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Fourteen months ago, I'd had enough. Enough of rushing the kids off to school in the morning, enough of the struggle to balance job and family, enough of working for someone else.
When my patience level with trying to be the superwoman of the '90s reached the breaking point, I consulted the women in my on-line writing group, "Sisters of the Scribe," with my dream of leaving my municipal government job in order to pursue self-employment. "How can I pull this off?" I wondered through e-mail messages with my friends. Freelance writers and wannabe authors are a dime a dozen -- and the success rate is low. I might as well bet on horses! For the next several months I put on my thinking cap, assessed my skills, and hit the local library and the World Wide Web. "What do people need that I can offer?" I asked. "What other things can I do with my writing beyond simple freelance hit and miss submissions?" Part of the answer came to me. Resumes. In the small city where I live, people desperately seek work, yet I could find no resume service listed in the phone book! "So how can I expand on this?" The answer came swift and hard. By helping people not only with hard copy resumes, but offering to post them on the Internet and conducting job searches through the many employment databases on the World Wide Web! Enid, Oklahoma is barely wired for the Web, and most citizens in my city have no access. If they do, it is available on a handful of terminals in the public library or through specially scheduled times at a few schools in town. The attraction of having a resume service with the advantage of Internet access would be a hit -- I just knew it. But then I stumbled upon a second client base -- other writers over the Internet. I quickly discovered there was a need for inexpensive manuscript critiquing as well as guidance with writing query letters and synopses. A query letter describes a piece of work a writer is attempting to sell is to an editor or agent. It not only presents information on the piece of writing, but lists the writer's credits and professional affiliations (if any). In short, it is the writer's brand of resume. Because I'd had success with query letters, synopses, and resumes, I marketed all these services under W/P Wordworks Editorial Services. The message of my business spread through e-mail friends and via my Web sites at Geocities, Freeyellow, and Success Magazine's Web site hosting services. Geocities offers personal home pages set in various neighborhoods based on your primary interest. If you enjoy literature and art, you might choose to live in Athens or Athens/Acropolis, like I did. If you're a carefree, Bohemian poet with joie de vivre, you might choose to make your home in the Paris neighborhood. Geocities is a very popular cyber homestead, and don't be surprised if it takes you a while to find a "vacant" address -- they now have over half-a-million residents! On Geocities my pages are personal, but I also use them as a promotion tool by showcasing my work and inviting others to e-mail me for private consultation. On my home page I have links to my new business Web site hosted by Success Magazine and to my newsletter for writers, Scribe & Quill, at FreeYellow . Both Freeyellow and SuccessMagazine welcome commercial advertising and they offer five free pages, and assistance with designing your pages. Since setting up cyber shop in May of this year, word has spread through the writer community and in my local community. My brochures carry the slogan: "Making Words Work for YOU!" as well as my e-mail and Web site addresses. And although I still advertise locally, my biggest contacts have been through the Internet. Customers inquire from all parts of the nation, from Massachusetts to California. And with the launching of Scribe & Quill, my newsletter for writers (complete with private e-mailing list and FREE web site), I have garnered my first Canadian customer. One of the best ways to get noticed is with a banner, which is a graphic "ribbon" of color and information or images which pops up on pages and, when clicked, will lead you to a Web site which will give you more information. Free banners can be posted through LinkExchange, BannerSwap, SmartClicks, and many others. You can make your own banner through Paint Shop Pro or MGI PhotoSuite and similar programs. Some banner swap sites, like LinkExchange require banners which do not exceed 400 X 40 pixels in size. Others, such as SmartClicks request a size of 400 x 50 pixels. From there, load your banner into one of these banner sites directly from your hard drive or off your own Web site (you'll find detailed instructions from each banner hosting service). Once loaded, your business banner will receive FREE rotations in front of millions of people -- just what you need to attract world-wide attention! The only catch is that you must display a link on your Web site back to the banner hosting service you've used to display your banner. A small price to pay for no-cost advertising! To get a free private e-mail list for your customers or clients, try Coollist . You choose the name of your list, decide if you want it moderated (you see all the posts before they're sent out to others) or unmoderated (the messages posted are automatically distributed to members of the list). A mailing list is an excellent way to keep your customers up-to-date on specials you're running or new promotions. It can also be used for questionnaires and general group discussion. Free classified sites abound on the Internet. And although there are too many to list here, these are some I've used to post my advertisements -- all for no no charge!: 1. http://www.FSBI.com/submitindice.htm This site gets over 100,000 visitors a day. 2. http://www.1second.com/freead.htm This site is very popular and get many hits, as well. 3. http://www.webnophobia.com/classifieds/placeads.html Great for posting almost -- for FREE! 4. http://www.classifieds-gmp.com/ This site is a new site, but is getting more popular every day. 5 http://www.webovation.com/ads.htm A great new site that pulls orders very fast. 6. http://www.websitings.com/classifieds/ Here you can post a FREE classified ad, as well as sign up for a FREE banner, as well! An additional place to promote your business is through postings on usenet groups. Many groups will not allow advertisements, but some will. Here is a list of newsgroups that will accept advertising:
When marketing your product or service, be sure to utilize all these tools for increased effectiveness. With banners, usenet group announcements, direct e-mail, and free classifieds, it's easy to toot your own horn without paying an arm or a leg! Your business can compete with the "big boys" and not have to spend the same amount of money to get equal advertising time! As for updating my Web sites, so far I've been responsible for the entire setup and maintenance and it hasn't cost me anything but time. The results of promoting my service over the Internet are better than I ever imagined. Clients pop up from all around the world and having a web site is a priceless asset. The greatest asset to having a Web site is the creativity and flexibility involved. Instead of advertising in black and white newspapers and magazines, I can change the background, the font style of my text, and the graphics how and when I prefer -- even if it's midnight! My long-term goal is to make my service the number one stop for resumes and consultation for thousands of job seekers and writers. In short, my business IS "Making Words Work for You!" For now, I am still able to maintain my traditional practice of assisting local off-line customers, but the largest share of my jobs is gained through the Internet. If you have the desire to begin a business of your own, the Internet is your greatest asset. Because of the nature of the medium, if you surf smart and use posting savvy, you can market your business for no cash outlay and watch your client base grow daily! Take it from me -- the Internet can turn your dreams of owning your own business into profitable reality!
If you would like to visit my pages, here is a listing:
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After 13 years of catering to the whims of bosses who could care less if I
even had a family or a life outside of the office, I threw my hands up and said,
"I don't want to play anymore." Somehow I decided I would find a way to work
for myself. Little did I know the Internet would play such a central role in my
metamorphosis!