An Internet Entrepreneur Story – My Story

What makes me want to write a blog about internet entrepreneurism? What makes me qualified? Hold on to your seats for the very exciting Christie Ingram, Internet Entrepreneur story. OK, it is not exciting, it is more slow and steady, maybe exciting if you love the children’s story the Tortoise and the Hare. If you have been at this internet game for any length of time, it is probably a lot like your story.

I can be described as a serial entrepreneur, I have tried a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, had some successes and learned a ton along the way. Each one of my failures, or un-successes have given me the knowledge or skill to try the next thing.

It started in the early 2000s, my health problems made working outside of the house impossible. I know there are a lot of people out there, who like me, because of an illness, started their own businesses so they could work in the robe, take the time needed when not feeling good and not having to feel guilty about calling in sick - again.

My husband and I were always what I call “scheming” – dreaming up business ideas. We had been doing this since before we were married. We were both bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, and dreamed of having a successful company one day.  He was working full time at a bank, but he definitely wanted to work for himself one day. Suddenly, we had our chance …

We started off with an e-commerce store, which was fun. My husband built the store with Zen Cart. We sold pretty little gifts and accessories for women. I learned about meta tags and traffic and buying and all sorts of things. I also learned that Canada Post charges a lot more to ship than the USPS and since most of my customers where in the US, I was losing money fast. That really sucked, I was good at buying things that became popular, I loved it, we had customers, but was still losing money. Booooo.

During the e-commerce phase, I started learning more about getting traffic and affiliate marketing, thanks to the Thirty Day Challenge. I thought it would be awesome to use my love of makeup to create a site that had affiliate links and create a free social networking site (again, my husband built it, this time using Ruby on Rails) about people who loved makeup or wanted to learn about it. I created YouTube tutorials and had a great time, but the amount of time I put into it and the amount of affiliate sales (the $$$) did not equal out. I learned two very important lessons, first, research your market … it is a buying market or is it 12 year old girls searching for how to info. Secondly, it is better to build up a site and then incorporate a community aspect afterwards – the old cart and horse.

And that brings us to Ingram Internet Enterprises, that is what “our thing”. We create web apps for small businesses, both custom apps and apps we create and have customers (like Wigify, our affiliate marketing app / network). We are both working full time on it, at home, although we do have separate offices on separate floors.  He handles the coding, the  building of the apps and support, and I handle everything else. It is working out really well and it is so awesome to finally be living our dream.

I am adding this blog to the mix, because I feel there is a lot to talk about in the world of internet entrepreneurs. There are so many different ways to have a web company, there are lots of things to apply of all of us. This is not a “how to make money online” blog, I want to focus on the issues we face, new products and services that may help your business, interviews with other web entrepreneurs and just plain awesome stuff.

What I would love to hear: How did you get your start on the web? What kind of posts would you like to see on this blog?