After working for more than 25 years in local banks, Paula Fondakowski decided to cash it all in for a different kind of green. Last October, she founded GuscleBerry.com, an online garden and home décor products business.
Fondakowski started seriously thinking about the venture in 2005, after her husband Stan convinced her to talk with a Web hosting company, which convinced her it was indeed a mission possible.
GuscleBerry.com – named after the family cat Gus -- offers about 1,000 garden, home decor, kitchen, giftware, bath-and-body and holidays/special occasion products. The site also features free downloadable articles on topics like gardening, health and home improvement.
So far, Guscleberry.com has used pay-per-click advertising in Google AdWords, which paid off well over the Christmas holiday, she says. During January, keywords such as "bath products," "decorative plates", and "fountains and birdbaths" performed the best. At the moment though, she concedes that similar pay per click efforts on Yahoo are meeting with little success.
To supplement these efforts, Fondakowski is exploring the possibilities of advertising on free ads Web sites and with her local chamber of commerce in Easthampton, MA. She's also begun looking into affiliate marketing arrangements.
At the moment, Guscleberry.com has lined up fewer than 100 customers, most of whom are women. "They love the body and bath section," says Fondakowski, who forecasts only about $20,000 in revenue the first year.
Going forward, she plans add more gardening tools to the site, as well as additional link partners and free articles.
