How this site got started
Dear Reader,
When I formed my web-designing business, Web Nation, Inc. in 1995, there was absolutely no information on what made a web site successful. We needed to learn, and learn fast. And so we started Credit Info Center as an experiment to find out what worked to bring traffic to a site. After some trial and error, we determined that content was the key, and devoted the rest of our time and budget to this aspect.
It worked, because we got lots of traffic even though the original site was pretty spare. We hope we've come a long way and made the information much more presentable since then. It's been fun! Geeks that we are, we became addicted to answering your mail and reading up on the world of credit. The information presented here comes from the sum total of our research, our readers, articles in the news media, and my own extensive experience in the mortgage industry. Here's the story in a nutshell.
A long time ago in a world without the internet far, far, away...
There lived in a ugly gray cubicle me, a mechanical engineer who thoroughly hated her job and found herself trained to do nothing else. One boring day, my manager informed me that our company was understaffed in the IS department. (No surprise.) I was asked: could I write an analysis program for a bearing design? My manager waived off the fact that I didn't know how to program. 'Oh and by the way, we need it done in a month,' he added. Well I learned to program in C, and actually had something working by the deadline. To my utter surprise and amazement, I loved it. I guess I shouldn't have been so amazed: I'm a Trekkie, prefer email to the phone and have lots of techno gadgets. Anyway, at the time, I never considered my new tasks a career switch; I worked at least half time with the typical boring mechanical engineering tasks (involving calculators, reports and useless meetings). Software just seemed like a fun new way to do engineering. After about 8 years, and after becoming disillusioned with the world of government contracting (I was laid off), I wanted to try something new. I left engineering behind, including software. Or so I thought.
From software to finance:
During my period of unemployment, I went to refinance my house. And along with a loan application, the mortgage company persuaded me to become a loan officer. Why not, I thought. I learn fast. I like people. I filled out a job application. I forgot that the guy recruiting me was a salesman, and the reality of what he promised me might be a trifle less rosy. The pay, as promised, was good, but it was a 24-hour-a-day assignment to make the big bucks. And as a side bonus, everyone in the business is stressed out. You know the old Hierarchy of Needs pyramid which breaks up into layers, in order of importance, what people need the most? Well food and shelter are at the all-important bottom layer of the pyramid's foundation, and in the mortgage business you're messin' with a very primary need. The sanest people go berserk when it comes time to buy a house. I learned to calmly look an angry, screeching behemoth in the eye and say sympathetically, "I would feel the same way you do. You're right, this situation isn't fair. Let's do something about it."
And so I learned more about credit every day. I specialized in working with people who were mostly "B", "C", and "D" credit (less-than-perfect to purely awful credit). I learned to fix people's credit not only because I'm a nice person and I hate to see nice people get screwed, but also because my livelihood depended on closing loans. If a loan didn't close due to credit, I didn't get paid.
Put it all together...
Anyway, after all that high-stress fun in the mortgage world, I decided to return to software. And just about the time I did, the Internet explosion happened. Perfect. Web Nation opened its first website, a subscription-viewing mortgage/real estate site. This site combined my two strengths: credit and software. We paid good money to get it looking as bleeding-edge as possible: lots of graphics, flashing signs, all the things that are now verboten in web page design. We were so proud! However, initial traffic was abysmal. We put our heads together. Pretty didn't cut it. So what would drive up the traffic?
To increase traffic, I thought, why not publish what I knew about credit as an added "bonus"? Very little information was available to the general public. So one day I stayed up all night and banged out the first 9 pages of what was to become Credit Info Center. Those pages were admittedly amaturish-looking and plain, but they brought in the traffic. The mortgage site is long gone, our pay-for-view customers never did arrive in large numbers. The credit site? Without ever actively marketing, we had advertisers approach us about placing ads. To date, I have answered over 5000 emails regarding letters about credit, and have spent 6 years researching the topic. The site has grown from its original 9 pages to more than 100. The moral of the story? Content, content.
Hope you enjoyed this little tale,
Kristy Welsh
President and CEO
Web Nation, Inc.
7904 E. Chaparral Rd
Suite 110-604
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
P.S. I know the Internet's been around since 1969, I just took a little creative license with the wording.
For all of our site disclaimers, go here.
Document last modified Tuesday, 11-May-2004 14:39:11 EDT
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