Dog Paw Print website home page screen capture
Have you ever wanted to make a website, but felt like you lacked the skills or computer education to do it? If so, I hope to encourage you through my story, since I have been able to do it over the course of the last two years. I had no experience at all when I started, so if I can do it, YOU can do it!
My name is Lori Krout, and I have built a successful website, Dog Paw Print, over the past two years. After reading Lynda’s recent post about how she started her website, Slip Resistant Solutions, I was encouraged to tell my story in hopes that it might spur someone on to try and build the website that they have always wanted.
First, let tell you a bit more about how I started getting interested in building my own website and the interesting paths that it has taken me down.
A little over two years ago, a friend told me about a class that June Hollister was conducting at the Tampa Bay Computer Society about how to build an online business from home. It sounded intriguing, even if I I must confess now it also sounded a little bit on the geeky side and I was kind of leary!
I am an artist by trade and knew NOTHING about building a website, so I had no idea what I would find when I visited the Tampa Bay Computer Society. Would there be all these brainy people with pocket protectors speaking in terminology that included programming-speak there? Would I fit in?
As it turned out, I did, and it was not that way at all! Instead, it was the beginning of great opportunities for me- ones that ended up changing my career path in a way that I am grateful for.
In that first course I took at the Tampa Bay Computer Society, I was introduced to Site Build It! (also known by many as SBI ) as a website-building program where I could learn all about the process of creating a website as I worked on it. I wanted to build a website about art- drawing and making art, specifically. I didn’t know if SBI was a gimmick or if it was really as great as it all sounded, so I set off on a quest to find out more about SBI outside of the course and see if there were reasons I should be concerned about SBI for any reason. The truth is, I really couldn’t find anything bad about it while I did this research, so I decided to give the whole idea of using SBI to build my own website a try.
Even though I wanted to create a site about art, I kept my options open and decided after doing some research to build a website to share information about how to find the right dog to fit each family’s lifestyle. We had recently rescued a dog and had gone through the research and adoption process, and I felt I could maybe help others. It would be fun! I love dogs, and I hoped to make Dog Paw Print into something brand-able down the road, maybe even incorporate my own artwork somehow.
At first, I read the Action Guide (training manual) for SBI and followed the steps religiously, reading and studying the whole way. Then, I came across a post in the forums for SBI that taught how to find and use the best keywords to build traffic. The author of an article about this process, found in the SBI Tips and Techniques library, Louann Shenberger, wrote all about How to Mine for Keywords, and I was hooked.
After trying out her methods and ideas, my traffic began to grow like crazy. I am now in the process of creating a second selling site that is associated with my Dog Paw Print site, which will be located at www.dog-paw-print-store.com, and over the summer I am going to help my daughter create a site to share her passion for fashion and how it can relate to dogs. That site will be www.diva-doggie.com.
We are building our own little doggie “empire” here in cyberworld, and I am learning more every day!
Building my website and watching the traffic and income from it grow has been very rewarding.
The thing is, you can build your own website too! It is not that tough, especially if you use Site Build It to do it and utilize resources like the ones you will find on the Website Building Workshop site and others.
If you get a chance, join our bi-monthly meetings at the Tampa Bay Computer Society every first and third Sunday afternoon in Clearwater, FL, led by the ever-awesome Rick Hart! Turns out we’re not such a geeky group after all!
Lori Krout
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