My Website Success Story...or How I Quit My Day Job

My Do It Yourself Weddings website has become more successful than I ever imagined. Not only is it successful, but it is also incredibly rewarding and I feel so fortunate that I took the leap and decided to create a website six years ago. I make money writing about something I’m interested in, I work at home and I’m able to be at home everyday with my son.

Here is my website success story…

The Past: I too used to have a “normal full-time” job. It was an office job. Boring. Stressful. I was pretty miserable and was looking for a way out. My husband and I started discussing having children but I loathed the idea of the 6-week maternity leave that my job offered. I knew I wouldn’t want to go back and leave my infant with someone else to take care of but we couldn’t afford for me to just stay home. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to have children unless there was a way I could be at home with them. I couldn’t handle the thought of my stressful job plus trying to raise a child. However, I really, really wanted to start a family. I felt stuck.

The Present: That was years ago…and things are so different now! My son was born September 2006 and I’m having the time of my life. I work from home so I’m with him every day. I didn’t even have to worry about maternity leave. In fact, I quit my job while I was pregnant because my site had already reached a level of success within one year so I could afford to quit.

So how did I do this? Want to know how a woman with no prior website experience attained this level of success? I had heard about something called “info publishing” where people build a website about something they are interested in and then make money by placing a small amount of relevant advertising on their pages. I researched it and even talked to several people who did it and realized it was something I’d enjoy doing.

After tons of research I choose a collection of web building tools called Site Build It (SBI) because many of the most successful “info publishing” sites use them. They take care of submitting to search engines, keywords, brainstorming, profitability, hosting the site, my email account, etc., while I focus on writing articles. I didn’t have to pull together different companies for different aspects of my web business, they offer it all in one place.

It took a lot of time and effort but this site now ranks in the top 1% of all websites for traffic. This means that of all the websites out there, only 1% of them get more visitors than I do. This is incredible! You can see this for yourself, on this page, my site is in the "Self Help" category, in about the middle.

The Future: For me "first comes marriage, then comes baby" has translated to "first comes DIY weddings, then comes DIY babies!" Yep, I joked about it for over a year but with the urging of our "graduated readers" I finally took the plunge and launched MakeBabyStuff.com to share my other passion. Sewing patterns, homemade toy ideas, nursery decor and and baby crafts galore. (PS, I also used SBI to launch my second site, I've been very happy with them and couldn't have reached the level of success I have without their tools.)

What are you interested in? Do you have a passion that you are knowledgeable about? Perhaps your area of interest might make a good informational website! If you are craving more info, check out these sites that were born out of the passions of regular people …pretty inspiring, huh? Whatever you decide to pursue, I wish you the best of luck and all the success that you desire.