Be Zen and make money from MomBite.com

March 30th, 2009 by admin

As mentioned in previous posts in the our title post, I am promoting my wife’s book:  Mommy’s little Money$Maker, an Inspirational guide for Mom’s to start a business or earn part-time income while working from home.  Here is a recent article from her blog Mombite.com today:  Click on title to see full article!

Be Zen When You Spend

(Author: Jill Dickinson, Mommy’s Little Money$Maker)


BEING ZEN WHEN YOU SPEND
It is a daily challenge for almost everyone, especially moms, to not come undone by the growing pressures of the economy, finances, family responsibilities and material matters.  But there is a powerful solution to the imbalance buzz that is naturally out in the world.

It’s called Being Zen When You Spend!
It may not be the cure-all for stress and life’s complications, but in one way or another, it is going to take you further in life.  In the very least, it could save you money.  Saving money alone could provide you with greater stability and security that could reach out farther than just your bank account.  If you want to ease your mind, you may want to start with your lifestyle and habits.  Creating healthier habits that add more benefit and less stress is the Zen way to go.

Be Zen when you spend. It’s that simple.  Take on a Zen approach around spending money and be Zen when you spend.  Embrace it and you will reap the rewards.

Posted in Money Maker | No Comments »

Microsoft Search not to be called Kumo.com

March 25th, 2009 by admin

Ok, so I have heard that the new Microsoft search will not be called kumo.com.  The new name is not told to more then 3 people in the company.  So what can I say, I am a little bummed.  I liked Kumo.com, what a buzz killer.  So folks, if you are trying to create buzz for a brand, leak out the word.  Don’t hide it from people or change it.  Be like Apple, one of the best marketing companies in the world.  Tell people months and years in advance what you will be building, how cool it is, and how hot it is.  But, don’t tell them yet, keep it a secret for a while.  And, then when they have had it, reveal it like the iPhone.  Create buzz, that is what Marketing is all about. 

Speaking of marketing, have you downloaded our free marketing book yet?  Do it now, and pass it to 20 of your friends, it’s worth reading.  Also if you know a Mom who is looking to earn a part time income or starting a business, have her check out my wife’s book and blog site at http://MomBite.com, here is an excerpt of an article:

11 Essential Ways to Help Your Kids Think Green

March 24, 2009 · No Comments

You’ve heard it before.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Recycle.

If you are currently putting these “green” habits to the test, then the next step is to instruct your kids on how to do the same.  Green is such a popular topic and now with the money tight in families, the color of money is one that everyone is interested in.

You can be a wonderful role model to your kids, but if they are only watching you turn off the lights when you leave the room and taking food scraps out to the compost bin, it’s not enough to get them to do it.  The more we can build natural habits into our children’s daily life patterns, the more we are going to start creating a community of people who will do the same.

If your kids learn a tip or two about being “green,” it will filter onto their friends.  Kids love to get involved in projects and this is an opportunity for them to take a deeper look at their lives and to figure out what is important as it affects the whole family and our community.

Top Ways to Teach Your Kids to Go Green!

1. Take your kids shopping to thrift stores.  Your children will learn a valuable lesson about reusing items if you let them shop second-hand, consignment and thrift stores.  Teach your kids about saving resources by reusing clothing, toys, and equipment and let them experience the thrill of finding a new treasure.  It’s not only smart - it’s important to our environment.

dscn001722. Teach your kids “green” art smarts. Instead of purchasing new art supplies with all of its packaging, breath new life into old, recycled items and make creative works of art.  Pop buttons off an old sweater, find old boxes or containers to decorate, or design a sculpture in your yard with recycled items.  Pat and Lisa of Seattle have taken sticks and twigs that have naturally twisted and realigned themselves into the resemblance of an alphabet letter and mounted them as an A through Z wall art display in their basement.  When out on a nature walk with your child, present them with the scavenger hunt game where they search for the alphabet letters in tree pieces.  It’s an inexpensive way to teach your kids to find learning in nature.

Posted in Money Maker, work at home, work from home | 1 Comment »

Why Wordpress.com is the best blogging platform . period!

March 22nd, 2009 by admin

It’s not a secret that we are huge Wordpress secrets for blogging, especially since we have been offerring SEO blog templates for Wordpress for years.  If you are an expert you already know that Wordpress has Meta tags and other built in amazing tools for SEO.  You know that Wordpress.org offers the MU (Multi-User), and the blogging software for FREE.  Which always catapults the most feature rich blogging tool in to being #1.

