Deborah Carney

Where I Celebrate Life

Not “How to” But “How Did I” Transcript

Not a “How to” But a “How Did I”….
Technology Gave My Children Better Lives
Chapter 1

I’m sitting here on a day that is a sad day for me every year. Nine years ago today, on Mother’s Day, May 13th, 2002, my youngest son was killed in a car crash. Every year on May 13th, I usually try to do something special that commemorates his life or helps other people. Today, what I decided to do is talk about how I got started on the Internet. Normally, I don’t do single podcasts by myself, so I hope this ends up being an okay podcast.

I think it’s important for a lot of moms and dads to hear my story so that they can understand that their story, even though it’s maybe in a different time and place, we all have some very similar experiences. I want to talk a little bit about it’s a bit of a history lesson in how the Internet has changed how we deal with certain things in our lives.

It all ties in with my starting a blog, DeborahCarney.com, which has taken me a long time to get to simply because it’s hard to talk about and write about certain things when you’ve had a lot of pain in your life. Again, I want people to understand, in my case, how technology has made a huge difference in a lot of aspects of my life.

To go back to the beginning, I married young, 19 years old, had a daughter in February of ’77, and had my son, Chris, in July of 1978. He got really, really sick when he was seven weeks old and had to be hospitalized. They thought that he had meningitis. It made him it very weak. It acted as a temporary paralysis. They thought that that disease paralyzed him. He started on his path of recovery. In the meantime, life went on. He got to be about nine months old and he seemed to be getting stronger, and then all of a sudden, he stopped. He could pull himself up to kneeling, but he could never stand.

We started to take him in for some testing and getting some evaluations done. Now they said it was ECHO encephalitis. It acted like a paralysis, like a polio type thing. The thing that got to them was that even though he couldn’t stand, and it seemed that he was very, very weak, he could still wiggle his feet. I can’t tell you how hilarious it was to be sitting in a hospital room at a teaching hospital and having neuromuscular specialists and neurologists come in the room with groups of students and go, “Look, no weight bearing, can’t use his lower extremities, but look, he can wiggle his feet.”
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Why I Love the Affiliate Marketing Industry – Or How I got Started

For the very beginning – go listen to this.

Today my son Chris would be 33 years old. To know how I got into affiliate marketing you need to hear some things that have gotten easier to type about and it is kismet that I am posting this in a thread where two people helped me stay in this industry and not just fade away into the woodwork. This isn’t a “be sorry for me” post, it is a how affiliate marketing and the people I met in this industry gave me support, courage and pushed me to move out of a funk I thought I would be in for the rest of my life.

My sons had a form of Muscular Dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. That means their nervous system stopped telling new muscles what to do when they were 9 months old. So their upper body was stronger than their lower (that’s how babies develop, from the top down 🙂 ) and they were never able to stand unaided or bear weight, so no pivot turns or lifting to their feet, they needed to be carried when going to bed or bathroom etc. When they were young I was a stay at home Mom and Wedding Photographer, so I only worked “weekends” while their dad could take care of them. For years our family was involved in public speaking and advocacy for the Muscular Dystrophy Assoc and disability rights. Those of you that have met my daughter Liz can attest to her composure in public, that stems from being on the news and in the public spotlight for several years starting very young.

They got older, I got divorced from their dad and I needed to work from home. One of the first websites I built was one for the local MDA office. Then I found Amazon and started to build sites with recommended reading on topics I was interested in, plus worked with several in-house affiliate programs that are no longer around.

Long story short, Dan (my youngest son) died in a car crash on Mother’s Day (May 13, 2002). My brain and heart shattered. He was not ill, he was healthy so it was unexpected. He was 20. Chris and I lived in NYC for a few years, I had a good job but had to quit. I couldn’t tolerate office politics, couldn’t justify being away from Chris 8 – 10 hours a day so I quit. I got a job at Club Mom for a short time and that’s where I met Shawn Collins.

Chris and I needed to move back to Rochester where we were from and the affiliate checks started getting bigger and bigger. I was also getting a decent amount of money selling on CafePress.com. In November 2005 CafePress lost their affiliate manager and she recommended me for the job, even though we were 3000 miles apart. In 2005 there weren’t as many OPMs as there are now. I was excited and made plans to possibly move to the west coast, Chris was very thin and always cold and I thought it would be great for him.

Back up a little to Affiliate Summit Las Vegas in June 2005. What I forgot to say is that after Dan’s death I was very agoraphobic (short version it means you like to stay home and especially not travel across the country). Shawn had invited me to come take photos at that Affiliate Summit, and that is where I first met Billy Kay in person – we knew each other from another online forum and from frequent yahoo chatting and phone calls.

This is a little more that just how I started, but since I got this far I might as well continue. Getting to that first (for me) Affiliate Summit probably saved my life. I realized finally that I could miss my son, but could be in public without crying or having a panic attack or break down when I saw other moms with their sons. So for that I owe Shawn (and Missy – although I hadn’t met her yet) forever a debt of gratitude.

