Mark Choon

And now, the continuation and conclusion of the short email interview with Mama Duck 

7) What are the best moments that you treasure while doing this? What do you enjoy most?

I really enjoy making people’s custom ideas come to life – when people can say “I had this idea in my head, but couldn’t find it anywhere, then you created it for me and it is just what I wanted”, I know that they will treasure that card and the memories that go with it forever. I also enjoy being able to chronicle my little guy’s development, having those stories written down for his memories as well as for others to enjoy is a wonderful thing as well.

What are your future plans to develop or expand this business further?

The blog will continue to expand and eventually become an entire parenting resource portal, laid out less like a blog and more like an informational site, I already have the design all planned out and I have my future web designer (husband :)) working on it already. The products side also needs to be redesigned, aside from design though, I’m continuing to expand my product examples every day. Right now I’ve been doing a lot of graduation invitations/announcements & open house invitations - http://lilduckduck.com/party-invitations.html , so you’ll see a lot of new examples for those coming out, then you’ll see more engagement & wedding designs - http://lilduckduck.com/engagement-cards.html accompanied by thank you cards - http://lilduckduck.com/thank-you-cards.html , also a full selection of 4th of July cards, back to school cards, Halloween cards, then of course updated designs for the holiday season - http://lilduckduck.com/holiday-cards.html . I’ve just added a new page for the - baby shower invitations - http://lilduckduck.com/baby-shower-invitations.html , which is also being expanded to show other themes (right now I’m mostly doing those on a custom basis, I get e-mails asking for design ideas for a baby animal jungle shower, for example, I send some ideas to the client and then post them on the site as examples with the personal information changed).

9) How do you promote your business?

Blog carnivals, community events, participating in relevant daily memes such as Works for Me Wednesday - http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/shannon/2006/07/works_for_me_br.html - which can be adapted to include toddler and household tips that are both relevant to my blog topic and great for search engine traffic. Just getting to know people via e-mail (responding to their comments) & through different blog events (Wendy’s casting call - http://wendyswhimsies.blogspot.com/ - allowed me to meet blogging friends right away that I still keep in touch with all the time). I also link my blog in my signature on all the parenting forums, on our signature making board (http://pixelperfectsignatures.com/) & in all my e-mails. When I post stories/photos about the little one, I send the link to all my friends and family, rather than just copying it into an e-mail, then they can share with their friends and so on.

10) Have you had any bad encounters with demanding customers?

It comes with the territory, thankfully most of my customers are just wonderful people. Nothing too terrible, you learn from things and build on the experience at least.

11)  If someone were to follow in your footsteps in starting an online business such as yours, what would your advice be?

Research ahead of time. I’ve seen a lot of people who say “I wish I’d known when I started that I need to use search engine friendly permalinks, or that it’s best to be on my own domain rather than Blogger/Typepad, etc” - mostly things that can be learned through just a bit of research, really. It seems overwhelming at first, but it becomes much easier when you just jump into it and try things. I have a local installation of WordPress on my Mac, where I can mess around with templates and coding to my hearts content without breaking the blog (PHP coding was new to me when I started the blog, although I’d done a fair amount of web design in xHtml and CSS), which is a huge help if you want to make your own templates or mess around a lot with pre-made templates.
 
12) What is the one thing that motivates you in running this business?

It’s very important for me to keep the little one here with me & to provide a good life for him, so that’s enough motivation to keep me working :).
 
13) Who were your mentors? (e.g Were they friends, colleagues, networking groups?)

I was fortunate to have several friends who started birth announcement businesses before I did, where I could learn from their experiences and come to them with questions and issues. I know that sometimes there is a competition issue, we were all friends before we started businesses, but if you can find or make friends with similar businesses, it will be a huge help to you.
Thank you again Mama Duck for taking precious time off to answer my questions. I’m sure myself and the readers have learnt a great deal from you and some might definitely take you and your business as an inspiration to create something of their own.