From Fool to Beginner Experience in Women's Shopping
After having a child and not going back to work, I had already become unaccustomed to the constrained life: waking up early in the morning, rushing to get ready, squeezing onto the bus, heart racing for fear of being late, pushing into elevators just before they close, even one minute late would still be considered tardy. At work, I still have to deal with that nauseating manager, play politics with colleagues, and at the end of the year, rush around anxiously trying to meet performance targets and secure contracts. Although the pay was decent, it always felt like this wasn't a life worth living, so I decided to start my own business.
I initially thought about opening a small shop on Taobao, selling some items. The store opened, but I quickly realized that getting rich wasn't as easy as I imagined. The number of similar shops on Taobao is comparable to the number of ants, and my prices didn’t offer any advantage because the cost of goods was high. Selling at a discount would only result in losses, as people couldn't see me amidst the vast ocean of sellers. I purchased a lot of inventory, but selling on a newly opened Taobao store was indeed difficult. Still, I persisted!
Thinking about it a lot, continuing down this path wasn't a solution. After discussing with my husband, we decided to set up another online shopping mall! However, this also troubled me for several days because I myself don't know how to write programs. Though I studied computer science before, it has nothing to do with programming settings. Several people quoted me prices ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan. Dizzying! My small-scale business couldn't afford such expenses.
With no other options, I had to find a way to save money. After searching online and putting in a great deal of effort, I finally saw a glimmer of hope. On Hao123, I found a domain name and virtual hosting service provider called Naisenic (http://www.nicenic.com) that offered an online shopping mall system with their hosting space. Later, after contacting them and trying it out, it basically met my requirements. All I needed to do was pay for the domain and hosting fees, and they installed the program for free. Although I still had to add content myself, this saved me several thousand yuan, making it worth it.
After the website went live, I hurriedly told all my relatives and friends, asking them to take a look and help increase the click-through rate. A friend asked me if someone else made the website for me, and when I replied that I did it myself, they were astonished. It made me feel proud.
Working for myself is really engaging; I dream about work, and the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my website. Everything I see reminds me of my website. When I used to work for others, I was never this dedicated; I would only complete tasks on time, neither late nor leaving early. After work, I would completely forget about work-related matters. Of course, this shows how hardworking I am now.
Baidu has been very friendly to my website, quickly indexing it and updating daily. Now, it can update within one to two hours, and the search results for the website's content are quite high up, many appearing on the first page, sometimes even as the top result. However, Google seems to lag behind, which troubles me a bit, but I'm continuously working on improving it.
Now that the website has broken even, it earns me a monthly salary, which makes me extremely happy. I've decided to work hard and keep going!