SailingToSuccess

My friend Lynette wrote this fabulous ecourse on making the most of your blog!

Fill in your information and it'll pop in your inbox. Do one lesson a day!

Enjoy!
Annette

Sexy and Smart WAHM: Multi-task Your Way to a Healthy Body and a Booming Business by Nicole Dean

 Can you relate to this dilemma?

I sit on my keister too many hours each day while I'm working.
With the holidays coming, I'm a little worried about it ... growing.

Without getting into too much details about my keister, we'll just say that it's definitely not the best thing for any keister to be sitting too long each day and leave it at that.  

Do you spend too much time in your swivel chair, too?

That got me thinking. A lot of my time sitting is spent listening to recorded teleseminars to boost my business.

So, I decided that I'd use the teleseminars as an excuse to get Skinny, Sexy and Smart all at the same time! How? By getting an mp3 player and listening and learning while I walk or run.

Of course, the first player I looked at was the Ipod which is awesome and comes in a lot of different colors that would look great with my walking shoes -- but, the Ipod is pretty expensive. I didn't know if I would be THAT dedicated to walking just yet, even though I was really drooling over the green one. If you have the cash to spend on the Ipod, then go for it. I'll be green with envy if you do.

I checked into some more options and found a cool little mp3 player that was a fraction of the price. I received it last week, and I love it! It's working just fine for what I need.


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The first thing I did when I got my mp3 player was to start a file with about 20 hours of audios that I had saved up from a bunch of speakers who I admire. Talks on getting traffic,

improving my copywriting, and writing ebooks ... that fun kind of stuff that really gets us Internet Marketers fired up, and puts the rest of the world to sleep.

So, needless to say, I've got a lot of walking ahead of me. I'm feeling like Forrest Gump. I may start running ... and never stop.

If you're dreading the holiday weight gain, but don't want to take time away from your business, an mp3 player might be a good investment for you, too. Definitely shop around, if you're on a tight budget. There are a lot of options available and the prices on the lower end are very affordable. Ask Santa to help you multi-task to be a Sexy and Smart WAHM, too.



Stay mostly-sane with Nicole Dean at  http://showmomthemoney.com/free-tutorial.htm. And, if you hate exercising, Nicole recommends http://www.funexercisevideos.com .

Article Source: http://www.ladypens.com

Working from Home -- Examining your 'Why' by Nicole Dean

 As Work at Home Moms, we talk about our "Why" as a positive thing. Our "Why" is our purpose, our reason, our muse. We refer to our 'Why' when we need inspiration or motivation to reach outside our comfort zone, to try a little harder, to keep going even when it's hard. Our 'Why' helps us to succeed.

Today I was asking "Why work from home" in a slightly different tone. Today, I am home with a sick puppy and am up to my eyeballs in puppy puke.

I'm new to this puppy thing. I was warned up and down about how much work a puppy is, and I thought "I have two children. How hard can a puppy possibly be?!" Well, one difference is that newborn babies aren't born with fangs --

at least mine weren't. So, in between changing the gauze patches on my shredded arms (those teeth are sharp!), and hours of puppy school, I fell in love with this furry beast. He was added to my list of "Why's".

So, today, while I was composing my work at home mom newsletter, in the background I hear my furr-ball start to vomit -- again. The thought that ran through my mind initially was not a happy "Why". It was more like:

* "WHY in the world am I home to deal with this while my husband gets to sit in a quiet office all day?"
* "WHY isn't HE dealing with cleaning up the 8th pile of yucky stuff?"
* "WHY don't I get any peace and quiet while I work?!"

After I cleaned up the puppy, rubbed his head and got him clean blankets, threw in another load of laundry, and climbed into bed with my sick 7 year old and my 3 year old to read stories, I had time to collect my thoughts. A little bit (ok, a LOT) of puppy puke was sure worth it.

And, later, when I made my phone call to my husband to tell him about our day, it wasn't the puppy-puke I was telling him about....

I told him how our daughter said that she wanted to plant some jelly beans to grow a jelly bean tree. And, how the kids were playing the game of Life and I overheard their rules. They decided that the person who got the most parents
into the car won. That's why I stay at home.

And, if a furry little tail starts wagging when I walk into the room? Well, that's sure an added bonus.

So, the next time your warm and loving "Why" turns into a plea for help, take a deep breath and think of all the memories you would be missing -- both good and not-so-good, if you weren't a work at home mom.



Nicole Dean is the mostly-sane Mom behind www.ShowMomTheMoney.com.
Are you a Work at Home Mom looking for help in your online business? Take the ShowMomtheMoney 101 Tutorial

Article Source: http://www.ladypens.com

Tips for Efficient and Effective Online Communication

By: Linda Stacy

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This is a GREAT article by Linda on communicating effectively online. Wonderful tips! Enjoy!
Annette
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If you market your business online you likely spend a lot of time communicating with customers and prospects via e-mail. You may also spend time networking on message boards and other online groups. Here are a few tips to help save time and to help make sure the message you want to send is the message that is received.

