Hello and thank you for visiting our blog!

My name is Stephen Malan and I have been in the e-commerce business for a few years now after leaving the big corporate life. I was a regional trainer for a large bank holding company, which required me to be flying about the country 3 weeks out of 4. After about a decade of the constant business travel, I had enough!

I was always interested in computers and the internet and especially with the e-commerce business model. I paid someone who was my mentor around $3000 to train me in the basics of website design, keyword selection, site optimization, etc. Which looking back was money well spent. I however stumbled along the way and hired a SEO company on a $2,000 six month contract to optimize my new e-commerce site. At the end of the six month campaign, I had shall we say, dubious results. I did not elect to extend the contract and went searching for a better solution. I then found after days of research a software program that would allow me to optimize my site as well do a lot of other SEO chores myself! I also found a great web designer and a company in Washington that manages my link building program. I have built a good team of professionals to assist me.

As a result of that endeavor my e-commerce site is now highly ranked on Google for our primary keyword and we have other #1 rankings and many first page keyword listings on Google as well as MSN, Yahoo and all the others. We ship our products worldwide and our business continues to grow by large percentage gains each quarter. Last May, we were approached by NetShops.com to see if we would be interested in selling our site. We politely declined.

Because of that long learning process, I have come to know, what works, what doesn’t and I am always looking at new things that MAY work! In starting this blog, the goal is to create a forum to show what worked for me and also to have others show what has worked for them or perhaps what hasn’t worked for them. Blogs are a sharing platform and we want to be able to have a robust blog with people sharing various products, techniques and other services that may have worked or may not have worked.

So feel free to post comments and ideas and perhaps a solution or two! No one has a corner on the market when it comes to website development, internet marketing or even start-up business ideas!

Thanks for dropping by!

Stephen Malan