Free Your Inbox From Newsletter Subscriptions

Who is having problems taming those newsletter subscriptions? If you’re anything like me, I like to subscribe to carefully chosen newsletters. They allow me to watch what’s going on in the market and competitors. It’s also a great way to build a swipe file. But how in the world do I keep these emails from clogging up my email space?

Sure, Gmail gives you 2.9 GB. But that’s the last thing I need honestly. I already have hundreds of Gigabytes of data on my hard drives. I don’t want to keep adding stuff to my storage. I only want to keep what is good, what is valuable and discard the rest. What do to?

Use MailBucket. If you go to MailBucket.org, you won’t see much. There is very little instruction that’s because it is so simple. You don’t even have to visit the site to start using it and there is no sign up involved. How do you use it?

1. Choose a user name e.g. internetbasedmoms. This will become your email address e.g. internetbasedmoms@mailbucket.org
2. Use this email address to subscribe to the newsletters you want to receive
3. To check email, just bookmark the URL http://www.mailbucket.org/simple/internetbasedmoms or you subscribe to the RSS feed at http://www.mailbucket.org/internetbasedmoms.xml

That’s it. Very simple. If you want to use it, just follow the above instructions and remember to swap out the user name for your own chosen user name. Also, make sure you check the user name is not already in use. You can just type in http://www.mailbucket.org/simple/chosen-user-name to see if there’s anything there.

As you probably already guessed, this is not secure at all. Anybody can read emails send to mailbucket. So please, please, please do not use this for sensitive stuff. I wouldn’t even use it for any sites where I have to create a free account and enter a password. It is perfectly OK for newsletter subscriptions.

Want alternatives? Here are two more similar services - again, not secure ladies. Use your judgment. Dodgit (their sites seem to be down a lot for me) and Mailinator

Making the Most of Your Time

 Hey,

As I sat in my bed meditating about life in general on this wonderful autumn
Sunday morning, I was impressed with the shortness of life itself. I have
sketched out what the next 10 years of my life should look like if we keep going
with the lifestyle we currently have so I can keep vision before me. I’ve listed
the children and how old they will be so that I can get a picture in my mind
that the way things are now won’t be this way for long.

Soon I will have a few more young adults in the house and less little
people. That saddens me because I would keep a house full of little people
forever if I could. But I know my job is to raise them with the intent of
leaving home for a life of their own.

As I think about the severe responsibility of that task, I am constantly
brought back to my knees for direction from the Lord. Each of my 7 children will
probably go in different directions. Although I tried to educate the oldest two
almost the same, they turned out completely different. AND I frustrated both of
them terribly. The oldest is an employee, the second is an
investor who loves to buy and sell houses.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur.

Anyway, one thing I continue to learn over and over is to make the best use
of my time. I have pruned out so much of what I used to love that I am down to a
bare bones existence. I know that is not for everyone but there are things I
want to accomplish. In order to make time for them, I have to cut out other
activities that may not prove to be as profitable.

I try to identify the few things that only I can do and focus on them. Then
I try to delegate the rest.

I am educating my children to think for themselves and hopefully for the
boys to have their own businesses. Not all of them may, but that’s okay. I want
them to have the ability to do so if they desire. I want the girls to be skilled
enough to make a living if they have to but their focus and their jobs require a
different direction.

Times are changing and with the coming of the Internet, it is very easy now
to work from home and earn incredible money, passively. The more stories I hear
from those who are doing it, the more I am intrigued by what a normal person can
do from anywhere in the world. We are truly living in a time that offers more
opportunity than any other time in the history of the world. Hopefully, we’ll be
good stewards of it.

Every time you receive a spam message, tell yourself, “That could have been
a helpful post.” It could have given someone hope, knowledge, encouragement or
an offer for something you know could change their lives if they applied it.
Do you get many encouraging posts like that?
Forwards don’t count! ;)

So why not be the author of encouragement to others. After all, email is
cheap for now. It’s still free. And if you have a one-way Yahoo! Group of folks
who want to hear what you say, all you have to write is one post instead of
many.

All this rambling is meant to encourage you. You are an
influence in your world.

Whatever it is, you have a purpose, a calling and a job to do. You have been
gifted specifically for that job. The mystery and adventure of our life is in
discovering what that is.

Life should be enjoyable. Our relationships with others should be
stimulating. Life is too short to waste by looking at the negative in a person
or situation and worrying. Look for the good, praise the person and express your
gratitude for the good. Sure the bad is there, it always is. But focus on the
positive to strengthen it in others.

I do, however, finally have a plan for my life. I keep it in my Life
Notebook and refer to it frequently. For so long, I felt the right thing to do
was just drift along and take what comes along. I had no direction and
consequently didn’t accomplish much. Now that I have some specific direction for
my life, I am more at peace. I no long live reacting to what happens in a day,
now I proactively cause much of what happens.

And yes, distractions always come so I adjust frequently. That’s just Life
With Kids.

As December nears, consider taking the month off from doing “school” at your
house to spend time building family relationships and preparing to write or
rewrite your goals for next year. Do this with your kids too. Figure out what
educators would call whatever you are doing this month and write it down in your
children’s school journals. Entertaining, hosting events, decorating and
shopping with a budget are all consumer skills that are incredibly important to
learn. Depending on their ages, let your children help you or even plan your
events. That is real life education.

