Absent, busy, me

I haven't posted much on any of my blogs this week. I suddenly realized the power of this little job I've got. it's called UNLIMITED INCOME, I just have to do it. And I wasn't doing it. Now I am, instead of posting to these blogs. My mantra these days is "saving my house $5 at a time. Although I just got another little job that might change my mantra into "saving my house $15 at a time" which would be way more efficient. My husband, on the other hand, likes to "save the house $60K at a time" and it looks like his tourism video (the job that brought us to this crazy little town) is finished. I wrote the narration, and my name is the first one up on the screen, which is really neat. He's an awesome salesman so I am sure we'll sell a million, and I'll get to take a trip or something with my writing income. In the meantime, my hair has grown back, my kids are amazing, and this whole experience with the restaurant has been like a bad dream that we are waking up from, a little more each day. The debts are there, but our family is coming back to life. i am turning more into the me that I LOVE TO BE and enjoying the munchkins, and my sweet husband and life is so very sweet. We might be broke, busted and whatever else, but damn, life is good.

Choosing a payment method

One of the websites I work for offers me the option of a monthly paypal deposit or a check, which they mail out quarterly. I always opt for paypal in these situations, because it's faster and I don't (even though I should) care about the fees. She had an interesting perspective, though and I'm going ot consider it. id on't know if it was really a perspective, or just her experience that gave me a new perspective. She's getting a big quarterly check in the mail. It's not like my little trickling in of income doesn't impress my husband, surely he notices and appreciates and all that crap. But if I were recieving checks in the mail, physicla checks he could see and deposit he might feel a little differently about my income. And why shouldn't I care about the paypal fees, they're fees. is it really worth it to have "instant access" to the cash, it spends just the same . Or does it? How much of that paypal money have I pissed away on ebay. And now she tells me overstock.com takes paypal. I didn't need to know that. Nor did I need to know about all the free trade deals on overstock. So now I am thinking, a big fat quarterly check in the mail might be a good idea. I'd be less likely to piss it away and My husband would recognize it as more income. Hmmm

Make Money from Home Processing Orders

I found a great resource for you; a blog by a lady who works from home as an order processor. She has 3-4 different companies she works for and she really know a lot about the business. I can't do it because my house is too noisy. It looks like it pays well, though. Check out her blog on my sidebar, E-jobs or something. Enjoy

Defining Success and a diatribe on social networking

While I haven''t thus far felt compelled to define success, I have stumbled upon a definition of success that resonates with my personal goals, and I'd like to share it with you.

From the FundsforWriters website:

Success means earning a living doing what you love

Earning a Living
I think that's a perfect expression of what my goals are with this whole writing thing. Earning a living; We're in a two-income culture, and I have almost 3 times as many children as the average American. While we do live a lot cheaper than other families, we still aren't exceeding 3 times the income level of anyone. So I don't expect to suddenly jump up the writing income ladder into three times the average income of a full-time writer, I do aim to perfect the craft and the business end of it, and eventually enjoy a nice income to contribute to our family's needs.

Doing What You Love
I love being a mom. I love the child-development aspect and the psychology of watching how each different personality type responds to the stimulus of growing up. I love watching them solve problems and follow their interests. I love watching them learn how to reach their goals. I love re-discovering the world with them, every day. And I love writing about it. More importantly, though, I love the idea of helping other women find bliss in their parenting. My challenge, sometimes is to not write about my own children so that readers might find joy in them, my challenge is to write about finding joy in children so that readers might find joy in their own. I do both, I guess. I hope.

Now that I have a workable definition of success, I will be focusing my attention to working on projects that further that purpose. PPP might not be part of that process. Hotel reviews might not be part of that process. However, those are the things that have brought me income lately, so I guess I will participate in those, but I will forget about the social networking business, it has been a bit of a neverending cycle. I end up with a bunch of readers who come to me just so that they can "network" but the network is based upon... networking. I guess if networking were my passion, I might like that. However, since the passion is parenting, I will focus instead on creating quality parenting material and learning about the needs of the parenting market, in print and online. I will also stick better to my working schedule and specifically name the times and days I plan to visit (more) parenting boards to be in touch with readers and build my blog traffic. I will do that in the morning, work and play with the kids in the daytime and actually write-write in the evenings, since that's how my brain works.

So what is your definition of success? Is success a journey or a destination? I believe it is a journey.

Almost like being a drug tester

But not quite; Yesterday while I was spending 6 hrs at the hospital with G1 to discover that 1- it wasn't medically wrong of me to "help" her abcessed tooth/gum thing drain out; and 2-my sterilization techniques were adequate and admirable and 3- my instincts were correct regarding the immediate need for frequent spitting and antibiotics, I made more money than I ever have in a single recorded day that I can recall on my Suite101 articles. So while some people make money in their jammies, or naked, or whatever else, I make money contracting germs with my kids.

