About the Owner,
Ruth Marlene Friesen

Ruth Marlene Friesen - your friendly shopping Guide.

You want to know about the owner of this site to help determine how much to trust the information found here, right? Well . . . I think what I can offer you is integrity and persistence - yes, tremendous tenacity!

I grew up in the rural, small town area of Hague, north of Saskatoon, in Saskatchewan, Canada. That's the flat prairie part of our vast beautiful country, with the living skies!

In 1971, after working four years as a telephone operator and paying off my little Nova, I packed my stuff in the car and headed east, as far as London, Ontario. There I worked for 12 years, learning to multi-task and live, like a cat with nine lives, but living them all at the same time! (A separate saga all by itself).

In 1983 I returned home, as a live-in-caregiver for my parents. I had struggled over the decision, but concluded it was God's will, and He would provide for me however long it took. My mother had been sickly most of my life, and had a long medical history. However, with my presence and care she survived another 14 years, despite pernicious anemia and congestive heart failure, just two of her problems. (All fodder for another book or site).

I've always had a runaway imagination, and for a number of years I dreamed that I'd marry a fine, intelligent gentleman who would make all my ideas for small businesses come true. Instead -- God brought me home to look after my aged parents, and took time to mature me, and show me that I could carry out a lot of these ideas myself! During that mostly house-bound time, I polished my novel, Ruthe's Secret Roses, and also some family histories and genealogies. Which I have self-published!

It's been slow going because I've started on a zero budget. Mom passed away in 1997, but I continued as Dad's live-in caregiver with free room and board as my compensation for another ten years, which I spent mostly online from right in the living room. Dad was across the room in his recliner. My learning curve was steep, but I'm grateful now for those years as I was able to learn so very much! I feel like I've been to university a couple of times!

It was near the beginning of my online life in 1999 that I stumbled upon the e-book, Make Your Site SELL. I could not afford it at that time (now it is a free download), but I discovered that I could sign up as an affiliate for free, and that got me weekly emails from this Ken Evoy, which taught me so much about running a website like a web business. When the SiteBuildIt! suite of services came out I sighed and drooled with desire.

I resolved to see how far I could go towards running an online business for free, or on an almost zilch budget. One day I'd have an SBI site too. Meantime, I'd see how far I could go with "Free" and "frugal."

From all the FREE information out there on the net, I taught myself web design, have published my novel by POD (a friend provided a gift for that), and have made a number of good friends around the world, especially through my novel-site, Ruthes-Secret Roses and my weekly blog/ezine, RoseBouquet. My novel and that site often refer to my friends as roses in my garden of friendship. All the while I've tried out a number of free income programs, and discarded a lot of them as I've become more discerning.

I registered my main business, Bouquet of Enterprises, with my home province, Saskatchewan, and I did my best to behave as a business woman, and telling only God when I had any desperate financial need. Now I see all that time as a wonderful preparation for my present life.

Dad died in February, 2007, just four days after he turned 91. I had thought he would get to be 100 as the ancestors are long-livers on his side of the tree.

Despite a cracked vertebrae, I turned into a white tornado while I cleaned up Dad's estate, and through a miracle (co-signer) bought a tiny house in Saskatoon, and got ready for the estate auction, plus sanitizing, and painting my wee house so it was safe to move into. Naturally, I needed a source of income too!

After 23 and a half years of not having a traditional "job," one relative thought I would have no marketable skills. - Well, I've showed her!

During that ten year online educational period I had volunteered to build websites for some non-profit missions. Western Tract Mission in Saskatoon was one I was most involved with, and the director offered to make me an official missionary so that my friends could get receipted for support monies they gave me. (He also jacked up my workload!). My wee little house is walking distance from there, so while I was also trying to run my web businesses from home, I also began to show up more often at the mission office, and then the Board offered me some office space on the second floor.

Ah-ha! It must be time to start another of my Bouquet Enterprises! I registered as a subsiduary, Azaleas Virtual Assistants with a plan to start teaching all the things I'd taught myself the slow way. That has not taken off quite the way I'd imagined. It does give dignity to my office hours, and I do have clients sometimes for computer repairs and tutorial sessions.

I plowed my inheritance into my down-payment on the house. However, I treated myself to one thing when Dad's estate was wrapped up; with my share of the inheritance, I bought the creme de la creme of web design services - SiteBuildIt!. (Click video graphic to see more about SBI).

By comparison,my life in Hague was very laid back. Now I'm working, easily, 10-12 hours a day, and have trouble finding time for all the new friends I'm making. I have several clients for my web design services, and if anyone else asks I tell them to stand in line and take a number. My multi-tasking skills are stretched to the nth degree!

But I try to reserve three mornings a week to work on my web businesses, and just now this site is getting all my attention. Having carefully done all the brainstorming steps in the ActionGuide, I am convinced this site is going to pay my living expenses so that I can back off some other responsibilities (or, ho-ho, delegating them to employees!) - and then I'll have time to write books and travel.

