This year is certainly a new beginning for me. I have been running my Cameron Highlands online website for several years and I’m receiving some online business proposal. Some of which, I have no idea how to proceed but definitely there is business opportunity.

Even the simple website that I set up for my company seems to draw many inquiries. So if you were to ask me whether making your own website is worth it or not, I should emphatically say, “Yes!”

The only thing left was up to me to follow up to take up the business opportunity or just leave it hanging there. Doing business online however do has its own caveats. You don’t know who is on the side of the inquiry as you could not see them face to face. You could of course dig up some info online like their website and determine roughly whether they are on the up and up or you could pay some money to some research company to dig up their background. Eventually of course you will meet them face to face to have a better understanding about their character.

I had two recent inquiries via my Cameron website, one was about selling tulips and lilies bulb for forcing and the other is about organizing a charity event. I didn’t have the experience about dealing with either of the above but this brings this quote in mind:

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell them “Certainly I can”. Then get busy and find out how to do it. — Theodore Roosevelt.

So the only thing that hinders me now is whether I want to take up the challenge and whether I have the time to go about doing it.

Not to mention, my brother-in-law was recently bitten by the photography bug. Having bought himself a Canon DSLR camera, he now wants to take on wedding photography jobs on part-time basis. He needed a partner to cover a wedding event, and I guess either me or my brother had the sufficient photographic skills to do it. It would be tiring all day long affair usually held on a weekend. The money could be good, but it was tiring and I need the equipment to do it. I still have not bought any DSLR, not even a low end unit but unfortunately if I need to go semi-pro, I would need a mid range equipment. My brother said he could borrow from his friend, so maybe that might help out initially till I get my own.

Having your own website certainly helped to generate lots of leads and business opportunity. No need to do so much cold calling when people would call you instead. This was the pull vs push of marketing and selling. And I rather have pull than push anytime.

Venturing into making my own website with Site Build It! (SBI) was truly a good learning experience. Many of the principles that they taught could be re-applied on my other website. Sometimes you didn’t even need to be a SEO expert. Just follow the guide and use your own common sense, some hard work, and patience, slowly but surely you could see the results.

I have a few people asking me whether it was really worth it to take up SBI? I would say yes despite its price tag, it was one of my better decisions. No regrets here. I enjoyed building the website, making the best website, out beating the other website in terms of quality content so much that they wanted to copy my stuff. Thank goodness they complied and removed my articles from their website.

SBI was not just your usual web hosting provider, they are touting themselves more than a web hosting company by providing you with the tools together with the steps, knowledge and motivation to make a successful website that could be used for creating business opportunities, generating sales leads, or even starting your online retail store. Many people has become very successful by using the SBI method, so successful that they could quit their dingy day job and never need to rely on a 9 to 5 day job and have so much freedom to boot.

Yes, it is possible, but to be truly successful, you need to have an idea, a spark, a passion and most of all, persistence and dedication to slug it out. Success can be elusive, but if you try hard enough, you will get somewhere.

So here’s to success. After all, success is not a destination, but an ongoing journey. See you there soon.