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January 2005's Diva: Dr. Nancy Kalish
of LostLovers.com
Our interview with Web Diva Dr. Nancy Kalish of LostLovers.com
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The Interview
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Girlposse.com: Tell us a little bit about yourself:
Dr. Nancy Kalish: I am a middle aged woman, divorced, and the mother of a grown daughter. I moved to California years ago when I accepted a professorship in psychology at California State University. I enjoy my work, teaching classes in child and adolescent psychology. My focus is on how people change, and how they stay the same, over time.
I grew up in New Jersey, with the ocean and New York City culture as my playgrounds. I still miss the East Coast, and if I ever get to retire, I'll probably move back. I graduated from a women's college, Douglass College (Rutgers) with a degree in English. My PhD is from City University of New York Graduate Center, an interdisciplinary degree in linguistics and psychology.
My lost love research began without forethought, when I contacted a lost love in 1993. After it failed, I wanted to know what other people experienced when they rekindled romances. To my surprise, there was no research on this topic at all! I then put together a questionnaire and began the Lost Love Project. I picked a name that made it sound large, but it was only me doing everything.
By 1996, I had surveyed 1000 people who had tried reunions with lost lovers, I was on Oprah and 20/20, and before long, I landed a publishing contract with William Morrow Inc. My book, Lost & Found Lovers, is the only research ever published on lost loves reunited. The first and only hardcover edition is sold out, but it is available for sale on my web site, Lostlovers.com.
Girlposse.com: About your site (www.LostLovers.com): Do you consider your site a hobby, part-time business, full-time business, or other? Was that always your intention? If not - what changed?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: My web site began as something designed by a computer sciences student for his class requirement. He got a grade and I got a free site. In 1997, web sites were primitive - just links floating in space. But the site was meant to tell people about my book, publicity for the publisher, and it worked fine for that. It got about 500 hits a month and I thought that was terrific.
The site has never been my financial support. I am a full time college professor, and that's what pays my bills - AND pays the web site expenses!
Girlposse.com: What made you decide to run a website?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: William Morrow asked me to provide a web site to publicize my book. It did that, but it was also a means of collecting more survey information. I got a post office box and put the address on the web site. Most people were not online in 1997, so almost all my mail was snail mail, with lovely stationery, photos, drawings, greeting card. I miss that. :-)
But the site evolved with the rise of the Internet, browsers, and the World Wide Web. I had the site professionally redesigned and it became a place for people to find information about my research. When my book went out of print and I bought the remainders for resale from my publisher, the site became a small business to sell my books. It did sell books, but the site never made a profit.
Today, I still sell books (ebooks), but the site is much larger -- offering my research information, and the popular message boards, which can be read for free but posting topics and replies requires membership (a charge to defray the costs of running my site). The site brings new people to my research survey and it is my display for the media. I do A LOT of media interviews of all types.
The web site currently gets 55.000 hits per month and it is growing.
Girlposse.com: Had you had computer experience before this?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: No. The first time I touched a computer (or a keyboard of any kind, actually) was when I began my book in 1993. I still type with two fingers. I still pay someone to make changes on my web site - still the same tech guy who designed the site years ago. I am extra money for him; he has a real job. :-)
Girlposse.com: How many people are involved with running your site?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: I do it all. I cannot afford to hire anyone, and the confidentiality of members is best kept if only I see their personal information.
So, on top of my full teaching load, I answer all email regarding lost love issues, I do media interviews, I send out press releases for publicity, I offer consultations for people who have lost love concerns, I assist members with issues like password changes or problems online, I take orders for ebooks and membership -- and until yesterday, I wrapped books to mail to customers and stood on line at the post office almost daily. This is a crazy way to live.
Oh, and I wrote a second book and started a third, in my spare time. hahaha
Girlposse.com: You are an author (LOST AND FOUND LOVERS) and researcher. Although your site offers information about your book and research, it also offers a great message board community. Was that part of your site from the beginning?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: No, not at all. I just wanted to sell books. But I kept getting email messages from people who wanted me to connect them with other people who also had lost love concerns. They said they hated to finish my book, because in the pages they found a community of like-minded friends.
