I never felt like I was so far "Over The Hill" until I started the project of creating a website about seven months ago. This experience has been one of the most challenging and consistently changing experiences that I have ever had in my life. And, I say that to also say, this journey seems to be an ongoing challenge to the percentage of my brain that I have used all my life. Everyday, I learn something new and completely foreign, which seems to only bring new completely foreign directions that I am supposed to be taking. Just yesterday, I was told that I need to create a "squeeze page". This is after I have already managed to begin to understand blogging, twittering, search engine optimization, web hosting, "html coding" and the list seems to grow. When I first started this "Educational Experience", I was surprised to learn that after I had spent about 2 months of trying to create a web site on one of the "do it yourself" website design sites, that in order to sell, I needed to have an e-commerce site built. Being open to new ideas, I contacted the Website Designers of my "do it yourself" group, and they told me that I would have to wait for a month before I could even talk to the designer that they assigned me to build my site. After, waiting for the month, it was a very disappointing experience to learn from the designer that he cannot build my site because I was using too many dropship products for him to be able to build it properly. In the meantime, I had finally weeded through all of the unscrupulous wholesaler offers and was satisfied that I had found a reputable company to give my money to that would help me find honest wholesale companies. Of course, this led me through the maze of a group of individuals that would tell me how wonderful they found various organizations to be and that they made $100,000 the first month that they opened their e-commerce store. This lesson was to give me a good understanding of "affiliate programs" and I was very fortunate that I didn't get caught into a web of people taking my money by me purchasing something that these folks had never even used.

So, now that I have waited a month only to find out that the designer that I spoke to said that what I needed done was not going to work, I began my quest of finding a designer that could do what I needed done. After talking to several groups that didn't even understand my concepts, I found a person that seemed to relate to my ideas. Of course, then we had all the preliminary signing of contracts and paying my money. She is very interested in my ideas at this point and feels she can do a wonderful job of "making it pretty". Of course, at this point I didn't understand that she couldn't spell very well and that would be an issue at some time later when it was published without my knowledge and all my friends called to tell me how to spell "Welcome". After five weeks or so, the website is completely ready for me to do my part, theforgetmenotshopstore.com or fmnshop.com  -for short. My training was a few hours and, again, as I mentioned, my computer experience has not been since childhood. I figure I am a smart person and I can figure this out myself. After all, I had just spent six months building a website for myself that wasn't even going to be a functional part of my ecommerce business. The site is still available on line and is theforgetmenotshop.com. It was kind of fun to build, I am just not too sure what to do with it. lol. Oh, by the way, did I mention that to build my "non-functional website, I had to add microsoft windows to my Mac because the sitebuilder did not work with a Mac machine. That took quite a while and several hundreds of dollars to find someone to help me with that fun task.

The store was all ready to go on Friday and on Sunday I was enrolled in an all day "How To Be Successful Selling On the Internet" workshop. I don't even want to talk about it, but the expert conducting the class tore my ideas, my website, my product selection and everything to bits. Basically, I was told to tear everything up and start over. It is a good thing that I don't live near a tall bridge.

Luckily I had a young computer friendly person sitting with me in the workshop and she had an understanding of my ecommerce vision. She convinced me that it would be crazy to let this unique idea go strictly because of one guy's opinion and there are other ways to be seen on the internet. So, here we are loading the store with about 500 products so far and only about 4000 more to go. We are writing policies, individual descriptions of products, coding and twittering, facebooking, and in the meantime searching ways to add just the right adwords and make this unique idea of Delayed Delivery a household word. My initial marketing research told me that it is an idea whose time has come. It is just getting the rest of the world to realize that it is finally an actual reality and maybe even do a bit of goggling search. We offer it as a service and hope that people find a need for it too. I am also doing the "old fashioned" marketing through the Chamber of Commerce and local area. I have been getting inspiration through "America's Got Talent" and I just keep typing and talking. American's do have talent and unique ideas and we do need to follow our dreams no matter how old we are.

This ecommerce adventure has been an experience that I will never forget and may be the biggest of my life. Having joined several forums, I have found that I am not alone in this experience and I must say it makes me feel better to hear other's stories. Some days I feel so overwhelmed I long for those old days of typewriters and rotary phones, but it is learning that keeps us alive and believe me there is no learning experience that I have found more frustrating, amazing and actually exciting then this one. If anyone is on this journey with me, all I can say is keep making that lemonade !!!!

This project has been so consuming that I am taking the time to find videos and jokes and articles regarding people from my era who find themselves moving into the computer world. It has really been entertaining and I am including some here for your enjoyment. Let me know if you have any stories to tell. Thanks guys. Visit my store please............. Any and all suggestions are welcome - just be gentle -- lol