So Why is Wordpress.com the best blogging platform?  Because it helps you setup a blog on your own domain for custom hosting within minutes and only $15/year (yes that is a year), DID WE MENTION INCLUDING THE DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION? YES, THAT IS TRUE.

Some of us are not technical, and so the fact that Wordpress.com hosts our free blogs is great, but we really want to be professional and blogging on our own domain allows us all to do that.  So the fact that it is super easy is another best feature.  Folks, I tried and spent hours on TypePad the (self proclaimed professional blog), it stinks.  I was willing to pay the $149/year (thank god they did not charge my credit card), but it was too rigid, templates were not professional enough, and the SEO was weak.  I expected so much more, but I would have just settled for an easy interface, but they simply made things hard for me to navigate.  Also TYPEPAD fees are non-refundable, so DO NOT BUY or Pay full in advance they do not prorate your monthly payments.  After the 14 day trial, you are literally hosed, stuck with their weaker blogging system.

Blogger and Blogspot are easy and Ok, they also allow domain hosting, for free I think.  Blogger blogging platform, is owned by Google, so it’s not that bad, nothing Google does is bad.  It simply does not have the features and customization that Wordpress.com blogging has.

Anyway, It’s taken me a few days to blog about this topic as I have been busy blogging about my wife’s book Mommy’s Little Money$Maker, an Inspiration Guide for Mom’s to start a business or earn a part time income.  Check it out at MomBite.com, she has been blogging their every day.  She plans to provide a daily MomBite, a featured business owned and started by a Mom that can help to inspire other Mom’s.  Enjoy and don’t be afraid to pass it on to other Mom’s.  Thanks!

Posted in Blogger's Block, Blogging, Blogging Don'ts, Blogging Techniques, Blogging Terms, Books, blog, blogspot | No Comments »

Money Maker, not just for Mom’s

March 21st, 2009 by admin

As you can tell from the recent posts, that I am really excited about my Wife’s blogging about her book; Mommy’s Little Money$Maker.  It will soon available for a free download for a limited time, because it’s going to go to a national publisher.  The blog and details about the money maker tips are at MomBite.com.

She has so many great work from home advice for Mom’s to start a business or make part-time income, it really is quite amazing.  But, what I am most excited about is the fact that she has actually incorporated something called MomBite’s.  A little tidbit about a business started by a Mom and the full on profile and interviews with successful women.  So really, it’s a great book of business ideas, and not just for Mom’s.  I think she might actually incorporate a couple of great ideas by Dads too.  So folks do visit her Money Maker site, MomBite.com and spread the word by blogging about it.  It’s in these crazy times we really do have to support each other and help Mom’s be the little or big Money Makers!  Enjoy the excerpts from MomBite.com:
Establish a Two-Hour “Work Out” Routine
March 20, 2009 ·

Two hours is a long time.  Two hours goes fast.  Two hours is all I need.  Two hours later.  Two hours to get it done.  Two hours time.  Two hour work-out.  Two hours.

Get the work “Out” of the way! If you are looking to find a Money$Maker, you need to start carving out time in your daily life to take action steps towards your goals.
Take two hours each day to establish a two-hour “work out” routine. Get an office set-up.  Research ideas for a business.  Make phone calls.  Set up a blog.  Network.  Get yourself out there.  Start projects that you can realistically finish.

Find alternative times to make work happen.

Get up in morning and do it before the kids tumble down the stairs wondering what’s for breakfast.
Think about carving out hours in the quiet of the afternoon or in the evening when you are able to find focus time.
While your child is napping, get to work.
If your baby often falls asleep in the car, set up a roving office space.
Get your family on board to help you find the time you deserve.
There are 24 hours in your day.  I know you are bus, but taking the two-hours and putting it toward a Money$Maker will go a long way to reaching your dreams.

I know that there is room to take two of the 24 hours in the day to work on your business. Two hours of work is a realistic, reasonable goal for starting any endeavor.

Keep in mind after you have used your two hours, that you still have 22 hours left to do things like laundry, paying bills, getting groceries, making meals, taking care of kids, carpooling, sleeping and doing something for yourself.

Tips:

When you finally slip away to take the two-hour time period for work, remember to use it wisely.
Organize what you’d like to get done ahead of time, so when the two hours arises, you are ready to hit it.
Minimize distractions in your workspace and try to stay focused.
If it is hard for you to stick with two-hours straight, try doing it in four sets of half-hours.  Set a timer if you must.  Do a half hour on, half hour off.
Stay consistent with taking the time to work.
Put a note on the door telling children that “Mommy is working (with another adult home if kids are young)” and close the door if that works better.
Hold a family meeting to let everyone feel involved in your endeavors.  Be honest and let them know what you need and involve them in decision making.
If the time still doesn’t work for your personal schedule, scale it back to one hour.  If it really works, try to add another hour onto your “Work Out” Routine.

