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1. Tell us about yourself and how you got Arcanadea.com started.

Nathalie Thompson: I’m a recently self-employed mom of a toddler and a preschooler, and I currently run two internet-based businesses, both hosted with IceStorm. Arcana Dea Design is a hand-crafted artisan jewelry design company that I launched about a year ago. It started off as a hobby thing on Etsy.com, just because I like to play with beads and sparkly things so much that I ended up making more jewelry than I could ever hope to wear on my own. After being on Etsy for a bit, I decided to take things to the next level and launch my own web site, under my own domain name. Shortly after I launched the business, however, my family and I were hit with two really, really difficult circumstances:

· In October of 2010, my father was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer. He has since undergone two rounds of chemotherapy (he’s currently on his third round) and both bowel and liver surgery to remove a number of tumours. We are waiting to see whether the current round of chemo will help with the recently discovered tumours in his lungs.

· In March of 2011, I lost someone very close to me to suicide. He had apparently been very depressed for a long time, although no one had known about it. There was just such shock afterwards, with everyone wondering how someone could be that sick and have no one be aware of it. And, of course, the guilt of thinking that maybe you could have done something differently or that things might have turned out differently if someone had known, or if he had gotten help.

In any case, I think that both of these events affected me more than I really realized at the time. I wanted to do something to help other people who were dealing with the same things, so I launched a charity line within Arcana Dea Design called the “Hope Collection”. It was a special line of jewelry with partial proceeds from the sale of any item within that line going to cancer awareness and mental health awareness charities. This year, I’ve made some major changes around this line and am now donating partial proceeds from the sale of any and all items in my shop to these charities.

2. How was your site designed? Any particular software you used?

The ecommerce section of the web site is built on a Zen Cart platform, with a purchased third-party template for the look of the store itself. The blog section is built on Word Press, and I bought a premium theme to design it. I installed both Zen Cart and Word Press through the oh-so-handy cPanel interface that came with my IceStorm web hosting account, so that part was really easy and painless. There was, however, a little more pain (teeth-gnashing, hair pulling, and maybe even one or two expletives uttered…) involved with customizing my templates.

Within the site, most of my graphics are done with an older version of Fireworks. I do all of the design work –coding for customization, graphics, etc. – myself, hence, the occasional aforementioned expletives…

3. What are some of the challenges you face when running your website and business?

I guess there’s really two main challenges – the technical issues, obviously, would be the biggest ones. I do have a background in web design, but that was an area I worked in over ten years ago; the web and all the associated technologies have evolved exponentially in that time, so it’s been a bit of a learning curve trying to keep up with all the techy stuff. Especially the coding – I’m not sure PHP even existed when I was doing web design, and style sheets were just being introduced when I left the field! Sometimes I just have no idea why something isn’t working or what to do about it, so I spend a lot of time in support forums for things like Zen Cart, Word Press and my theme templates. And luckily for me, IceStorm support rocks; I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love these guys! I think that’s probably what I love most about IceStorm, actually – the customer support is just incredible. I suspect they must get sick of hearing from me sometimes, though; I have visions of my name coming up in the queue and all these poor tech people sitting around drawing straws for who’s going to have to deal with me this time!

Beyond the technical stuff, it’s really a time issue for me, especially with two businesses to run. My kids are still very young so they still really need their Mommy lots, and they do take up a lot of my time. They are currently part-time at a daycare they love, which is their fun time for playing with lots of other kids; it’s also huge as far as giving me time to get things done, and I find that knowing I only have a set amount of uninterrupted time to work helps to keep me really focused and in the zone when they are away. And then, having worked that intensely and consistently for those hours, I am so ready for playtime or crayons or messing around in the sandbox once they are home again, so it seems to work out well. Most of the time.

4. What do you enjoy most about running your website?

I think what I like most is that there is always something new to learn. Arcana Dea Design is a one-woman show, which means I have to be on top of everything from graphic design, to book keeping, to coding, to social media and marketing. And I also have to actually make some jewelry once in a while, too! There is just no way to get bored when you’re running your own business; when you’re the one wearing all the hats there is always, always something to do. And there’s just such satisfaction with seeing the end product – the web site and the blog – evolve and change as a result of all your efforts. At the end of the day, you can see that you’ve accomplished something really cool, and there’s just no substitute for that feeling.

5. Any other sites you’re working on?

I’ve recently launched a web site at Get-Government-Jobs.com. It’s a job coaching business that helps people get hired in the Canadian federal government, and the site is completely built on a Word Press platform. I’ve also branched out into the world of video with an associated YouTube channel for this one, which has introduced a whole new set of technical challenges to master!

I also have an older site at TTG-Creations.com which has, unfortunately, been rather neglected of late. I hired a fantastic designer to do the template for this particular shop, and it’s actually a Cafepress shop that’s been integrated into my own domain with something called CP Shop. This particular site is on my radar for revamping later this year.

