Home Business Specialists - Website Open

We can check another item off our list of things to do, since Home Business Specialists is now finished and open. Next comes the huge job of promotion. With a good plan it shouldn't be too big of an issue. Basically we want to start with networking, since that's the best free source of traffic. We'll move on to some other sources very shortly. There really shouldn't be much we will have to do for promotion since all pages are optimized for the search engines, and most traffic is going to come from that.
I do need to work on getting the website listed in some directories, which I'll be working on for the rest of the week.

It's always very exciting to get a new website started, but also a LOT of hard work. It's good to know that my other websites are on "autopiolet" so to speak, and don't need my attention as much. :)

By mid July I hope to have enough time to work on another site of mine that I never really did finish, and I'm just dying to. I suppose if I really wanted to I could get a lot more done online and off, but lack of motivation and energy kicks in and I can't do a thing. Ah well, as long as I get a few things done a day I feel like I've accomplished something and the day hasn't been waisted. :)

~Kara

Motivation...Where'd it go??

Thats the way my ended yesterday and started today. Yesterday afternoon it was so bad and I felt as though nothing had gotten accomplished that I gave up and decided to do some yard work. I needed to feel some sort of accomplishment!

This morning I tried to jump right back in hoping the motivation had come back...nope, still wasn't there. I drug on through the biggest part of the morning just about to give up when bam! everything hit me at once. I now had work to do to help Kara with the business site, a friend thats just starting out online to help and the ezine to get ready for tomorrow (we've decided that as long as the kiddos are home from school..mornings are no longer my "time").

Yay! And the motivation is back! Ezine is all ready to go and I managed to help Kara with a handful of the pages for the business site (with a couple of extra new ideas for it even!). Not to mention my offline friend is about 2 steps away from having her very own website! Not too bad for a day that started out so slow. Always remember...no matter what...Keep On Pluggin!

Anita :)

Still moving right along

Today was a rather rocky day to say the least in my household, what with problems hitting me from every direction (an extra fussy baby due to a missing pacifier, a computer that wouldn't stop acting up, and then to top it off slicing my finger on a can then finding my son had taken off with all the band aids). After taking a deep breath and finally getting that fussy baby to sleep, I found the pacifier, the computer started working again, and my finger stopped bleeding. By then it was of course time to go to the store.

Aside from all that, I manage to at least start on 2 pages from the business side of "the big project". So really I'm actually pleased I managed to salvage something from the day. :)

~Kara

Contract and Freelance Jobs - Now Open!!

I don't have to hold back any longer, Home Freelance Jobs is now live! I'm so excited, even though this is just one of the two parts to the big project. Won't be much longer before the other site is finished. Even still, we are now excepting applications for independent contractors so that when the other website is finished we will have all our "ducks in a row" so to speak. It feels good to be offering home jobs for those looking, and we realised there were a LOT out there.

So here we go.......the adventure is just starting!

~Kara

Can I spill the beans yet?

Ooooo I'm so excited that we are FINISHED with one of the two sites for our "big project". I've never been good at keeping secretes, and when I'm excited the whole world knows about it. I want to scream out the URL to our new site, but actually the files havent' been uploaded to the host yet, so I know I had better just keep quiet for another day or two.

Really it's amazing how much you can accomplish with another person. There's no way I could have gotten that site finished quickly if it hadn't been for Anita doing the research on a few things and making sure the content was "just right". Here we were estimating that we would get this first site done by Friday, and it's only Tuesday! Amazing! I don't feel like I've overworked myself the last few days either, so that is a major plus. :)

Seems like this project started going faster once we got some of the first steps done (market research and main idea for the website). I think it was only last week we finally started working on content. Now look at us go!

If you couldn't tell, I've been having fun with this project. Just thinking of the possibilities with a new website keeps me going and never gets me bored. Just taking the first step and getting over the first hill is the key. ;)

~Kara

Affiliates, Affiliates, Affiliates!

Wow! Today was a very successful day when you look at accomplishments but, my oh my! Have you ever searched for affiliate products on a very wide range scale? I mean, I have alot of area I can cover with affiliate programs with the new project...and finding the right ones that you want to promote can be a very daunting process. Try going to Amazon sometime with one subject in mind and do a search for books related to that topic....Not back yet? Now try that with a whole bunch of topics! Yeah, ha, I'll see you next week. And thats just Amazon! Now try Clickbank, CJ, Commission Junction...yeah, let's say I'm not done with my part of the job yet! Time for a break...till tommorrow!

