She is called Karla With a K and this StoresOnline merchant has profited from a market that’s as unique as her name.

Karla was born an Army brat in Monterey, CA, but she grew up in Hawaii and Virginia and received her B. A. degree in Communications from Howard University in Washington, D. C. She put her love of communication to good use in Los Angeles, California, where she has worked as an actress and broadcaster since the mid 1990s.

After the station Karla worked at was purchased and changed to the Spanish language, she turned to substitute teaching in Los Angeles. “I had to find another way of acquiring benefits. You know, I had to go to the doctor.”

Karla’s boyfriend, at the time, invited her to go with him to his first workshop with StoresOnline. She thinks it was because of her past experience with another company. “I had already been burned one time, as I attempted to get into the website business,” Karla said.

Karla had purchased a website package from another company, one that promised unlimited websites. “At that company, they said you’re buying unlimited websites and unlimited merchant accounts for a certain amount of money and it was less than the StoresOnline price tag. But as I said, it just didn’t have any reality to it. Because, essentially, I just did one website with them.”

Karla compares her first experience as having a skeleton of a successful e-commerce business. “It didn’t have any way to track traffic, to track conversion rate, or really to—it didn’t have a natural connection to any shipper or merchant account solutions. It just didn’t have a lot of things that StoresOnline has.”

So after she attended the StoresOnline workshop with her boyfriend, she realized what was missing from the other company. “It was the tools, the marketing tools, that make the difference. And StoresOnline exhibited all of the marketing tools that I needed. And so I was just really excited about trying this whole thing again.”

Karla purchased three websites, even though she had no idea what product she would sell on the sites. While she was substitute teaching, she noticed a fashion trend emerging among her students. They would wear brand new Pro Club t-shirts every day.

Karla describes a conversation with one of her students:
“What are you talking about, you have on a T-shirt!” she said.
“Well, you know, I had to go,” her student responded, “I had to stop at the store this morning and buy this shirt. You, know, cause I got to have a fresh, white T…I’m sending my t-shirts to the cleaners.”
“What? You’re sending a t-shirt to the cleaners, the dry cleaners?”
“Yeah.”

Karla realized right then and there that she could sell Pro Club shirts for less than the shirt, plus the cost of dry cleaning. So she created ProClubGear.com and started selling the Pro Club line of products, selling the t-shirts by the dozen. Because the Pro Club manufacturers is located up the street from her school, Karla worked out a convenient route from school-- she buys her product, then ships, only adding two extra stops to her drive home.

Karla’s favorite part of owning an online store is the principle of passive income. “I can be teaching in my classroom and when I go home and check my website, I can have $2,000 worth of sales that I didn’t have to do anything to get, once the website was built.”

Karla describes the time spent maintaining the website as an economy of scale: when you invest three hours, the site works for you for the rest of the week. “You go out shopping, spending money, and you come home and you see that money has been replaced because people have being purchasing from you.”

When asked if she had any advice for new online merchants, Karla encouraged people to continue learning through StoresOnline’s workshops and tutorials, as well as through other sources. “There’s a lot of new things out here to learn. Open yourself up to the experience and give it a shot.”

Visit Karla’s website at

www.proclubgear.com

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