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I have used advertising in a newspaper to start my business. Its expensive and did bring in business and I have repeat customers. I live in a rural area and find I use the internet to locate just about everything including stores in the city. This is a great time to ask after I have already made the commitment but what are your thoughts on having a web site.

What are some likes and dislikes you have re websites that will make mine more appealing. One reason I thought it would be a good idea is to have a map to my home.

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I'm no help on the matter, but would like to know the thoughts of some of the experienced quilters. I am just starting up, and have wondered the same thing. Sometimes just looking things up on the internet is so time consuming, so how much of your time would you have to spend monitoring your web site?

Hope you get some good discussion on the subject!

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You should think about how to target your customers. Will they Google Iowa quilters? If they do that, where will your site be on that long list? How will they find your name or business name? Something needs to draw them to your site.

There have been lots of discussion about this over the years and it seems the consensus is a web site is good if you can generate some traffic. You can do that by blogging and directing to your site (but it may only attract fellow longarmers and not potential customers) or your site can be used to sell goods as well as services. A site is a good place to offer your pricing and a gallery of your quilts, but might only be visited by those who have picked up your business card somewhere and want to see what you offer. But the card draws them to the site--the free-standing site doesn't usually generate much business. Just MHO.

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Most of my business is from my LQS as well as my Guild. All of it is by word of mouth, or someone picks up a business card at the LQS and the owners often refer customers to me. My business card has my contact info on it as well as my flkr site where customers can go and see my work. I have alot of return customers and seem to stay booked up for 2 mos all the time. I tried advertising in one of those travel books but never had one call so I decided it wasn't worth the $ investment. I think it is all about the network. And that's my 2 cents worth.....:)

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