6. How do you see the future of the Internet?

I think the Internet will continue to be a fantastic means of bringing people together. It gives us the opportunity to build communities where none could have existed before — or at least not in the way, or with the ease, that exists with the Internet. It opens things up and allows people from all over the world to freely and easily interact with one another and share information and ideas and concepts. It really is a global community these days, and I think this particular aspect is just going to increase. I think we’ll continue to see international friendships and business connections growing through these means, regardless of what politicians and world leaders are up to. And maybe, at some point, we’ll even reach a tipping point in terms of things like world peace, because when you have friends, colleagues, clients and customers in every part of the world, understanding and tolerance of cultural, religious and regional differences kind of automatically increase as well. They have to. And I think it’s going to be grassroots thing, growing under the radar of international politics.

7. Any final comments?

Just another huge thank you to the IceStorm support peeps! The more I get into running my own business, the more I realize how critically important customer service and responsiveness is. I’ve also noticed, however, that there aren’t a whole lot of businesses out there that are able to keep their client service standards up that high when they start growing the way IceStorm has, so I think that, as a company, you should definitely be applauded for that. I’d also like to say that I’m not sure my web sites would be where they are today without the help of those in the IceStorm support team, and I am so grateful to them for all the assistance they’ve provided as I’ve gotten these sites off the ground. You guys are fantastic, and I appreciate you so much!

Thank you, Nathalie, for the fantastic interview and the kind words for us! We wish you continued success!

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If you have a website and you have modest goals, you can expect to build up an extra stream of income within a fairly short time. Don’t expect to quit your job after a few weeks and don’t expect to become location independent too quickly. While it is possible to make a full-time income from running your own website, it will take a lot of time before the income is anything near enough to live on. Don’t let this put you off, however. With a little time and realistic goals, you can open the door to a steadily rising passive income.

The bulk of the revenue from most money-making websites comes from affiliate programs and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With affiliate programs, you advertise someone else’s product or service on your site. When someone purchases that product or service having come from your site, you earn a share of the money. Pay-per-click advertising works in a slightly similar way. You can join an advertising program such as Google AdSense to make relevant advertisements appear on your website. When a visitor clicks on an advertisement, you get paid.

Affiliate programs cost you absolutely nothing to join and there is something available for every possible niche. Sites such as ClickBank and Amazon are just two of many popular online market places which offer highly developed and rewarding affiliate programs. Don’t forget to do your research, however. Get to know your visitors and what they are most likely to be interested in buying. If, for example, you’re running a travel blog, you might want to advertise travel guides on your site as part of your affiliate programs.

Per-per-click advertising costs nothing to place on your website, but the amount of money you get from each click is tiny. However, as traffic to your site increases, those occasional few cents here and there start to rise exponentially. Some blogs earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month from pay-per-click advertising alone. To give you a higher chance of your advertisements receiving clicks, ensure that you place your ads optimally. The advertisements should already be relevant to the content of each page of your site.

Get started making money though our IceStorm.com Affiliate Program. You get $10 in your account for just signing-up!

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1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got iLasting.com started.

Anthony Doctolero: I created iLasting.com because I wanted to pay tribute to my grandfather who was a special person in my life. Growing up, I was an altar boy for many years so I served many funerals. The priest would always say a quote and to this day it has stayed with me. He said, “You are never truly gone, until someone stops remembering you.” When my grandfather passed away in 2000, our family ran a short obituary in the newspaper. I always felt it was a shame that we couldn’t say more about his life. He was an ordinary man, but led an extraordinary life. He was not a celebrity, but to our family he was the president. When it came time to create a tribute for him, I couldn’t find a site which had all the features I wanted, so I created this service. The site is not about death; it’s about celebrating life.

2. How was your site designed?

We decided early on that the design of our memorial sites would be more like Facebook, and less like MySpace in terms of the level of customization we offer up. We did however allow the creators to choose from different themes. We felt this was the best for the visitors to the sites and also allowed for some personalization. We still get emails from some users who request more customization, but we get even more positive emails from visitors who appreciate the simplicity of our design.

3. What are some of the challenges you face when running your website and business?

One of the biggest challenges we face with our site is striking the right balance between allowing users to personalize their site while maintaining a cohesive look and feel to the site. While we recognize the significance and do encourage personalization, we also don’t want the site as a whole to be filled with glittered text and blinking images. This is because the end user or visitors to the memorials have told us these types of elements make it more difficult to get through the site.

4. What do you enjoy most about running your website?

I enjoy getting feedback emails from memorial creators who have told us the memorial they created really helped them during the grieving process.

5. How do you see the future of the Internet?

I see the Internet continuing to evolve and becoming even more intertwined in our daily lives. Whether it be through desktops, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, or TV’s, it seems the Internet will continue to find new mediums to connect people in new ways.

Thank you Anthony for doing this interview! What you’re doing at iLasting.com is admirable. We wish you continued success!