A Tale of 2 WAHMs

Mom, when was the last time you actually took time for yourself?  Just a few extra minutes for mom pampering?  I know I’m so bad at this.  Gee, I feel guilty taking longer in the tub than what it takes to shave my legs

That’s one of the reasons I like the blog Mom’s Indulgence. I’m trying to teach myself that first of all, it’s okay to do this from time to time and secondly how to do it.

Oh and if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy a particular blog post called Taking time for you. It’ll remind you to take a little time for you AND shows you why you don’t need to feel guilty.

According to Mom’s Indulgence, believe it not, taking time for you can be good for your family too. (yay! I can take time for me for everyone else! How cool is that!?!)Ergocalciferol
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I just came across this today and I had to share.  Did you know you could have personalized fruit rollup made?  You can enter you own message and/or add pictures.  How cool is that?  Or am I the only nut who’s excited over this?  LOL!  Looks like it works out to be about $1 per rollup.  Eh, not the cheapest I guess but what a cool way to send out thank you notes for a child’s birthday presents or you could make the invitations out of these.  You could even use these to promote your business.  That’d stand out anyway.  Hmm … graduation gifts and I seen one that was design to ask someone to marry them!  Now that’s an interesting thing to do.  I’d have to give the person the whole box and see how long it took them to realize what they rollups were saying.

Anyway, I thought I’d share this with you. 
Customize your own fruit rollups

What These Orchids Say About You

You are exotic and intricately beautiful. You possess a unique grace that’s both delicate and strong. You are thoughtful and refined. You are the definition of class.

What Do The Flowers You Pick Say About You?

My Comments: Well that one seems to have accomplished a very difficult task (just ask my husband) … it’s rendered me speachless. All I can say is, I’m flattered! LOL! How about you? What do the flowers you pick say about you?

“When you buy something at a small, lesser-known online store, there’s a decent chance they will sell your address to spammers.” and, “Sign up for a newsletter? Your address could certainly get sold.”

Quoted by Neil J. Rubenking of PC Magazine.

This was quoted on another work at home mom blog, Lynette Chandler of Tech Based Marketing who came across it by reading a recent issue of PC Magazine.

I would love to see ANY information that could possibly back this up.  I’m pretty confident in saying that there is none. 

I was extremely offended by this assumption - this assumption that is coming off as a fact to those who don’t know any better.  Why attack the small business owner? The small business owner has enough to deal with as they struggle to compete with the “big guys” in the first place. We don’t need something like this to make it even more difficult.

This is a very popular magazine filled with subscribers who usually take every word to heart.

Our lists are the lifeblood of our businesses! I for one can’t stand to be spammed and I care about my subscribers - without them I wouldn’t be where I am today so therefore I respect each and every one of them as well as do everything in my power to protect them. Unlike the larger companies that don’t have nearly as much to loose.

I work extremely hard to build a trusting relationship and a strong reputation with all my subscribers, clients and customers. This is not something I’m willing to sacrafice. Are you?

Someone who is considered an expert should be sure the proper research is done before making a claim such as this. 

Isn’t it funny when I sign up to a newsletter from a “big company” I’m bombarded with email offers from several other ‘big companies”?  But when I sign up to a newsletter provided by a small business owner I get emails from that person only.  How about you? 

How many times have you purchased something from a “bigger name” only to receive an email later from someone else that just happens to be about the same product or something related to the one you just bought?  So not only are they selling our email address, they’re also selling information about our purchases!  How many times has that happened when you purchased from a work at home mom?

I don’t know about you but I work hard to build all my lists - very hard.  Don’t think for a second I’m willing to share those contacts!  They’re mine - I worked hard for them and I’m going to keep them!  I don’t care what someone is willing to offer me.  That’s short lived - and me?  I’m in it for the long haul. 

How many of my subscribers do you think would continue to purchase from me if they found out I sold their email address?  And that’s assuming they would actually STAY on the list - which I highly doubt.  I know if it happend to me, I’d be gone.  You?

Gee, even if I wanted to (which I would never)  I would even know how to sell the list.  Do you know how?

I really could go on and on about this. This was nothing more than a slam to the small business owner who did nothing to deserve it. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way as it’s slowly making it’s way around the work at home mom community. See for yourself, the general consensus is … we’re offended.

Online Stores Will Sell Your Info
This Bugs Me - Blame the Mom and Pops
Did You Know That You Were Selling People’s Information

I’m sorry but I believe this is big enough that we deserve a rebuttal. Leave a comment and share your thoughts. I’ll be sharing this post with Mr. Rubenking. I believe he needs to be made aware of what he’s done.

