My Work-from-Home-Story

How failing at selling jewelry was the best thing that happened to me, and how I now earn a living from making jewelry anyway!

My name is Christine Gierer.  I'm a work-at-home mom with two kids, Zoe and Edgar, and I'm able to stay home with them and earn an income doing something I LOVE.  I love making jewelry, and I love sharing what I do with others like you!

So how did I get here?

Well let's go back a little bit.

I used to work a regular job...

I used to work at a regular job.  I was a mental health counsellor in a small grass-roots agency.  I wasn't making six-figures, but I was making a good income. 

I was doing OK going to work everyday, making a regular living, driving to work in rush-hour traffic, going to an office, working 9-5. I was pretty happy living my boring little life.  Nothing much went on, but nothing really bad happened either.  There were things I loved about my job, and things I hated.

And I could have gone on and on like that. 

But something big happened.  Something HUGE in fact.

We got pregnant.  We were so happy and so excited!  After a difficult birth (it seemed this little baby did NOT want to come out into the cold world), we had our first perfect little baby.  She was supposed to be an Isabel, but we knew she was a stubborn one.  We named her Zoe, which means "life". 

Chris and I are kind of old school.  We wanted Zoe to have her mommy home with her, at least for the preschool and kindergarten years.  We knew it would be a struggle, living on one income, but we'd saved some money, and we could live pretty cheaply if I didn't need a car or work clothes or transportation.

I started getting into the groove of being a mommy. At first I couldn't believe that they'd let us take this little thing home with us.  I stared into Zoe's face so much that my husbands face looked MASSIVE to me.  If you're a parent, I'm sure you know exactly what I mean!

When Zoe was two-and-a-half we popped out number two.  This time we had a baby boy. We named him Edgar.  He was a dream!  So perfect and this one was sleepy.  You don't know how much this was a relief to me after having a high-needs toddler.   We were out and about together the next day.  Zoe had proven to be as filled with life as we thought she would be, and needed to be socializing ALL the TIME.  So at age 32, I had a super active two-and-a-half year-old, and a sleepy newborn baby.

I wanted so badly to continue to stay at home with my kids...

Yes, I know kids are exhausting.  Sometimes I wished I was back at work just so I could use the bathroom with no one following me. 

What would I do when they went to school?  When I was 29, working, and pregnant I calculated that I'd be working again at 37 when number two would be in full time school. 

At the time that seemed impossibly far away, but with my two kids already in existence now, time seemed to be speeding up impossibly fast.  Before I knew it I'd be back at work and my kids would be picked up by a baby sitter if I didn't do something about it!

Zoe was two-and-a-half. I figured the time was now to start building a business I could do part-time from home.  By the time they went to school, I'd be running a successful business from home.

Crafty Mama (Me) Sells Jewelry - And Falls Flat on Her Face...

I was crafty, and long before I started working in an office, I'd been a painter/ crafter.  I took fine arts in school and for awhile I painted furniture and did tons of arts and crafts shows.  After a bit, I decided I needed something more secure.  I didn't really enjoy the whole "working events" experience.  Just wasn't my thing.  So I went back to school to become a mental health counsellor.

But I always remembered this from working the craft shows.  There was one craft that ALWAYS sold well- even when nothing else was selling.  And that was jewelry.  So I started making jewelry.  This was a side business I'd started when I was actually working so it was already putting along half-heartedly.  Truth be told, I only started it to begin with to earn a little extra money to spend on beads.

Now that I was at home and I was trying to think of ways to make some money, I decided to try my hand at selling online instead of just through word of mouth in my community.

I figured that online selling would suit me because I was at home with kids and couldn't go far with nap times and all, I hated in person selling and all the planning and display and show costs associated with doing craft shows, and I was terrified of approaching shops with my jewelry.

Etsy... The Magic Bullet. (Not).

So that's how I started online.  Etsy was just in its beginning days, and I opened a little Etsy shop.  I got some business cards, built my little Etsy shop, made some inventory and photographed it all pretty like they said I should, and waited for the sales to come in.

Which they didn't. 

There was a ton of competition for jewelry and people still weren't very interested in buying it from an online nobody.  So I figured I needed to get traffic to the shop and I couldn't afford to buy advertising.

Maybe a Blog Was the Ticket?

So I started a blog, thinking I could get traffic to my shop that way.  People loved reading blogs, didn't they? 

Sure I got a few readers to my blog, but they were looking for free information and for pretty pictures to get ideas for what they could make and sell too.  At least that's what it seemed like to me. 

I started doing all sorts of research, networking, buying e-books about internet marketing, and basically got lost in a huge sea of confusing and often contradictory information.  I kept trying different things that didn't produce any results.  I was getting pretty dejected about the whole thing.  It seemed like everyone was figuring this whole online thing out except for me.

How My Failure was the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me...

It turned out that all this online failure was the best thing that ever happened to me!