Posted in Money Maker | 1 Comment »

Great Book to help Mom’s work at home or from home

March 18th, 2009 by admin

A great book is about to come out, it’s from a person very close to me.  It’s a great book for work at home or work from home guide for Mom’s who are looking to earn extra income in these times.  The title is: Mommy’s Little Money$Maker, the blog is @ MomBite.com

Here is an excerpt from the MomBite blog: 

The Book Bite: Mommy’s little Money$Maker:  The Mom’s Insider Guide to Making Money.  Real Moms.  Real Ideas.  Smart Tips.
 
We have over 150 ideas of successful business ideas created by Moms.  In the book, you will find the compilation of tips from some of the best experts and practical advice from everyday Mommy Entrepreneurs.   In fact, we have featured over 40 successful businesses of Moms who have turned their passion and desire into a perfect business for them.
 
Soon we are offering the eDownload of the book for free.  So please give us your feedback and help other Moms succeed in living their dreams!

Posted in Getting Started, work at home | No Comments »

Twitter beyond the Hype

March 16th, 2009 by admin

So blogging is big, we know that.  You have heard us say this hundreds of times, especially how Blogs are at the center of SEO, Search and Social marketing.  But, is Microblogging via Twitter hot too?  Yes, especially if you read the article below in CNBC, the main stream business media.  Twitter allows people, businesses, and anyone really to connect with their audience, unlike anything else.   Well, maybe Facebook, but because it’s instant, it’s really catching on.  So what is Twitter, you ask?  Microblogging, which essentially is short snippets you share about recent events, topics or news.  Because they are fresh, they are popular.  CNN commentators are using them, and you can share topics and everyone can comment on that topic.  I call it more like, Live Blogging rather than microblogging. 

Go to check it out at Twitter.com, it’s easy, it’s easy, and you don’t have to be technical at all.  You just have to want to say something, and people will find you.   If you like watching people on faceBook, you will love Twitter.  See Full article @  http://www.cnbc.com/id/29719516  it’s brought to you via CNBC by Vault.com the Career site, who I think originated the content. 

Some excerpts:

Execs: To Tweet, Or Not To Tweet?

Vault

O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Twitter would, were it not Twitter call’d. (Sorry, Will.)

Twitter – are executives really expected to “do” something called tweeting? Use something called Twitter?

The simple answer is YES. In fact, it shouldn’t even be a question anymore. Americans – of all ages – have embraced “social networking” in its many contemporary forms: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, the sharing services like Digg and Reddit, blogging, and yes, Twitter. A marketing campaign or constituent communications tool by any other name would smell as sweet, right?

 

 

That’s what my plugged-in lieutenants tell me. One of them sent me a list of advantages last week that ran on for three pages! And unlike Facebook, Twitter seems to have been adopted just as quickly by Gen X as by kids in college. And lots of companies – unable to penetrate Facebook – have been far more successful exploiting the promise and prowess of Twitter.

Tony Hsiah of Zappos tweets and so does Starbucks [SBUX  10.78    0.22  (+2.08%)   ] . And lots of media outlets are doing it as entities. (Can an entity be “social”?)

Big brands and companies have legitimate concerns about security, authenticity and the like. Many CEO’s are insulated and surrounded by legions of PR and Investor Relations troops – not to mention lawyers. I think the term “social networking” often gets in the way. Social and commercial don’t seem to go together. But I think it’s the networking that holds the power. All these so-called 2.0 web services are anchored by the same core principles: personalization; the importance of “influencers” (friend, favorite, followed, follower); instant, viral transmission of ideas and images; transparency and authenticity.

Posted in Blogging, blog dictionary | No Comments »

Are Blogs Advertisements?

March 9th, 2009 by admin

The simple answer is no, but they can be.  And there is a fine line that people are crossing, and Google has punished them for it.  The whole concept is one of pay per post or blogs that are written to endorse products or services.  Especially if they are not publicly disclosed, and a no-follow link has been placed.  The concept is regulated pretty heavily by Google, and violators are punished by loosing their organic rankings.  I think this holds true for both bloggers and advertisers.  So disclose publicly if you have any advertisers or endorsements.  For example, we don’t have any advertisers or endorsers, but we promote our own Marketing book and heaters on a different site.  And are always blogging about those relevant topics.  So I think we are OK.  A lot of this depends on how strick and far Google wants to take it.   This is another reason, why we should have a democratic search system, and why I am starting to support Live.com and It’s new name of Kumo.com, if that is it’s new name. 