As the Web evolved and sites began adding message boards, I added one, too. Finally lost lovers had a fellowship of others who shared their experiences. The main comment I hear is, "Thank you! Before I read your book or found your site, I thought I was crazy!"
Girlposse.com: You offer one of the rarities on-line today: A site without ads. How do you keep your site going?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: My college salary pays for the site and for my research. I also used the money I earned from book sales to run the site, but it was still losing a lot of money per year. I told the site members that I was going to take the site down. They came up with the idea of charging themselves a fee (at the beginning, membership was free). Now the membership fees defray the costs of the site.
But my research still costs more than the site takes in. The college does not support my research and who offers grants for love research? I pay student helpers to give out surveys, encode the data, do the statistics, etc. I pay to find survey participants, either with newspaper ads or a survey participant pool out of Syracuse University. I pay the tech guy. I even pay for travel for some TV shows - 20/20, or CNN, for example, are "news" shows and they do not pay to fly me to NYC for interviews.
At one point, I took out a homeowners loan for all this. I may take ads in the future. Donations to the web site are welcomed. :-)
Girlposse.com: Who are your visitors?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: That's a good question. I don't capture email addresses or trace visitors in any way.
The people who join the message board are primarily between the ages of 35 to 65. The mean is probably about 45 or 50. They are divorced, widowed, single never married, and married. They come from all walks of life, all states, many countries. They were all shocked by the power that the lost love reunion had over them.
Girlposse.com: What changes have you seen in the internet since you first came online as a visitor? As a site owner?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: In 1993, there were no browsers. One could join AOL, prodigy or CompuServe for entrance to their internal forums. And there was Usenet -- newsgroups that are on the Internet but are not the Web. These groups still exist, but now so does the Web.
I used to be a professor who had a web site. Now I'm a site owner. Web sites are much more a business now than they were early on. I'm learning as I go.
Girlposse.com: With all of the sites around today, what makes yours such a popular site?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: Lostlovers.com is the only site on the web that specializes in rekindled romance research.
Girlposse.com: What is your favorite feature on your site?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: The photo gallery (a link from my home page). There are photos of site members and reunited, married couples. There are thumbnail photos, but if you click on them, they not only get bigger but there are more photos. I love the photos of the couples from when they were teenagers dating the first time.
Girlposse.com: What do you have planned for your site in the near future? Down the road?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: I like the site to make money. :-)
Girlposse.com: There are many different aspects to running a web site. From creating and finding content, to site design, to massive amounts of e-mail, etc. What is your favorite aspect?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: Probably the email. Some of it is annoying, of course; people want me to find their cousins or birth mothers, or they want me to send money to Nigeria, or they want to yell at me because their spouses left them for lost loves (why is that my fault?). But I have had much correspondence with wonderful people worldwide and I have made good friendships.
Girlposse.com: What is your greatest pet-peeve on-line?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: It used to be that message board members erased their posts, leaving a blank hole where their information used to be. There were threads that looked like swiss cheese. When I took away the ability to delete messages, people complained for a while, but it does make the threads readable.
Girlposse.com: What are your Top 5 Sites to visit?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: Aside from my own, there are about 5 sites I need to frequent to maintain the business - the bulletin board registration site for new members, and the site where my merchant online payments account resides. I use google a lot. And I go to a few political web sites frequently for news that is not in my newspaper.
Girlposse.com: What is your greatest reward in having a site?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: I know that the members have truly benefitted from the site. They have found understanding and compassion from other members, no matter what their circumstances. I never envisioned that people would exchange email addresses and talk offline, let alone meet each other. There are socials that people initiate for different geographic areas to meet each other. I've been to two of these and they are fun.
There is even one romance: two members were having no luck with their lost loves. The lost loves weren't interested in reunions. These two started emailing offline and found that they had a lot in common. After a year or two, they fell in love. They will be getting married soon.
Girlposse.com:
As more people are regularly online, do you think the internet has helped with the feeling of community or hurt it somehow?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: It's helped in the sense that one can find like-minded people, wherever they are in the world, and communicate with them. The way it hurts is that one can spend so much time online that there is no time for local friends. That's certainly my case right now!
Girlposse.com: Do you have any advice for people wanting to start their own site?
Dr. Nancy Kalish: Get funding.
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Hot Links
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Our favorite features on www.LostLovers.com:
~January 2005
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