Hello to All From- HopeInSite

[HopeInSite]

I am perhaps the newest of newbies to post here, so for any of my future posts- please be patient with me. I have made some of the worst mistakes a web site owner could make when it comes to hiring programmers, etc. For now I will simply say- thank goodness this forum exists! I am learning more here than I have from anywhere else! Keep the excellent info coming and I won't be a newbie for long. Also, a very special thank you to Clinton for his dedication and knowledge! I look forward to the support and information you provide.

[Clinton]

Nice username

Welcome to experienced-people.net, HopeInSite

What type of sites/web businesses have you dabbled in so far?

[hooperman]

Hi HopeInSite, and welcome to the forums

I have made some of the worst mistakes a web site owner could make when it comes to hiring programmers, etc.

That sounds like it might make interesting reading! Were these programmers from rentamonkey/getafreelancer/elance type sites?

[HopeInSite]

Ok, here we go...

The story of how I came to own a site is so crazy that it could be made into a movie- except it's the type of movie that I personally hate because it has too many negatives and not enough positives in in it.

First, I am in southern California (US) and all sorts of strange things tend to happen here. Twenty years ago I was a young single parent (I'm still single, still a parent, just not 20 years old anymore), and back then I wanted to go back to college and I didn't have enough money coming in from my day job or from child support to make it happen. Soooo, I decided to put an ad in the local paper to see if I could find another single parent to help me by exchanging childcare on the nights I went to school so that I didn't have to pay for a baby sitter. Mind you, this was before the internet entered into all of our lives, so the ad was just a simple 3-line text ad in a local free paper. What happened after that was totally unexpected! I got hundreds of responses! The people actually sent me letters of interest through snail-mail because I didn't publish my phone number or home address in the ad, and as I said, there was no internet back then. Well, I wound up finding a wonderful gal who has to this day been a huge part of my and my daughter's life. Problems solved. I got to go back to college and all is quiet. Now, move forward approx. 15 years and my daughter is in high school, I am sitting quietly in my apartment and I get a phone call from a neighbor who is out of town on business and hasn't been able to reach his wife for 3 days! He asks me to go over and check on her while he holds on the phone. I run over, bang on the door, and no answer. I get back on the phone and he says I need to break through the window because something is very, very wrong. Well, of course I do. It was really dark and I smelled something horrific! Then I flipped on a light and saw his wife laying on the floor of his kitchen burned to a crisp from a fire that had burned something on the stove then caught her on fire. Just her dead body and a partially burnt stove and some melted floor tiles and that was it. The whole thing took me about 5 seconds to realize that I couldn't breathe and I jumped back out of the broken window (I had cleared all of the glass away before I had entered). Just as my took a deep breathe of fresh air outside I heard a man's voice from behind say- stop right there and put your hands where I can see them! You can guess what happened. Apparently a neighbor had seen someone break into the house and knew that the woman was home alone and called the police. The cops had parked behind the house so I didn't even know they were there. Then a squad car pulled up in front of me at the same time time the news crews got there. All the while the lady's poor husband was waiting for me on the phone! The news people filmed me being "almost" arrested for breaking and entering when I finally convinced them to look in the damn house and they will see what happened. They did, then they went to my house and told her husband. It was awful! Then, a few hours later my phone starts ringing again and apparently all of my daughter's little friends had seen her Mom (me) get in trouble on the TV!! My daughter was sooo upset!! She told me- next time tell the guy to call 911 if he can't get a hold of his wife and let them do the break in!! Geez Mom!!! Well, a few days later the husband came over to my apartment and said that he wanted to thank me and apologize for everything that happened to me, being on the news and all. He said he wanted to do something really big for me to help me and my daughter. I told him that I was ok, but that years earlier I had put an ad in the paper looking to exchange childcare with other single parents and that I know if I could help more single parents to make ends meet it would be an important thing to do. He said, well, have you got any experience with this new internet thing? I said no. He said, why don't you look through the phone book and try and find someone who can make one of those "web site things". Well, that's where I found a guy who told me sure, he could do that. He was a graphic designer and he would use his artistic skills and read about how it's done and do it for me. I was soooooo stupid!!! After spending numerous months with him and getting little color print outs off of his laser printer of what my site would look like (there's a warning sign- I never got to see it on the computer!) The total of checks that were written to him was $25,000!!! THEN- he decides that it's too hard to do and quits!!! I talked to my neighbor who was writing all of those checks and he said maybe we should sue him...well, great idea if you can find him!! I went by, he and his office were all gone! No one around, just an empty office and the landlord of the building was looking for him too! I couldn't believe how dumb I was for trusting this man, or myself! I wound up crying like a baby for getting in to something that I had to right to get in to. I was all upset when I got a phone call- turn on the TV- the World Trade Center has been attacked!!!! It was so devastating that the neighbor told me that we all have to go on for those who can't!! Let's forget about the $25K and start over. We'll find a legitimate web site company and create a site that will help single parents no matter what!! The world needs something good to happen now. Everyone needs to help one another. That's the only thing to do now. Let's get back to what is really important now...

