Home Schooling, St Aiden's
Website Overview
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Home schooling educational site, phonics, English language, languages, literature arts, eBooks, math, online educational games and software, worksheets and workbooks, arts, crafts and activities. Free teacher and student resources. Updated daily.
Site Owner: Donnette E Davis
Contact Email: donnette@telkomsa.net
Website Home Page: http://www.staidenshomeschool.com
Location: South Africa
Month/Year Website Launched: February, 2007
Initial Start Up Costs: $200
Time Invested Before Launch: 2400 hours
Programming and Technical Work Done By Owner or Hired Out: web design, content,layout, marketing
Time Invested Each Week Running Website: 70 hours
Niche Market Target: family & education
Products And Services Offered: Educational products, eBooks, software, online games, marketing
Average Number of Monthly Visitors: 2000
Number of Newsletter Subscribers or Members: 100
Estimated Monthly Expenses: $$200
Interview By: Jeremy Gislason
Interview Date: 26-Sep-07
Q. Please tell us a little about your background.
I am a WAHM, single, with 6 children, 5 of whom are still at home. Due to personal reasons and the shocking state of this once-well-loved country I elected to homeschool my three younger children. Home education and my websites take up a lot of my time, and although my income-producing profession is in the legal field I do a lot less now than I did beore I started my website.
Q. What made you decide to start a website in the field?
There is a lack of information and resources that are pimarily South African based. What is available is shockingly expensive and out of the reach of the average South African HS family. Initially I started purchasing material to educate my children from the USA and UK. Having had to adapt this, especially the USA material due to language and grammatical differences, I found I was producing workbooks for my children that would benefit other homeschooling families in South Africa, and other African and Euopean countries. I decided to start the website to make this available to other families for free and now write educational eBooks as a way of subsidising the webhosting costs which are sold part from the website
Q. What kind of research went into this niche area before building your website?
Many hundreds of manhours on the internet and human interviews. Research into the availability and costs of existing resources took up most of the time.
Q. How did you design and build your website?
I purchased and registered a domain through my webhosting company and with the domain came a Sitebuilder which I still use, although my site has now outgrown the Sitebuilder which is intended for smaller sites.
Q. What software do you use to run your business?
I use various software. I have a mailing list from one supplier. I have web rings and site rings from another. I have a link exchange from another. My workbooks are created in Microsoft, and I use wordsearch, crossword, template software from yet more developers. I also make use of web widgets and have recently started designing my own.
Q. How does your website generate income?
It is a donation site. I am affiliated with Amazon, Offer Forge ZA, Peppor.com and Google Adsense. My eBooks that are written for resale are sold on Lulu, through Payloadz and Paypal.
Q. How do you collect payments for your products or services?
Via Paypal.
Q. What promotion methods do you use?
I make use of social networking, link exchanges, providing free web content.
Q. Which method has proven to give you the best sales results?
Sales through Lulu.
Q. Which method of traffic generation has proven to be the best for you?
Google search engine.
Q. What is your biggest challenge each month?
To complete and upload new projects.
Q. What's the biggest mistake you've made since starting your business?
Not completing certain focus areas before commencing on the next one. This has proven to be a problem in that I have had to go back and re-do a lot of the website pages since the site grew very big in a very short space of time. In fact the whole website has just undergone a major facelift which is almost finished.
Q. How has your lifestyle changed since you started your online business?
My lifestyle has not changed. I still spend my days in my office researching for educating my children and creating my projects.
Q. How has your SureFireWealth.com membership helped you with your online business?
Only just joined.
Q. What would you say to someone looking to start a website in the same niche as you?
Be prepared for a lot of hard work. Don't expect results in 6 months.
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Thank You
Jeremy Gislason
Webmaster
SureFireWealth.com
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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