The husband and wife team of Gary and Mary Cooley has produced Twin Lakes Area tourism web sites since April of 1995. They have also been directly involved in the sale of 56 area small resorts, either as listing and sales real estate agents, or as consultants to owners and buyers.

The Cooleys also conduct several commercial grade photo shoots per year of outdoor Ozark recreation for advertising. Shoots include both digital stills and HD video.

"Any way you look at it, Ozarks tourism and recreation is what we do, every day, all day." says Gary.

Gary, a former private investigator specializing in corporate vice, moved here from Chicago in 1994. He grew up in Vermont and has lived in 7 states since leaving his native state. Mary is a former long-haul truck driver who grew up in southern Texas. She has, at one time or another, seen most of the United States.

Both Gary and Mary are 50-something. Each lost their first spouse due to sudden deaths. They met in Mountain Home as singles and married a year later. The Cooleys accept the fact they could make more money in a major metro area. They both miss certain aspects of the big city life. But there is much more they do not miss, and neither would trade more money to live anywhere else.

Back in 1994 David Rife, Gary's good friend from St. Louis, encouraged Gary to "get involved" in this thing called the World Wide Web. Rife was an engineer at Boeing who had used the Internet long before Al Gore invented it. Rife told Cooley in 1994, "This is the next great technological revolution. It could really help your real estate career."

Rife taught the Cooleys the basics of Web site development, way back in the 1994 days of Mosaic and Netscape version 1.0. (Internet Explorer was not around in those days.) From there the Cooleys are self-taught - with the help of some good magazines, books, and consultants. They subscribe to numerous monthly travel, advertising, video, photography, technology, and business publications. They also learn from the Web sites of these same publications.

"With technology and American culture moving so fast there is no other way to stay on top of change other than reading", says Mary. "You have to constantly re-invent yourself or lose business."

The Cooleys also hire top level consultants in travel, technology, advertising, and photography. These consultants range in price from $350 to as much as $5,000 per hour. The Cooleys spend many thousands on information from top pros, which is a lot for a Mom & Pop operation. Yet as Gary points out,

"Our resort advertisers think nothing of spending $10,000 to $50,000 a year on remodeling cabins or buying rental boats. It is necessary to the success of their business. They rent those cabins or boats out for years to come and make a profit. For us the investment in information serves the same purpose. It it just information instead of boats or cabin interiors that we invest in."

By reading, by experimenting constantly, using top consultants, and by polling 2COOLEYS readers, the Cooleys have come to learn what works and what does not for tourism Web promotions and resort sales. Yet there is always something new to learn.

As Gary likes to point out, "There are thousands of people who claim to be pros. However, in our experience, many really are not. We have found that it cost less in the long run to find the true pros, the ones who are at the top of their industry, pay their price, and learn from them. After that we adapt their prinicples to our own efforts"

What makes it fun is that the more we pay the more we hear the pros admit their mistakes, the big mistakes they've learned the hard way. Sure, a $8,000 consulting bill is expensive. But it never fails - these guys always save us far more than they cost us. This level of knowledge is passed on to our customers. Our level of information is as good as or better than any other source - large, small, or "official".

By combining the knowledge of top pros with their own tests and efforts, the 2Cooleys have developed the area's most visited tourism Web sites. Their sites enjoy an average combined readership of 70,000 to 75,000 unique visitors (readers) per month. Page views run into the 300,000 to 350,000 range each month. According to published traffic numbers for other area tourism sites, this puts the Cooleys ahead by at least a 4-to1 ratio in total monthly readers. And of course when it comes to the Web, exposure is what counts.

Says Mary, "We are just two people with two computers and a couple of pro digital cameras. All our competitors have full-size offices with 20 or more employees. Yet we out-produce them by a wide margin in terms of exposure and readers - and real sales for our customers. This happens only because we specialize in tourism. We don't "do" anything that is not tourism.  It is also the advantage of having the right knowledge. It is not the technology, it is the people pushing the keys. Letting one's ego drop, and listening to those who really have done it, who have made it to the Big Time, that is our secret. And we have learned a great deal from several very good and helpful customers"

In July of 2007 the Cooleys decided that streaming video for the Web had finally reached a good quality level so they invested in pro video production equipment. While the Cooleys had worked with video for several years, the jump into High Def was not easy, and not cheap. Mary's reaction to Gary talking about investing in HD video was:

"I about keeled over when I learned that a good video camera tripod costs at least $5,000. I soon learned that the tripod was the cheap stuff! But I also knew right away we had to do this. Sure, I could buy some nice toys with what we invested in HD video. But I'll have a lot more fun with the video - and it will pay us back for sure. I'll wait until I'm too old to romp around the hills with my video camera to enjoy the toys. Gary is lucky he has a wife who is as crazy as he is!"

Gary agrees.