Okay, I'm Seqkat the webmaster and
publisher of the ezine Village of Tidbits. So, what's my
story, and how can it help you? Well, I
gave birth to my first child in 1991 and I wanted to stay home and
raise my child. In 1993 came my second child and I continued
in the career field that enabled me to stay home with my children
and raise them - child care.
I
wanted to be MY kid's mom - not a baby sitter. I wanted to see
their first steps, hear their first words, not have the baby sitter
tell me about them. So, I became the baby sitter for everyone
else's kids - and boy was it hard. I pulled 70 hour weeks
raising children, and on Saturday and Sunday when I was *off* I
raised my kids - so it was not an official break.
Those
were very hard days and I pulled it for five long years. I'd
shutter at the thought of going back to it, but I'd do it again, if
it was the only means of staying home with my kids.
After
five years I gave a try at substitute teaching at schools, the year
my daughter started Kindergarten. I was miserable on the
days I had to take my son to the baby sitter, and I only did this
part time. I really missed my own daughter during the day as
well.
Then
my neighbor got me on to working a job at home working on my
computer. It was correcting SGML to parse medical journals to
the internet. It's like HTML but it was that company's own
code that is different from HTML. It was a hard job, very
tedious and detailed, and my days became nights sitting up to 2:00
am trying to get the six day job that was due in three days done on
time. But hey, I was home with my kids. But I was tired.
Then
in June of year 2000 I stumbled onto something why surfing the net.
I stumbled upon an affiliate program. I was a complete newbie
to making money online, and marketing so forth. I signed
up, received my duplicate web page bearing the id number they
assigned to me! I was so excited! I thought this was my
website, yes, I said my - you can laugh, I laugh now at it too!
Then in the forum where they help you market this affiliate program
I learned that I needed to promote my affiliate webpage at
classifieds online. They gave me places I could go, and taught
me how to search to find more.
So,
I went to about five classified websites and posted my ad and waited
for the money to start come gushing in. I waited one
day, two, three, a week, two then three - and was shocked and
dismayed, when not a single person signed up. So, lost at my
lack of success I returned to the forum, reported my problem and
inquired as to what I needed to do.
I
was told that I needed to post daily to hundreds of classifieds, as
classifieds get pushed down very quickly as new ads come in.
Okay, that makes sense - I can do this - and I so embarked on my new
mission. I posted my ads now to 25 classifieds each day, (time
consuming!!), and again waited one day, two, three, a week, two and
once again returned to the forum. I did what you told
me, but it's not working! I wasn't given a straight answer.
I
began researching on the internet for ways to better promote my
affiliate website. I began seeing over and over, that the best
place to advertise online was in an ezine. What the heck is an
ezine? I found a directory, went to some ezines, and
subscribed. What a new world I was exposed to. I began
sending in my ads, and I remembered to repeat the process - and did
this weekly in several ezines. My results? Did you guess
- the same? Bingo - you're on the money, and I of course
wasn't making any money yet. I didn't know a thing about
product review - that is, is the product really good, and really
good for the money?? If not, it's not going to sell! I
just didn't know this.
After
a few months of being subscribed to ezines, the writer in me began
to itch, and I wanted to do my own ezine. But I had no idea
what to do an ezine on, and really feared no one would want to read
what I wrote. I toyed with this idea for a couple of months.
I did a small sample ezine in December of 2000 - and then just
decided to take the plunge in January 2001. I started with 7,
yes, I said SEVEN subscribers - and they were all
friends that I knew. I didn't even have a website.
As
I saw other ezines advertising their own website, I began to panic,
thinking I had to have one. I emailed one
ezine publisher to whom I was subscribed, and asked if you had to
have a website to produce an ezine. Now reply. I emailed
yet another, and another one, and another one - yes, you guessed it
- no reply.
I
really had no idea what I was doing! But I persisted.