So I had gone from being Affiliate to being Affiliate Manager. Life was good. Chris didn’t want to move to the west coast because he would miss Liz’s son Alec. I figured once I got him there for a visit he would be fine and want to stay. So I went and started the job planning to get him out there eventually.

That was not to be. I loved working for CafePress, I had been a long time shopkeeper, knew most of my affiliates personally. Then I got a phone call from Liz while driving with a friend from San Fran to LA “Mom, Chris is in the hospital”. She and I were on the phone almost constantly for the next week, I wanted to go back, but I also didn’t want to be away from a phone for 6 hours while I was on the plane. Liz had questions from the drs, Chris said “I’ll be ok, stay out there”. He went home to his girlfriend’s house that Saturday and Sunday I got the call from Liz that Chris stopped breathing and was on the way back to the hospital. We all knew he was already gone. So Sunday March 5th, 2006 my life shattered again.

I tried to be able to work in a corporate environment and I couldn’t do it. Schedules and meetings and office politics to me were inconsequential. They were BS that I didn’t want to put up with. I was talked into going to the Orlando Affiliate Summit, where I was greeted by people that had never talked to be before and people I barely knew with hugs and support. I told certain people ahead of time that if I started to panic I needed them to give me a hug. I had lots of hugs that Affiliate Summit, and went back to San Fran and quit my job.

After a short stint at a network, I became an OPM. Because I can’t work for other people, For years I would refuse to meet deadlines. Deadlines were meaningless.

Without this industry, which lets you work where you feel comfortable whether you are at home or at a hotel or a casino in Vegas, I don’t know what would have happened to me. This industry gave me a way to work in the type of environment I need to work in, on my schedule, and earn a living.

Chris loved Stoli, Jim Morrison and the Lord of the Rings trilogy – so have a shot then go listen to some music and watch a movie with your kids today.

Article about CafePress and How I Used it to Sell My Art

Like many other people I get Google alerts for my name. One popped up in my email box today linking to an article that I hadn’t thought about in a long time! It was published by Corel back before I became involved with CafePress as their affiliate manager, it details how I used CafePress as a shopkeeper to sell my digital art and photography. I used mainly Paint Shop Pro back then and still do for a lot of my digital art creation, when I have time! There are a few inaccuracies, but it was written in early 2005, lots has changed since then!

Here is that article:

New York Photographer Combines Power of Paint Shop Pro with the Internet to Earn a Living

Deborah Carney has been a professional photographer for 30 years. The Rochester, New York, resident’s photos chronicle her passion for the special things in her life, most notably New York and Maine Coon cats.

In 1999, Carney set up a CafePress shop and began selling her photographs on products ranging from T-shirts and mugs to framed prints, greeting cards, and custom postage. CafePress.com is an online marketplace and e-commerce solution that allows anyone with digital photos or images to create and sell products online without the risk of overstock or financial outlay.

At the time, Carney was using L View to scan and crop her photos. Back in the day, she says, L View was “the bomb,” but it had limitations.

Having had some success making her life’s interest her business in the form of her CafePress shop, Debbie was on a constant quest to find a better solution to manage her photography. In 2002 she discovered Paint Shop Pro, and suddenly her business began to take off.

CafePress allows Debbie to offer an unlimited number of her photographs for sale on more than 80 different products. The limitless capabilities of the CafePress system combined with the timesaving features of Paint Shop Pro has allowed her to create an image catalogue of 3,000 images and an online offering of 9,000 products.

By using Paint Shop Pro’s dynamic features and a watercolor plug-in, Carney can scan and process a thousand digital photos overnight.

Recently Carney mastered the Paint Shop Pro Text Tool, and now she can venture into a whole new area of the CafePress Shops — customization.

“I’d recommend that new users get comfortable with the Text Tool early on because it provides you with a lot of personalization options, which is great for your CafePress customers,” she said. Carney recently designed a custom Framed Print Anniversary keepsake for one of her buyers: “Joe and Jean’s Wedding Day, Las Vegas Oct 20, 2000.”

Carney is still discovering all that Paint Shop Pro can do. “With all the text tools, tons of plug-ins, frames and borders options, there are millions of ways to apply them to the photos I’ll use on the CafePress products,” she said.

In fact, she enjoys using the Picture Frames to turn her images into different shapes like hearts and ovals for romantic gifts.

Her best tip for new users: “Learn how to crop right away and set those timesaving defaults.”

“I can’t even imagine running my CafePress shops without Paint Shop Pro,” she said.

CafePress is a quick, easy and free way for artists and photographers like you to start an online business, simply by sharing your creativity with the world. Knowing Paint Shop Pro gives you a competitive edge on creating well-designed product and a well-stocked shop.

Who said artists have to starve?

Start your own CafePress store, sign-up today!