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Hello my dear reader. I know it has been awhile. Life has been an obstacle course, but slowly I am climbing out and getting back to what I love most. Helping you!
I have been working at home in some capacity for the last 14 years. It is rewarding, it is hard and it is the best place to work for me and my family. Let me take a moment to reintroduce myself.
My name is Shannon Weidemann and I am a pro at working at home. I have answered phones and taken orders for a shopping channel, graded test papers, done legal transcription, copywriting and content writing, been a member of a multi-level marketing company (a couple of them), SEO, affiliate marketing, and probably a few others along the way.
I’m married, have one 10-year-old daughter, and a 7-month-old puppy. We live in a cozy bungalow in Michigan that is perfect for us, although I keep dreaming of a second bathroom and a mudroom. The puppy is totally keeping us on our toes. I had forgotten how much work it is, but it is all worthwhile.
I got my start working from home after leaving a pretty high stress job. I didn’t particularly want to go back to working for someone else after that and started researching the best ways to work at home or start my own business. At the time there was very little online other than some work at home mom websites offering advice on home party companies and a few companies that hired telecommuters. I wasn’t yet a mom, but they welcomed me in. This might be really dating myself, but the big talk at the time was of a company that would send you the supplies to make railroad nail crosses. Anyone else remember that one?
I ended up joining a multi-level marketing company that sold birthday party supplies because they told me that I could do everything from home and I didn’t have to do home parties. They set me up with their generic website, I let all my friends and family know about it and then I waited. And waited.
When that didn’t work I took the advice of a friend and learned some basic html, bought a domain name and build a very basic website that I could point to my company website. I started to get some traffic to that site and I waited some more.
The same friend then told me about affiliate marketing and told me that there was a birthday party supply company offering an affiliate program and that I should join up and direct my website visitors there instead of the multi-level marketing company. I set that all up and ended up traveling to Belgium for two weeks with my husband who had to go there for work. I would like to say that I patiently waited and checked my stats every few hours, but this was the age before smartphones and everyone had a laptop or tablet to travel with. I’m not even sure the hotel offered internet.
One day while I was out sightseeing I stopped into a cafe that had computers with internet that you could pay to use. I wanted to check my email, perhaps catch my parents and friends on IM, and see what was going on in the world. Kind of an afterthought I decided to check and see if I had made any sales. And there it was. My very first affiliate marketing sale. I was hooked.
I continue working in affiliate marketing today. What all my years of experience have taught me though is that what you do is not as important as how you do it. I believe that anyone can be successful at working at home, it is just finding the right fit for what works for you and following some tried and true knowledge.
I want to help you by sharing some of the knowledge that I have learned and what has worked for me. I will also be sharing some of the tools that I love and help me work smarter and easier.
Welcome back, dear reader. I can’t wait to hear from you!
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