Lisa Buben knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But she might never have broken into online marketing without one.
Buben has become a maven of sorts. As owner and operator of ecommerce sites like Fancy Scrubs (her first) and another site Fancy Chef Uniforms, she learned the art of online marketing first hand — by trial and error.
But it all might never have happened except for a fateful day four years ago. That’s when an unexpected event changed the direction of her life.
“My husband had dragged me to a seminar on a Saturday in February and the only reason I went was for the FREE lunch,” she remembers. “I got interested when I learned it was about SEO and SEM as I was starting to sell those programs to clients at my day job at the newspaper.”
Online Marketing Offers New Opportunities
In fact, Buben had spent most of her life in the newspaper business, beginning as a typist and working her way up to graphic designer and finally multi-media sales person.
But the experience opened Buben’s eyes to new possibilities, and she and her husband attended additional seminars in online marketing and started their online business from there.
Four years later, she admits there have been ups and downs, particularly in the area of search.
“It’s exciting when we are on the upside and disappointing when on the downside,” she says. “I don’t give up easily so no plans to change as we are on the upswing this past month.”
She admits smiling that had she known the work that would be involved when attending that seminar four years ago, she might have run the other way.
But she also admits she enjoys working on her websites and the time she spends on social media.
Lisa Buben Launches Inspire to Thrive
But Buben soon found there were even more demands on her time.
“Many friends were asking me about the online business and how to do things, so I created Inspire to Thrive, my blog,” she says.
Three years later, Buben says blogging has kept her learning, has helped her meet people, has allowed her to help others and even has served as a great stress reliever at times.
More recently she also discovered the BizSugar community.
“I started using BizSugar this year and saw a lot of traffic from it,” she says. “I was able to meet more bloggers and learn more every time I visited BizSugar. I really like the quality of the content there and the response from the community. What could be better than that? It’s a wonderful community.”
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