Home Office Organization–21st Century Style

Archive for October, 2008

I have recently subscribed by email to most of my own blogs to see what my readers were seeing, and I am not happy. But I found out how to make it better and I hopefully will be happy starting today.

What I see when I get an email blog broadcast or digest newsletter from one of my blogs is a message with excerpts of the posts. To read the entire post you have to click on the link that takes you to the blog site. I figure if someone signs up to get your blog posts by email, they don’t want to have to go to the blog to read posts.

I use AWeber as my autoresponder service and I did not realize that my readers were only receiving post excerpts. I looked through their help pages and found that I have to copy and paste the entire post content into the excerpt box for my readers to get entire posts with graphics, videos and HTML included. It will look much like it does on the blog without the sidebars and other blog elements. Or it is supposed to. I will see what actually appears in the emails.

This message and two others are test messages for digest newsletters that are coming out in a few hours so I can check them in the morning and make adjustments and changes as needed.

I will write a part 2 to this post to let everyone know if it worked.

If you use AWeber with the blog broadcast feature, be aware that your readers are only receiving excerpts of your posts unless you are putting all the content into the excerpt box.

Please leave your experiences in the comments and let us know what you have seen and how you run your email blog subscriptions. I am open to all suggestions and ideas.

Technorati Tags: AWeber, email newsletter format, email subscriptions

Maybe you have read the Blog Profits Blueprint and decided you are just not ready to devote the time and money to Blog Mastermind, but you do have a website or some websites and you want to increase traffic to them.

And not just any traffic, targeted traffic. How do you do that?

Sign up for Traffic Rush and get 10 free lessons! This course was created by my fellow blogger and 30 Day Challenger, Caroline Middlebrook. If you like what you’re learning in the free lessons, then get the full course!

I’m doing the free lessons now and will sign up for the full course as soon as I get to lesson 10. I’ve already boosted my StumbleUpon traffic significantly in one week on all my blogs.

Targeted traffic is the number one factor in making money from your websites. If people who are not interested in your site visit it, it is not likely they will stick around or buy anything from you. StumbleUpon is unique in that it delivers targeted traffic to your websites. I know when I hit that Stumble button on my browser toolbar I’m taken to sites that absolutely fascinate me. When someone hits Stumble and is brought to one of my sites, I hope they are fascinated as well and will stay for awhile and browse through my content. Maybe they will find something they like well enough to buy. Since StumbleUpon allows the user to select topics of interest from a large list, the sites the user is taken to are highly targeted to their specific interests.

As with any social media site, there is a right way and several wrong ways to use StumbleUpon. Caroline shows you step-by-step how to use StumbleUpon the right way to increase traffic to your sites and to make what you Stumble a lot more powerful.

What have you got to lose? Nothing! Sign up for your free lessons here: Traffic Rush.

Sherri Joubert
Getting a lot more traffic fast!

Technorati Tags: home office organization, Marketing, traffic course, website traffic

Like the value of the U.S. dollar, the Australian dollar has dropped dramatically. It was worth 95 cents US a few months ago, and now it’s worth about 68 cents US as of October 9.

Why this matters to you is that Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind, charges admission in Australian dollars. If you order now, you will save big money, even as the U.S. dollar drops in value. This is a really good deal that can help you bring in some extra money part-time during these difficult economic times.

Join Blog Mastermind now!

I’ve already raved about this program before and if you don’t believe me, just do a search on Google for “Blog Mastermind Reviews” to see what other people are saying. Seriously, don’t take my word for it. Read reviews by some other people.

It’s the only program of it’s kind that teaches you how to make a full-time living from blogging only part time, and is led by one of the best blog teachers I know of.

Already over a 1,000 people have taken part in the program, with many satisfied graduates earning good money from their blogs. Last month (September 2008) I was offline because of Hurricane Gustav and my blogs still brought in a pretty decent completely passive income. The money came in from affiliate product sales and paid advertising. I just started selling advertising on a couple of my blogs in July and that income is increasing each month. It increased in September without me knowing it.

Part of what you will learn in the Blog Mastermind program is how to diversify your income streams so you have money coming in from a lot of sources. As each small source grows, your total income grows without you having all your eggs in one basket. If an income source dries up, there are plenty of others to rely on.

I was only able to get online sporadically from some hot spots around town until our internet service was restored on 9/27, and I didn’t write more than a few short posts. I was more involved with email and getting in touch with my family to let them know we were okay even though we were completely out of touch.

It was great having some money coming in from efforts I made in the past. I was offline and my tutoring income suffered greatly because of school closures due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. But my blogging income actually grew during September, even though I spent no more than a few hours the entire month writing posts.

Adding blogging to your mix of income sources is a great way to recession-proof your life and make sure you still have income if this horrible economy trickles down and takes away your full-time job.

YOU CAN SAVE IF YOU ACT BEFORE MONDAY, OCTOBER 13

If you paid for entry into the program right now with a credit (or debit) card that is in US dollars, you would save roughly 32% off the entry fee, because the course fees are in Australian dollars.

