From Humble Wordpress Blog to Online Magazine

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Once upon a time (July 9, 2006) I started a humble and simple Wordpress blog with zero budget and zero design… just a great name and a vision to make Startup Princess a world wide site for women entrepreneurs. I knew I needed to buy our URL even if it wasn’t hosted on Startup Princess.com we redirected traffic for 10 months to our wordpress blog. I still regret that we lost 10 months to a different site, but fortunately Fairy Godmother Sarah Lewis of Findable Blogs took heart and sponsored our “move” to our new site, many upgrades, answered tech questions, and helped us figure out a way to manage all of our profiles. Sarah designed our current more stylish look with Startup Princess Kimberly Schwede’s awesome logo for us.

I was happy to build a readership here, yet the site had a lot of limitations and I desperately wanted to look more professional and to be taken seriously by the entrepreneurs we were trying to reach yet we still had zero budget. I learned a great deal about faith, patience and hope. I also learned that the definition of “desire” is motivated by ACTION… thus, “Make a Wish, Make it Happen” has been a great theme for this company, for me, and for our community.

I brainstormed, sweated, prayed, and discussed the future of Startup Princess with strategic advisor Peter Tennis, our fantastic Fairy Godmothers Janet Meiners, Nancy Cadjan, Wendy Piersall, Rachael Herrscher, and Holly Buchanan, Erika Wilde, Danielle La Porte, Laura Posey, Sarah Lewis, Laura West, Cathy Gonsalves, Sarah Morgenstern, Jory DesJardins, Stacey Kannenberg, Kim Scoville, Deborah Gardner, Heather Ledeboer, Carol Rice, Kristen Lamb, all the Startup Princess readers who’ve left us comments and given us ideas and my partner Leslie Smoot! Each of these incredibly dear friends, talented and successful women volunteered their time not only in providing business advice, but in providing emotional support when I was hitting my head against the wall and was uncertain of our future.

At times it was painfully frustrating because we were growing and no one knew it on the web! We were reaching 2000 uniques daily and still appeared like a 1-person show when really there were 27 writers that supported the site as Fairy Godmothers. We held a statewide conference and couldn’t direct people to an adequate homepage where they could find info about the event… yet over and over I felt directed to keep patient with the process and that in time my wish would be fulfilled in a way that would make sense financially and fulfill our needs. I got bids, lots of them– $600 for simple redesigns all the way to $20,000 for a very comprehensive one like Divine Caroline. I didn’t want to get a loan, investor, so these possibilities were not to be.

So instead of focusing on our redesign we focused on our business model. The objective was to figuring out who we were more clearly so that when we DID have a website it would be the right one. We researched the industry, attended conferences nationally, and surveyed our members. We have tried to listen to what women entrepreneurs really need and how we can provide that for them to be successful. We focused on what Startup Princess does best.

How Startup Princess Will Continue to Support Women Entrepreneurs:

1. We have a vast community of female experts in business who love to share their experiences, resources, and advice with our audience. We will continue to bring these successful women to our audience in every media channel possible!

2. We love to connect women entrepreneurs to each other and to feature women whom are in early startup stages and celebrate their success to help them receive more recognition, PR, and to promote the good they are doing in the world and for their families.

3. We will continue providing events but we will NOT be producing events in every city any time soon, rather we will film and record our events and use the web to reach our national members. We will continue to produce a national conference each Fall and hope that the event will be THE premiere women entrepreneur event in the country one day.

4. Our objective is that women whom visit our site will be encouraged, that they will get solid “how to” ideas and see how they can move ahead with their business ideas while fulfilling their roles as wife, mother, and strive to maintain life-balance in the process.

5. We will use online advertising as one stream of revenue and have been accepted into the Forbes Business Ad Network, plus have many sponsors waiting to advertise with us. Our 5-rotation monthly top banner rate is $150 sidebar banners are $75 a month. We have a few spots left for our debut next week. Leave a comment below…

And of course we have many other plans waiting for us to implement, but I’m learning that it’s really been a blessing to grow Startup Princess slowly, I’ve made better decisions because of it and my family has seen me MORE as a result. I’m grateful the day to show our face to the world is soon approaching and you’ll see a more professional approach overall. In some ways I’m a little sad because I’ve enjoyed being your host here so very much. Startup Princess will shift, it will be less of me, and more about YOU… I’ll keep writing of course, however, the new site will highlight many many more people which has always been my desire. You’ve never seen my photo on the cover of this blog, nor will you in the next one because the path of entrepreneurship isn’t about what Kelly thinks is best (I’m learning too!), it’s about bringing you the real-life startup experiences, sharing valuable resources, and introducing the amazing women inspiring us all.

I write this post with mixed emotions… excited to move forward and yet I have a bit of butterflies as well… we’re going to show our most “professional face” now.

Please visit us NEXT Monday, April 21st to see the beautiful new Startup Princess site. Many many thanks to our very generous sponsor Sarah Bray whom after leaving a comment on this blog a month ago is now our partner in development. She’s been truly a “joy” to work with, hence I love her name, S. Joy Studios. She’s a Startup Princess, so who better to recreate our look? Startup Princess is all about increasing opportunities for women entrepreneurs… what a pleasure to give her this chance to shine and for us to look our best! Thank you, thank you Sarah for granting not only my wish, but OUR WISH… over 66,000 (daily readership is over 2400 uniques right now) whom have read our site in the last year and wanted more, deserved more, and now will HAVE more. I love that this company evolved from a simple place… no investors, no grand entrance… like many of you we’re figuring out our way by trial and error, by bootstrapping, by trading resources, and by FAITH.. a story of how when you make a wish it sometimes takes much longer than you ever expect to “Make it Happen”, yet when it does, it is the right time and you’d never want it any other way!

This will be the only post here this week… enjoy the anticipation! Thank you for giving us a reason to grow up and get a larger “castle”. Love and praises to God who has heard and answered my prayers to serve you with a greater voice and influence.

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And for those who’ve enjoyed reading about my pageant journey– I’ve got 6 weeks to go! Focused a lot last week on my platform prep, solidified 3 more sponsors (thank you Startup Princesses Sarah Jane Wright Sarah Jane Studios and Susan McLain, The Writing Way and Bree McKinley of McKinley Electric) and enjoyed getting to know the other contestants better at a couple events. I had the opportunity to stay the night with Mrs Utah 2006 Alicia Warnock when we had a late night party/early morning workshop in SLC. We spent a very fun, late evening chatting with Alicia and Emily who’s also a fashion blogger! BTW, did you hear that Miss USA (who was crowned Friday) is an Entrepreneur? It’s a new trend. Just watch!

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