Featured Home Business - My Very Own Mail Interview

January 29, 2007 | Author: Eve Lester | Filed under: Business Advice

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Last week, we featured My Very Own Mail as our featured home business. Lisa and I did an interview about her home business, this week, it is posted. :-) After a long ordeal with the cable company, I am finally back online. So here is the interview, lots of great information! Enjoy!

What is your business in a nutshell?
I send fun personalized letter packages to children - once a month, each subscribed child receives a letter from me talking up a great book and encouraging the children to enjoy reading, even if that means being read to, for my younger bookworms. They also receive a fun, easy-to-do craft project, and a goodie, like a bookmark, or stickers, or tattoos, or erasers, etc. The theme of the book I talk about, and the craft, and the goodie - are all coordinating. For example, this month, we are talking about animals.

What is your day to day like? i.e. - How many hours a day do you work, what is your daily schedule like?
I am generally at the computer all day long, but, along with my letter business, I also do other things online to generate a little income. I try to force myself to get off the computer to do housework, but, that doesn’t always sound so appealing! So I am here at the computer, promoting my business in one way or another, working on letters, blogging (http://www.myveryownmail.com/BookwormBroadcast) or working on my other online endeavors almost all of the time. Can you say obsessed?

What made you decide to start the �letter business�?
I was looking online for work several years ago, getting caught up in one scam after another, when I accidentally did the best possible thing. I bought a $12 ebook - the cheapest one I had ever bought! And inside this little gem, was my answer! The ebook was basically a list of possible businesses you could start from home, and one of the ones listed was personalized letters for kids. I put my own spin on it - the bookworm spin! - and went from there!

How much did you spend to get started?
I don’t think I started with much at all in the beginning, my site was still a geocities site, so it was free. And I think I bought the goodies and such at the dollar store. I already had paper and ink, but I had to buy the big envelopes. And then I went around on the internet promoting it everywhere that I could for free. As I started to make money, I switched to a paid hosting account, which is still quite cheap - $12/month. And I get all the goodies from Oriental Trading Company. I will tell you one neat trick that I bumped into accidentally…I ran out of colored ink - I had been using white paper and lots of pretty colors of ink on my letters. I ran out and didn’t have enough to buy more. I did, however, have enough for colored printing paper. So I used that with black ink. And you know what? It’s a LOT cuter!! Especially when you pair up different colors - my letters are almost always two pages long.

How long has it taken you to start earning an income through this?
The income from it is not at all consistent, and certainly nothing that anyone could live off of. I don’t think - who knows, maybe someone out there could grow it that big. The thing is, the bigger you get - the more hours you are spending putting everything together - and that can take a lot of time! I made some money from it soon after I started, though - when I got my first order. Of course, at that time, that just went back into supplies, and such. The bottom line is, more than anything - it is a labor of love. I love it so much - I feel like I am really ‘talking’ to each child every month!

What are your future goals with the business?
I plan to add more and more resources to my website helping parents help their children learn to read and more importantly, learn to love to read!
I’ve also recently started a mailing list, which I plan to use to communicate with parents about resources I find online, fun ways to encourage reading, and such - and also if there are any specials I am having. You can reach that here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-Bookworm-Bulletin

Thanks for taking the time to work with me this week and for being patient while I get everything worked out with the cable company.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 and is filed under Business Advice. 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.

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[…] Featured Home Business - My Very Own Mail Interview […]

The My Very Own Mail ~~~~~~Bookworm Broadcast~~~~~~ » Blog Archive » Home Biz of the Week Interview wrote on January 29, 2007 - 11:59 am | Visit Link

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