(*This is the first half of my crazy story, but I can stop here for now. I don't want to finish right now because there's more bad news to come, and I cringe just remembering everything that has happened.) (I told you this would make a bad movie!!) : (

[HopeInSite]

I think I have just posted the longest message in the history of this site!! Sorry folks- just tellin' it like it is. Or, was. (Don't judge please.)

[Clinton]

Wow, that is some story.

$25K to do a website?! Mind you, it was a lot more expensive back then, but that's still a lot.

If you're looking to start a new site in an area you're passionate about, I fully encourage you. Do proceed cautiously though. The majority of new websites fail to become profitable businesses, and if you don't already have some experience with websites or business, you're seriously disadvantaged. Don't let that stop you having a go, but bear in the above in mind before you invest your life savings.

An alternate approach: It may be worth buying a small website or two and playing around with developing them and monetising them. If you do succeed you can always sell those sites and proceed to start one on your big project.

[HopeInSite]

Hey Clinton-

I read your message and thought that I should tell you the final (short) part to my story.

I did get more money to create an actual functioning site, it wound up costing another $25K. My site is an asp site. It has an interactive database that allow single parents to enter their US zip code (I couldn't afford to buy the zip code database for area's outside of the US). A single parent that wants to exchange childcare or share housing simply enters their zip code and the results come up instantly showing them who in their area is looking for the same thing. The creation of the functioning site took about a year of meetings with 5 programmers who all worked for the same company. After the site was finished I had almost no Money left to promote it, and read an article in a business publication about the best ways to promote a business on a small budget. One of the suggestions was wonderful! There is a company called PR Newswire that is a news service like the AP. I paid approx. $400 (my very last $$) and wrote a press release about the launch of my site. They then take the press release and put in in their database for all news outlets to pick up as a human interest story. My story wound up going into over 40 different newspapers across the US, I was interviewed on 8 radio stations (also across the US), and one TV station had me on the air in San Diego, CA which aired in Cleveland, Ohio. I got a ton of exposure for that $400 investment! The main thing about that is for any business who wants to try PR Newswire, your story has to be newsworthy, or no one is going to pick up the story in the various media outlets. The results were an instant 1800 members joining my site. I was very happy until I started on my next "great" idea- which was to try and do something wonderful to show my gratitude to the man who had given me a total of $50K to help save the world (at least the single parents in the world). Soooo, I decided I would try and help him fix up a small guest house that was at the back of his property in San Diego by the beach. This little guest house was boarded up and had been that way since 1923! Well, being the knucklehead that I am sometimes, I had just finished doing the TV interview (which would turn out to be my final one) and had a weekend dedicated to tearing the boards off of the small back house and walked inside and immediately got engulfed in a thick black dust that was swirling around the air inside. I ran outside and couldn't catch my breathe! I don't know why I thought the inside of a little cottage that had been locked up since 1923 would be nice and sweet inside!!! I must have been delusional. The man that owned the house wasn't home when I did it and had given me full permission to do what I wanted. Later on I found out that he thought I would never go through with it once I saw through the windows. But noooo, not me. Well, here's where we end, I wound up getting a lung disease and was hospitalized. The junk I inhaled was a form of black mold, also known as black death. It went into my body and burnt actual holes throughout my entire system! Lungs, kidneys, pancreas, and stomach lining- all full of holes that caused internal bleeding. I was fighting for my life. At the same time my site was unattended and those 1800 members wondered what was going on. Since I was the only person in charge, it was a stuck on hold. I was so sick that I was unable to even post any info of what was happening to me on the site. The site kept going on auto-pilot for the entire time I was a vegetable, which turned out to be 7 years! I was not supposed to live and had begged God to take me about a million times during that period. Well, as luck would have it, I am back to 100% now!! As they say, only the good die young, and I am not on the good list apparently! : ) I now have to play catch up for having a web site that is way overdue for some TLC and I know that I have no $$$, that's for sure! I signed up for a google adsense account and was approved, but now I can't get it set up by myself because my site is an asp site, which I found out is very complicated and outdated or something like that, and I have no idea how to get adsense set up when I am not a programmer, and have no money! See, I told you this story kinda stinks. I need to monetize my site and I can't even figure out how to set that up because it's an asp site, whatever that means. All I ever wanted to do was help single parent families have an easier life. And if I could eat and put gas in my car with 137K miles on it, that would be great too!

