Mid Life Marketer’s Kick Start

As a newcomer to the Internet Marketing Life, I have had to start learning a whole raft of skills and techniques that were frankly, a foreign language to me a year ago. I have also started to follow my passion for snapping photos of everything that I pass by. I would hesitate to call myself a “Photographer”, it’s just something I enjoy with a passion. Website construction, FTP, panoramic stitching, the strange world of camera raw: these are all new worlds into which I have had to delve.

I am lucky enough to live in a corner of the world called Stanwix. It’s on one of the bits of Carlisle that’s up the hill and away from the floodplain of the R. Eden, so we were fortunate to be spectators to the carnage of the floods 3 years ago. As (allegedly) wealthy and upmarket as Stanwix is supposed to be it’s been very backward in not having a community presence on the web. What better way to combine … learning to drive a website … testing my virtual tours… and … giving something back to a place I really like.

So Stanwix’ Community website was born. This is my first attempt at developing a useful website that carries good quality content. The framework or template is in place and there is a small amount of original content there, but my hope is that residents and businesses within the area and its surrounds will see some value in the site and literally drive its development.

One of the useful techniques I have learned during this roller coaster year since I fell out of my teaching career and decided to focus on Internet Marketing, has been the almost viral power of on-line press releases. After a rather long break from the press room at Free Press Release.com I finally made it back to this often overlooked marketing strategy. My latest press release is aimed at promoting the Stanwix Community Website is entitled (rather grandly I thought!) Press Release: Stanwix Carlisle Gains a Community Web Site

There are many online portals for submitting your press release. All of them follow pretty consistent rules about content, quality and respect for other people’s information. My preference, even though I am UK based is Free Press Release.com The format they present is easy to use, even in the free service and you can buy into their paid service if you want higher placement of your article in the listings. A pretty cool sort of service. Although I am not a traffic superstar yet, the articles posted have certainly increased the click throughs to my Prosperizer website and my Building on a Budget Project.
Well that’s all for now. I’m back to beating my old laptop into acceptance of the fact that it has to process 6 image Tiff based panoramic view without crashing!!!!!!!

My Big Why Part 2
Meltdown

Then the inevitable breakdown happened. As bad as it felt, I was lucky, because I had friends (including my wife) who forced me to get talking again. They persisted when I couldn’t do anything apart from get outdoors and focus on the beautiful simplicity of climbing a piece of rock or ice. Not that I could even organise myself to sort the gear out for climbing or a bit of paddling. All the time school hung over me like a black cloud on the horizon. I got back to work eventually and made it through to the summer holidays. After the years of stress and dissatisfaction at home my wife and I parted company just as the holidays arrived. We managed to keep everything very civilised. It was hard. She had already met an old flame and she was visibly blooming as her fires were rekindled. She had enough sensitivity still, to keep things relatively discreet to my eyes. Slowly we adjusted to the new order. ( I haven’t even mentioned the children - but they coped in a way that still makes both of us very proud and is quite humbling).

By this time I was slowly waking up to the fact that I was in several places I just didn’t want to be. I had already started dabbling in the on-line marketing world, just to see if it was viable, as I already spent a lot of time at the computer. I thought, “… if I can get my computer habits to make me a living, I might be onto a winner!”. Indecision and prevarication were, unfortunately, the flavours of the day back then. I was going nowhere. Except for one thread that had persisted. UVME was in its pre-launch period and I knew that this was a project I wanted to be involved with. Strong reasons for my WHY were beginning to form in my mind. I just couldn’t put my finger on them at that stage. In my next post, I’ll show exactly how clear my WHY has become.
Ray