Mother's Day

The only way to tell you who Kimberly Printable is and how she got to be where is she today is to take you through a journey from the earliest days of the Internet, which was only available to people who had a modem card in their computer so that they could “dial up” and connect to the web. So let’s get started…The only way to tell you who Kimberly Printable is and how she got to be where is she today is to take you through a journey from the earliest days of the Internet, which was only available to people who had a modem card in their computer so that they could “dial up” and connect to the web. So let’s get started…

 Back when Microsoft was in the Windows 3.1 version (and to establish how long ago that was, we use Windows 7 today), my family got our first computer and I got a freelance job typing up information for a local business that wanted to move their hardcopy to computer-based documents. There were no such things as optical-reader scanners back then and anything moved from hardcopy printouts to computer documents had to be done by hand.

When Windows 95 was launched, I thought working at home would be “easy.” After all, I had a computer and I could log onto the Internet. Like a vast number of other people who had the same idea, I bought into several work at home schemes, all of which sounded “too good to be true.” And, of course, they all were too good to be true. Ultimately, I realized that working at home really meant starting my own business.

I jumped on board the home business train, got one of those first freebie web sites (the kind that had the impossibly long web address), and began to create the first of my many web sites. After an unknown number of trials and errors, plowing through the early transitions of not only Microsoft, but I also had to learn about and adapt to the basic workings of the Internet and the web. About this same time, domain names were becoming affordable. Realizing that the domain name that I chose would be the foundation of my entire at-home business, I settled on “Moms Break” (with the goal of using at-home Moms as my target market).

Moms Break was originally a site that listed other free offers that at-home Moms would find interesting and usable. At the time, this was a great idea because, in those early days of the Internet, most people didn’t know how to find these kinds of offers on their own. At that time, searching the web wasn’t as simple as typing in a couple of relevant words or terms and letting Google do its thing. Yahoo and Excite were the only search engines, and you had to understand how to search for what you wanted to find (does anyone remember Boolean searches?).

After the birth of Google and the rapid changes in other search engines that make them what they are today, an at-home business based on hunting up offers for Moms became obsolete. This was a huge blow to my business plans. Anyone could now jump on “The Google” and find what they needed. I had to dream up a new approach to my Moms Break website…one that would still attract at-home moms.

While I was cleaning out a closet, I discovered all of the supplies I’d used during a stint of preschool teaching. While I looked at those supplies, my thoughts drifted to a free fax-cover fax form that I had just downloaded from the web. That was it! I could turn my experience as a preschool teacher into creating free to print paper-based products that Moms could use for all sorts of things. These types of free documents became known online (which was another term change, instead of saying “being on the Internet”) as “free printables.”

In time I expanded my horizons and added more free printable web sites that would be attractive to other target groups of people. I also diversified the types of free printables that are offered on my web sites, morphing my at-home business as new technologies became available and easily accessible to anyone who has a computer.

Well, that’s my story…and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my personal journey. Now, I hope you’ll enjoy visiting my free printable web sites!