So, how do you feel?

©Lisa Barker

(An excerpt from Lisa Barker’s book Just Because Your Kids Drive You
Insane…Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!)

There I was in the middle of the bra aisle with the three-year old and
two-year old in tow.  I’d played it smart.  I had both children
strapped into a shopping cart of their own.  I had them parked out of range
of the merchandise.

I knew my size.  I deftly hunted for the appropriate color, whisked it
into a cart and weaved my way from women’s lingerie to skivvies for
the kiddies.

It was looking as if my underwear mission would soon be Mission
Accomplished, but no.

Along the way I noticed this strange trail of plastic cards.  “Hmm.
  That looks just like…my ATM card!  My credit card!  My driver’s
license!”

Grinning like a happy hamster, my two-year old demonstrated how the
contents of my wallet had been strewn along like a plan Hansel and Gretel
had hatched to help Mommy find her way back to the bra department by
smoothly tossing the little important slips of paper and money in my
purse up in the air like confetti.

Of course, I knew my priorities.  I immediately abandoned my kids as I
desperately tried to collect all my most important personal and
financial tokens.  You’d think I was a mad woman on a treasure hunt in the
aisles of unmentionables.

Satisfied that I had retrieved all my things before my identity could
be stolen, I returned to my children only to discover a ‘helpful’
fellow shopper standing there to inform me that my two-year old had stood
up in his seat.

It was as if she thought I’d just decided to park my kids in the
middle of nowhere and stroll off to browse and have a jolly good time.

Parenting Police are convinced that you should have never had children
to begin with.  They will shake their heads and cluck their tongues,
offer you unsolicited advice about birth control or state the obvious.

“Your child is running through the aisles.”

“You mean this isn’t Disneyland?”

“Is it naptime?”

“No, they always scream like this.”

“You must have your hands full.”

“No, I just like to drop bottles of milk on the floor to see how fast
it takes the clerk to call out, ‘Wet spill in aisle three!’”

“Your son has a potty mouth.”

“My husband and I think self-expression is  $%#&*@ GOOD for them.”

“These children are all yours?”

“So that explains why they keep following me home!”

Well, we made it to the checkout without anybody calling Child
Protective Services.  At least for now, sarcasm isn’t viewed as parental
incompetence.

LISA BARKER of Greenfield is a syndicated humor columnist and mom of
five. Her latest book is “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane …
Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!” See www.JellyMom.com for more
information.

———————————-

P.S. Ladies, I absolutely love Lisa’s “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane … Doesn’t Mean You Are a Bad Parent!” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … Lisa is a talented writer with a sense of humor that only a mom can really understand! Check out www.JellyMom.com and pick yourself up a copy.

Yup, I’m selling The Scrapbooking Source. The site has a very solid foundation, and could make a whole lot of money to those interested in taking it over. Specifically those who could add a lot of useful content to the site. There currently is quite a bit of content, but still lots of room for growth.

The site is a PR3 and was started in October 2006. The new owner also gets a full optimized message board with over 100 members. (The boards are currently “off”, but can be easily turned back on in the admin).

There are two forms of income on this site - affiliate ads and Adsense income. Neither are really optimized, so a little tweeking might prove to be useful. I just flat out don’t have the time to mess with it.
Asking price is $500 OBO. This appraisal seems to think it’s worth nearly three times that,  so I think this is quite a bargain. A few links for the site are featured on Idea Queen, which will stay in place.

If you are interested just leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you. You can also email me at contact <at> momsmarketonline.com

After playing with Associated Content for a month now, I can’t say I’m as enthused about it as I was from the beginning. Granted my original plans were just to add non-exclusive articles and see how it went, but I got over excited and started posting paid articles too.

Total earnings from just paid views was pretty pathetic. At a glance I can see Idea Queen’s blog made more in Adsense than I made in AC page views. Not a big surprise there though - I know I can get much better than $1.50 per 1,000 views with Adsense. (My averages are usually around $4-5 per 1,000 page views). Well not only that, but IQ’s blog has a whole lot more posts (over 300 blog posts verses only 40-some articles posted on AC). Of course it’s going to perform better.

As far as the exclusive paid articles go, I’ve done14 in all and made around $50 (upfront, does not include page view totals). Not bad I guess, if you figure some of those articles would have never been used for anything. Just something I wanted to write about and threw it to them. Probably better than I’d do in Adsense too.

