Downturn in the economy, what will this mean?

All the news on the economy is bad right now, super high foreclosure rates, inflation at record high rates, stock market drops... how could this not concern everyone? Here I am starting a new business that will depend on other businesses seeing how important being on the internet is for their bottom line.

I see alot of advertisment on the web showing low cost hosting accompanied by inexpensive (or free), "easy" software for business owners to develope their own sites. Yeah, well, I have tried these "user friendly" software packages. They may seem easy initially, but variably they have gliches in the software making it difficult, if not impossible, to get a site up and running on the web. I have coached a few customers through the issues that these programs have created. Wow! It would have cost them less to hire me to design a totally new website for them and show them how to update it themselves. Instead I spend valuable (and costly) time figuring out their problem, a solution, and then showing them a work around.

Anyway, now that a site is up and running for my friend Judy, and she is happy with that site, I need a new customer project. I had 1000 business cards made up and some magnets for my car as advertising. I gave Judy a stack to give out at her business, and I have posted cards everywhere I go. I have joined 2 local Chambers of Commerce, so hopefully that will also help get my business name known. I place my card at any store location that allows posting of cards. I talk to all my friends and ask that if they hear of anyone looking for a new web site design, please give my name out. When I go out to dinner, coffee, lunch, shopping, I ask the person waiting on me if the business has a web site. If they say they do not, or that they are currently working on getting one, I hand them a card and ask them to give that to whoever is the owner. I explain that I design web sites and can design a wonderful site for their business inexpensively, and I will work hard to make the site work for them and their clients/customers.

I have met with the owners of a local Indian Restaurant that just opened, I met them by eatting dinner at the restaurant and asking if they had a web site. I designed a main web page, just as a show piece for the meeting and let them know all I could place on the site how beneficial the site would be for their business. They said they would call. They have not called.

I spoke with a friend that owns a local popcorn vending business. She said she had purchase software to create her own site. That was 2 months ago. Her site is still not up and running. I saw her last week. She said she may be calling me, she is having difficulty with the software.

A friend of mine gave my name and number to a local tobacco shop. I stopped in, knowing they were in the market for a web site. The owner said she had purchased hosting services and a URL for her business site. She had also downloaded a free trial of a siftware program to design a site. She had created a number of pages, but she was having some problems getting the pages to work the way she thought it should. She asked to pay me and I could help her through these issues. I accepted. I spent 5 hours downloading, learning the software and manipulating her pages to get them partially working. I spent 3 hours at her shop showing her the capabilities and flaws of her software. I had to explain to her that this software was not fully performing and this typically is the issue with the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software. I did check with her hosting service and they do accept the file type that this software creates. I left her to finish up the her web site, and told her to call me if she needed help. Two days later she emailed me asking for more help. I will drop in to help her with more problems tomorrow. It would have taken less time for me to design a new site for her.

I met a woman on a trip last summer to China. She runs a cultural exchange for groupd traveling between China and the U.S. The group I traveled to China with included 93 people, 56 of them were high school students from a local band. I kept a blog to let the parents, family, and friends of all these people keep up on our adventures while we were traveling. The blog was a huge hit with everone. This woman, Rebecca, liked our blog so much she linked to it from her business' web site. We spoke again at a Chinese New Year Celebration in February 2008. She knew of my new business adventure and she asked me to look at her site. She had some broken links, etc. I fixed the issues with her site, and she has now expressed interest in my designing a wholly new site for her business in the fall after her travel groups return from China. So, there is one future customer (hopefully).

So, I have had lots of leads and interest, but little true business. Withe the economy in such dire straights, I am concerned that leaving a paying position at the library is a huge risk. I will lose sleep over this, I'm sure. In addition to the bad economy, my daughter is heading off to college in September. That's a huge expense to cover and I'm going to drop out of a stable career? What, am I nuts?

The problem is, when I am creating web sites and working to help people with updating issues, I am so short on time. I do still work at my position at the library. The time crunch is terrible. I just can not keep up both careers. So, I need to get out there, get some more business and hopefully push aside these doubts.

