on the forum. We are still in talks with them though, and there is no hard feelings.
Read the full interview here: http://absolutelyban...m/george-talks/
-- absolutelybangkok.com 2009-11-19
Keep on truckin'!! 
, new to forums then, but ThaiVisaDotCom gave me a veiw in them days, years ago what a forum is all about.
....perhaps Im not being naughty enuf 
..Nice interview and congratulations to George !
It's quite normal to end (or start) an interview with the writer/journalist, isn't it ?
Thanks George
