Home Business

Unlike my aunt (that’s not her to the left, btw), who doesn’t miss a single serve, I don’t really follow the sport of tennis much anymore.  The “characters” are pretty much gone, so I have to admit I lost interest.  Something caught my eye in a newspaper this week, though.   I saw a picture of a very young girl, a professional tennis player, and beneath the picture was the word Retired.  At 25.  According to the story, she’d lost her passion for the sport.

We’ve all been there, right?  Irregardless of our career path or walk in life - sometimes the next step seems more monumental than all the ones before.  Other times, the steps ahead seem blase’, unimportant, and fail to inspire us any more than Jack Black in a Speedo.

I’ve been there before.  Because, irregardless of what some people may think, just because you work from home doesn’t mean it isn’t work.  When web publishers, writers, graphic artists, web designers, etc. sit and work for hours each day - it’s not exactly free time!   Yes, working from home has huge, beautiful benefits - but the lack of respect and the jokes about “getting a job” are enough to make a person want to eat pencils.

That’s why I don’t keep pencils on my desk.

Oh, and my, my, my…  A word about full-time mothers.  You want to talk about WORK?!?!  If anyone assumes that a full time mother doesn’t work - I’d invite them to do what she does.  If they survived a full day, they’d give her flowers the next day and well-deserved respect every day thereafter. 

Irregardless of where you work or what you do, there will be times when your motivation and, even, inspiration, fail you.  Fortunately you don’t have to stay in the Lost Zone.  

There have been days when I’ll open a blog editor or pick up a pen and paper to write an article and…. and, nothing.  I’ll just stare at the white space until I get swimmy eyed, then I close whatever it is I have open along with my mind.  Sometimes “it” just isn’t there and for the life of me I don’t know where “it” went.

Lost Zone, incidentally, is a name I came up with for this feeling while I was in high school.  I loved Literature, English, Composition, Biology,  Spanish, and History.  (I don’t have any kind words for Math and it doesn’t have any for me.)  Still, there would be times when I just didn’t care if I finished the Shakespeare play I was reading at the time or if I ever saw another art thou again.

My mom and my Bassett Hound would always tell me to leave the books for a while and do something else.  Mom would suggest cleaning my room, “Honey” would suggest a walk. We walked a lot.

When you feel like you’re in the Lost Zone, you need a new perspective.  Fortunately, one can be found just around the corner.  Below are a few of their favorite hiding places:

• New Perspectives love to hide near water.  Lakes, Oceans, Rivers - you can almost always find one simply by looking out over a beautiful body of water. 
• Parks.  Whether it’s a State Park or a City Park, these are some of the most ALIVE places on earth.  One of the great things about them is the way they conjur up amazing memories from yesterday.  Trips to the park when we were children, times we took our little ones to the park, etc.  It was even in a park, by a lake, sitting at a picnic table that my husband asked me to marry him.  Is it any wonder water and parks are numbers one and two?!
• Don’t look now, but a new perspective might just be in your own yard!  Grilling out, planting flowers, feeding birds (and squirrels, raccoons, possums…), soaking up a few rays, spying on the neighbors, petting your cat or dog, throwing a frisbee - they’re all perfect ways to just get away from it all and find a new perspective.
• Taking a ride through the country - or across the country - can do wonders to clear your head.  Some people (moi included) like to turn the radio up, sing along, and even, when the move hits, do a little seat dancing.  Others like to just roll the windows down, turn the radio off and listen to the world as it passes by.  That’s cool, too.
• Watching a movie is also a great escape.  Whether it’s on your sofa or your nearest movie theater, this one’s a great way to get away.  (Btw, if you haven’t seen Iron Man yet, you really should - I’ve seen it twice and that’s something I never do.  What’s even more telling is I’d go a third time!  Yeah, he can fly. And, yeah, I loved it.)
• The zoo!  Another one of my favorite places on the entire earth is the zoo.  Even though I always make my husband spend a fortune in the gift shop.  (This polar bear figurine, that lion coffee mug, those stuffed bears…)  Watching amazing, beautiful, and always entertaining animals takes you away from anything and everything troubling, unsettling, or even mildly annoying.  Who could fret over writer’s block when a monkey is clowning at one turn and a polar bear is taking a dive at the next?

A Fresh Perspective will do a world of good when you need a break.  