If there is any way to make money on an asp sit please let me know. It has great potential. is up and running, and the single parents that use it are super nice people. They had sent me "thank you for creating this site!" emails when it first launched, before I got sick. To this day, there is not another site on the internet that does what my site does! No one else has an interactive web site that focuses on childcare exchanges and shared housing which provides instant results within a specified zip code! My site is the only one that does that! And it deserves to be in existence so that single parent families can make help each other to make ends meet. (My guts may have gotten sick, but my heart has always been in the right place!!) I would love to keep my site up and running to pick up where I left off more than 7 years ago. Single parents need it. They told me they do!

If anyone knows how to monetize my site through adsense or some other program, please let me know. That's my entire story. Thank you all for any help or advice you have to offer!! I truly appreciate it!

[Clinton]

What's the URL, HopeInSite?

It sounds like a worthy project you're building there.

Is there anyone here who could help her setup an SSI on this site (asp shouldn't make it any more difficult)?

[HopeInSite]

The URL is http://www.ForSingleParents.com
The best way to see how it works is to enter the zip code 92107. There is also a forum that was locked for years while I was sick. It has just recently been unlocked. I appreciate any help I can get with this site form your members. I sincerely want to help single parents who feel isolated and desperate for support to find others that can help them make it. If these single parent families don't help each other they may face incredible hardships. When parents have chronic struggles it affects their children for the rest of their lives. I know from first hand experience! Now that I am healthy and my daughter is grown, I remember the times when things weren't ok. Times when I hardly got anything for child support, my job barely covered my expenses and I slept on a small cot next to the refrigerator in the kitchen so that my daughter could have the only bedroom in my small apartment. Years later I still hear that refrigerator turning on and off all night long in my sleep- it was absolutely horrible. When I found another single parent to share childcare with me so that I could go back to college, it literally saved my sanity- if not my life! I simply can't sit by and do nothing for the millions of single parent families still out there suffering and isolated like I was. I remember trying to hide my tears from my daughter so that she wouldn't worry, she was only 3 years old at the time! It was so tragic. That is not something that struggling single parents talk about. And the children suffer. The society suffers. And we all lose. I can not emphasize enough the need to help these people help themselves. Strength is in the numbers. And when I say my life completely changed when I found another single parent to exchange childcare (eventually we shared housing too!) I really mean- IT CHANGED MY LIFE!!!!! I will never give up trying to help those that are still out there living the life I that I lived. My heart aches for them everyday and I must do something to help. My web site is simply a tool, but it can change lives and provide hope. "We're On Our Own- But Not Alone!" That's my slogan and that's my goal. No one should have to suffer when help is right around the corner!

(Now if I just knew how to put adsense ads on my site...) Thanks again to Clinton for your attention to my site's needs. Now you know why I chose the user name HopeInSite! I may not have much, but I've always had hope!!

[Rover]

The first step to putting in adsnese is to get an account with Google and that takes a few weeks. Then, you simply copy and paste the code in. Anyway, Good luck on that project. It looks like something that needs done. Do you have a plan for getting traffic? What are the keywords you are trying for?