I was so despairing of the whole thing that I decided I was going to give it one last ditch effort in order to make the money back that I'd been wasting on internet strategies and guides to building a million dollar online business overnight. 

I decided they were all a load of crap.

I realized that things weren't working because "selling" felt like being a used car salesman to me. I needed to feel like I was actually helping people not trying to get them to give me money.

I was sick of not seeing any results.  I needed a step by step plan for this helpful non-salesy business.

The Teacher Appeared

I'm going to go a little new age on you but keep on reading.  There's something called "Satori".  If you're into that stuff I might be screwing this up royally, but "satori" means "When the Student is ready, the Teacher will Appear".

I guess Ken Evoy, the CEO of SiteBuildIt, turned out to be my "teacher"

And his mantra was CTPM.  I'll get into that in a minute.

I found this company that talked about a step by step way to make an income from a content website. It said there was work involved, that nothing would happen overnight, but that slow and steady would win the race.

It's funny, but I'm sure I already came across it before.  But I wasn't ready then.  Maybe you're the same.  Maybe you aren't ready right now either.  But keep this in your head and you'll remember me telling you this.  You'll say, "Gawd! That Christine girl was right.  I should have listened to her way back when I first read her story."

Here's What Got Me so Hepped Up

You ever had one of those "ah-ha!" moments? 

Here's the thing that really got me.  It was so simple and so obvious, but I'd never really figured this out before.

SiteBuildIt! (a.k.a SBI!) is based on a simple, logical premise. SBI! calls it CTPM.

It stands for Content=>Traffic=>Pre sell=>Monetize :

Doesn't that make sense?  You create information people want, you attract people that want to read that content, you "pre sell" them (I call it building a trusting relationship), and then you earn money offering them something of value.

I was still skeptical...

After all I'd already tried so many things that sounded good but were doing squat.  I didn't buy then and there.  But I couldn't get it out of my mind.

I went back and watched the SBI! video tour, and I even emailed a SiteBuildit site owner to ask some questions.  The woman I emailed was really nice and she said exactly what everybody else said in the case studies.  She said that SBI! made all the difference for her and made it so easy.  She said it would take work on my part of course, but I wasn't worried about the work.  I knew I could apply myself if someone could just show me exactly how to do it.  

I suspended disbelief and jumped in (even though I still sort of suspected that I was being taken for a ride... )

I ponied up the $300 a year it would cost me to get an SBI! site.  They said It would include everything I needed - web pages builders, form builders, an autoresponder so I could send out newsletters, and teach me how to actually get people to visit my site. They promised if i followed the instructions, I'd have a site in the top 1%-3% of all sites on the 'net.

In retrospect the cost was nothing since it works out to about $25 a month.  I mean, what other business can you possibly think of that costs less than $30 a month in expenses?

What I Did That Worked

I started going through the step by step SBI! training process.

They have it laid out in "days".  You do everything at your own pace, and there are written steps as well as video so that you can learn the best way for you.  I ended up watching a lot of the videos in my kitchen on my laptop as I cut up toddler snacks.

It was a huge relief not to think for awhile.  I just followed the instructions.  At least now it seemed like I had a clear path!

Fast forward a few months after beginning my SBI! journey.  It wasn't a quick journey.  It certainly didn't make me rich overnight.

The first 5 steps of the journey don't even involve having a website.  At first it's all about preparing to have a website.  They gave me the tools and training to do market research.  I remember it clearly.  It was in October of 2007 that I finally figured out what my site would be about and I got started on the actual building process.

I continued following their step by step instructions, and I was amazed that everything happened exactly as predicted!  The first month I started documenting my jewelry making as I went along.  I was making things anyway, so it wasn't a big deal to take some pictures as I went along.   I made a few web pages using their no-tech page builder tool. 

I got 5 visitors the first month and 19 page views.  I was dubious, but I persisted.  

The next month I built a few more pages.  I loved it because it gave me a "productive" reason to be buying beads and making things.  I felt creative and excited again.  Babies are rewarding, but your mind kind of shrinks as you keep picking up the same toys over and over again. 

That month I got 264 visitors.  By the third month, (as they predicted!) I received more than 30 visitors a day and could start monetizing with google ads and other revenue sharing programs.

So I continued on, even more excited than before. Every month I built a few pages during my kids nap times, got more visitors, and started implementing the other strategies they were teaching me. 

I started building relationships with my visitors through my newsletter. 

And then a miracle happened.  It least it seemed like a miracle to me. I made my first $100!

A Couple of Hours a Day Was All I Had...

So long story short I started making it work.  I worked on my SBI!! site in between making snacks, hosting play dates, taking my kids to play centres, doing duty days at my daughter's three morning a week nursery school, and wiping baby bums and runny noses.  I don't imagine I was spending more than an hour or two a day on the computer.

WooHoo!  My first $100...

