Outsourced Job Leads to the Start of a Successful Internet Business

As outsourcing and the frustrations of finding employment affected the Davidson's, Gail and John decided it was time to start an Internet business. For a long time Gail had a job she really enjoyed. She performed technical support for computer operatingsystems. However, like many others in the computer industry, her job was going to beoutsourced overseas.  After considering various possible replacement jobs, both Gail and John like the idea of starting their own business.  They decided to begin an Internet venture because unlike starting a "brick and mortar store" the advantage of an Internet business is that you can get started without a substantial amount of monetary investment up front. "When we decided that we wanted to start our own company, one of the things we did was to go out and look at a number of different Website hosting providers. All of the companies I initially looked at offered their own products that everyone who signed up with them could sell. We considered this to be a very unattractive business venture since everyone in that room would be a competitor of yours and it was up to you to figure out how to differentiate yourself from everyone else.", said John.

John continued to look for other alternative Internet business opportunities. During his search, John found StoresOnline and said to Gail, "This looks pretty good. I think you need to come look at this. This company provides marketing resources that the others we looked at don't." Gail and John attended a StoreOnline presentation where they saw the benefits of a partnership with StoresOnline. The thing that impressed them the most was the fact that StoresOnline operated much differently then the others. Instead of focusing on "their" products to sell, Storesonline explained that their focus was to teach you how to market your website.  During the StoresOnline presentation it was pointed out that there are millions of websites with more being created daily. If you don't know how to market your website, it doesn't matter how much money you spend developing a website. If Internet users can't find your website, you will not have a successful business. Gail and John were attracted to what StoresOnline had to offer because they were providing the tools and assistance to make your website successful. "It was exciting to know that StoresOnline continually updates their reference material as they learned of new methodologies that will help you be successful. Their reference materials are also designed to teach people who know nothing about an Internet business ---  on how to get started and how to be successful. We found the StoresOnline presentation so informative that we felt that this was a company who could teach us what to do", said Gail. At the end of the presentation, Gail and John bought six websites even though they had no idea at this time what they were going to sell.

From the StoresOnline workshop that they attended they were advised to go home and make a list of hobbies and interests in order to come up with a list of possible items that they would find interesting to sell. Gail and John followed their advice and began the process of building a website. They began brainstorming on possible products to sell as well as reading the reference materials provided by StoresOnline. "All the materials provided by StoresOnline were pertinent in helping us build our Internet business. There was a lot of information on how to set up an Internet site and how to use the resources offered by StoreOnline", said Gail.  Gail and John used the tools provided by StoresOnline to help them decide what product to sell. After a thorough analysis, they decided to sell storage sheds. They used the StoresOnline reverse search tool to discover how many people were looking for information on sheds and the Keyword Analysis Tool to see their competitors' marketing efforts. "From the tools StoresOnline offered, I was able to identify a product that I didn't believe other people were marketing properly," Gail said.

Gail and John built their storage shed website and used the resources in Merchant
Services to begin the marketing. One of the suggestions within Merchant Services was to
use relevant, keyword-rich content in the website's pages. Gail and John took the
suggestions and built the pages accordingly. "When we developed the content, we made
sure to integrate the keywords that we wanted the search engines to find", Gail said. "We submitted our site to the various live Directories identified by StoresOnline. We worked on link building. After doing so we saw a dramatic increase in number of unique visitors to website. Within the first year our website achieved a ranking by Alexa.com meaning that traffic to our website was sufficient to qualify us as one of the top five % of all websites."

As Gail and John built their site and added content to their specific pages, they
discovered how simple it was to use the software. "I found the tools so easy to use, that I
preferred building it myself. I like having control over the content and the
look and the feel of the site. I also like the fact that knowledgeable StoresOnline customer service representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week to help answer any technical questions that might arise," Gail said.

Because of various marketing strategies and hard work, the business was off to a successful start. So much so, Gail needed to hire a couple of employees to help out. "Our website went live in May 2004, and by August 2004 it had taken off so much that I had to hire somebody since I couldn't keep up with it. The business has grown and grown and grown. At this point [April 2006], I have a staff of five people working for me. I attribute our success to the wonderful knowledge given to us by StoresOnline," Gail said.

"As I grow my business, one of my business objectives is to expand the offering to our
staff, in terms of benefits. In our first year we implemented profit sharing. Whereas, the trend today in America is to reduce benefits, my goal is to improve the offerings every year."

Visit Gail and John's website at

http://www.shedtopia.com/

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary. Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.