Our paths crossed a couple of years ago and like most online acquaintances, we kept touch here and there through social media outlets and of course – Facebook. Recently we began an exchange of emails that resulted in my asking Janet to share her personal work at home experience.

I’m sure you’ll carry something away from her experience. It’s amazing how success can be staring us right in the face and we don’t even see it.

This is her story:

I was a Navy wife, for about 20 years, spent several years moving around from base to base, and I had found that a great ice breaker and way to meet the other wives was to throw a Tupperware party and give a military discount (my cost) to all who attended.

I thought it would be a great idea if "someone" organized a "party" place where a person could have access to all of them.

Wendy Leal has a fabulous site www.HostAPartyOnline.com. I discovered her around 2003/4 when my daughter became an Avon rep.

One of the problems for online Avon reps, was the same problem that all of us as IMers have – where to find buyers, and how to direct traffic.

Fortunately the Avon spot came available at HostAPartyOnline.com and I rented the spot, at a ridiculously great price. Traffic came! Few buyers, but LOTS of women who wanted to be Avon reps!

A potential gold rush was there; however, Avon would only permit you to sign up a rep if you were having face-to-face contact. I don’t know if that’s changed, but it was a deal breaker with my daughter in NY, myself in WA, and ladies begging to hook up EVERYWHERE, but within a days drive of us.

Avon indicated that even though we wouldn’t be able to sign the person up for ourselves, they would contact the local rep and have THEM go talk to them and we’d get about $25 for each person who signed up.

While you can’t expect 100% of them to sign up, one would expect AVON to have 100% follow through to contact the referrals. Avon dropped the ball and there was 0% contact with the referrals!!

Ok, so that’s not working, let’s forget about that and change focus to the locals. ‘You’re paying a fee for the website, let’s get it to work for you’, was my thinking.

I got the idea that branding was going to be important. Afterall who’s going to remember http://www.Avon.com/Long-unusual-spelling-of-a-strangers-first-and-last-name ?

People will stop after the .com and get the same results that they’re looking for.

So, I went to GoDaddy purchased …get this… HotAvon.com! Now I was naive and didn’t realize that I was infringing on trademarks and permission was needed, BEFORE I purchased it, but when I found out my daughter did her best to get a hold of the person who’d be able to ok it.

Never did get permission, but we didn’t get shot down either. It was like there was nobody home at Avon. I hope things have changed over the years with them, because I really like Avon. (I did ditch the url, because I do think I shouldn’t have gone that route).

I went to Vistaprint and had clear address labels created with my daughter’s name and the web address. Each item, in each order had a sticker on it.

Business cards were made up with the address on it. The catalogs were stamped with the web address. The web address, to THIS DAY is still in my daughter’s email signature, because she has yet to take the 30 seconds required to learn how to take it out…???

That wasn’t driving traffic either.

I’d like to stop right here and have everyone take note – that all of this took place in about a 4 MONTH span! And I didn’t KNOW ANYTHING about Internet Marketing, and I was guessing at everything I was doing. 4 MONTHS IS NOT ENOUGH TIME to judge performance of something you are clueless about.

However, I knew that my daughter wasn’t putting much effort into her Avon business, but I was. I wanted her to be successful (A word to the wise – You CAN’T MAKE someone successful).

I had access to the Avon online rep forum, so I looked there to see if I could get some information from them and learn how THEY were being successful.

And THEY were begging for help on how to become successful. Well, that was no help.

LIGHT GOES ON!!! My daughter isn’t ambitious, but these people were. I have ideas that I know will be helpful to someone who is serious about what they’re doing.

I now make a web site with ideas about how to make money with Avon.

First I explained how to get a domain name at GoDaddy and I became an affiliate and put a text link everywhere I wrote their name.

I explained branding, and how important it was to create a memorable domain address for your customers so that they will remember it – provocative, interesting, funny, EASY to spell and remember.

And then I did the same thing with how to use Vistaprint and all the things that you could do with their products.

How to create a website so people can contact you. The advantages of focusing on becoming a specialist and doing fund raising events.

I then went into the Avon rep forum and I posted the link. I got traffic and I made about $300 in those 4 months. That sucked! All that work for a measly $300.

I gave up.

Now, here it is about 6 years later, and I’ve had a lot of failures in IM, and you know what I learned? I learned that I WAS a successful Internet Marketer 6 years ago!!!! And I didn’t know it!

I had thought that people made money fast and easy on the internet. That $300, to me, was not fast or easy. It was, however, a sensational start.

Now that I know what I have since learned – I seed my ideas, patiently nurture them and allow them to grow and blossom.

It’s easy to give up. After all, we are usually surrounded by friends and family encouraging your failure. YOU are the one with the power. The choices belong to YOU. If you believe in what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter if anyone else does, because there is one sure way of failure – giving up.

Remember you can’t toss seeds from an apartment window, onto a snow covered pavement and expect a field to appear the next day ready for harvest.

I never did backtrack and try to restart this ambition. You are welcome to do some research and develop the idea for yourself.

There are a lot of distributorships available which have requirements that are nominal for starting a business. Find the one that interests you the most and do what no one else is doing with it. Make it fun, make it YOU!

Joyfully Janet – Auction Media Press

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