The ones above are just a few of my favorites - your own fresh perspective may be hiding on a golf course, in a fishing boat, in a bowling alley, etc.  It may be at a baseball, basketball, or football game.  Sporting events are great places to get away from it all and just have fun.  If you need and want a fresh perspective, it’s there waiting for you.

Make it a point to find at least one this weekend.  Monday will thank you for it! 

I actually have three things I want to share with you today, things that I think will help you help yourself (Self Help Daily’s favorite scenario).  I’m going to put them all in one post rather than three separate ones… So here we go!

GREATER GOOGLING

My daughters kid me about being the Queen of Google.  Whenever we need to find anything out, my first response is, “I’ll Google it.”  And then I do…  I find what we need, too - as in every time.  I kick some serious search engine butt when it comes to knowing when to add a + sign along with quotation marks and knowing what search terms to use.  Spending your working hours in front of the computer screen has its benefits.

However, and this pains me somewhat to say it, I recently read a post by Jim Edwards that pointed out a few things I didn’t know.  Imagine!  The link is below and it’s a wealth of information for anyone who…. well, for anyone!  We all need information, and usually on a daily basis.  Jim’s post will show you how to make sure you get all of the information you need.

Improve Search Engine Results - 5 Easy Tips

YouTube and YOU!

Another amazing source of information is YouTube. It’s not just music videos and Dane Cook (though I highly recommend each! ).  Wordpress recently came out with a slick new  version - 2.5.  I have 13 of my own blogs and maintain 5 more, so I had a lot of updating to do (which explains why there haven’t been as many posts lately).  Problem was, I had no idea how to go about it or, really, if I even should try. 

Option #1 - I GOOGLED, of course.  There were countless forum and blog postings by experts and geniuses.  But all of the blah blah blahs were flying over my head and the yadda yadda yaddas were giving my headache a headache.  So I thought, “Hmmmm… I wonder if anyone has put up a YouTube tutorial…”  Eu-freakin-reka!  I searched “Wordpress 2.5″ and it produces over 40 results.  There are probably even more now.

If you haven’t upgraded, you should look into it - either by using the Automatic Upgrade Plugin or manually, the old school way.  Some of the blogs I upgraded worked with the Plugin, others had to be led through it step by step.  Neither process killed me, thanks to a great little plugin and to the professors of YouTube.

It made me wonder how many other “classes” were available at the University of YouTube.  I searched for random “How To’s” - some of which I already knew full well how to do (anything related to baking or gardening), others I had no clue about (how to save money on anything), and some I have no intention of ever doing (manual, sweaty stuff… Oh, and saving money on anything.  Sorry, honey.)  Below are just some of the tutorials available - and each has more than one.

• How to Knead Bread
• How to Change a Tire
• How to Save Money at the Grocery Store
• How to Grow Tomatoes
• Organic Gardening
• How to Prune Rose Bushes
• How to Plant Tulips
• How to Clean Your Gutters
• How to Change Your Oil
• How to Make a Million Dollars
• How to Make Fudge
• How to Build a Computer
• How to Build Golf Clubs
• How to Play Golf (over 3,700 results)
• How to Be a Better Husband (about 750 results)
• How to Play the Piano
• How to Play the Guitar
• How to Get into College
• How to Decorate a Cake 

Great stuff!

A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA

Last, but certainly not least:  This is for those of you who blog. My husband recently found (and purchased) some amazing blog themes - The Revolution WordPress Themes Package. He bought the package because we have so many blogs and wanted to use the theme on more than one.  However, the gorgeous themes are also available individually, since most people have only one blog.   

These themes are positively stunning.  You can customize them to the ends of the earth and back.  I’ve already redone three of my own blogs using various Revolution themes, and plan to do at least one more.  I’ve linked to mine below - I redid the colors on a few (simply to “match” the attitude of the blog) and created banners for the top.  Thankfully, the themes are so easy to customize you could change the looks as often as you want.  They’re also beautiful, as they are,  so you don’t actually have to do anything AT ALL in the way of changing the colors, etc.

I’ve used the following themes on the following blogs:

I have the Revolution Magazine Theme on my Kentucky Blog, and Music Blog.  I might use this theme on my Hollywood Yesterday blog as well.  I think the featured video will be perfect, and come on, the thumbnails are crazy cool!

I put the Tech Theme on our Gadget site, All Handhelds.  I wanted it to look like a cross between a website and a blog - kind of a website that happens to function like a blog.  A revolutionary idea that the Revolution Theme plays along with brilliantly.

