About Fairground Media

about this website

The ability to sell things online (aka: e-commerce) presents a very real, exciting opportunity for any maker, artist, expert, author, gifted curator, or entrepreneurial spirit.

This website was created to make the knowledge and tools it takes to build a microbusiness online more accessible than ever before for the talented, deserving people who need it.

Here, you’ll find topics ranging from how to accept credit cards on your own site, to branding, to time management.

Should you have any ideas or suggestions for what you’d like to see here on the blog, feel free to send them my way! Submissions are also warmly appreciated.

 

what people are saying

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about stephanie

In case you were wondering, the owner of this website and voice you are “hearing” is me, Stephanie Peterson.

I became a designer by trade when I was very young, though my medium of choice was not finger paint, crayons, or those awful tie dye kits everyone seems to get into in their tween years.spacer

At about 11 years old, I stumbled upon a “make your own free website” service that no longer exists, called Expage. I was having a lot of fun with the controls but wanted the ability to create a fully-custom design, so I taught myself how to write code through various websites and tutorials.

Soon after, at 13, I designed, developed, and became sole webmaster for my father’s retail business website.

As the years went by, I designed websites for fun, for friends, for school programs, etc. And picked up a textbook every few years to update my knowledge as the web evolved.

After high school, I studied Interactive Media Design at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I contracted design and web development for a start-up marketing firm, and then was put in charge of online sales for my father’s company.

When my now-husband’s job led us west, I accepted a tiny web development role at a large, private agency in Colorado. Serving internationally-recognized companies there, I got to experience what “the best of the best” are really like behind-the-scenes, in the trenches. And despite being a self-proclaimed monstrosity of a C# developer and hating the corporate grind, a part of me will be always be grateful for the short time I did spend there.

Thankfully, I was able to leave my corporate job without actually “striking out” on my own. My new freelance web design business was ramping up as I hoped it would, though it was a particularly cumbersome gig. Eventually (around a year in), I decided to weed out some of the less desirable projects by focusing my services exclusively on e-commerce. And at the very same time, I created the blog you’re visiting today.

I raised my rates quite substantially when I decided to specialize, which slowed work down. But rather than investing the extra time into more marketing, I decided to put more time into this blog and e-commerce projects of my own. And I loved it!

This rabbit trail has since led me into a rotation of really interesting online side projects– some failures and some successes– and it’s sparked new life into my little ‘ol e-commerce blog here at Fairground Media. I feel so lucky today to have this blog as an outlet for following my curiosity wherever it leads.

That said, outside of all this work stuff and in the rare occurrence that I’m not online, these days you can find me with my husband (who happens to be a brilliant mathematician with a PhD in business analytics/optimization) near picturesque Boulder, CO, where we take daily walks and occasionally force our introverted selves out into public.

Of course this story is far from finished! ;)
 

contact

Want to get ahold of me?

Send me an e-mail via the contact form below or directly at stephanie@fairgroundmedia.com!

(Quick question or comment? You can also reach me on Twitter.)

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