If you ordered the $97/month for six months plan, your credit card statement would show about $66 as
long as the Aussie dollar remains where it is now.

For the $497 AUD prepaid package, where you get the entire program up front (already a 15% discount off the monthly price), the cost on your US card would show roughly $338.

Note of course these prices are subject to change based on the current exchange rates, but it doesn’t look like the Australian dollar will climb back up any time soon, at least not by Monday because the currency markets will be closed until then.

It really doesn’t matter though, because Yaro is changing his pricing as of Monday, October 13, and will be charging in American dollars then. So you only have until Monday to save.

You can join here -

Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program

When you go to the payment page you will see prices of $97 or $497 depending on which option you choose.

Those prices are in Australian dollars today, Saturday and Sunday; so the discount will show up if you pay with a US dollar bank card.

THE $97/MONTH PAYMENT PLAN IS GOING AWAY TOO

On Monday, Yaro is also eliminating the $97 a month pricing plan. He said he does have plans to bring it back, but because of his bank and online shopping cart system, he can’t charge in USD for recurring subscriptions.

Until he changes his system or they upgrade the features, there won’t be a $97 a month option, only a $497 prepaid course option.

To put it in simple terms – If you want to join Blog Mastermind, the cheaper price deadline is Monday, October 13, so you had better decide soon.

Here’s the order page -

Good luck with your blog and make sure you tell me what you think of Yaro’s course if you join.

Regards,
Sherri

PS. Don’t forget, Yaro has a 30 day money back policy, so you can sample it without worrying about
losing your money.

Even if you are not 100% sure, you should give his coaching program a try now so you can lock in the Australian dollar pricing and if you decide it’s not for you, just ask for your money back within 30 days.

Join Blog Mastermind Here

Technorati Tags: Blog Mastermind, Yaro Starak

Working at home has some unique challenges. It’s easy to get distracted. What steals your time? What keeps your productivity from being as high as you know it should be? We all have time-stealers in our lives that keep us busy but don’t actually accomplish anything worthwhile.

My Problem

For me, it’s email. I sit down with my coffee first thing in the morning just to see what’s there and if there is anything important that will require my immediate attention.

But instead of just reviewing what’s there, I start reading all kinds of stuff that should wait until later. I do things like read blog posts, newsletters, tons of junk mail from sales lists I really should unsubscribe from, and generally waste time. I also feel a strange obligation to read things that don’t have anything to do with my work or even my life just because they show up in my inbox.

Why do I do this to myself?

I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve come up with the notion that I like it when my email boxes are empty. I feel like I’m in more control of my life. I handle postal mail the same way, but there is so much less of it.

This is a really bad habit, especially when I’ve been offline for an extended period of time, like I have been because of Hurricane Gustav. We lost power for 9 days, and I just got internet access back at home on September 27. I haven’t dealt with email for a full month because internet access was so sparse. When we needed to get on the web we went to one of our hot spots: Community Coffee House or Chick-Fil-A. I need to focus on business and getting my income back up to normal, but I have hundreds of email messages in each of two inboxes and I’m seriously tempted to hide out until they’re all read and filed or deleted.

I was also reminded there are a lot of things to do off the computer and away from the TV. We had power for nearly 3 weeks but no TV and no regular internet access. We stayed busy getting a lot done around the house that really needed our attention. We still have a lot to do. In that period of time I realized we got a lot accomplished. Accomplished. Done.

Then I realized how much I’m not accomplishing online because of my email habits.

What am I going to do about it?

Here is a task list I came up with while we had no internet or TV. I already do some of it in this order anyway. I just have to be much more disciplined about my first email check of the day.

• Start some quick offline task before making coffee in the morning, like laundry
• Make breakfast while the coffee is brewing, and then eat
• Continue the offline task if needed
• Write a blog post, market a blog, or start on a new niche website while finishing my coffee (limited to one hour)
• Work with my son on his homeschooling assignments
• Errands
• Check email and scan for client and work messages, and important personal messages only
• Ignore the rest of the messages
• Plan the online work for the day
• Lunch
• Yard or other outside work or take a walk or bike ride
• Get back to work and stick to the plan for the day
• Take a break and start supper
• Get back on the computer and finish my work for the day
• Go to my second job on days that I have tutoring students
• Supper
• Optional: continue working online

At this point I’ll allow myself to get into my email boxes and peruse them for as long as I want. In that time I’ll be unsubscribing from as much as I can without interfering with my business or true interests.

I started this schedule when I got internet access back. I know it’s doable because when we went to a hot spot, I didn’t spend a ton of time on email. I scanned for important messages, took care of them, and then went to other parts of the web for news, to write a blog post, to watch the first Presidential debate on September 26, and to see what was up in the connected world.

This experience was an epiphany and I realized I must do all my online work in this fashion, not just during emergencies when we have limited internet access.

What do you do that steals your time? Please leave your stories in the comments.

Sherri Joubert
Trying to be more productive

Technorati Tags: home office organization, Productivity, self-discipline, time management