Online resources offer small business owners access to “the free stuff,” according to Debra Simpson, and everybody likes free stuff, she says.
Simpson is owner of Magic In Words, a Carlsbad-based Internet marketing business designed to help entrepreneurs increase traffic to their Web sites.
“I spend a lot of time with my clients teaching them online social networking and how to incorporate those Internet tools into their businesses,” said Simpson, who also produces North San Diego Business, a blog dedicated to North San Diego County business news.
“Most people just need to be shown what the tools are and how to use them, and I think I fit that need,” she said.
In regular podcast interviews with local business professionals and as a guest speaker throughout Southern California, Simpson said she teaches low-cost and no-cost forms of marketing online, while creating passive income via sale of information products.
Simpson said she took out equity in her home to purchase a small-business newspaper in San Diego called The Business Resource, formerly known as Networks.
“I did well for a while in publishing but was unable to overcome the 1993 recession, so I sold the paper and began working in multimedia and Web publishing for McGraw-Hill,” Simpson said.
Simpson spent four years in computer programming for The McGraw-Hill Cos.’ Web sites until the publishing and financial information company closed its Carlsbad office in 2000, at which time the entrepreneur found the path to her current venture.
Fresh Start
Starting over again in the small-business community may have been challenging for Simpson, but she downplays any difficulty she faced during that time.
“I was unemployed, so I started building Web sites for all the small businesses I started for, based on my programming experience from McGraw-Hill,” she said.
But contrary to some assumptions, programming experience is not a must for those looking to create…