Anita

The Big Project Challenge

I swore I was not going to do any more challenges because they end up killing me, but I can never resist. Jumping in a bit late for the June challenge at WAHM.com, but we can still pull it off I'm sure. Actually it might be a good thing we came in late, so that we need to push that much harder. The plan is to finish up the "big project" by the end of the month and officially launch.

Today was a good day for the most part, since we managed to get the content done for yet another page. Still quite a few to go though. Some pages we should be able to fly right through like the "about us" and "contact" no doubt. Others might take a little more time due to forms.

Tomorrow I would at least like to get the main page done for the site that needs to be completed by next week. I don't think there is much more than needs to be done with it after that, so finishing it by the end of next week should be no problem. :)

~Kara

Affiliate Marketing Chat

Despite the fact that I'm just a tad burned out on affiliate marketing (I don't look forward to look at much of anything except my checks lately) due to the fact I went so many month building as many pages as possible, but today's chat was really fun. I've noticed Rosalind Gardner's book, Super Affiliate Handbook has hit the WAHM world in a big way and quite a few are either currently reading it or planning to buy it soon. I do in fact own the book and think it's an EXCELLENT resource. I tend to do things a little different, so may not be using everything from the book. BUT I found it to be a wonderful step by step book for beginners, and picked up some little ideas (and merchants) that I missed before. Well worth it!

Anyway, the chat was a good one today, and I did enjoy chit chatting with everyone that was there. At one point the chat did turn to SEO as an affiliate marketing chat normally does, so we've decided to have an open discussion on SEO next week. Same day, same time, same place (Wednesday, 2pm EST, at the Online Party Room ). Hope to see an even larger turn out next week. :)

Haven't really given much thought as to what other topics we will have, although I imagin some chats on offline marketing would be great since summer officially begins in a week and a half. The offline world will most deffinately be hoping, so I belive it would be a good idea to have an open chat on some ideas.

I do hope tomorrow we will be able to work on our large business project as I'm anxious to get it done. :)

~Kara

Getting Better :)

Yup, today was definately better! Wednesday's are ezine days. Today's ezine took just a bit longer to get out than it had been. Even though we gather all the information the day before?!? Ah, but you'll have these days!

Once the ezine was out and I got a chance to browse through my email a bit from the night before it was lunch time. Oh, lunch time! One of my most favorite times of the day. Because I get to eat? Nope, because I know its nap time after that! I really do love my kids I swear! LOL!

Ah, but seriously, the reason I was so waiting for nap time today was because today we were holding our first weekly chat. Today's topic was affiliate marketing and this seems to be one of my favorite topics lately. I'm still in the learning process by all means but...I'm getting there. I think we had a really successful chat this afternoon. We had a variety of people in there. People who knew what they're doing (such as Kara, LOL), people who have just dabbled a bit, and then the complete newbies. I think some of us learned alot of new things today. Till next week...SEO!

All and all I think we managed to get a decent amount of work done today but I'm looking forward to tomorrow and diving back into the new project again!

Oh, and how could I almost forget! My message boards are back up!

Anita :)

A good day most deffinately.......ok well mostly

As Anita mentioned, we did indeed get quite a bit done today. I felt good about getting the content on a page done, and many of the images for half of a new site. Not to mention working together with Anita to get a set up for articles working the way we wanted to, so that she could work on getting article pages done.

As always it was a challenge with the kids, as they were either getting in trouble or asking me for something the entire day. Normal, but stressful none the less. I've been strongly concidering taking them to a sitter once a week, just so I get a little peace and quiet. Only problem is it would require me to drive 10 minutes to the next town, 10 minutes getting them in and settled down (plus idle chit chat with my aunt), and another 10 minutes home. That's a half hour gone already, then another half hour going back over to get them. 1 hour total. Well, not really worth it I don't think, unless I can talk my mom into at least taking them over there when she's done at the store. THAT might be worth it, but still something I need to think about (and talk my mom into).