1. Use meaningful subject lines.

You want to convey the content of the message. Make sure your subject line is as specific as it can be in a few words. “I have a question” doesn’t offer any clue to the content, but “question about shipping” does. You may think that the subject line isn’t that important since your question will be in the message, but a recipient who may receive a hundred emails a day will prioritize by subject line and the more specific subjects will likely be read first.

You also want to choose email subject lines that are less likely to be blocked by a spam filter. Avoid spam filter trigger words like “free,” “info you requested,” and “save”.

When posting on message boards and news groups you want your subject line to attract the people who can answer your question or who are interested in the topic. Many message board participants have limited time and they only open the topics of interest. If your subject line simply reads, “help me” the experts may skip over it. But “need help with search engine optimization” will likely get the attention of someone with more experience on the topic.

Don’t change the subject line in your reply unless you are completely changing the topic of the message.

2. Your message should be concise, but complete. Get to your point early in your message and make sure you provide all the necessary information.

Some people still pay an hourly rate for Internet access and others are limited in the amount of information they can download. Unnecessarily long messages may be ignored or deleted by those individuals and unnecessarily long email messages add to an already overburdened email system.

By providing complete information in your first message you can often get your request taken care of right away. For example, if you email a website to ask for a change to your ad or your reciprocal link, don’t just ask, “how can I change my ad,” but include the changes you want to make. Often, changes are made by email so if you include the information in your first email the change will be made right away.

3. When replying to e-mail, be sure to include enough of the original message to convey the context of the reply.

The person you’re corresponding with may receive hundreds of messages a week and your message will be answered sooner and more accurately if the rest of the correspondence is included.

An exception should be made when you’ve written back and forth quite a few times and the email message starts to get very large. In that case, delete some of the earlier messages that are no longer necessary. Additionally, if you are emailing a newsgroup that offers daily “digest” be sure to remove most of the original message. It becomes very difficult to read the digest when every response includes the entire original message.

On threaded message boards it’s not necessary to quote the original post in your reply as most visitors are following along the entire thread and know the context. Use a quoted reply only to highlight and refer to a particular section of the original.

4. When sending e-mail to multiple recipients, be sure to use the blind CC address line. Do not reveal all the e-mail addresses to all the recipients.

In most cases you shouldn’t be sending messages to multiple recipients unless it’s a mailing list (in which case you should be using a mailing list program that individually addresses the messages to your list). But if you sometimes find the need to send one message to multiple recipients, be extremely careful to use the blind CC. Leaving everyone’s email address visible to all the recipients will anger many and lead the rest to mistrust that you’ll safeguard any of their personal information.

5. Make sure your business email can get through to you.

In your effort to reduce the amount of spam you receive, make sure your aren’t eliminating business email. Avoid e-mail accounts that filter spam for and find your own effective spam filter that lets you decide what is and isn’t spam. You need to make sure your business email gets through. In many cases your ISP email or one of the popular free email services will likely be heavily filtered at the server. If you don’t have a website that includes several email addresses consider purchasing another domain name and hosting service for your business email and make sure the hosting company allows you to turn off all filtering at the server level.

Those are just a few tips to help you communicate more efficiently online. If you’re new to the Internet you’ll want to do a little research on “netiquette.” You’ll find tips about online shorthand and emoticons (icons that indicate expressions like smiling and frowning), information on “flaming” (angry or insulting personal attacks), and simple conventions like typing in all caps is considered shouting.

Communicating online is very different from communicating in person. With just a little effort your online communication can become efficient and effective.

Free Reprint Article from http://www.ladypens.com - Articles by Women

Linda Stacy owns and manages a unique service connecting network marketing business owners with potential team members through instant online chats. Visit iRepNetwork.com for tips and tools to help you generate leads and build your team. www.irepnetwork.com

This article is available for reprint with author's resource box intact and all links active. Copyright is reserved by author.

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I've been a big fan of Alice Seba now for over a year. She and Kelly McCausey introduced me to this whole wild world internet marketing, blogging, etc, without even knowing it. They had a conference call...I have no idea how I found it or anything... but I was on and it blew me away. I've been on a frenzied search for information and fun ever since.

But, there's a reality to this home based business stuff, and that's what I want to throw in front of you today. Alice posted a very personal entry on her blog and I think it's an important read... it all fits with this balance thing, but really drives the point home....very seriously.

You can read Alice's story on her blog by Clicking here for www.aliceseba.com.

I really would love to hear your thoughts on this..so important.

Warmly-
Annette