By February of 2008, 5 months after launching my fledgling site, I was getting about 150 unique visitors a day, and I first hit the $100 mark in my ad earnings. And I got my first cheque from Google in March 2008.

Now that might not sound like much, but I was only spending a couple hours a day, and I'd been trying to make something happen for over a year before I took action on the whole SiteBuildit! thing.

I was elated.  Once I'd made that first hundred dollars simply sharing with others what I loved, I was hooked.  I knew if I could do it once, I could duplicate my results over and over to increase that $100 exponentialy.

Back in February of 2008, I got 3,149 unique visitors total for the month. 

Now I receive more visitors than that a DAY. 

Some days I receive double that number!  And since the internet is really a numbers game, the more visitors the better. So you can imagine how much income I generate from Google now! 

I've since added other revenue streams and I've written an e-book so I'm doing pretty OK income-wise.  By this time next year I think I'll surpass the income I was making working full-time.  So I'm not becoming a millionaire, but I'm still at home with my kids who are 6 and 4 now, and I don't have to start brushing off those work clothes!  I'm in a T-shirt and shorts right now as I write this.  My baby, Edgar is starting Junior Kindergarten tomorrow and I don't have to think about getting a job, getting after-school care, or how I'll only see my babies for dinner, bath, and bedtime.

I am just so grateful, I can't tell you.

Wouldn't You Love to Love Your Job?

I LOVE what I do.  How many people make a living doing what they love?  Honestly, it's the best.  I love getting out of bed in the morning.  I love making jewelry and sharing my passion.  And I love getting my morning coffee and checking my stats to see how much money I made the day before. And I feel so good about it because every penny I make is from helping others learn and grow too.  What's better than that?

I feel so much more secure now than I did when I was working. 

When I was working there was always the danger that funding would be cut.  And raises were non-existent in a non-profit agency barely getting by.

Now I never have to worry about losing my job.  SBI! taught me to make multiple income streams so I don't rely on just one either.  If one goes kaput for some reason, I have tons of other ways I'm making money from my website traffic.

The second great part about my business is that the money comes in passively and it builds on itself as time goes on. 

What's passive income? 

Passive income is the money you make on auto-pilot without you even needing to be there.  I consistently make more money every month because my traffic increases every month.  How would you like to get a pay raise every month?

And my web traffic increases every month because SBI! taught me to build a website for both the search engines and human visitors.   

Nowadays I spend less time building pages.  Life has gotten busier as the kids have gotten older. 

But it's funny, the traffic still increases every month and so does the income!  I spend nothing on advertising at all.  Although I probably will soon since I have the income base to fund it now! But let me tell you, getting free traffic from the search engines is absolutely wonderful.

I even make money when I'm away camping!

I was away most of the month of August 2009 (I'm writing this in September 2009) and I actually made more in August than I have ever made from my website any month previous! Did I mention I was away camping with no computer?  How wonderful to have a business that can even run on autopilot!

I don't want to gush, but I really am so grateful that I came across that SBI! link that day back in 2007. Signing up with them was the best thing I ever did.  They gave me the tools, the training, and the support to succeed.  Remember that top 1%-3% promise?  I hit that in my first year of building this site.  And I continue to be in the top 1% of websites.

You can do it too!

I love recommending SBI! to my friends and family.  It is so wonderful to do what you love and make it your career. The flexibility I enjoy now is absolutely priceless. 

And honestly, anyone can do it.  Even if you barely know how to turn on your computer you can do this.  Even if you think you can't write you can do this. They help you and guide you through every part of the process.  There is even a member's forum where you can get help choosing what to make a website about.  You'd be surprised how easy it is.

Want to see where I rank after only 2 years with this website?  Click the image above.  I'm under "misc-business" (don't ask me why.  I have no idea.  But I'm gaining on the list which is so cool).

It's not just for being an "infopreneur" like me...

While I'm on the subject of SBI! I'll let you in on something else.  People often ask me how to get started building a home-based jewelry business.  If you want to sell your jewelry online read how to to create a home-based online jewelry shop that actually get visitors (and buyers). Or even better, get on my Handmade Results mailing list to get access to free content and free marketing lessons that NOBODY else is talking about (but they should - because they are the only strategies that will get you a successful full-time online jewelry business).

Want to ask me a question about Sitebuildit?  I love sharing my experiences with others.  (I think everyone should have a job they love!)  Contact me here and I'd be happy to answer any questions!

Best, as always,

P.S.: I love SBI and believe that it is the best website building service so I do promote it shamelessly. Why? Because it works! And yes, if you decide to purchase SBI through one of the links on this site I do earn a commission. But even if I wasn't getting a commission, I'd still promote SiteBuildit! shamelessly because it really helped me break through the biggest online business hurdle - understanding this stuff enough to make it work, and giving me the tools, confidence, and support to follow through and persevere. So a superb website building platform for you, and a commission for me to continue putting out great content. A win-win don't you think?

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