EntreCard Rates

Is it my imagination or did Entrecard totally change the way their Ad prices are determined. If I remember correctly, didn't it used to be based upon hits or card drops? And now it's based upon what- how many people are waiting to advertise on your site? Hmmm- Yeah- I just checked the campaigns page and it's totally different now, the higher ones were around 500EC to advertise, now they're over 2000. Big deal, it's fake currency designed to reward the busy droppers, whatever. I wonder if people will get freaked out about it.

Mombloggers Unite

I just read a wonderful article that really summed up a few things
1- why moms blog
2-why moms read blogs

I've often said that life moves so fast, and blogging helps me keep up.

Here's the article... http://www.mommybloggers.com/2006/09/mombloggers_unite.html

Goodbye Kontera

Text link ads aren't for me. Mostly they were just linking random words to search engines. I'd enter the word "baby" and when you hovered over it, it would say "Find a Baby." I don't want tons of outgoing links to stupid stuff.

The Financial Success Directory

There are so many opportunities to make money online. I have a little bit of web design knowledge, and I write. It's easy to get distracted and think maybe I should switch to web design or graphic design. I know the digital scrapbooking designers sometimes look like they're having a lot more fun than I am. Maybe... if I ever got that Macbook Air like I've been wanting. The pink one. But alas, I have fallen into the writing career, and blogging about it serves as my journal-along-the-way to help anyone else who ventures this way. I've found a few things that worked and a few things that haven't worked. Mind you, I've only been at this since January. I just found a new website (that I linked to up above, Angellica2017.com) and it's like a big directory of online money-making opportunities. I was pleased to find so may resources and articles on how to maximize your adsense profits, how to avoid scams, how to intertwine your adsense and affiliate links. All in all, it seems like a great directory. Of the ten articles in the sidebar, I think I enjoyed like 8 of them. That's pretty good. And I think I can't possibly be the only one enjoying this guys (Or girl, Angellica doesn't sound masculine!) OK I can't be the only one enjoying this website because it has over 20,000 subscribers. I don't know how many sites you're subscribed to but I don't subscribe to very many, so when I see that over 20,000 people have enjoyed this site so much that they want to subscribe, I find it very impressive. You are subscribed to me of course, right?

Another impressive fact about this website is its pagerank of 3/10. That's saying something important, and if Google values them enough to give them a ranking at all, then I'm paying close attention. Great articles on SEO that I can use on all of my sites and articles everywhere. Also information on adsense marketing secrets that make it look so darned simple- you should really check it out. He also has articles about Affiliate marketing, which I have seen a lot of success stories on- I'm thinking an SEO optimized affiliate site can be a powerful thing. I still have a lot to learn, and writing for the web is very different from blogging and writing for print magazines and newsletters. Google crawls for search terms that people tend to use when they're looking for information. Google also has tools we can use to see which terms are searched for more frequently, so that when we use them in a certain proportion to our text, we're guaranteed to come up higher in the search list. So this website has articles on google, too so that you can learn what tools google has available.

Good luck to you. Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how much you win.

Reasons to be Independent

I just found yet again another blog from a woman whose husband just up and died. I am in shock. The emotion is so raw. This is the second one I have come across lately. The first one was a mystery illness that took Jim away from his wife and six kids in less than 24 hours on 12-17-07. The second one was a Pulmonary Embolism that yanked Jeff away from his wife and two small children on 3-25-08. I just can't imagine going through something like that. I can't imagine dealing with my kids while I'm so sad and they're so sad. What would I do? What would I say? We used to fight and I'd wish he'd be gone. I think I changed my mind at my Uncles funeral, when my nieces entered the funeral home and let out a cry from so very deep that I'll never forget the sound, or the feeling of hopelessness and misery that it represented. They lost their Daddy and there was nothing any of us could do to help. Hold up their bodies so they can walk across the room, let their tears fall into our shoulder. The emptiness was painful. They had to clean out his apartment, pick clothes for him to be buried in. Their mother (divorced) had issues, too. How much do you like your ex? Not at all- I'm guessing, but suddenly now he's dead and your kids are heartbroken and you're needing to suddenly "remember the good times" so your kids can mourn, instead of remembering the time you got your ass kicked when he came home drunk? Anyway- both of these women were left to wonder how they'd manage financially with their husbands gone. Luckily, we have Life Insurance. If anything happened that would help, for at least 2 years, with a cheap funeral. I'm glad, though, that I have a means of supporting us in case anything happened, I can't imagine going out on a job interview right after the funeral and sticking my grief-stricken kids in school or daycare right away. I think I'd want to lay in bed forever and wither away in a puddle of tears.