Interview With Rachna Kingston – Founder Of Entheos – Website Design and Development Company
January 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment
I'm Rachna, the founder and owner of Entheos – www.entheosweb.com, a web design and development company. I'm 29 years old and I live in Bangalore, the silicon valley of India.
I started working in a web development company right after I graduated from college. Later I co-founded a web development company with a friend of mine. I then sold my stake in that company and founded Entheos that is 100% owned by me. I've been in the web design business for over 8 years now and I absolutely love love it! It's amazing how we can be working from India but have visitors and clients from all over the world.
Affiliate marketing is my latest passion. The web motivates and inspires me, its great to see how the web has evolved and matured through the years and the amount of choice we have now for designing, developing and promoting website.
1) Tell us about your main project, Entheos? Why did you launch Entheos? Where are you at now with Entheos?
1) Tell us about your main project, Entheos? Why did you launch Entheos? Where are you at now with Entheos?
Entheos is a web design and development company. We offer custom web design and programming services, ready-made templates, photo galleries and logos, and free tutorials and resources for people who want to learn web design. Entheos means "God Within" and is a Christian company. I wanted Entheos to be a popular resource for web design and to have a high ranking in Google. Entheos now enjoys thousands of visitors everyday and enjoys #1 ranking on many keyword searches.
2) I understand that you have over 100 tutorials featured on your website, what advice would you give someone who wants to drive traffic to their website by offering tutorials?
2) I understand that you have over 100 tutorials featured on your website, what advice would you give someone who wants to drive traffic to their website by offering tutorials?
Well-written, helpful tutorials are a a great way to drive traffic to your site. I can vouch for that as most of the visitors to our site come through our tutorials. It's important to write tutorials on a related subject to your site business so you are driving targeted visitors who may later convert to customers for your product. Your tutorials should be written by you and not copied from elsewhere. Tutorials should cover important subjects and should not have too much competition online. Once you have written a bunch of tutorials, submit to as many tutorial submission sites as possible. Get as many links to your tutorials as you can. This will increase your ranking in Google if there are other tutorials online that cover the same topic. Write tutorials on niche subjects or latest technology and not general topics which will have a lot of competition online.
3) You offer over 20,000 templates for sale on your website, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to make money online selling website templates and graphics? What type of templates are most successful? Any templates you would recommend to a young entrepreneur starting off online?
Yes, we have a huge collection of more that 20,000 templates at our template site . We offer a wide variety of templates for Flash, CSS, Logos, Corporate Identities WordPress, Joomla, OsCommerce and much more. Flash templates are quite popular. My advice to young entrepreneurs trying to make money online by selling templates would be to focus on a niche market, either niche website businesses or niche products like open source cms systems. The web is already saturated with thousands of template sites, it would be difficult to compete with this, a better option would be to try and get into a niche market like wordpress templates, magento templates, Joomla templates (latest versions).
4) A lot of young entrepreneurs have decided to start their business online, where would you recommend them to start? What do they need to start a successful website online?
I would recommend new Net entrepreneurs to start by building quality content for their website. Google loves content. Don't focus on making money online in the beginning. Just focus on writing quality content for a few months. Once you have at least 25 pages of relevant content on your site, you need to promote this aggressively. Promotion is easy if you have good content as people will want to link to your website if they find the information useful. Promote in tutorial sites, directories, write to the webmasters if they can add your site in their link pages. I remember when I launched Entheos, I spent the first year just writing content and submitting my tutorials everywhere I could find. You can add Google Adsense to earn revenue from your free tutorial pages. Once you have good resources and promote aggressively you will see the results come in. This increases over time as your ranking gets higher in Google as domain age comes into effect. You will see a snow ball effect over a few years.
5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?
I would have told myself to get into affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money by promoting products you love.
6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
I believe anyone can be an entrepreneur. I think if you believe in something and have the passion and hard work to back it up, anything is possible.
7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)
7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)
I look up to my former boss Mr. Ralph Budelman, a visionary, a pioneer, a man of high principles and an just an amazing person.
Another person I admire is my dad. He's honest, hard working and has the ability to balance his work, play golf 3 times a week and spend time with the family. He is always there if we need him and supports and encourages us in all our endeavors.
Do you have any favourite business related, website design or webmaster related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?
Do you have any favourite business related, website design or webmaster related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs? Right now, I like your site www.webdesigndev.com as I think it covers the main topics of web design and is detailed and well written. Other site I like are http://www.pixel2life.com/ (good tutorial resource) and www.hotscripts.com (good script resource).
9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?
9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?
Start the day with prayer.
10) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?
Believe in the success of your business, work hard towards that and don't give up.
11) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?
11) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?
I would approx. 8 hours a day. My daily tasks include checking my site statistics, email, affiliate sites and researching online for new affiliate products and ways of promotion. My sites don't require daily tasks but I do update them once a week or once a month depending on the need.
12) If the Internet had not existed – what do you think you would be doing?
12) If the Internet had not existed – what do you think you would be doing?
I would probably be working in a 9 to 5 job in some kind of management position. I would certainly not be having even 1% of the fun I am having now being my own boss and doing something I absolutely love!
13) What do you like best about the Internet?
13) What do you like best about the Internet?
I love the way the Web has leveled the playing field. It has given an opportunity to anyone to start a business and be successful at it without having much capital or resources. Age, location, finance, gender, education etc. are not barriers. So many entrepreneurs have sprung up because of the power of the Internet. The whole world is our marketplace. It's amazing to see that we are working in Bangalore, but have clients and visitors from all over the world visiting our site and being helped by our resources.
14) What do you like least about the Internet?
14) What do you like least about the Internet?
I hate spam email.
15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
My dream was to visit the U.S. and I recently achieved this dream, as my husband and I just returned from a 2 month long trip to the U.S. We had a fabulous time there. Future plans would be to travel the world, maybe one country every year 
A lifetime goal I have is to start an orphanage here in India.
A lifetime goal I have is to start an orphanage here in India. If you would like to ask Rachna a question, she is answering them on the Retire at 21 forum now!
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