On 14 February 2013, after a long week of marketing exams at EPHEC in Louvain-La-Neuve, I launched my free sample website: Face à la crise. Today, four years later, I'm still busy with this project which every month attracts more than 150,000 Belgians and I'm becoming more passionate about it by the minute.
The concept of Face à la crise is very simple, it aims to provide hints and tips to help Belgians make savings: Free samples, special offers, products with 100% refunds, free competitions... it's all there!
I'm often asked how I had the idea of creating this website and the answer is very simple:
A few years ago, there were almost no special offer websites on the internet. Whether you entered Belgian competitions, free samples, special offer Belgium, or any other such keywords into Google, you always ended up with a site reserved for France. At the time, all the special offer sites were designed for the French and as a Belgian, I was frustrated by this situation every time. So, in 2013, I decided to create my own special offer website: Face à la crise, reserved this time just for Belgium.
In the beginning, it was more for fun than anything else, but I soon noticed that the site was increasingly popular and I had to continue with the idea. In the last year of my Marketing course, my professors announced that I had to find 50 hours of additional marketing-related activities as part of the final test. What a pain, but then I had the idea to dedicate myself 100% to my website... two birds, one stone! Then came the time for my internship. I spent 3 months at Chaussures Maniet where I helped them to launch their new webshop. I gradually became passionate about internet marketing.
At the end of my internship and my marketing studies, I took the "tough" decision to work freelance and gave myself a year to develop Face à la crise and make it profitable.
Today, 4 years later, after highs and lows, www.facealacrise.be is a success! Over 100,000 subscribers, 150,000 visitors/month, a Facebook community of 75,000 fans,.. I could never have imagined that. This tough decision that I had to make finally seemed obvious to me.
I think I'm lucky to have one of the best jobs... Why? Simply because I'm paid by brands to distribute free gifts and samples. What more could you want?
In addition to my website, I quickly launched my mobile applications on Android and iOS, "Face à la crise, les gratuits" in order to differentiate myself and be in the pockets of all my members.
My new projects? To create Tegen de crisis, the counterpart to Face à la crise for Flanders, a second success!
Thanks for reading,
Guillaume de Ryckel
CTA
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