INTERVIEW
John Dilbeck
September 20, 2006
TWT: Are you currently working from home at all?
JD: I work 100% from home. I enjoy the benefits of no commuting, dressing as I please, setting my own schedule, and still having way too much to do in the time I have. I'm a full-time online marketer now. I earn 100% of my income from my home business.
TWT: What was the driving force that led you to investigate working from home?
JD: I am an independent kind of guy and I like charting my own course in life as much as I can. My first home business was selling magazine subscriptions and personalized holiday cards door to door when I was about ten years old. I learned early that I had to work to get the things I wanted. My first goal was to get a new bike. I got it. About 30 years ago, I started my first real business as a computer consultant working from home. I also had several full- and part-time jobs as a college instructor, systems administrator, desktop publisher, and software developer along the way. These jobs came and went, but I always continued my consulting business until I closed it a few years ago. Following that, I went back to what is a family tradition, blacksmithing. There have been blacksmiths in the Dilbeck family tree for over 200 years, and when I quit consulting, I remembered how much I enjoyed smithing metal when my Dad taught me. I specialized in making steel roses and you can see some examples at TheRoseThatNeverWilts.com, even though I am not taking any orders at this time. I enjoy working at home so much that I've probably become unemployable.
TWT: Tell me a little about your family and the steel rose in your profile photo. Are you married? Have any children?
JD: I was married for several years and am still very friendly with my ex-wife and her husband. I have one daughter and three grandkids. I don't get to see them as often as I'd like, but it is always a treat when we can visit. I have one brother, who has been a drag racing fanatic since he was a kid. I started GeorgiaDragRacing.com for him as a gift a few years ago, and it has grown into a very successful niche site. I have talked extensively about how I started forging steel roses at TheRoseThatNeverWilts.com and I hope, one day, to resume making them. I am currently a full-time caretaker for my Mom. She was diagnosed with cancer five years ago, next month. Fortunately, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery removed the cancer and she has had no relapses. Unfortunately, during the surgery, she suffered some nerve damage that left her unable to walk without assistance and she can no longer care for herself. When faced with the decision to put her into a nursing home or bring her home, it was an easy decision to make. I closed my metal smithing business and brought her back home to live in her own home. Last year, she fell twice, about six months apart, and broke each leg in the process. Each accident resulted in several weeks in the nursing home and, even though they took care of her very well, we are doing everything in our power to make sure she doesn't have to go back there. Now, I am always with her. My home office is in the room next to hers and I'm able to work as I want and still be easily accessible when she needs me. I am fortunate to be able to live here and help her. It would be impossible without owning a home business.
TWT: It is wonderful to hear you support for her. Let’s talk about John Dilbeck and Friends web site. How did that come about?
JD: I've had a blog at johndilbeck.editthispage.com for several years, dating back to when Dave Winer was first creating his interactive websites. We didn't know what a blog was, so he called it EditThisPage, which meant that each page could be built using a browser rather than creating a page and FTPing it to a web server. I lost all of the old messages last year, because I forgot to renew it after Mom broke her leg and I was going back and forth between home and the nursing home every day, but I re-started the site when Userland started offering paid hosting. I should have kept a backup, but didn't. JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com is my primary blog, but it is more than that, since it can be used by a team of writers and multiple editors to manage a blog, discussion group, stand-alone pages, and more. My long-term goal is to have several of my friends participate in creating content for the site and managing discussions. It will take some time to reach that goal. All of us are very busy people with the intention of building the site. Right now, I do all of the writing that gets done, but you'll see several friends participating over the coming year. I've been building websites since shortly after there was a World Wide Web, when Lynx and Mosaic were the only browsers - months before the introduction of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. I have been blogging since about the time blogging first started and I've done it on dozens of sites and platforms. I'm always testing to see what results in more viewers and more sales. One of my major problems is that I am interested in way too many things. It would be better if I could focus on one topic, but I would never be happy doing that, so sometimes I spread myself too thin for my own good. Last December, after I had a problem with Blogger.com, I moved all my blogs off their service and I've been creating a network of niche-specific blogs for the last eight months. I should be finished with the infrastructure in the next month or so and then I'll be able to get back to testing things and reporting on them on the appropriate blog. JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com will remain my primary blog, and I invite you all to come and visit. I welcome feedback, critiques, and questions.
TWT: I too have a varied interest and have trouble keeping things nailed down. What about Dilbeck Marketing most excites you?
JD: Being my own boss and being able to work from home. Dilbeck Marketing is a direct off-shoot from Dilbeck Metalsmithing. When I started getting requests for my steel roses, I created a website at JohnDilbeck.com that was used for marketing them. Over the course of a couple of years, I received orders from all over the United States and Canada and queries from Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Over the years, I've experimented with JohnDilbeck.com, and if the site ever had a focus, it has lost it. High on my priority list for this fall is to overhaul that site and bring it back under control. A little over four years ago, I moved from selling my steel roses to affiliate marketing. I had to have a way to earn an income and still be available to help Mom when she needs it. Affiliate marketing, and some network marketing, has enabled me to earn a living working from a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina by selling products and services to people around the world. I could make more money as a computer consultant, but I couldn't do that and still stay at home almost all the time.
TWT: What is your favorite part of working Dilbeck Marketing?
JD: Being able to work whenever I want and do whatever I think is best for me at the time. I love taking the initiative to try new things and I take the responsibility for both successes and failures. I get the opportunity to try lots of products and services and then I do my best to give advice on the items that work best for me. Sometimes I try several competing products before deciding on the one that I think is best and then recommending it to my visitors.