Now the thing that really irks me is their “right” to change titles. The reason they give is they think they are making it more “search engine friendly”. As someone who is good at both copywriting and SEO, I have to say they REALLY need a lesson in both. I know what makes for an eye catching headline, and they love to rip it apart to make it sound awful. Not only that but the new title is hardly ever “optimized”. For some reason they think they’ll get more exposure in search engines, yet they forget we have other ways of promotion so those eye catching titles ARE needed.

The last article I thought I would let them give me up front payment for they even changed the body AND the title. I mean completely changed the theme of the article to something that it shouldn’t have been. The original article was “5 gifts for girls” which they changed to “gifts for 5 year old girls” and changed my content to toss in “5 year old” here and there………um, NOT what the article was about! That term was not even searched for (yes I check WordTracker). So what was the point of that?

Needless to say I’ve had enough of them tearing up my titles and changing them to something stupid for absolutely no reason. Yes it’s “their site” but it’s MY name attached to those articles. While I enjoyed the extra pocket change the last month, I think I can find more productive ways to earn better money long term. I do plan to toss them some non-exclusive articles (they can’t change those) for page view payment only, but I think that’s it. Guess I’m not ready to sell out just yet.  :razz:

I tipped quite a few of my favorite blogs as well as some that I admit I just found today …
Why? 

Well, where else can you get quality advertising directed right to your target group for such a low price?

I tipped some of my favorite blogs that I learn from as a “thanks” for all the help.

I tipped popular blogs that target the same market that I am.

I’m also thinking about all the exposure I’m getting for such a low price!  I didn’t pay more than $5 for any of the tips I left.  (You can’t beat that.)

What am I talking about you say?  I’m talking about the Scratch Back & Top Spots that you see on almost every blog you visit now, lol!  We have one - you can see it over there on the left hand side.
<< ——

When we put ours up, we decided to keep the price low so anyone can afford to advertise their business.  You can get listed in our top spots for only $2 each.  Your ad stays up until it gets “bumped”.  I absolutely love this concept!  (yes, I’ve become addicted to tipping, lol!)

So, take a closer look at some of your favorite blogs. Chances are they too have a Scratch Back “Top Sites” list on their blog.  Say thanks to your favorite publishers by dropping them a tip and get some great exposure in the meantime.

You’ll be surprised as to how affordable MOST of these unique little tip jars are! No more letting a tip w/ nothing but a little bit of good karma - you actually get something in return

Oh and one of the things that I’ve noticed as I went about tipping … a little “tip” I can share with you.  Find blogs that are related to your niche and use the same ad text for each one.  Remember - it’s been proven that folks need to see your advertisement at least 7 times before they’ll act.  The more visitors see your ad … the more branding exposure you get

Want another tip? If you have your own blog and have the SB list on yours … I’ve also found that scratch back owners often like to return the favor What a great way to network a bunch of like-minded blogs together.

And I’m not ashamed to admit … I sure wish I was the guy who thought of this! (Err … gal!)

I’ve been tipping for quite some time but today I really went on a tipping spree - why? Because I’m seeing results!

Oh boy are we having a hard time finding a way to organize which child does what when and how much they can earn.  Right now we don’t have anything “set in stone”.  Each child basically know their individual chores and what is expected of them.  However, these are very, very few.  Other than those I’m always asking each child to “do me a favor” and offering a money reward.  I am so tired of all that, lol!

I want something that’s “set in stone” - something like a chore chart.  We’re not sure if we want to give each individual chore a value.  If it’s done, they get paid for it, if it isn’t they don’t.  OR  Should we just make a list of chores.  If they’re all done, they get paid, if they’re not - they don’t.  I’m not sure if the latter is quite fair to the children however, it does give them more of an incentive of getting them done.

Mom is tired of constantly telling each child what to do, reminding them over and over again to get it done and all that good stuff!  Mom wants something a bit more organized!  (Yes, I’m yelling and venting, rofl!)

 My daughter is 11 and my son is 7. 

How do you handle it?  I’m assuming most combine allowances and chores?  Do you do this?  What do you pay?  What chores are your children responsible for and how old are they?

Yeah, I have a ton of questions … I would just love to hear how other handle the “Chores & Allowances” issue.

 So, spill the beans … what do you do?

You Are a Crossword Puzzle

You are well read, and you have a good head for remembering facts. You are a wordsmith. You have a way with words, and you’re very literate. You are a mysterious person who enjoys dropping little clues every now and then.

My Comments: Well, it’s right. Never really thought about it this way but I can’t deny it … it’s right, lol! So, how about you?