Many website packages are complicated and expensive, yet Kate Schwager, from a successful wheat and cotton share farming business near Wee Waa in western NSW, has recently relaunched www.weewaa.com, a website developed from a regular newsletter she wrote for Wee Waa Inc.
Despite the town’s obvious community spirit people didn’t know just how much the area had going for it and Kate felt Wee Waa should be promoting itself. She also saw an opportunity for a home-based business bringing in some off-farm income.
Kate had become frustrated because every time she’d go and ‘learn a package’, by the time she got back to it she’d forgotten what she’d learnt! These initial IT setbacks were overcome through Ruth Quigly, from Webteam Australia, whom she met through WINCOTT – an organisation for women involved in the cotton industry. Ruth put Kate in touch with Christian Torvnes (Ligante) a Brazilian who has developed a user friendly package for building websites. Kate is now able to draft advertisements with clients in a word processing program then simply cut and paste them straight onto the website.
Within three months Kate attracted 80 advertisers and was able to provide free pages to community groups. She charges $50 per half page and $100 per full page per year. With 32,000 hits to the site in that time locals and others alike were saying they didn’t realise all the area had to offer! Kate plans marketing the web package to other towns and businesses throughout Australia as an accessible and easy to use promotional tool.
Internet Marketing Specialist, Kate Schwager’s contact details are:
email: bkschwager@northnet.com.au
Ph: 02 6796 7243
Fax: 02 6796 7206
Mobile: 0407 665 357.