Trumpeting our achievements

**"* C* <y*@sympatico.ca>**

As Lon would like us to trumpet our achievements, here's my contribution:

I've been underemployed this winter, which has given me the time to work
obsessively on a new web site. Up to this point, I've used a free site on my
internet server account, but it just wasn't professional enough anymore.

www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com is now replacing my old web site
www.theperennialfarm.com - and is ready to be unveiled to this group.

Awhile back, Doug Green mentioned that web guru Ken Evoy offers a
web-building program (it's that and a whole lot more). I'd been aware of it
for several years, (again, thanks to Doug), but was quite resistant to its
hard-sell web pitch. (It's a web download program not available in stores.)

However, I finally bought Site-Build-It in the fall - prompted by the fact
that the price was just about to go up - and that I really needed to have a
better website. My aim is to promote my writing outside of Canada, as well
as tours to our country garden, and earn some income to keep up the garden -
through Google's Adsense program. (This is still to come, I hope. Over the
past six years, we have established a huge country garden, and as my
husband's retirement looms, the question has become: how do we sustain this
thing when our income drops, and our energy isn't what it is now?)

Without any html knowledge (of necessity, of course, I've learned some
rudimentary html of late) and some basic familiarity with digital imaging, I
was able to put together a web site that I'm pretty happy about. I started
the project the moment my last spring bulb was tucked into the ground in
late November.

If you are interested to learn more about the Site-Build-It, see
http://buildit.sitesell.com/Yvonne1.html.html. The best thing about the
program was that I could learn to put together a good-looking website
without hiring outside help (beyond my budget - and then you're held hostage
to the web guy to help you update your site). With Site-Build-It, I have a
site that's in my control, that I can update hourly, if I want to.

Best of all, Evoy's program coaches you in the whole game of getting your
website noticed in the noise of the net. This process takes a number of
months, but Google is now listing most of my pages, and traffic is starting
to come from there. (Evoy's pitch - and he's right - is that traffic is the
holy grail on the net: Site-Built-It coaches you on how to make all your
pages as search-engine friendly as possible.)

If you have a moment this weekend, please check out
www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com and let me know what you think.

Cheers, Yvonne Cunnington
Author of Clueless in the Garden: A Guide for the Horticulturally Helpless
www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com

"Why build JUST a Web site...when you COULD build a Web BUSINESS?" If you
want to know more about building your own website with Site-Build-It, click
on http://buildit.sitesell.com/Yvonne1.html.html

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