My heart goes out to those who would like to be able to make a living from a web business too. Therefore, as I can squeeze it in, I describe some small business ideas on my Bouquet of Enterprises site. But you know what? At this point I'm convinced, after building over 20 generic, or raw-html sites, and now my second SBI site, that SBI is crucial to having a site that makes enough money to live on - or more. I have a circus of my own sites, and a number I've built for others, and some of those have over 800 pages, and get visitors that ask for help, but aside from charging my clients by the hour, they make no money like the SBI sites.

Mind you, they still need a lot more work and attention before I can set them on auto-pilot. Even then, they will need regular maintenance and effort. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but a proven recipe for success as you can tell if you check out these case - studies of others who are futher along than I am.

If it works for you, let me know, please. It will really charge up my batteries!

Blessings & Thanks,
Ruth

P.S. Okay. I know I'd want to check out some of those other sites mentioned if I were you. Here they are;
Aloe-Vera-and-Handy-Herbs.com
Ruthes-SecretRoses.com
Bouquet of Enterprises
AGodlyInheritance.com
Generosity-Alive.org
JustGoodCooking.com

P. P.S. I have a reputation for talking fast and enthusiastically when I get excited. Did you hear that as you read this page? Fortunately, on the written page you can read me as slow as you like. Take all the time you need!

New! Comments

Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.

More & Deeper

Shopping Guide BLOG - keeps you up-to-date with the most recent pages and information added to this site, check it each time you visit for what's new here. Bookmark it.

7 Steps to Shop Online - Here are more detailed steps for how to shop online, simple enough so that if you can read and follow instructions, you should be able to do it easily enough. You'll gain confidence as you shop online more and more often.

Advantages! - besides the many obvious advantages, here are suggestions for how to turn the disadvantages into your most favourite advantages.

Dis-Advantages? Transforming disadvantages of shopping online into real advantages of shopping online? Yes, you can!

Research First! - find out about the product you want to purchase and also the online stores or shops that offer it - to get the best deal possible.

Stores & Shops - before you start shopping wildly online - there are places to avoid - and there are places that are excellent. Learn to find out which a prospective shopping site is before you use it.

Comparison Shopping - An introduction to Comparison Shopping sites or engines, and how to use them to find the best deals for your online shopping.

Best Deals by Seasons - Wait, if you can, until the time of year when that item has the best discount sales.

Consumer Reports - is a resource for choosing the best products to buy in North America.

Handling Payments

Secure Online Shopping criteria, and good habits to form that will keep you safe as you enter the exciting world of online shopping.

Shopping Online with Credit Cards does not have to be scary; if you are informed and ethical, and conscientious you can safely shop with your credit card online.

Shopping Online with Gift Cards - there are serious pros and cons to weigh before you start shopping online with gift cards.

Shopping Online WITHOUT credit cards - I can assure you from personal experience that there are several ways to shop online without credit cards at all; and I may not even have found all the ways.

Shopping online with PayPal - Reassuring facts about shopping online with PayPal to give you peace of mind.

Download your purchase of e-book, software, membership - here are detailed instructions for downloading your e-book, software, or membership access, and some extra security notes for protecting your purchases.

Invoice Troubleshooting - It's good to know what to do about receipts, or online invoices - troubleshooting when things go wrong. Even though we all hope it never happens, it sometimes does, and knowing what steps to take can make a world of a difference.

Need Shopping Money? - Here are two potentially profitable ways to get it through a small business effort on the side.

Grocery Shopping Online - Discoveries about Grocery Shopping Online in the UK, USA and Canada, including short reviews of the first flush of such sites found.

Grocery Shopping Online in Canada - with some basic information on the online grocery stores listed here to get you started.

Grocery Shopping Online in USA with descriptions and reviews of some national and regional grocery shopping sites that can deliver groceries to your door.

Grocery Shopping Online in UK - and the results of my search for such online grocery sites in that country. At first I thought they had a corner on this novel idea.

Need to send a Personal Shopper for your groceries? - Tips to either arrange for a personal shopper to do it for you, or for you to offer to be a personal shopper for others.

A Power Shopper, - and how to become one in several stages as you develop your online shopping skills.

Suggestions for setting up your own personal shopper business, - where you use your skills on behalf of those who do not have time or otherwise cannot shop for themselves.

Site Basics

About the Owner - You want to know about the owner of this site to help determine how much to trust the information found here, right? Well . . . I think what I can offer you is integrity and persistence - yes, tremendous tenacity.

Reach Ruth - Looking for how to reach Ruth Friesen, the owner of this website? This is the page and the best method.

Layout Map - An outline to act as a map of this site if you should get lost.

G---o-----s---h---o---p---p---i---n---g & TAKE The Customer Advantage!

Home - Online Shopping Guides is especially for the reluctant and those new to shopping online; I want to show you that it is not that hard, and you CAN shop securely online. 'Home' is the default entry point and index for this website.