Starting over and keeping a level head about it-

I have decided to leave my current position of Outreach Library Assistant (I take the library's circulating items to housebound and nursing home patrons in the district), and forge my own way in the web design business. Scary and exciting, all at once.

I made this decision actually way back in November; Thanksgiving weekend to be exact. I decided it was time to make a change.I looked around to see what options were available to a middle aged woman with my skills and knowledge base. Looking back over what I had done for the previous few years, and what I found enjoyable gave me some ideas. I have many connections in the local business community because I have been the chairperson for the local Holiday Parade for the previous 2 years (and continue to do so). The library has also been a great source for contacts. In addition, I was a huge supporter (of both time and effort) of the local high school band program because my daughter was a member in a number of bands in her high school. In all these organizations, I worked alongside many wonderful people, and did whatever I thought I could to help towards the goals which included allot of fundraising, organization and soliciting of materials, funds, volunteers, etc. I learned so much from each of the people I worked with and all the events I helped to pull together.

On opportunity presented itself through the band that I particularly enjoyed- I designed, created and implemented a new web site for the band program to facilitate communications between the parents, students and the band directors. That web site ended up being 78 web pages long, and included huge amounts of information. The directors of the band loved it because it made it easy to communicate with parents and students in a very timely manner. The parents loved it because they were now always aware of what was happening in the band program for their students. Not sure if the band students really cared one way or the other...

I decided that web designs was something I should try as a profession. In a way I feel like my daughter. When she was 5 she wanted to play the cello. Upon questioning her as to why the cello, she told me it rhymed with jello (which she loved). Hopefully my enthusiasm with the new profession will last longer than her excitement for the cello (she now plays the saxophone) At first, I was concerned with educating myself to learn all I would need to know about web design (not to mention running my own business). Then the reality of actually making money hit, would anyone PAY me to create a site?

I struck upon the idea of offering to create a site for a business owner I work with on planning the local Holiday Homecoming events for our city in the Chicagoland suburbs. Judy, my friend, owns a local coffee shop, and I knew she had no web site. I asked her if I could create a web site for her, free of charge. My only stipulation would be that I could place my logo and a link to my new business site at the bottom (inconspicuously) of each of her web pages. She agreed! Thank you so much Judy!!

I wrote the main home page of the site over a weekend, went to her shop and showed her my ideas. She said she liked what she saw and gave me content and order forms to incorporate into additional pages for her site (I also took pictures inside her shop to put on her web site). Two weeks later, I was back with a fully functioning and finished site to show her. She was pleased with the final results- I paid the URL cost for her site for one year ($10) and found a site that would host her site for free with that URL.

So, Judy got a nicely functioning site; I got a link to my business web site, and a new site I could list in my portfolio. A win-win situation if ever I heard of one. I stopped back 2 weeks later to touch base with Judy and she said 3 customers had stopped in just that very week and said they found out about her coffee shop on the Internet, looked at her web site, then decided to come by and see her shop/cafe. So, one satisfied "customer" down, many more (hopefully) to please...

Sue

Reinventing myself, again...

This is the start of a new adventure in my personal life, and you are invited along for the rollercoaster of a ride I am certain it will be.

First some background-

• I'm starting a new business totally from scratch. I will keep you informed of the how, where, and why of all my endeavers towards that end.
• I have never been of the mind to be my own boss. I have always like the going to a job, doing the best I could in performance of that job, and acquiring a paycheck from someone for my efforts. Now the ability and opportunity has presented itself to me for a new career and I have decided to give it a whirl, so to speak.
• I am 48 years old, have worked since I was 13 years old and any number of jobs, the latest being a library outreach services assistant, before that a cataloging assistant, an acquisition assistant, medical records technician, a chemical lab technician, a chemical research technician, a production line worker, fast food service clerk... Apparently I excel at technicianing and assisting! I have been at my current position for almost 6 years, time to move on, eh?
• That's pretty much all that is pertinent for now. Feel free to stop back often and make comments regarding this blog. I hope for it to be helpful to someone else who may be of the inclination to start their own business. Maybe you'll see that if I can get away with it, you can too!