I know I’ve given you a lot to chew on in this post - hindsight says screams, “You should have made this three posts, not one!”  The links open in new windows, though, so at least you can go check things out and then come back.  You know my door’s always open and the coffee’s always on.

If you use GOOGLE Adsense, you should be aware that Google has recently implemented new policies.  Publishers need to be certain they read through the policies top to bottom.  (They’ll appear when you log in to your adsense account.)

One of the newest policies, and one that has most people pretty shook up, is the one that now requires all publishers to have a Privacy Policy in place. 

When I read that I was now to notify my visitors “specifically about cookies and web beacons,” my head nearly exploded.  Yeah, so, cookies, to me, are baked in the oven and eaten with coffee…. and web beacons?  Web beacons? 

Thankfully for people as out of the loop as I am, we have a guardian angel:  Jennifer Slegg at Jensense.com has developed a Privacy Policy template for us.

Jen, I love you.

You can copy the template, fill in the blanks with your information, and place it on your new Privacy Policy page.  And, of course, be sure to link to her blog.

….and thank God for her…. And light a candle in her honor……  And name your next child Jennifer.

If you’re a writer or would-be writer, I want to tell you about a web site you’ll be interested in.  How We Became Writers is a stroke of creative genius.  HWBW is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of writings by writers, telling how they became writers.  I’ve read and have been motivated by each entry.  There’s simply no better way to be inspired or motivated than by reading the accounts of others who share your interests.  Inevitably, you come away with ideas, renewed passion, and a feeling of, “I can do this!”  Love that last one.

Check out the writings, they’re very interesting and motivating!

I’m sure you’ve come across my newest pet peeve yourself.  Probably more than once.

I honestly don’t have many pet peeves, but the few that I have belong in some sort of peeve hall of fame…or would that be hall of shame?

The newest entry is this:  It peeves me when a businessman or businesswoman simply becomes a busy-man or busy-woman, to the point of being too busy for their customers or clients.  Instead of serving the people who got them to where they are, they’re too busy going after new people - bigger and so-called better things.

If your business is “blowing up,” so to speak, the people with the cash are the dynamite.  Your customers or clients got you there - you didn’t wake up one day and arrive there all by yourself.  You can, however, wake up one day and find that it all came to an end.

People who are in business for themselves are especially bad at forgetting this simple fact.   All they can think of is growing their business by coming up with new products, new software, new this, new that.  They often leave you with the impression that you’re no longer important to them, as though you’re “so yesterday.” 

Not cool.

I’ve noticed it online a lot lately.  Frankly, I think that if an individual ever tells a customer or potential customer that they’re too busy to take care of something, the customer should say, “Wow, I’m really sorry that my money and I bothered you.  We’ll go bother someone else now.  And, don’t worry, I’ll tell everyone I know to do the same. Have a great day.”

I can’t even imagine telling someone who had respected me enough to use my product or service that I was “too busy” for them.  If you’re that swamped, why not say, “I really want to help you, and I promise I will. I have 100 pots on a 4 burner stove right now, so I can’t promise that I’ll be able to help you as soon as I’d prefer to, but know that you are a priority.  I will take care of this as soon as possible.  Thanks so much for understanding!”

Yet, what do you get from most of these people?  “I’m just too busy.”

Again, not cool.

These are generally the same people who think they’re waaaay above answering the telephone.  You leave a message for them and they never return it. You call again.  Nothing.  Whatever happened to treating people with respect? Your reputation is riding on it.

I guess it’s something we all need to be more mindful of.  Whether we’re running our own business or running a household (or both).  We should treat everyone around us with the respect they deserve.  If someone does something for us and we neglect to say, “Thank you!” - we disrespected them. 

If we aren’t willing to put ourselves out for other people, why should they ever put themselves out for us?  It’s possible…it’s just possible…that we’re becomming far too “me” oriented.  Looking out for number 1 will leave you as alone as the number 1. 

Very not cool.

New Year’s is a time for resolutions, and according to SUCCESS there is no better time design the person you want to become and the life you want to live in 2008.

Publisher and Editorial Director of SUCCESS magazine, Darren Hardy, offers the following advice on how to make 2008 your best year ever!

