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Visions & Ventures for the New Millennium |
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In The Beginning... In the beginning I was a single parent looking for ways to support my family and myself and get out of the corporate world where I was underpaid and under-appreciated. Leaving the security of an established corporation was risky, but working as traveling Database Consultant my pay was finally appropriate with my skills, but working in various states meant losing touch with my family and friends, not to mention killing any hope of starting a love relationship! While away from home I spent my "free time" learning to become a webmaster, and at present I publish 3 web sites, The Singles Center at www.singlescenter.com - Our Galleria gift shoppe at www.ourgalleria.com and www.bvventures.com my new home based business site
With programming skills I learned when I worked in Xerox Personnel Systems and as a traveling Consultant, learning internet skills seemed a logical step for me. BUT, I lacked marketing skills and spent much more time on testing and learning marketing and promotion methods than on learning the technical skills needed for an internet business. Since I did not have a JFK budget I had to keep working as a Consultant while learning from various "gurus" so when it comes to balancing time and money as you develop a small home business - I’ve been there, done that. I had originally started my home business ventures by publishing a print magazine Singles, The Magazine for Today's Single, which grew out of my involvement as a founder of a non-profit singles support and social group. The magazine grew to the point of my acquiring a National distributor who placed the glossy covered magazine in hundreds of locations around the country. According to the phone and letter reports from the distributor, the magazine was selling well, and I was elated until I invoiced the distributor and tried to get paid, and the sell-out reports suddenly turned to Returned reports. It took a few months of reporting to see that the printers and the distributor would be the only ones making money with this venture so I looked for another way to handle the printing and distribution. It was 1996 and the internet was getting a lot of press with web site publishing companies popping up everywhere. Publishing on the internet would certainly lower the costs, with the cost of hiring a Webmaster being a great deal less than the Printer and the National Distributor cut of my profits. BUT, finding a reasonably priced Internet Publishing company who had my interests at the top of their list was not an easy task. The first version of the magazine that I submitted to a Webmaster took three weeks for them to publish, and it was full of errors and omissions. Of course that led to my next step of finding a way to publish it myself, since I had innate technical skills anyway. I looked at several programs and decided to use Microsoft’s Frontpage software to publish and maintain my site, which I called The Singles Center, expecting to add more than a magazine as it grew. The Singles Center was meant to be a healthy resource for singles, since that was what I had the most knowledge of and could identify with, and it could be a test model as I learned more internet skills. Whether it became profitable or not was secondary. However with the marketing and promotion skills I have learned, I have been able to increase the traffic to over 120,000 page views per month. As a result I have recently added a Banner Rotation application and will be doing a major campaign to acquire advertisers so it looks like my test model will actually become profitable as well. I don’t consider myself a marketing guru but I have learned enough from real gurus to make my affiliation with them worthwhile. Professional marketing and promotion becomes more and more necessary as the internet grows and the competition becomes stronger. I am happy to leave the marketing to the gurus and concentrate on developing The Singles Center content to be the best singles site on the internet. Having grown my technical internet skills over the past several years and becoming proficient with Frontpage I can assist other small business people, or individuals, in setting up and publishing their own site too. I do this on an individual basis, by quote, working from my home. If you need help setting up a site, from registering, to hosting, to publishing, please contact me via the internet or call my toll free number at 877-355-6089. In the meantime I earn income from marketing affiliations and business opportunities I think have promise. The most recent of my ventures does not require technical skills but you can use the internet to develop the business. I was excited when I got the first contact by email - "Make Money on Air & Water". That got my attention! You can get more information on wind technology at www.awea.org and specific information on the business opportunity by completing the contact form. To review all of the businesses I am involved with follow the Home Based Business links below. Who knows maybe you’ll find one that fits you too.
Other sites in our Family of Sites: Making The Most of Singlehood
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