Work at Home Moms Articles – WAHM Articles

This week’s interview is with Michelle Shaeffer. Michelle is a work at home mom to three beautiful little blessings and a kitten, and wife to Arlyn. They’re a homeschooling, natural living family.

WAHM-Articles: Hi Michelle! Welcome to the WAHM Articles Blog. I’ve really enjoyed reading your articles at WAHM Articles. I don’t like to read technical “how-to’s” but you share important technical information in a way that’s easy to understand and actually enjoyable to read!

Can you tell us about your business?

Michelle Shaeffer: Elemental Muse offers reliable website hosting and affordable design for solo-prenuers and home based businesses. My info products are available through The Muses Guide

I’ve been designing websites for about 15 years (professionally since 2000) and offering website hosting for almost 4 years. In 2007 I began producing information products for WAHMs.

WA: How does your business help women who work from home?

Michelle: My goal at Elemental Muse is to help work at home moms navigate successfully through the technical aspects of setting up and running their websites by providing reliable hosting with excellent support. The difference between confusion and success for a new business just getting their website online can be the support their designer and/or website host offers.

WA: You also offer many information products to women who want to work from hom. What led you to create these products?

Michelle: The products I offer at The Muses Guide came as a natural extension of the desire to help my clients get beyond just being online to having a website that generates traffics and converts the traffic into sales through smart marketing, newsletter promotion, and other techniques.

So many of my hosting and design clients were struggling with the same questions. I offer consulting services to current clients but my time is limited and I couldn’t help everyone I wanted to. By developing The Muses Guide series I can provide the answers to more work at home moms at very budget friendly prices.

WA: Can you tell us about your new marketing workshop?

Michelle: I’ve been so excited about this project! It’s an 8 lesson course that goes from step one of determining what makes your business and products or services unique and who your ideal customer is all the way to completing a marketing plan with monthly goals. The three marketing strategy lessons contain 130+ free or nearly free ways to market your business. Each lesson is included in PDF and mp3 format so busy moms can fit it into their schedule in whichever way works best for them. The overall goal is to create a marketing plan that’s packed with options and based on personality so that it’s something enjoyable and successful.

WA: You mentioned that your workshop includes a section on promoting your business with articles. What are some of things you teach in that section?

Michelle: First, that it’s really not as difficult as you might think to promote your business with articles! I talk with a lot of women who aren’t sure how to get started or even if they can write an article. They don’t realize that once they get past the initial feelings of uncertainty it’s easy and fun. Women are good at sharing their knowledge and helping others, once we give ourselves permission to do so.

One of the great aspects of article marketing is the sense of confidence that it helps women build–the feeling that not only can you help others and provide valuable content but that others are interested in what you have to share. A belief in yourself and your products or services is so critical to successful marketing and a successful business. Article marketing can be a confidence booster that helps springboard other marketing efforts.

My favorite bonus tip to share is to sign up for Google alerts. It’s an easy way to see where your articles are being posted online and get a sense of what markets you’re reaching.

WA: Where do you get ideas for the articles you write?

Michelle: Many of my articles start out as an answer to a question either from a client or on a message board. When I begin to answer the same question I’ve been asked several times, it usually hits me then that it would be a good article.

WA: How has writing and submitting articles helped you grow your businesses?

Michelle: A few weeks ago I decided to start an experiment. I setup a website at www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com to promote my ezine, The Muses Brainstorm, and am actively marketing it only with article marketing and the natural results (such as this interview). I haven’t linked to it from my other websites, submitted it to search engines, or done any other promotion of it.

The reasoning behind my experiment is to answer two questions:
1) Does article marketing generate traffic?
2) Does the traffic convert at a higher rate than other marketing techniques?

When someone clicks through a link from an article I’ve written, they are familiar with my writing style and topics I cover, so it’s highly targeted traffic coming from the articles and so far it’s definitely been more responsive. My conversion rate for ezine signups is much higher than the general traffic that hits my other websites.

Writing and submitting articles is a wonderful way to share helpful information and connect with my market.

WA: Thanks Michelle! I would love to hear about the results of your experiment. Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us. Best of luck with your business!

You can read some of Michelle’s WAHM Articles here.

You can also visit Michelle at http://www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com , http://www.themusesguide.com, http://elementalmuse.com or at her blog, http://www.wahspirations.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Article Marketing, Article Writing Tips, Author Interviews, WAHM Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.