1. Decide to be Successful – Success is not a dream, hope or fantasy; it is a decision. Make the decision to change, improve and act on your ambitions.
2. Design your Best Year Yet – As an architect would design a skyscraper, write out the goals, plans and actions it will take to achieve the life you want to live.
3. Identify Your Passion - What are your unique interests, talents and gifts? Passion attracts success. Find what you love to do - you will never “work” again.
4. Program Yourself for Success – You will see, perceive, expect and create what you think about. To program your mind for success – read watch and listen to materials that will support your success. 
5. Surround Yourself with Success - You are the combined average of the five people you hang around the most. Surround yourself with healthy, success-minded achievers.
6.  Model Success - The best way to learn to be successful at anything is to find someone who is where you want to be and model their success habits.
7. Master the Fundamentals – Don’t complicate it. About a half a dozen things make up 90%+ of what it takes to be successful at anything. Keep it simple. 
8. Get Fit - The mind cannot achieve what the body cannot perform. Your family, friends and career and future depend on your good health. Make it priority No. 1. 
9.  Remember What’s Important – At the end of the journey what will have mattered most will be your relationships – the people you love and those that love you. Make sure they are on your goal list for 2008. 
10.  Make a Difference – What do you want your life’s legacy to be? You have the power to make a positive difference – to a single person, a neighborhood, a community, a nation, the world. Realize that power in 2008.

About SUCCESS magazine:

 SUCCESS, published bimonthly, is designed specifically to serve the growing entrepreneur, home-based and small-business markets. SUCCESS features today’s thought leaders and success experts, leading CEOs, entrepreneurs and other achievers with practical advice, ideas, tips and training on leadership, goal setting, time management, selling, motivation and much more. SUCCESS retails for $5.95 and is distributed nationally with an initial rate base of 100,000. http://www.successmagazine.com

Thanks, Rachel for passing this along for my readers (and for me!).

We suffer one of two things. Either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. You’ve got to choose discipline, versus regret, because discipline weighs ounces and regret weighs tons. - Jim Rohn, Conversations with Millionaires: What Millionaires Do to Get Rich, That You Never Learned About in School!

Isn’t that a amazing quote?  I spent a little time alone with it this morning, really letting it sink in and the deeper it sank, the more amazing it was. Discipline: The conquerer of great things vs. Regret: The coward who was conquered by all things.

Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic - I was caught up in the moment.

The father of the quote, Jim Rohn, went on to say, The reason is because the regret is an accumulated affect a year from now.  When you didn’ do the easy discipline.  He then gives a perfect example of what he’s talking about - one of my own personal phobias, dentists!  We’ve just about all been there.  The dentist tells us we need a procedure done that’ll cost around $300, but we really aren’t having much pain, so we say, “Thanks, but I think I’ll just see how it goes.”  How it goes is this:  We’re back in his office a couple of weeks, possibly months, later in a great deal of pain facing a fresh form of hell that’ll cost closer to $3,000.

I’ve also had a lesson in this philosophy courtesy of my Dodge Caravan.  It’s a very pretty van and I love it madly, but it taught me a hard, costly lesson a few years ago.  First of all, I play the radio and cds loudly, so if the vehicle’s who’s its and what’s its are in distress, I’m not very apt to hear their s-o-s calls, unless it’s between songs or I’m on the cell phone.  But I did, I have to admit, hear her tipping and tapping - kind of lie tiny morocas under the front end of the vehicle.

My response?  I believe I turned up the music.  I figured it was too little a noise to worry about - if there was trouble, it’d be a bigger, more hideous sound.  Surely if there was trouble, she wouldn’t go…..right?  The hideous noise came,  my buddy stopped moving, and I stopped grooving.

Costly?  Yes, Lord.

Another area where Discipline’s ounces and Regret’s tons comes into play is, ironically enough, the area of fitness.  We wonder, “How did these (5, 10, or 20) pounds sneak up on me?!”  Ounce by ounce, of course.

When we don’t discipline ourselves at every single meal and with every single “hankering,” we pave a fat-laden road to regret.  If we don’t have the discipline to exercise every single day, the pounds will make themselves at home and invite friends over.  Man! I hate it when they invite friends over!!

Before you know it, we’ve put ourselves in the position of being self-concious and unhappy with ourselves, at best, and in danger of a host of health problems, at worst.  Suddenly, heart problems, Diabetes, and a plethora of cancers all know our address - information we had hoped to keep from them.

