How I Ended Up in The Bahamas...And Built This Website About Eleuthera Island
My name is Dieter, pronounced Deter. No, I'm not a dieter in the dictionary sense of the word. Quite the opposite, for I enjoy my wife Gerda's superb cooking We came to Eleuthera from Zurich, Switzerland, where we spent most of our lives, except that in the 70's, I traveled around South-East Asia for a couple of years. Our native language is Swiss-German, a German dialect. Together with my wife Gerda, I live in Eleuthera, the island with the most gorgeous beaches in the Bahamas. Here I found an interesting way to let people know what a beautiful island Eleuthera is, and earn a nice income by doing so. This page will show you how I did it, and what might be in it for you. Read my story... A Problem - or a Blessing in DisguiseFor 16 years I ran an office near Zurich and was responsible for sales to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, a job I liked and was successful at. Our England-based company produced coatings for food packaging materials.As I got onto 55, I felt I'd had my fill of business life. Right at that time, a glossy folder arrived on my desk, presenting options to buy land on Eleuthera. To tell you the truth, I first had to look up where all these Bahamian islands are. Like so many other folks, I asked myself... Bermudas or Bahamas? I was not quite sure.
Anyway, I showed Gerda - pictured here - a really nice photo of a coconut palm shading parts of one of those spectacular Eleutheran beaches and asked her... "Could you imagine living there?" To my big surprise she was quite enthusiastic. Then she said... "Why don't we spend a couple of weeks on Eleuthera to get a feel for it?" By the way, we had to learn how to pronounce Eleuthera, too. Right after we arrived at Nassau - capital of the Bahamas - a woman at the tourist counter told me... "The island of your destination is pronounced E-loo-thra". Really, I had to ask.
We stayed in one of the very few hotels on a beautiful beach. During our 4 weeks we got to like the island so much for its friendliness and absence of crowds, that we bought a cottage and had a house built next to it.Six months later we packed all of our household goods, everything, into a 20 foot overseas container and were told it would arrive in Eleuthera in about a month. Little did we know! Hit Or MissWhen we finally arrived on the island, our house was not completed as promised and we had to stay in the cottage next door where we lived for six months with nothing but the content of our suitcases. Why?... Our overseas container got lost, the Florida shipping line told us.So we said to ourselves... "If that container is really lost, it must be a sign that we should not live on this island". Yet, we didn't lose hope completely. After 5 months of daily work on the new house in Central Eleuthera, I accidentally discovered our container at the dock in Governor's Harbour, three miles from the cottage. What a relief! Did we get a phone call? Oh, we didn't even have a phone at that time. Did we get a message via our American neighbor who was our relay station?... You guessed it. The answer is NO. A week later some tourists who passed our cottage on the way to the beach told us... "There's a container right by the road side of your long driveway, parked behind a dune". Yes, it was ours! The local trucker didn't deliver it to our house because his tractor was spinning trying to go up the steep road over the dune. So he unloaded the container and left without walking the 100 yards to the cottage to inform us. 
Somehow we managed to haul our stuff over to the house. We put everything into place in the finished home and "easy" island life finally started.Gerda immediately began combing the beach using her treasures to create sculptures and sea glass jewelry. I worked around the houses and enjoyed swimming in the crystal clear water. But what I was really missing was an interesting intellectual challenge to keep me busy with something other than yard work and little jobs to perfect our new home. A New PerspectiveQuite unexpectedly I found a solution... In Tarpum Bay, half an hour south of where we live, a Canadian software engineer offered a computer course for newbies. That caught my interest and I enrolled immediately.After weeks of schooling I started to sense what the Internet could mean to me... fantastic communication with the world via sound, images and the written word. If only I could learn how to build a website which seemed to be such a difficult task. Then - I can't quite remember how - I stumbled across SBI. SBI is a method that helps turn any hobby, passion or skill into a viable online business. I didn't know yet that almost any topic can make money with a website. All that's needed is imagination and motivation. Remember, I was relatively new to computers and the Internet world. But I was totally fascinated that even I could learn the "tricks" to build a highly visited site. For example the site you are reading just now, is being visited 1,400 to 1,700 times every day. That's 42,000 to 51,000 visits per month. So you see... you could do it, too. I didn't need any programming skills or web design knowledge. SBI has all the tools I needed. They took me by the hand and taught me step-by-step how to use everything. They helped me find the perfect topic - which was right under my nose - and showed me in easily understandable language how to build the Web site that gets lots of visitors, makes new friends and extra money. 
Maybe you are like me and hesitant about starting a site based on your special knowledge and enthusiasm. If that is the case, I'd recommend you click on the link above. After a bit of reading and watching you'll be informed well enough to decide, whether to go for it or not. I wish you all the best and good luck in your new venture. Dieter P.S.: For a slide show of Gerda's art work - like the shells in the photo above - click here and to send her a comment, click here. Return to |