Aside from the stress of the children, I've felt I've had a really great day. I've struggled with motivation issues for nearly 2 months now, and today was the first day I really felt I've gotten over that. Well, proof positive - it's now 8pm and I'm STILL HERE at the computer brainstorming and doing things I know need to get done instead of saying "eh, tomorrow....". I can barely keep all the ideas in my head I'm so excited. Although my online game is calling me, and I feel the need to relax a little bit after this busy day. I think I've deserved it :)

~Kara

Bad Day Or Good Day???

First of all I'll start this post off with a promise NOT to turn this into my own personal venting board!

Today started off a real doosey! Mommy's Helper's message boards were down, I couldn't add any more tracking codes to my web pages, my priviledges at Ryze had been taken away because they Ryze administrator's accused me of spam at the end of May (when actually all I was doing was replying via private messenger to say thanks to all the birthday wishes I had receieved!), my 3 year old (his name is Cole, I'm sure he'll be mentioned alot in any of my venting posts, LOL!) was getting into everything and anything that he wasn't allowed to AND to top it all off I had to call my 7 year old's (her name is Melanie) school to request that she be held back in the 2nd grade for when school started again this fall!

Needless to say, I'd rather crawled right back into bed. Nah, not start the day over...just sleep right through it.

So, in efforts to try to turn this into a better day I kept working. I did alittle surfing of things that I always meant to take a look at but, just didn't take the time. Good news! In my surfing I managed to find a very resourceful site for me to keep an eye on to help me with my new adverture into affiliate marketing.

A little later Kara comes online and is ready to work. Great! So, we work on our new project for most of the day. And let me say...we kicked some major butt and got A LOT accomplished. Kara worked on scripts and links of the sites and I busily worked on getting the articles ready to be put online. Together we worked on more of the content and managed to get quite a few pages ready to go :) Started this blog and set up a new chat room for tommorrow's first chat on Affiliate Marketing. Wow! I really felt as though we had gotten so much accomplished! That made me feel so much better. Heck, I even forgot my message boards were still down.

As we plugged away I received a phone call from my daughter's school. I went over with her about how I'm so torn between holding Melanie back or not. She reassured me by the end of summer between the 3 of us we'd find the best solution for her. I'm still not sure where I stand because she'll be doing some testing on her to find out whether or not she has a learning disability. She's so very slow at reading and it's holding her back in all her other subjects. So, if the answer is not to hold her back, that means she does have a learning disability and if the answer is to hold her back...well, think about it. How would you feel if you were 7 years old again and needed to repeat the grade over again? Poor thing! I just feel so horrible for her! But, I do feel so much better that I'll have some real reasoning behind the decision in the long run. Then I won't feel quite so badly about the ultimate answer.

As I was working on getting the articles ready for tommorrow's ezine, I happened to mention to Kara the problems I was having with the stats codes. She graciously taught me a little trick thats actually going to save me a lot more time each week and be able to add additional codes!

So...I guess my little lesson behind all my ramblings would be that no matter how bad things look. Keep pluggin! Keep working. You'd be surprised what actually might come out of it! I know I was :) (Even though my message boards are still down!!)

Toodles!
Anita :)

Welcome!

Well, Kara pretty much summed it up. So, welcome to our blog! And you all thought I rambled before. Ha, this is a whole new ball game and I'm allowed too! I invite you all to watch as we together expand Mommy's Helper, Mom's Market, and Wahm State Directory to the fullest of their potential! Also, as a special treat you'll be able to watch first hand as we develop and build our newest project. But, you'll only get to find out the real scoop when we officialy launch ;) Feel free to share your comments with us. We'd love the feedback!

Like Kara said, this is going to be one fun learning experience!

Toodles!
Anita DeFrank
http://www.MommysHelperOnline.com
http://www.WahmStateDirectory.com
http://www.MommyBanners.com

It's up!

Finally, after all this time Anita and I have managed to set up our own personal blog. It's about time! Now we can openly ramble about anything on our minds regarding business and hey even vent about the sometimes not so glamorous life at home.

So anyway, this is going to deffinately be a learning experience for us, but should be fun!

~Kara Kelso~
Mom's Market
http://www.momsmarketonline.com