Bloom Your Blog

Unless you blog to avoid having to spend money on therapy then you probably want more readers then you currently have. I’m no pro so I’ve been surfing around looking at other successful blogs and trying to grab some ideas.

I found some great info over at the Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog by Alice Seba. I’d summarize here, but she did such a nice job cutting to the chase it would be just as fast to give her blog a quick visit. How to Get Blog Traffic - 11 Steps to Growing Readership
You’ll also find some invaluable advise on affiliate marketing that can go a long way towards making your addiction to blogging pay for itself or perhaps even some extra gas money (albeit not much).

Affiliate Marketing Sweetie

Blog on!

Top 10 Reasons Women Start a Home Business

This article was contributed by: Bizy Moms (Bizy Moms is a world leader serving work at home moms by helping them to be independent via starting and managing their own businesses.)

It’s a big decision to stay home with your family, rather than continue in a traditional job outside the home. But did you know that there are many choices if you decide to do so?The first step before starting a work from home business is to forget about the business all together. Don’t think about what kind of business you want or what you want from it or anything like that. Next, write down your life. What have you accomplished in your lifetime so far? What things have you not done that you thought you would have done by now. What things would you like to accomplish or do in the years to come?

Look at your answers and write down goals for yourself. What would you like to achieve and by when would you like to achieve them. What will it take to achieve these goals? Are you in a position now that you will be able to achieve your goals? If not, why not?

These answers and goals should be your motivation for whatever you decide to do. So now you hopefully know what you want out of life!

Getting what you want in life usually involves knowing what you want first. If you get what you want before you even know you wanted it, consider yourself lucky, and don’t throw it away before you realize its value.

There are several advantages to working from your home including flexible working hours, low overhead, and more available time to work while other people are commuting to their jobs. Obviously the appeal of one or more of these can be more than enough for many of us to give working from home a try.

And who knows, maybe a few minutes, hours, or days later, you’ll land a big sale or be rewarded for your efforts like never before. And then you’ll be reminded that, YES! You are doing the right thing! That the “crazy” idea of starting your own home-based business was actually the BEST decision you’ve ever made.

Here are the Top 10 reasons for moms to start a home business

1- Save on Day Care costs
2 - No commuting
3 - More flexibility
4 - Spend more time with your family
5 - Save on office attire and lunches
6 - Helps you to do something you like
7 - To be able to say ‘I own a business’
8 - You don’t have to execute your boss’s ideas
9 - Satisfied with your own achievements
10 - Your time is invested for your betterment

As you can see the benefits are numerous. Take some time today to see if starting a home business is the right choice for you. List the costs of commuting and working outside of your home. List the perks to being home for your children everyday, list the “downers” too. Also make a list of the space, equipment and skills you already possess that will aid you in starting a home based business. And finally, make a list of the possible businesses you could start with the equipment and skill set you just listed. Writing down your thoughts and assets is a great way to see the whole picture as it pertains to you and your family. You may be very surprised where your lists lead you. Give it a try!

The Best Thing About Running Your Own Business

Perhaps the best thing about running your own business is the effect it might have on how your children view how things work in this world. I recently received an email from a WAHM that was moving and will help drive this point home. It’s not all about money.

Nicole Pauling is a “muralist” and she paints murals in York PA and the surrounding area. Her business, Artistic Expression Murals, brightens up rooms, swimming pools (one of only two in the U.S.!), offices, businesses, and windows. Nicole is a mom and entrepreneur and like most of us stays very busy day-to-day.

One day her 5 year old daughter, Katrina, came home with a box of rocks and asked her to sell them for her so that she could buy food for those who needed it. Nicole said, “Honey, no one will buy plain rocks.” Katrina replied, “That’s ok. Then I’ll paint them.” And that’s what she did. Since then she has collected almost $150 and 300 food items to donate locally in York, PA!

Read that again!

This little girl had learned that if you want to raise money for something that you can do so by creating something and selling it to people who wanted what you created. She also has learned that the oft-heard “that won’t work” shouldn’t deter you from trying! When Nicole said no one would buy plain rocks, she didn’t take it as a reason to give up, but rather as a reason to think of what she had to do to make it work! She painted them!!

This lil’ entrepreneur and world-changer has raised hundreds of dollars to buy food for people who can’t afford to feed themselves enough. She’s a shining star that can teach all of us some lessons.

For more information about this lil’ superstar check out this article in their local newspaper, The York Daily Record: Kindergarten girl paints rocks to feed the hungry

In the Business of Saving Children’s Lives

Kristin Salgado, a registered ER nurse and mother of three, developed an instructional DVD that shows the basic steps of proper CPR and Heimlich maneuvers for children. With the help of a local production company (Tommy Rosa film productions). Together they’ve come up with a fantastic video, that’s informative, educational and is up to date with the latest CPR techniques. As a mom Kristin knows how hectic things can be every day. Not too many parents have free time to go out and get certified in CPR, nor does this DVD certify you , but it does offer a very good “crash course”.

Sadly, every year hundreds of children die due to drownings and from choking. This video can decrease these numbers drastically. It’s a wonderful resource for parents and the company is now marketing the video as a school fundraiser to parent-teacher associations in local school districts.