TWT: I believe failure is the sweetener to success. It is good to be responsible with both. What is your least favorite Dilbeck Marketing aspect, if there is one?
JD: The only real negative is that I can't get out and do more person-to-person sales. That is not a negative of the business, but is a reality of helping Mom full-time. I enjoy meeting people and helping them find the success they want. I know of many products and services that offer outstanding value and getting the word out while competing online is more difficult than showing individual clients what I have discovered. When I can be away from home for an hour or so, at most, it allows for running errands, but not scheduling conferences, seminars, presentations, nor sales calls, and I would enjoy doing that. But, I think I have my priorities straight and I'll take care of Mom first.
TWT: How do you feel that Adland helps you in your profession?
JD: I have to admit that Adland has confused me quite a bit and it took some time to start seeing the value of the service and to learn to use it properly. There are so many things we can do at Adland that it is easy to overlook some of them. For instance, I forgot that I had an inbox for receiving messages from other members, and only recently rediscovered it. Adland has done a great job of sending visitors to several of my offers and I really need to do a better job of advertising on the site. I am just now learning about and starting to use the forums and other networking parts of the service.
TWT: How long have you been a member of the Adland community?
JD: I've been a member for a couple of years, but I've only been active for the last three or four months. The more I interact with other members, the better I like the site and the services it offers.
TWT: Tell me how you use the Adland community features and have you found support, friends, relationships here?
JD: Mostly, I've used the advertising features, but more recently I've started participating in the forums, finding new friends, and meeting people I've known from other places on the web. I'm very interested in blogging and one of my new friends is Kenneth -BlogGuy- Sword. I've had some pleasant interchanges with him and even started a new blog on his blogging service. I'm always happy to run into old friends here, such as Linda Miller. She has bought some products from me and I am one of her very satisfied “Send Out Cards” customers. I am pleased to see friends like Diane Walker and Jon Arnold here, both of whom are fellow Cognigen Networks representatives
TWT: Do you use print advertising (ads in papers, magazines, periodicals) and do you find it productive?
JD: In the past, I've advertised in newspapers and magazines with disappointing results. I have had some good results in sponsoring and/or advertising in organizations' newsletters, such as the local Rotary club and other small nonprofits. I've also had good results from participating in, and sometimes being a sponsor of, events put on by local nonprofits. I believe that everyone should give back to their community as they are able. I have plans to start writing a regular column about online marketing and offer it to one of the local newspapers. I think I will have better results in giving away free information rather than advertising. We'll see if I'm correct or not in a few months.
TWT: Are there any other sources of advertising or promotion that you find particularly useful?
JD: Websites and blogs are my primary sources of promotion. Lately, I've done more online advertising on heavily visited sites and I'm exploring using traffic exchanges and safelists. I'm having pretty good success with the traffic exchanges, so far, but I still get much better results from the visitors who find one of my sites in the major search engines. Earlier this year, I became interested in writing articles and publishing them on the web. I read a lot of articles and I am surprised at the huge range in quality I find. In order to better understand article marketing, I started an article directory at 21stCenturyArticles.com where I accept articles related to business, technology, and communications. I accept less than 25% of the articles that are submitted and do my best to offer quality articles to my visitors. Hundreds of articles are submitted every week and I read all of them before deciding whether to reject or accept each one. It takes more time than I expected, but I am finding it very educational. I know a lot more about article marketing than I did six months ago and I'm finding it easier every week to identify what I consider to be a good article. I know this experience will help me when I start writing and submitting articles of my own.
TWT: That is a research project I would like to know results on! Where do you see yourself in five years?
JD: I wish I knew. If you asked me five years ago, my answer would have been very far from the mark, because I intended to be a metalsmith specializing in reproduction arms and armor. I remain very interested in the subject and continue to educate myself, but am unable at this time to do any practical work in that area. My long-term goal is to organize and build the first castle built by ordinary people. I have people in my family tree that built castles and ruled from them, and I plan to build a castle in the mountains of western North Carolina that will include office space, deluxe condominiums, quality restaurants, a hotel, and a conference center. Since my new home town is about equidistant from five major metropolitan areas and visitors can get here in two or three hours, I believe it will be a very popular destination. I'm sure it will take more than five years, because we're starting from scratch and don't want to attract major investors. I want average people to participate by spending between $30 and $100 to help us finance this, so it will take many such transactions to pull in the millions of dollars we will need. In the meantime, I'm building this conference center in my imagination. Every day, I take some time to explore a new part in my mind and in the process I intend to attract others who would like to participate in this grand project. I had intended to go more public with this earlier this year, but caring for Mom while her broken leg mended was more important. Why a castle? Because castles capture our imaginations more than any other structure I can think of, except possibly for cathedrals, and who hasn't wanted to become a knight, battle a dragon, or rescue a princess? Imagination is a primary component of motivation, and the opportunity to help build a real castle, not just something that looks like one, is something that will capture the attention of many people from around the world. It will take only about a million people who are willing to invest $100 to make this dream become a reality. I'm still researching what to offer to attract the most people to this project. Will it be done in five years? Doubtful. Will it be completed in my lifetime? Hopefully.
TWT: John, I have eagerly awaited this interview because I felt we had a lot in common. I see I am not wrong. Thank you for allowing me the privileged of interviewing you and introducing you more fully to the community.
JD: Thank you, Melissa