Between 2010 and 2014 I provided editorial services for two sister wine websites, redwine.co.uk and whitewine.co.uk.
The website owner (an affiliate marketer) had procured the two domain names at auction, and he'd had Wordpress-based websites made to go with them, and was planning on selling the websites on for a profit at a later date – while also toying with the idea of developing them into magazine-style websites providing an irreverent, non-expert perspective on the world of wine. (If he could get funding for the project...)
In the interim he was looking for someone to build up a catalogue of content across both websites – reviews of supermarket wines and wine-subscription services, industry trends and news, interviews with vintners and retailers, and features about wine regions, grapes, and winemaking techniques. He approached me after coming across my personal wine blog – only about six months old at that date – and since I was already writing about wine for fun (and planning on going freelance at some point in the near future) I was happy to carry on doing it for money.
I ran both sites for several years, editing content, writing reviews, building and managing a small team of freelancers on a modest budget, and focusing on getting the websites noticed on search engines. I studied for a WSET (intermediate) certificate while working on the sites, so that I'd have at least some idea of what I was talking about. And though the sites never developed into anything greater, and the owner eventually decided to retire and discontinue their upkeep, my writing was noted and commended by a senior member of staff at Snooth.com, a promising wine-themed social media and ecommerce website. (Itself now also defunct!)
Here are a few screen-grabs from the sites as they were then, taken from the internet archive:
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