This month REZ BIZ magazine had a chance to ask him about what he learned, and his advice for budding Internet businesses.

He is originally from Tuba City.   His clans are Tse' deeshgizhnii nishli, To'dich'iinii' bashishchiin, To'dich'iinii' da' shichei, To'stoonii da shi nali.

Q. In the beginning, what were you trying to do?   Was it different because you had www.Navajoland.com which later turned into RedNations.com?

I was bit by the Internet bug in the summer of 1995.   From that point on, I started putting plans together to start-up an Internet Service Provider.   I didn't get to launch the idea, because Navajo Community College (prior to becoming Diné College) received several National Science Foundation grants to create and offer the Internet through their branches.

In January of 1996, NCC hired me to help develop this idea, so I learned Unix system administration, web administration, email administration, and graphic design, and taught various web and email skills to students and teachers.   To put it simply, it was exciting to drive Internet technology for Navajoland and Native people.   I was networking with everyone in Diné College, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, tribal colleges, universities, various consultants, new satellite Internet start-up companies, telecommunications companies, utility companies, Arizona state government, the Navajo Tribe and various tribal departments.

Then, in the fall of 1997, Navajoland.com was started to promote Navajoland tourism and people.   I worked with the Navajo Nation Tourism Office and networked out to tourism organizations in Arizona and New Mexico.   One of the popular features of Navajoland.com was the chat room.   To this day, many people still remember the chat room.   It was offered to encourage the use of a new way of communicating and networking.   Unfortunately, I had to close down the chat room, because it's so easy for anonymous people to be bold and mean spirited, which is still true today.

I actually started the online modeling concept under Navajoland.com that first featured Shannonlynn Chester.   We started promoting this new feature at the Navajo Nation Fair in 1997.   We were given a table under the Navajoland Tourism tent, near the rodeo grounds.   In a matter of minutes, we had a long line of people going outside the tent, wanting Shannonlynn's autographed 8x10 color picture.

Then, in 2000, I wanted to build upon Navajoland.com to reach and serve a larger Native American audience, and the idea of of RedNations.com was sparked.   I re-wrote all of the Navajoland.com programs to support a multi-user site. For example, one e-card program could support all account holders.   I offered the following multi-user programs - guestbook, news, calendar, e-cards (photo album), email notification, email web forms.   The beauty of all of these programs was that a user could log in to add, edit, delete, publish and un-publish each new entry through their own web browser.   Users didn't have to know html to maintain their web site.   The intent was to offer these services to help Native organizations and tribes get online quickly and easily.   No Native was offering these types of services, let alone developing them.

A web site grows as a result of consistently putting up content.   I had to design the web site such that I could easily maintain the site all by myself, so I wrote programs to automatically generate the web pages for RedNations.com, which at that time, was a novel way of maintaining a web site.   Keep in mind, at that time, there was no free set of programs to do this, so I was probably the only Native developing this at that time.

Around 2002, I started the big push of promoting RedNations.com, with the intent of featuring college and professional Native people.   RedNations.com was created to offer this opportunity for college and professional Native people to give back to our community by volunteering to share their experiences with school and career- education, business, tribal, entertainment, sports, government, and military, etc.

By the spring of 2003, I made the decision to focus on contemporary Native music and models, because these people made the effort to contact me to be featured.    My goals narrowed to providing a service to promote and grow the Native American entertainment industry in music and modeling.   The rest is history.

Q. You were getting a lot of hits to your web sites. Weren't you getting like 1 million hits each month? Were your visitors mostly other models? What was their age group and do you have any idea what their income was like?

With Navajoland.com, I was getting over a million hits per month.   The strategy was to use Navajoland.com as one of the first users under RedNations.com, so I could transfer the visitor base to RedNations.com and test the new online services.   At RedNations.com's peak, I was averaging over 4 million hits per month.

My visitors were repeat visitors.   It's really hard to give demographics, but if I had to guess, from my statistics report:

… Unique Visitors: close to 37,000 (peak)
… Age: 16 to 50 years old
… Demographics:   High school and college students, professionals, and military people

RedNations.com is the premier Native American entertainment web site for contemporary Native American music and models.

Q. Did you run Rednations.com as a business or more of a social site? Do you think there wasn't enough advertising or financial support?

I would have to say, RedNations.com is more or less a promotional site.   The contemporary Native American entertainment market is still under development, so there is plenty of room to grow this market.

Q. Do you think there's enough money out there for someone to create what you were doing? Is there a big market for what Rednations.com was doing?

As an online Native American entertainment publication, no.   I pioneered this area, so I had the opportunity to test the Navajo and Native American public's view on music and modeling.   Let's just say - today, commercially - there is a delicate balance of Navajo values and modern values, or the ways of the white people.

Q. If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

  I wouldn't do anything differently, because decisions were made under certain conditions and circumstances.

Q. What advice would you give for others who want to get into business?

I would encourage people to make sure your trademark a unique name and logo.   Market and brand your name and logo.   Try to keep your marketing simple and affordable, while you test your products and/or services.   If you're going to market on the web, then keep in mind, web traffic is driven by content, not so much on how pretty or extravagant your web site looks and feels.   Pay for advertising.   View marketing as paying for experience and exposure.   Enjoy meeting people.

Q. Are you selling the name RedNations.com?

  I'm not shopping it, but if someone gives me a "can't refuse" offer, then I may entertain the offer.

Q. What are you going to do next?

With RedNations.com there was a monthly burden of getting content, setting up shows, marketing shows, hitting up shows and networking.   I've been so focused on other people, for so long, that I put myself aside.   Believe me, it's been great to meet and create so many opportunities and inspiration for my Native people, but it's time for me to focus on me, my kids, my career as an engineer and other personal projects and ideas.