WebMatrons
By Beth Hendry-Yim
Susan Peach is ready for life to get a little easier. At 46, having spent much of her life raising two boys by herself, the fitness instructor wants time to putter in her garden, take a week or two to visit a warmer climate, and maybe write her memoirs. She's dreaming of a four–hour work week, and setting up office anywhere there's an Internet café and a chai latte.
And her dream is coming true. Peach is among a growing number of women between the ages of 45 and 60 who make an income from websites. Call them WebMatrons -- a new breed of businesswomen, in an age bracket Stats Canada says is bursting with first-time entrepreneurs.
Today, we're sitting in her home office, which used to be her eldest son's bedroom. Her choice of office wear is workout pants, a yoga top, and sandals. On the wall above the eight–year–old Mac desktop computer from which she runs her business is a flow chart of her website structure. Tacked on a bulletin board is a cheque from Google AdSense for $136.18. She earned the money from strategically placing Google ads on her website's pages. Every time someone clicks on an ad link, Peach gets paid. "That was my first one," she says, pointing to the cheque. "It's a photocopy. I didn't want to cash it, but I needed the money. I got it copied in colour so it looks real."
Peach's website, Pole Dancing for Fitness, provides comprehensive advice and information on one of her favourite ways to stay in shape. "Everyone seems to have their own opinion on the subject of pole dancing," she writes on the site, "but as far as I'm concerned it's a great way to build some incredible strength and have a ton of fun at the same time." She started the site after reading about SiteSell, an all–in–one site–building and hosting service that also provides advice on monetization -- ie. making money.
In addition to Google ads, she surrounds the written content with banner ads from affiliate sites. Affiliate programs are partnerships between websites, one of which is a commercial organization selling a product or products. When one of Peach's visitors clicks on a banner, goes to the partner site, and makes a purchase, she gets paid a commission in the 10–25 percent range. "My most popular link is Lil' Mynx Poles," she says. "So far I've made over $250 in commissions since I signed up for their affiliate program. I even had another pole company contact me to say I needed to sell their product. You know you've made it when companies start contacting you!"
Peach's bigger goal is to find a balance between work and pleasure. According to a CIBC report on women entrepreneurs, she's a "lifestyler" — the type of self-employed businessperson looking for a good mix of satisfying and financially feasible work and leisure time.
"I've done my stint working a 9–9 job running a fitness studio," she says. "Maintaining a website gives me time to play and money to play with."
Gale Lennard, a 51–year old analyst for a large aerospace company, knows what she means. She owns HappyHalfway.com, a site with the motto "How to be happy in midlife."
"I've been with the same corporation for 26 years," Lennard says. "The company has been extremely good to me — great pay and benefits. But in recent years, I've seen shifts due to economy and changes in funding for our Space programs, and realized that the only way for me to be in control of my career and financial destiny is to be my own boss."
For Lennard, however, success isn't only measured by AdSense revenue. "My definition of success is to get paid to do something you love," she says, "and I love working on my web business — communicating with people all over the world, getting feedback from visitors, and learning new things."
Control and fulfillment are a common theme for WebMatrons. Elizabeth Martyn, owner of Healthy Eating Made Easy, was a freelance writer when she decided she wanted a project "that was mine, rather than working on projects where others were in control both of content and timing." At 57, she now focuses solely on her web business, which allows her to take a few months off every now and then. "Some weeks I do a lot of work, some weeks none at all. [It] averages 10–12 hours weekly over the year."She's been developing her website since 2005, and it's now bringing her a "reliable four–figure income" every month.
Peach's website has seen similar growth. "I started out setting a goal of earning $1.00 from AdSense per day and one purchase from an affiliate partner per month," she says. "After just a few months, I'm looking at over $200.00 a month." Peach recently added a feature which provides pole dancing studios with a free listing in a searchable database. For a small monthly fee, they can also add content like video, live links, pictures, and a Google map "As my traffic increases and I keep adding new monetizing methods, my income will keep going up. Once you start researching and looking around, it's amazing how easy it is to generate a decent income."
Peach explains that good, original content is the first and most important factor in getting and growing traffic. Not only does it draw potential customers in, it also keeps them browsing around and clicking on links and ads. For Lennard, creating content has had a surprise plus side. "Sometimes it's a struggle to find the words," she says, "but I've been quite surprised to find out that I can actually write. I'm very proud of the writing I've done."
Optimizing keywords is also, well, key. Keywords are the terms visitors enter into a search engine to locate relevant websites. When optimized (see video below), search engines can more easily find the site and categorize it, improving ranking and, more importantly, how quickly potential clients get there. There's a lot of jargon and new information to be learned, especially for people who grew up in an era without computers, but fortunately there's just as much help to be had. "When I first started," Peach says,"I knew very little about websites, but the hosting service I use has a self–study course that showed me how to put it all together."
Now that Peach's traffic has gone from under 100 unique visitors a day to over 400, she's moved on to creating "pole dancing for fitness" DVDs. With retail and wholesale services like Kunaki and Amazon, it's fairly straightforward. Once the video is produced, all she has to do is copy it to her hard drive and then upload to Kunaki along with the cover art. Getting on Amazon is a little more complicated and not as financially rewarding, but she says it gets her name out in cyberspace and drives more traffic to her site. "Though I don't make as much with Amazon, I've already got one video up that's bringing in $300.00 to $600.00 a month. If I could get three more up there, I think I'd be set!"
Like many Canadian women, Peach is branching out, exploring new employment territory, learning new skills, and stretching her comfort zone. Thirty–three percent of entrepreneurs in Canada are women and of those, over 58 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54. The largest growth rate in entrepreneurial endeavours, however, is being seen in women over the age of 55. In a tough economy, they're finding innovative and creative ways to make a buck and stay sane.
And while not all will succeed, the gamble has more than paid off for Peach. Her directory has grown to contain listings for pole dancing studios in nearly every American state and Canadian province, as well as from countries all over the world, including a huge representation from the U.K. AdSense revenue has also been increasing steadily and her site's ranking is improving daily. Not bad for a former fitness trainer, turned pole-dancing WebMatron.
Quick Tips for Building a Web-Based Business
1. Find a niche market that is specific. Fitness and Health are broad topics. Narrow it down to something more specific like pole dancing for fitness or eating vegan on a budget.
2. Don't monetize your site until you have at least 25 pages of content produced. There's no use putting AdSense on your web pages if no one visits them. Google chooses the quality of ad that's put on your website. If you don't get much traffic, you won't get the good ads.
3. Make sure the content on your site is relevant and well-written. Repeat traffic means increased revenue. If visitors find irrelevant or poorly written information on your site, they won't come back.
4. Do link exchanges with related websites. Have a recipe for blueberries on your site? Find a site dedicated to blueberries and ask the webmaster if they'd like to put a link to your recipe. In exchange, you'll link your recipe to their website. Spiders love sites with outgoing and incoming links.
5. Add video and pictures to your website. Make a how–to–video on how to make a blueberry cake. Upload it to YouTube, link it to your site and watch the traffic and AdSense revenue increase.