Costly?  Yes, Lord.

“We suffer one of two things. Either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. You’ve got to choose discipline, versus regret, because discipline weighs ounces and regret weighs tons.”

Incidentally (By the Way’s on vacation…), the book this quote appeared in - Conversations with Millionaires - is an excellent book.  It’s, literally, a conversation with nine self-made millionaires.  When self-made millionaires talk, I not only listen, I take notes!

The nine individuals interviewed are:

• Jim Rohn - Very successful success mentor
• Mark Victor Hansen - Co-Auhor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series
• Wally “Famous” Amos - Chocolate Chip Cookie King!
• Jack Canfield - Self-Esteem expert and Co-Auhor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series
• Robert Allen - Best Selling Author
• Sharon Lechter - Co-Author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series
• Michael Gerber - Small Business expert and author of E-myth
• Jim McCann - CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com
• Jay Conrad Levinson - Author of the Guerilla Marketing book series

If you use the link at the top of the post, you can find a wicked deal on Amazon.com - as you know, they offer used books as well as new copies. Buying two or three used books for the price of one new one is always as cool as Coke on ice.

If you’re like me, you love your pets as much as some people (better than some I’ve had the displeasure of meeting).  You’re also probably just as horrified by the tragedies involving  unsafe pet food.

I’ll always believe that we lost our dog, Wednesday, largely because of tainted food. He was, like, 675 years old, so it would be very tough to prove.  Plus, common sense dictates that the little guy didn’t have much time left. 

However, most of the animals being harmed aren’t 675.  My heart breaks for everyone who has lost a very special friend during these scares.  It’s completely and utterly senseless.

Unfortunately, I read this morning that there’s a new scare.  Chicken Jerky Strips and Chicken Jerky have been pulled from the shelves in Wal-Mart stores after Pet owners reported their dogs getting sick.  The products were made in China - as if the country needed any more bad news.

Read the story for more details:  Melamine Found in Dog Treats

Needless to say, if you know anyone with dogs, tell them about the products so they can toss them out.

 

 

Who says you can’t get anything for free anymore? 

I was researching html validation, search engine spiders, and search engine performance today and came across a few websites that made my job a lot easier.  I’ve linked them below, so if you have a website or blog, you’ll want give them a look when you get a chance.  On second thought - make a chance, the information’s THAT important.

Free Internet Marketing and SEO Tools - I was particularly impressed with #17, the Spider Viewer.  It allows you to see your page as a Search Engine Spider would.  I ran some of my websites through and was amazed at the lack of some keywords as well as the abundance of some utter nonesense!  I have a little work to do.

Dr. Watson’s HTML Validator - Again, you enter your url, then you’re presented with a list of “errors” found in your html.  Rest assured, there’ll be errors.  I read an article on About.com and the author said that their own website had lots of errors.  It does, however, point out some basic html validating errors that could be causing problems in other browsers and/or wreaking havoc in your search engine performance.

Below the list of errors found, you’ll be able to see your html code with numbers before each line - it makes it a cinch to find exactly where the problems lie.  Did I find any errors on my websites?  Again… I have work to do.

I’m terrible about getting all caught up in the pretties of a website or blog - the images, the colors (I’m waaay into colors.).  Sometimes I have to handcuff myself to the desk and make myself dig behind the scenes….look under the covers, so to speak.

The main reason I launched myself into this research was because one of my websites (Buttermilk Press) (and corresponding blogs, Get Cooking) is performing about as miserably in GOOGLE as it possibly can. I guess there’s just so much competition in the field of recipes, it’s tough to break into the top pages.

The websites above gave me a wealth of information, though, so I may have a shot now. With enough effort, who knows, I might even land in the top 5,000!!!

If you happen to be sitting on any SEO knowledge you’d like to pass on to me, I’d welcome it with open arms.  After all, how will the world enjoy my amazing buttermilk biscuit recipes if they never find them?!  Geez.

Someone, ironically enough named Rich, e-mailed me a great link earlier.  He thought my readers might find it interesting, and I know he’s right.  I’ve spent a great deal of time enjoying it, myself, and have bookmarked it to finish reading after supper. It’s the The 100 Most Inspirational Personal Finance Turnaround Stories Online and it makes for fascinating, inspirational, and motivational reading. 

Check it out.  There’s so much information there, just waiting for someone to soak it up. 

I’m now thinking rich and thanking Rich.