Rose DesRochers - Todays-Woman.net

Hi Rose! Tell us about your businesses.

Thank you Nicole for featuring me. I'm Rose DesRochers and I'm the founder and administrator of Todays-Woman.net. Todays-Woman Writing Community first opened its doors to web surfers in 2002, at this time it was a woman's network. Since then it has become a writing community for both men and women, connecting writers from around the world in one virtual space.

Today's Woman is administrated by Rose DesRochers, Shawn DesRochers, SteveReichard and moderated by a team of four. The community is made up of those looking to be published, hobby writers, published authors, and publishers themselves. Todays-Woman.net has a full online forum with over 56 communities built inside of it. We have writing lessons, a full directory of links to literacy resources, famous poets, online book store, book reviews, and over 150 calls for submissions to help writers get published, plus many more features.Though the main focus of our community at one time was a poetry community, todays-woman.net is now the online community for creative writing, fiction writing, story writing, poetry writing, writing contests, freelance writing, song writing and all other genes of writing. More can be read about us on our company about page.
http://www.todays-woman.net/tos-about.html

Do you have any recent news, products, a new launch, freebies, etc.

The newest addition to the Today's Woman Writing Community is our new classified section, which allows writers to easily browse current contests, freelance jobs, and calls for submission. We've also added a section, to assist writers in getting the word out about their new book by requesting book reviews. The e-Classified software allows me to easily add, modify, or remove categories through the online control panel. In addition ads are listed in our weekly newsletter at no extra charge. Those interested in listing a job opportunity may contact me through the Todays-Woman.net contact form. Browse Today's Woman Writers classifieds
http://www.todays-woman.net/writer-classifieds.html

What are your absolute favorite products or resources you can't live without in your business (or have helped you the most)?

Three things I can't live without are Mentors/ members, a great webmaster and a content managing system. If it were not for my husband and webmaster Shawn DesRochers, owner of
invision-graphics.com I would not be online. Therefore I owe him a great deal of gratitude. One of the benefits that have helped me the most is having wonderful mentors and loyal members. This is a group of individuals - far too many names to list. These caring people have no alternative motives, but to offer their experience in the writing industry. This group of mentors which consist of editors, copywriters, publishers, webmasters, writers, and authors assist me in learning as much as I can about the writing industry.

I also think one of the most beneficial features of todays-woman is the divix Content management system designed by invision-graphics.com. Maintaining a website takes a lot of time and man work- in this case woman work and the content management system provides writers with an ability to submit articles, press releases, author interviews and more. I just need to authorize them. A must have for an online business like mine.

What's your best advice for someone just starting out in online business?

Starting a new online business can be time consuming. I think that you need to find a "balance" between your commitment to your new online business and family commitment. Also new business owners should take advantage of the resources available to them. There are a great number of useful articles on the net from experts in their field. I think that establishing a friendly relationship between customer and owner is important too. I'm on a first name bases with my community members and they tend to like that. There are a number of ways to drive traffic to your website.

• Exchange links - Link exchanging is a great way to drive traffic
• Write free articles- I quickly learned that writing articles and submitting them to online publications was a great way to attract new readers and drive traffic to your website.
• Google and other search engines love content - Update your content on a regular bases.

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