J.B.Slife dot Com

Below is a little about each of my sites. Check them out…let me know what you think…leave a comment.

 

Leotard Crazy
(Gymnastics Pro Shop)

Leotard Crazy was started back in July of 2003. Leotard Crazy was originally going to be a gymnastics apparel store. This quickly changed as I noticed that our customers wanted more than leotards. Leotard Crazy expanded into gymnastics grips and wrist/ankle supports by 2004.

The website itself is running on Miva Merchant 5. The site is very simple and easy to browse. As customers browse and place items in thier baskets, they are encouraged to buy with a dynamic “mini-basket” that displays in the right column.

As I refined our advertising and learned to use AdWords, Leotard Crazy became more of a gymnastics power. With little advertising we were selling over $2000 per month by 2005. Today, Leotard Crazy is averaging over $5000 per month with plans to double that by the end of 2008.

Through trial and error (and hard work) Leotard Crazy has grown to be a well known online store in the world of gymnastics. Here at jbslife.com you will learn about my successes and failures in ecommerce. Miva Merchant, SEO, advertising, and website design are just a few of the tips you can look forward to.

The Chalk Bucket
(Gymnastics Community)

The Chalk Bucket is my first and only successful community. Originally started as a way to pull in some extra traffic for Leotard Crazy, it has become much more than that. The Chalk Bucket is one of the premier gymnastics communities on the net today.

The Chalk Bucket was started back in September of 2005 as “The Leotard Crazy Message Boards”. I was just starting to get into forums and though it would be easy to start my own. I was just going to buy the software (vBulletin), add it to my website, and people would start filling it with high quality posts. I was totally wrong.

“The Leotard Crazy Message Boards” sat there for over a year with little activity and hardly any members. I lost interest until one day I logged in and noticed that there were a few members posting. That’s when I figured it out…in order to run a successful community, you must be an active part of it yourself.

I started posting and driving the community forward. It was split off of Leotard Crazy and became “The Chalk Bucket”. Looking into the future I see a very high quality content site with great advertising potential. Right now it is at 280 registered members with a goal of 1000 by the end of 2007.

CountryMusicForums.net
(Country Music Community)

CountryMusicForums.net is my second shot at a vBulletin forum. I had a few reasons that I wanted to started this one.

Linda Rae
My Mom, Linda Rae Slife, is a country singer/songwriter. She is interested in country music. Instead of me trying to start a community all by myself, we have the power of two. It will also turn into a great way for her (and others) to advertise their music.

Stability
I wanted to start in a new niche so all of my sites are not based on one subject. I also wanted to try a much broader niche that I could potentially draw in more members.

I listen to Country Music
I like country music, I listen to it everyday. Why not start a country music community?

Tyler Cruz
Tyler is a young internet entrepreneur whose blog I stumbled across one evening. He runs several different forums. Some of them are very successful and some of them are not. Overall he reports that he makes $256 per day off of his websites. That kind of money is enough to inspire me to at least give it a shot.

CountryMusicForum.net was just started at the beginning of 2007. I haven’t put any effort into it, yet. As soon as my life stabilizes I will kick CountryMusicForums.net into full gear.

When will my life stabilize? My wife and I are expecting our second daughter on March 28th. Then we are going to be moving back to Wisconsin towards the end of May. Once we get moved and I start my new job we’ll be stable…should be early this summer (2007).

Slife Family Website
(My Family Website)

SlifeFamily.com is my family blog. I had this website up a couple of years ago for the birth of our first child. Now, for the birth of our second, SlifeFamily.com is back. This time…BLOG-STYLE. That’s right, it’s a WordPress blog.

Yes, it is my family blog. You’ll find family pictures and info, but this time there is going to be one big difference. I’m going to tell other friends and families how to create their own blogs. SlifeFamily.com is going to be a great “how to” website for family blogging. Does your family have a blog?

NASCAR-Forums.net
(NASCAR Community)

NASCAR-Forums.net was created at about the same time as Country Music Forums. It really didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, so I gave up on it.

Now I have a new plan. I received many positive comments on my skin for CountryMusicForums.net, so I decided to use it here also. It’s the same skin with a different main color and header. It looks kind of evil…how you enjoy it.

I do have one other NASCAR domain that I may try to develop in future.  However, for the time being, this one is proving to be challenging enough.

Anyways…here it is again. Redesigned and upgraded to vBulletin 3.7 Beta 4, NASCAR-Forums.net is ready for the 50th running of the Daytona 500.