To learn more about Kristin’s potentially life-saving video visit her Website: How to Save a Child

Other useful sites worth a visit:

First Aid Tips for Families

First Aid for Children

Child CPR

Free Mother’s Day Cards

Send this link to all your friends. The site is the largest site for free greeting cards and they have a wide selection of Mother’s Day cards as well. For more information click here:

Mothers Day Cards

No more excuses!

Kids Meal Deals Needs Recruiters

Dana Davis, a stay-at-home-mom (sahm) with two young boys, had an idea she believed in and she didn’t let all of the “good” reasons not to run with it get in her way. She has boldly launched a new site for families looking for affordable family restaurants called Kids Meal Deals.

Kids Meal Deals offers parents a searchable database of family and budget-friendly restaurants. Restaurants can be found by zip code, food type (coming soon), or name. The resource is easy to use and can be especially helpful when planning a Summer vacation or road trip to unfamiliar territory.

Dana realizes she can’t bring in restaurants that want to promote their locations by herself so she developed a recruiter program for stay at home moms and dads. Basically she’s looking for restaurants to subscribe to a monthly listing in Kids Meal Deals database for a reasonable fee. She needs help getting the word out to restaurants outside of her Columbus Ohio area. In return for bringing in a new restaurant you’ll receive a $50 reward and immense appreciation that only a stay-at-home mom can describe. For more information on this cause visit: Kids Meal Deals Recruiters.

We wish Dana and her family much success in their venture!

Earn 49 cents a day!!!

If that title got you this far I hope it’s curiosity at work and not excitement over earning 49 cents a day!

But, in the event you are looking for ways to earn a little extra like so many of us with websites here’s a little information about an advertising network that I really like:

They call themselves Project Wonderful and their system really is pretty wonderful. It’s the easiest ad network provider that I’ve ever used as a publisher (website owner) and it’s also the easiest from the advertisers perspective. It only takes a few minutes to get setup (adding their ad code to your site) and within minutes prospective advertisers will begin submitting their READY-TO-RUN banner ads to you for approval. If you’re ok with the ad you click a link and the ad will begin running almost immediately.

What’s really cool is the advertisers bid for placement on your site so as more advertisers line up the more they’ll bid. This competition is what I like the most about their business model. Of course it isn’t a get rich quick scheme, especially for those of us who have small websites, but as the sites grow in traffic and the ad network grows in popularity and numbers of registered advertisers, the bids will increase without the need to create a media kit, change pricing, or do anything other than tend to the site and approve ads.

It’s been a few days since I got started and the ads are generating 49 cents a day right now and rising all the time. It’s not much, but I really do believe in this and I’m already bringing in more then the Google ads were fetching for me.

You can find ad spots here on WAHM Blog and on these sites:

moms dot com and moms dot com directory

dads dot com and dads dot com directory

moms TV and dads TV

Check it out for yourself!

Little Lady From Ohio… NOT!

When I read Jackie Billiter’s story (in which she refers to herself as a “little lady from Ohio”) I just couldn’t wait to share it with you. There are so many lessons to take away from her recent experience dealing with celebrities.

Jackie is the owner of Cutie Patootie Diaper Cakes and her unique diaper cakes were discovered last year by some of the Huggies people (Kimberly-Clark). They found Jackie’s business online and it turns out that they were looking for a special gift for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who was preparing to leave the popular TV show, The View, to go on maternity leave.

After discussing the options with Jackie they decided on a 5-tier custom Cutie Patootie diaper cake for Elisabeth that would be given to her live during the TV show on ABC. Needless to say Jackie was beyond thrilled at this unexpected opportunity for some publicity.

But, as happens so often things went anything but smoothly. Elisabeth moved her departure date up by a full week and this didn’t leave enough time to ship the extremely large and heavy diaper cake to ABC’s studio in New York city. Overnighting it was out of the question because it would have cost far more then the gift itself. So like any successful entrepreneur Jackie took matters into her own hands. She and her husband loaded the diaper cake into their car and went on a road trip from their home in Ohio to New York city! They drove 9 hours straight and delivered the special gift personally. And like most entrepreneurs they turned around and drove straight back home so as not to waste all of the profits on an overnight stay in NYC.

This exceptional entrepreneur was called on again a couple of weeks later to deliver a couple of cakes to celebrities in Chicago, which she also delivered in person. Clearly, Jackie has what it takes to succeed: A quality and unique product, a strong desire to satisfy her clients, a willingness to do whatever it takes, and perseverance.

Way to go Jackie!

Top 100 Sites

If you sell products from your website you need to take advantage of Top 100 Sites that allow you to get your business listed with a brief description, a link, and in many cases a banner ad. The cost? Free!

WAHM Break Cafe has 3 such sites that we manage and the traffic these sites get and deliver is solid and growing all the time.

The original one online for a couple of years now is WAHM Shopping Mall.

Two newer Top 100 sites that deliver some traffic are:

Moms Top 100 and our very own WAHM Break Cafes Top 100.

Check ‘em out. They’re open to woman owned businesses. Banner ads on top are $5 per month. Banner ads and listings within the Top 100 listings are totally free, BUT you’ll need to be sure to link back to the site(s) from your site or your listing will be taken down.