A Tale of 2 WAHMs

Lisa Barker

One of the best things parents can do for their children is to
volunteer in the classroom or for an after school sport or club.  But sometimes
parents, especially moms, can over-commit and that can quickly lead to
burn-out and resentment.  Post the following list on your refrigerator
to help keep your volunteerism in a healthy range.

You might have volunteer burn-out if.

1.  You know the teacher’s planner better than she does and she has to
ask you where to find such and such in her classroom.

2.  Whenever you eat pasta you think of a dozen wearable art projects
you can make with it.

» Read the rest of this entry …

Ah!  I know I sure do!  I LOVE the new look of our blog!  Yeah, maybe I’m bragging a bit so forgive me cause I simply ADORE it!

Guess who did it?  The fabulous Lara from www.DesignedByLara.com.  I have to say, Lara is the absolute best!  She is the first person I go to whenever I need anything to do with graphics, templates … any design.  The girl has certainly found her niche.  Not only is she a fantastic designer, but she’s also very fast and affordable.  Oh and I think she’s a mind reader too (LOL!).  I can’t say I was the best at providing her information on what we wanted.  Heck, I had a hard time deciding … but she sure figured it out.  All I had to do was fill out a short form and she went to town.

Lara is one of the best and most affordable designer I’ve seen in a long time.  Affordable is a BIG factor in the whole game.  She’s perfectly priced for the average work at home mom.  Now you too can have a fabulous looking blog, website and even newsletter!  She does it all and then some.  Need some buttons to advertise with?  You can contact Lara for that too!  Honestly, I am simply super-impressed with her work and I highly recommend her.

So, does your blog need a face-lift?  Head on over to DesignedByLara.com and take the leap.  I guarantee you, you WILL be glad you did  ;)

It’s that time again … time for the Monday Nite Blog Thing!  Now, let’s see some comments here … will YOU be a Multi Millionaire? 

Monday Nite Blog Thing

Your Chances of Being a Multimillionaire: 52%

You have a decent shot at being a multimillionaire. Surprised? You’re confident and a hard worker. Keep it up!

Will You Be a Multimillionaire?

This has been bugging me for months, and it’s time to blog about it.

Several months ago while reviewing some tips from a well known marketer, he said something that made my jaw drop. I was absolutely dumbfounded he said it, and my respect for him dropped quite a bit. What was said? “I don’t build specific holiday pages”.

At first I thought, surely this is a mistake! Can you actually build massive amounts of pages online without having at least a few holiday themed ones? He went on to say the traffic is only temporary, so he doesn’t even bother. He wants to put hard work into pages that are going to be good all year round. WOW, think of all the traffic he’s missing!

Now I have to say that YES it is “temporary”. You only get searches for the holiday when it’s NEAR the holiday (with the exception of Christmas - I see searches for my Christmas pages all year round, just not as much until November and December). I’m also NOT saying that the majority of your marketing should be done around holidays. It’s important to put forth the same effort all year round. Especially physical products - if you work hard all year, it’s going to pay off around the big shopping seasons.

That said, I have to put an emphasis on how very important holiday pages on your site are.  I see it every single day on Idea Queen, and have been trying very hard to cover more holidays there. Sure it’s “temporary” traffic, BUT I get hoards of visitors the entire month before the holiday hits.

Now here’s the biggest reason I say holiday pages are a MUST - around big holidays, your “normal” traffic is going to drop, and on the “off season” your “normal” traffic is going to skyrocket. Here’s an example:

The month of October of course had a focus on Halloween. I have several pages on Idea Queen that focus on ideas for Halloween. Those pages accounted for over 2,500 unique visitors last month. That’s around 80 unique visitors per day - just for Halloween pages!

Now that we’re past Halloween, has the number of visitors dropped? Slightly, but not really that much. The recipe pages have now picked back up. In fact, yesterday’s visitor count was higher than the first few Sundays of October. So what visitors I lost in holiday pages people are not searching for anymore, I’ve gained in “normal” pages. The average surfer isn’t looking for holiday ideas this week, but looking for “everyday” ideas instead. Either way, I got ‘em.  See how that works?

So yes is bugs me that a well known marketer says he doesn’t bother with holiday pages. For someone that’s suppose to know how to get massive amounts of traffic to his site,  he’s sure missing out on large chunks of it. If you cover all the main holidays, guess what? That’s year round traffic. When one holiday ends, the searches for the next begins. “Normal” pages are going to pick up the slack in between. Which if you fail to have holiday pages, you are cutting your traffic in half for the entire year.

So what are you going to do? Are you going to listen to the guru and not bother, or cash in on those large chunks of traffic year round?  :wink:

After much thinking, planning, and frustration, Mom’s Market is a brand new site again. Well, kinda. All the perks of an old site remain - traffic, backward links, and knowledge the site exists. But still it looks as if it’s a brand new site.

Last year I added product reviews as a main part of the site. After letting it sit for quite some time, I decided to make it the ONLY part of the site. It was really better off this way, and making it a blog gives it that much better SE rankings.

The old reviews will be added back in slowly. I’ll be adding 2 or 3 a week, and have been since the site re-opened. So if you had a review before, not to worry - it WILL get put back up. It will actually be “re-featured” if you think about it, since it will be in the spotlight again. If you don’t see yours yet, it will be there soon. I have a hoard of them sitting in drafts right now. That is if your site is still active - there were tons I had to pitch.

Products are being accepted for review again. So if you didn’t have a review last year, you can get it done now. There is an entire page with the details on how to get your product submitted for review. Just be sure you READ the entire page, because we do have strict guidelines. The only thing I don’t like about flipping through submissions is the lack of people following guidelines. They really are there for a reason!

Be sure to stop in at Mom’s Market to see the new site!