Finally, one of the ezine publishers published in his ezine about
starting a website! Oh, boy - a lesson just for me!
He talked about getting started with a free one, and listed an url
of a company, who at the time offered free websites. I clicked
on that link - followed the few steps of clicking next - and within
moments the Village site was born. Talk about excitement - I
was exhilarated - now I really did have my OWN website! I
played and played with that puppy. I still play it with to
this day - it's a an ongoing project - one never finished - and I
love it. As I learn more, the website grows and shares more
with you!
Now,
I did begin getting subscribers to my own amazement to my ezine,
through offering to run free ads and running my ads in other ezines.
Some friendly ezine publishers even introduced me, which was very
touching as well as helpful. As my website grew in the next
month - every time I updated the website I sent a notice to my ezine
list. I emailed them five times in one week - to introduce
something new at my website. Can you believe I did
that?? Biggest newbie mistake - others weren't as
excited about my website as I was. Can you blame them?
It wasn't theirs. One subscriber emailed me asking to be
unsubscribed, explaining that was too many emails. I got to
chatting back and forth with her, formed an alliance of how she
could do write ups in my ezine pertaining to her business, and we
became fast friends.
I
apologized to the rest of my subscribers for the too many emails,
and assured them that wouldn't be in the future, and slipped in my
ezine for others to be able to do write ups pertaining to their
business, and many took me up on my offer - making my ezine what it
is today, subscriber interactive!
By
May of that same year, I had bonded wonderfully with my subscribers
- I was floating on Cloud 9 with all the wonderful feedback they
were sending back to me. I then decided to start my own ad
co-op, but wanted it to be different removing problems, I was having
with some I were in. I emailed my subscribers and asked for
their critical input, and used their critique to fine tune my idea.
I started advertising to get publishers to join, and by mid May I
launched my ad co-op. Then came June and I started selling ads
through just my own ezine as well. By the end of June, I
wasn't taking any more computer work from the company I worked for,
I was making money through my ezine! By the end of July, I
quit my job for I was making enough money on my own to be - that
wonderful - SELF-EMPLOYED!
What
a thrill! Now, since then, I've had ups and downs, doing
some things right, making some mistakes, learning a lot from a
school of personal experience. I've learned techniques to
employ, and techniques to forsake.
The
way I got started was scary - absolutely not knowing what I was
doing, but boy do I know a lot more now, but I still research to
continue to learn, and fine tune methods. One painful lesson I
learned just last year 2002, was that things change, and so does the
needs of the market, and I had to totally revamp my ad co-op to keep
it flourishing by providing the new needs of the market.
In
2001 - I began my own ezine training course that teaches others how
to start an ezine, gain subscribers, retain those subs, and sell ads
for revenue. It now ranks #1 with Yahoo and Google. I
then extended my ezine from one of just entertainment with the
occasional business article, to sharing what has led me to success,
and sharing a little lessons to help readers, and was in such stock
of readers sending in business articles, there's always one in my
ezine now.
Now,
this very year of 2003, I feel comfortable enough to really stretch
forth my hand and offer one on one personal mentoring, and now do so
through my Free Online Business
Consultations and it is going great! I've really been able
to steer sign ups in the right direction - having been in their
shoes, having been just as lost - and couldn't for the life of me
figure out why my goals weren't being achieved.
I
stumbled on to success and I'm determined to help others knock out a
lot of those long waiting months and get there a lot faster!
And I've already seen it happen with a lot of my ezine trainees.
Be
sure to have a look around my site - you can find all kinds of help
like links such as Tools for Online
Success, my Ezine Training Course,
of course my Free Business
Consultation, how to Advertise
Effectively, how to Set up
Your Website to Sell and of course my bi-weekly ezine
Village of Tidbits that usually
carries a lesson as well.
And
work alone is an unhealthy balance, spiritualism and fun are
important too - and you find it all at my home
page.
To
your success - God bless!
In
His Joy,
Seqkat
