Q. Please tell us a little about your background.

A. I have grown herbs and vegetables on and off commercially for about 30 years. I retained a strong interest in these two fields, so decided to build a website around them. I did some study, and got a Diploma in Medicinal Herbs.  I also use my website to advertise my offline business which is selling herbal teas, and I also sell them mail order from the website.

Q. What made you decide to start a website in the Herbal Gardening field?

A. Mainly because of my interests, I didn't start the website specifically
to make a lot of money, but it turned out okay in the end!

Q. What kind of research went into this niche area before building your website?

A. Not much, in hindsight I might have picked a better or perhaps narrower niche. There is lots of info online about herbs, but much of it is not very accurate or up to date.

Q. How did you design and build your website?

A. I did it myself with the help of Sitebuildit, an amazing web building system that any one can use to build a top rating website.  It only costs peanuts, and monkeys could build it. Even I found it easy!


Q. What software do you use to run your business?

A. Sitebuildit has everything I need.


Q. How does your website generate income?

A. I sell my own and other products, (eBooks and software) but I have just closed the shop, and loaded most of my goods onto a new membership site. I figure that will be better option for my customers. I also have affiliate sales.

Q. How do you collect payments for your products or services?

A. I only use Paypal. It's easy, inexpensive, and I've never had any trouble.

Q. What promotion methods do you use?

A. I haven't had much success buying leads, but I sometimes take top sponsor adverts in appropriate ezines. I've found they work better for me than solos.

Q. Which method has proven to give you the best sales results?

A. Catchy top sponsor adverts, often a funny poem or limerick. This one below bought me swags of traffic.

There was a young gal from Roesetter
Whose love life had gone and had left her
She read about herbs, and tea how to serve,
And her love life came back and got better!
Find out all about herbal teas and supplements at
http://www.home-herb-garden.com

Q. Which method of traffic generation has proven to be the best for you?

A. I've tried a few different things, without a lot of success. I firmly believe that to get traffic you must have plenty of good content, and all else will follow. So I've concentrated on building good content, and the traffic just seems to arrive. Of course Sitebuildit automatically logs all my web pages with the search engines, and keeps me up to date with link partners, so I don't have to worry about doing any of that, I can just concentrate on building a better website. Mind you, although Alexa have rated my page in the top 1 percent, I’m sure I could do better if I took the time to re-optimize the key words on some of the older pages.

Q. What is your biggest challenge each month?

A. Finding the time to get the newsletter out. Recently I've split the newsletter into two, and now send a smaller one out every fortnight instead of monthly, and it seems to be easier.

Q. What's the biggest mistake you've made since starting your business?

A. Building another two or three web sites without using Sitebuildit. I wanted to do a website or two the old hard way, just so I knew how. It was a lot harder and took a lot longer, and they haven't done very well at all. My next sites will all be Sitebuildit. I have another couple of niches in mind, and I'm doing the research and summarizing the content now.

Q. How has your lifestyle changed since you started your online business?

A. It hasn't changed a lot, except I spend more time on the computer. I have a pretty good day job as well, that involves some travel, but I guess I don't spend as much time out on the water as I used to, or would like to. Keeping up to date with emails etc when I am away is a breeze, I don't have to cart a laptop around, I just go to an Internet Cafe and log into my Sitebuildit webmail. I can even sit in a Internet Cafe in Melbourne or Perth, drink cappuccino, and add a web page or two!

Q. How has your SureFireWealth.com membership helped you with your online business?

A. It's wonderful, the products are great, the ones I don't resell I read for my own info. I'm very pleased I joined, it's not expensive for what you get, and I heartily recommend it to any aspiring online business person.

Q. What would you say to someone looking to start a website in the same niche as you?

A. Refine the niche, go smaller. Instead of "herbs", pick an illness that almost everyone has, like arthritis, or asthma, or allergies, and focus on herbal remedies around that. Provide plenty of good content, and don't try to promote the "new beauty wonder plant" that has just been discovered in the depths of the Amazon jungle.

Instead promote and sell information about that malady, promote herbal remedies that have stood the test of time, there are plenty of them. Or focus on a gardening subject, lawns, orchids, ferns, etc. or  rather than cooking, focus on pizzas, wedding cakes or similar.

Keep the niche small, a mistake that I made was going too broad. The other advantage to a smaller niche is that 10 or 15 good pages may provide all the content you need to sell your product, then you can start on another niche. I think I have around 150 big pages on my site and its still growing! I'm not complaining, mind, but if I had targeted a smaller niche, I might now have 10 niche pages instead of one! Good luck in your business, Cheers, Patrick.

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Thanks Patrick!

Warm Regards,
Jeremy Gislason
Webmaster
SureFireWealth.com