The issue of No Follow Link and Blogging and Advertising gray line got highlighted last week when Forrester published a report on blogging and marketing.  See attached blog post to dwell in to the issue in detail:   http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/03/sponsored-con-1.html

Posted in Blogging, Blogging Don'ts, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Microsoft Search brand: Kumo.com?

March 3rd, 2009 by admin

Just read the following article from MediaPost.com on Kumo and the Microsoft Search initiative.  Check it out at:  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101335

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I like the whole concept, and think they will impress us.  How can this Marketing book, (yes, we sell it on Amazon occassionally that is for $9.95) and blogging expert, “Moi” be so confident?  If you know your Microsoft history, you would realize that they are the masters on evolutionary innovation.  What is evolutionary innovation, they keep making things better and better until they dominate.  Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Outlook etc. are just a few examples where Microsoft initially did not have a leading solution.  But, they kept on pushing and pushing for innovation and now dominate all those markets. 

So if you want to listen to this marketing guy, Kumo.com and Microsoft search will come on Google’s tale at some point.  It might take them a few years, but never ever count the Redmond Giant out of any game.  Here is an excerpt from the article:  Microsoft is conducting an internal test of Kumo, the rebranded version of Live Search, and is looking to its employees for feedback, according to an email sent late Monday afternoon.   Here is the lengthy excerpt: 

Microsoft is conducting an internal test of Kumo, the rebranded version of Live Search, and is looking to its employees for feedback, according to an email sent late Monday afternoon.

Satya Nadella, senior vice president of research and development for Microsoft’s online services division, invited company staffers to begin testing the new search engine. “Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days,” Nadella wrote.

Kumo, which means “cloud” or “spider” in Japanese, is the codename for the internal test and it’s not clear from the email whether the name will be retained. The service is not yet available outside the company and the email did not detail when it will go live externally.

“In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes,” Nadella wrote. “These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today. We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks.”

Features of Kumo vary by country, but results are organized in a way that saves time, according to the email. An explorer pane on the left side of results pages gives access to tools that help with tasks. Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions.

Posted in Internet Advertising, internet marketing | No Comments »

Blogging? Be careful on content excerpts

March 2nd, 2009 by admin

When we blog about a particular subject, a news story or simply our thoughts; we often make a point by providing excerpts from news articles or original sources. I have been a little too lax as far as adding too much of excerpts, but I always provide a link back, thinking that is good enough.  Not true.  And, since I/we are blogging and giving the source of the article traffic; I justify it to myself.  Thinking that these people should be very excited that this great internet marketing book blog is giving them a link from a high Google Page Rank of 5 is linking them. 

If they were truely a web based company in the world of Internet Marketing, they would appreciate it.  But traditional media and journalists of big companies are not always compensated properly.  Hence lies the big issue, of why we need to not borrow their content.  We can always excerpt to help people, but lead them get more information the source.  As always if you find our marketing insights and this internet marketing book Here is a link to an article form CNBC that all blogging professionals should read:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29464102

Here is an excerpt from the article below, Bloggers be forwarned lawsuits for copyright infringement against bloggers are on rise.

When the popular New York business blog Silicon Alley Insider quoted a quarter of Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column in mid-February, the editor added a caveat at the end: “We thank Dow Jones in advance for allowing us to bring it to you.”

The editor added “in advance” because Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, had not given the blog permission to use the column. The excerpt was published with the assumption that it would be permitted under the “fair use” statute of copyright law.

Generally, the excerpts have been considered legal, and for years they have been welcomed by major media companies, which were happy to receive links and pass-along traffic from the swarm of Web sites that regurgitate their news and information.

But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work — a practice sometimes called scraping — are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.

With the Web’s advertising engine stalling just as newspapers are under pressure, some publishers are second-guessing their liberal attitude toward free content.

“A lot of news organizations are saying, ‘We’re not willing to accept the tiny fraction of a penny that we get from the page views that these links are sending in,’ ” said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “They think they need to defend their turf more aggressively.”

Copyright infringement lawsuits directed at bloggers and other online publishers seem to be on the rise. David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, said his colleagues kept track of 16 such suits in 2007. In 2004 and 2005, it monitored three such suits each year. And newspapers sometimes send cease-and-desist orders to sites that they believe have crossed the line.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »