From Dog Treat Baker to Dog Treat Webmaster

In May 2005 Baggins and I lived in pretty Doylestown, PA with my husband in a 2nd floor apartment of a large white Victorian house.

My husband and I both worked in museums--he giving tours at the NJ Statehouse and I worked at a small historic house museum just outside of Philadelphia.

Museum work doesn't pay well and jobs are hard to find. Then, budgets are constantly cut and pay freezes are common. There had to be a better way!

I wanted to start a part time business I could grow that would supplement my unfortunate museum reality salary and maybe one day allow me more freedom. (My dark secret is I really wanted to be self-employed.)

So I took a look around.

I had a really cute dog ;) I liked to cook and I had an interest in nutrition so I started baking dog treats for Baggins and our neighbors.

Baking

The response was exciting. The dogs gobbled down the treats (no surprise there) and the people raved about them. I had it in my head to start a website about dogs but didn't really know how to go about doing that.

Instead, I started selling dog treats at the Saturday morning Farmer's Market in Doylestown, PA.

And when some acquaintances who ran a pet shop said they liked them and wanted to sell them, I decided to go for it.

But as the market season wound down, I wanted to spend less time baking dozens of treats at night after work.

So Tired

After all, baking every night after my full-time job until 9 or 10:00 was tough and then I had to get up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays to be at the Farmer's Market until noon. All for a profit of maybe $50 dollars. This was too time intensive!

I researched alternatives online and wondered if I could build a website.

Build a website? Me? As my husband says, "You barely could turn on a computer when I met you." And he's sort of right. I was not exactly embracing the computer age. But I thought I could share my love of dogs with other dog lovers through the Internet and build it into a business of some kind.

How I didn't know. There were all those Get Rich Quick things everywhere online and that didn't seem right to me.

Things Start to Click!

Then I discovered SBI! SBI stands for Site Build It and it helps you turn your hobby, passion, interests into a business. This sounded interesting! I researched it for days.

Reading the story of a guy named Elad was a big part of why I decided to take a chance on SBI.

SBI is designed for those who've never built a website and need some guidance. Even more experienced "techie types" find it useful.

It's fun and simple to build a website about something you love.

I was so thrilled to see visitors coming to my site and hearing from them when they write to thank me for sharing these dog treat recipes. And it's beyond thrilling to make money doing this!

Now it's 2009.

I get 500-700 visitors a day and growing. My family is amazed that my "little" website gets so many visitors.

I still work in the museum field but I have created a supplemental income through my love for dogs and their people. I've seen the proof in my site and others.

And there's a sense of accomplishment knowing I did this! It's so gratifying to know people enjoy visiting my website. They write me thank you emails and share their stories and dogs with me. I truly needed this.

Anyway, thanks for reading and happy baking!

Jen & Baggins