My husband introduced me to the blog world and of course the blogs he's interested in. I am really trying to find woman online communities to connect with. I spoke with a friend/neighbor at the park yesterday who mentioned a particular blogsite Mommies with Style that she regularly visits. This particular blog's sole existence is to help moms find products that all moms are interested in, which ranges to just about everything! Can you imagine one stop shopping while the kids are in bed? What a great idea!

Marketing, marketing, marketing! Can't do enough! I sent my first promotional newsletter and I am getting a great response. In two days, I've added 42 potential customers to my database! I knew word of mouth was a powerful tool! I hope the momentum keeps up. I also put an advertisement in my daughter's school spring program that will potentially be seen by 2000 parents/grandparents! More marketing ideas to come!

This weekend I've learned alot about website ranking and tactics to boost website ranking. We have initiated some of these tactics and from what I've read, it could take up to 6 months to increase your ranking. Consider this part of the marketing process, which is always ongoing anyway. Speaking of marketing, I sent out my Kaboodle Kids launch promotion email today. My hope is that these 100+ people feel an incentive from my promotion to forward my email to at least 5 to 10 friends that would be interested in kids clothes. More marketing ideas in the works. keep posted.

I have my business cards! I am officially marketing now, not that I haven't been before but I have the card to give those people I do talk to. I've been passing them out all weekend. I am sure there will be a few people that wonder how they got my card this weekend. I've also been working on becoming SEO friendly. I want those that search on the internet for unique fun kids clothes see Kaboodle Kids on the first page. I understand this may take some time but that is my goal!

Today I processed my second order! I processed it through the telephone order module for a neighbor friend. It was quite easy and I am glad to have practiced on a friend than a customer I didn't know. I do need to remember that not only do I need information from my customer, but that I need to provide them back information, like the amount of the invoice. I almost forgot to do that so I need to polish that a bit. I am sure it will come with practice.

Today I mailed out the first package to Kaboodle Kids first customer! It was exciting and a day I'll never forget. I even wrote a hand written note to my first customer. It seems so long ago since I left my job 3 months ago to start Kaboodle Kids. I am very proud and happy today.

Today Kaboodle Kids went live!.. accidently! And I am happy as clams it did!

I was working on the test website tweaking the category pages and metatags trying to get everything done so that I could go live soon. Periodically, I was checking emails as I was expecting a specific email to come in when I noticed an email notifying me of an order. I thought that was funny as I hadn't put through a test order so I checked the order menu in the admin panel and sure enough I had my first order of $35.00 which had gone through the credit card authorization process. I realized that I have a real order, but how did it happen? I thought I was in a test region. I realized the domain switch must have occurred and I am finding out that technically it is a live test region once the domain is pointing in the right direction... which did happen today!

So I called my first customer and congratulated her for being my first customer. She was tickled pink and what was great was that she didn't see those pages missing some text that actually stated blah blah blah (those were my reminders to put text there)! So, of course, I took out those blah blah blahs and I am still working on putting that text there. Hopefully I'll have all this completed before I send out my mass email to the 132 people on my mailing list that I hope are still interested in Kaboodle Kids, as I was led to believe.

It has been a whirlwind since I got the first shipment... stock updates, pricing, photo shoots. Lots of tedious and some exciting work. Overall, I am having a blast! Now I feel like I am ready to go live. I've felt this way for the past few days. I am waiting for my domain transfer. The waiting is killing me. I am thinking of all the if onlys as I am retracing the month long process to purchase the domain KaboodleKids.com. For a process that could have taken less than a week, it sure took way too long. This week has given me time to sit back and review the website as it stands. My father-in-law tested the site and a friend in Boston looked it over and gave me some feedback as well. There have been some great tweaking of the website this week, so I shouldn't be as perplexed as I feel. In time, the site will be up and running and I will be busy as a bee processing orders and marketing my company!