Online Success Story:
Jill Green
http://panicfreeme.com

Panic Free Me is an anxiety self help blog that shows people how to stop panic attacks and get their life back.

1. When did you set up your website?

I registered the domain and set the blog up right around Christmas 2009. I wanted to start the blog as a gift to myself to mark my progress with my recovery from anxiety and panic attacks. So it is a little over a year and a half old…

2. What gave you the idea for this particular niche & website?

The idea came from my own personal suffering with anxiety. I have spent tons of money over the years on doctors and therapists and all kinds of things that didn’t really amount to much as far as making me better.

What did help was reaching out and connecting with others who were going through the same thing. Anxiety can be incredibly isolating and I often felt I was the only person in the world going through it. So the advent of the internet was a real blessing to me. I found a lot of help and support on forums back in the day.

What I found most interesting about my anxiety recovery is that once I made the decision to seriously do something about it, I created room for real healing. It really is a personal choice. That’s why my blog’s title is anxiety self help- no one can make me better but me My hope is that other anxiety sufferers will come to this realization as well.

I consider myself a recovering anxious person- I still get anxiety from time to time, but it no longer rules my life.

I also wanted to blog about anxiety to take away the shame I carried around with me trying to cover it up for so many years. I used to think I was insane or mentally ill – this is one of the hallmarks of living with anxiety.

Today I know I am just your average, every day, sensitive person with a habit of having adrenaline rushes from time to time, lol. I’m no different than anyone else. And I want all anxiety suffers to feel this way and know they can get better too.

3. Did you have any experience with online business prior to creating this website?

Yes. I have an ecommerce website since 2006, but blogging was completely new to me.

4. What did you do for work prior to setting up an online business?

I am a registered nurse and a public school teacher.

5. How did you initially promote your website, and if different – how do you promote it now?

I used the methods Lynn teaches such as optimizing posts for long tail keyword phrases, getting one way inbound links, and of course creating good content. I have an email list that grows little by little. I recently started taking Twitter and Facebook a little more seriously and I’ve been guest blogging too.

6. Is your website profitable? Can you share some basic traffic & profit stats with us?

Yes it is (finally!). It’s not anything huge but I make a around $200-$300 per month on affiliate sales. I had 4,942 absolute unique visitors last month.

7. What are your plans for the site going forward?

To be more social.

Recently I stopped focusing so much technical stuff like link building, SEO , trying to find the perfect theme, etc. ( I still do this stuff, but I’m not obsessed with it like before). I shifted my focus more on creating connections with real people. I even turned off the pop up on my blog so people wouldn’t feel I was some disconnected robot.

I am finding the blog to be much more rewarding now that I spend quality time interacting with my readers. I get unsolicited comments and emails from readers telling me something I shared helped them and nothing feels better than that.

8. What ONE piece of advice would you give someone interested in starting their own niche site or blog?

I’m sure it’s been said before, but try to trust the process and be patient. Patience is not my strong suit and now that I am helping people and making some money in the process, I’m really glad I hung in there.

Jill Green
http://PanicFreeMe.com

-Thank you, Jill and congratulations on your success!