Raine Shine (Shine Local Directory)

I have been running the Banbury-Cross website - www.banbury-cross.co.uk - since 1998.  It is an Online directory of Businesses and Services in the Banbury area offering Free listings to ALL businesses based in OX15, OX16 & OX17.  It makes money by charging anything from £60 - £240+vat per year to Upgrade listings.

It has been so successful that in 2011, I started setting up the business for Franchising - the new website is called the Shine Local Directory - www.shinelocal.co.uk - It will be run on the same basis as the original Banbury-Cross website offering Free listings to ALL businesses and small amounts to Upgrade their listings.

Today - May 2012 - The new website is 95% complete and I am looking for my first THREE Franchisees.  Although this is a brand new business, it is based on 14 years of experience and history and I can honestly say that I have heard and seen it all in the Online Business Directory Business :-)

If you are interested in running your own business, please consider the Shine Local Directory and feel free to contact me for an initial chat.

Well - I'll let you in on a secret - Raine Hilson is my married name and although I was divorced in 2002, I have kept on my married name - until now -

When I was trying to decide what to call my new website - I pondered for three months until someone from my youth rang me up and called me by my maiden name - which was Shine - yes - Raine Shine - this was my Birth Certificate name - and No my parents didn't have a sense of humour, they honestly didn't realise that the name would clash - if you want to know why - then ask and I'll tell you !

Anyways - I was in the music business for many years (Google me and you'll see more if you're interested) before retiring and leaving London - getting married and moving to Banbury.

I worked on the local newspapers selling advertising space for a few years before leaving to have my daughter.  Friends from London told me about the internet in 1997 and I found a course I could do from home.  So I borrowed a 486 computer and loaded up the course on 6 floppy discs and learnt HTML.  The course obviously wanted me to design a basic website so I based it on the local newspaper - having a page for Property, a page for Motors, a page for Classifieds.... Hmmmm this is a great idea and thus the Banbury-Cross Website was born and launched on 1st September 1998.

I went into my previous customers' businesses with a laptop, plugging into their phone lines and showing them the internet when the biggest search engine was Yahoo !

The Banbury-Cross website grew and evolved through seven or eight different designs until I decided to get it ready to expand last year and Shine Local was born.

So - www.banbury-cross.co.uk  and www.shinelocal.co.uk are my websites and have been my business for the past 14 years and hopefully for the forseeable and far future !