What were you doing when they were 9 years old?
Under sleep overs? Pizza to eat? Find out what kind of cootie shot is the most effective? This is what I was doing - together with active to anticipate my first "two-digit' birthday.Sydney Englund was starting a business - and I am not speaking here of a lemonade stand.
It runs HorseCrazyGirls.com, a website where young girls your horse madness with stories, pictures and games.
The page is still a strong eight years after its creation, and now-16-year-old Sydney is an experienced entrepreneur. It makes between $400 and $1,600 per month working only four to six hours per week
the penny hoarder spoke with Sydney to learn how to build a company before the age most of us our first jobs.
A Crazy Horse start
after riding ponies at the fair if you was 5, Sydney was difficult for horses, as it seems to be only a little girl. Their passion led them to find Horse Websites that are specifically addressed to young women, and it was only a few results.So in 2007, 9-year-old Sydney (with a little help from her mother HorseCrazyGirls.com) started to create the community could not be found on the website.
How Sydney makes money online
Sydney designed your site to a place to gather for girls and their love for horses and ponies. Users submit pictures, stories and even horse name ideas. Horse Crazy Girls has more than 10,000 published opinions to date.But Sydney soon realized that they could benefit from the web site of the earning opportunities and at the same time the site reader
Sydney Reviews horse-related products, gear and games and earns money for ad click-throughs and product purchases.
How many bloggers and web-based solopreneurs, the major part of Sydney's result of affiliate programs such as Amazon and Google Adsense revenue.
It also hosts free gifts for the promotion of the products, you reviews, and is currently working on a Secure Site sponsorship with top brands of horse-riding equipment such as helmets. It is also planning to start their own product line.
Business - not ballet - after school
children today are busy - just ask a mom runs a makeshift chauffeur service, bouncing between football training, ballet recitals and the Sunday school.
When I asked, Sydney, as it manages a business in their free time, while juggling school and riding lessons, said to prioritize and delegate
"i probably spend 4-6 hours on the site each week during the school (in)," said Sydney, "but I can spend a lot more time on the website on the summer."
Sydney still some help from her mother during the school year, but increasingly leads the business on their own. The website looks more traffic (and higher earnings) during the holidays when readers buy gifts for the horse-obsessed girls in your life.
Sydney says that it is preparing for the traffic before the time when you on vacation. You have heard it before: Flexible working hours are a great advantage of the self-employed activity!
Sydney also took the help of a third party IT companies for the administration of the site the back-end, as well as a virtual assistant for vocational education and training for the large number of submissions content on the website for plagiarism and quality.
This allows you to optimize your Sydney personal involvement with the business. You can set the focus on the larger goals as a pending site redesign.
The total time required for the administration of the site? A total of approximately 10 hours per week, evaluates it. Not bad for the result at least $400 a month - especially for the fulfilment of the work.
"I find it really worthwhile," said Sydney - and the fact that the buffer is priceless.
Crazy Horse lessons (not the horse type)
Sydney grew next to your website and you valuable insights on the way.
Since it was so young, if the site is launched, Sydney do not have specific ideas for what kind of content to include. The supervision is understandable, but it is hard hit, if Google implements Panda in 2011
"After Panda was clear to us that it was a mistake, just to opinions and not to the regulation of content," said Sydney. "When we started, we experienced exponential growth, but after panda, growth took a dive."
Sydney has plans to improve the site and grow your business, including the creation of a better layout and the integration of more video content. These improvements, together with the product sponsorship and proprietary product introduction, the future is rosy for horse Crazy Girls.
"I would like to have this website support my riding full time, and have it as my full-time position," said Sydney. But like any savvy business woman, she has a backup plan: go to school, you follow a degree in medicine and to a dermatologist.
Ready for crazy?
Start a freelance business of any kind can be daunting, especially a content-based web business.With so much content already, how can the people on your web site? What can you do to in a large blue sea of links?
Sydney's history gives us the answer: Find the thing that they are enthusiastic about and find out what you can bring in other parts of the passion. In the case of horse Crazy Girls, it was an online community around a common passion.
Then, they remain so - not afraid of hard work. "It may be time-consuming," said Sydney. "It is a part-time job."
You need to be prepared for the rejection and unexpected twists - Sydney persevering despite the Panda stumbling block and will continue to face several brands for sponsorship.
But in the end, the hard work is worth it. There is nothing more beautiful than a paycheck for following your dreams.
"If that is what you want to do, you should do it. It is worthwhile if it is something that you love," said Sydney.
source: thepennyhoarder.com