If you feel too stressed in the coming month, realize there is more to
education than what we think of as school. Relax and go with the flow. And you
may find that that daughter you struggle with so much eventually becomes a
conference coordinator, all because you gave her a few weeks of real life for
school. You just never know.

Life is short so live it with joy!

So many books, so little time…

Rhea!

User Generated Content at the Local Level

Newspapers are finally realizing the value of user generated content.  A recent article in the Houston Chronicle announced the re-design of the web site and invited readers to “Find out what news your neighbors are sharing and post some of your news directly to the Web site in this new feature.”

It also informed me that residents had posted more than 100 images of local people, places and events. And that I could catch up on the latest word in my area and chime in with my.02 cents worth in blogs by local reporters.

Do you see the significance of this? Have you seen any other examples of “local” user generated content? Am I the only one excited by this?

Boy, Did I Mess Up

Well, I messed up yesterday.  Simply put, I said something I should not have said.  No need to go into the gory details.  Suffice it to say I was trying to be funny and I offended someone.

Now I could spend all kinds of time justifying my wisecrack and telling you the offended party was being overly sensitive - that’s just not important, though.  In hindsight, my core soul knows I should not have said what I said.  Period. End of discussion.

I’ve done my best to clean up the mess I made - that’s my job in this situation.  It is also my job to remember, remember, remember my criteria for saying anything - at all - involving another person.

1) Is it true?

2) Is it kind?

3) Is it necessary?

I could keep me and my big mouth out of a whole mess of trouble and some excrutiatingly painful apologies if I just remembered to follow these simple guidelines.

So, I invite you to learn from my painful mistake and incorporate these guidelines into your own business and your own life.  It will save you from a whole mess of problems, too:)

Love & Success-
Sarah

Sarah

Let’s Talk About Scheduling Family Time…

Let’s face it - Moms are busy! Come to think of it, our kids are busy too. In the midst of trying to organize your time so that you get the house cleaned, work done, kids off to school or plan their home school agenda and of course spend time solo relaxing… be sure that you block of some time each day to ensure the family comes together to enjoy some quality family time. 

I encourage moms to not focus on the *Amount* of time but to focus on the *Quality* of that time.

Here are a few suggestions of how to use some time management skills to get things done AND spend time with your children at the same time:

Cooking dinner: why not have your children help. As you cook together, simply talk to them about their day. If you have toddlers about, they can join you too. Pass the toddler a large tupperware bowl and a wooden spoon and let him/her use her imagination.

Travel Time: Spend the time you are carpooling your children to and from school or activities taking turns to talk about the day, sing songs or perhaps have your child read to you from the backseat.

Exercise: What better way to kill two birds with one stone. Grab the kids, bikes or skateboards and hit the sidewalk for a nice family walk.

Chores: Get the house cleaned up together. Turn on some music and have the children help you clean up. To make this fun you can use a stop watch or a egg timer and see if the children can play “Beat The Clock” and clean up a room before the timer goes off (this is a great tip to get children to clean up quickly and have fun doing it).

Fun Night:  Try to carve out a weekend a month (or more than one a month) to have a Game night or Movie night. Make it fun and easy on you and order a pizza so you dont have to cook and all you have to do is focus on having fun with the family.

If you are in need of more information on how to organize your time to fit in more family time, feel free to stop by Real Life Guidance for tons of information and find out how being organized will free up a lot of time in your life, leaving you more time for your family.

Lifesaver for Moms Who Run an Online Business

If you run a business online, you know that the content on your website is crucial to your website’s success.

As moms, we don’t always have the time we need to dedicate to the content side of our business. It takes time to research and write the content, not to mention adding it to your site and getting it out there for the world to see.

With a family to take care of, a house to run, and all the other time eating tasks we moms have to deal with on a daily basis, it’s hard finding that time. That’s why PLR (private label rights) content is perfect for online business owners, especially moms.

Now you can stop worrying about creating your content from scratch with PLR. It’s done for you and all you need to do is tweak it a bit to fit your business needs.

Mila and I have put together a free guide that will help you make the most of PLR content without taking up so much time. After all, we’ve got more important things tugging at our feet or waiting to be fed! ;-)

Grab your free guide today and see how much time you can save by using PLR content to your advantage. Massive Content Creation Made Simple: Genius Ways to Use & Profit from PLR Content

4 Steps to Creating Information Products

Creating your first product may seem like a daunting process, but there are a few “easier” ways to get your product out there quickly. Here are a few quick and simple ways to create your first product.

Interview an Expert – You can get your feet wet with information products by interviewing and expert in your field. Once you interview the expert have the audio transcribed and offer both the audio and transcript for sale.

You’ll need to work out the terms with the expert but sometimes people are willing to do interviews in exchange for publicity or you can also give them resale rights to the product, meaning they can sell it as well for full profits. Always sort out the terms of the arrangements at the beginning so you don’t have any interesting surprises later on.

Use PLR – If you purchase a PLR product that allows resale rights then you can make a product out of it. The trick is to purchase a product and then edit it, giving it your own personal voice. You can also create a mini bonus product to go along with the main product for further value. It also helps to create your own graphics for the product and use your own sales page, rather than the standard page you may have purchased with the original PLR product.

Answer Questions – If you have a website or subscriber list, ask them to send you their most pressing questions. Start collecting these questions and simply answer them, add an introduction and closing and you have a product. Another great way to do this is to visit related forums and answer the questions being asked in your product. You shouldn’t use anyone’s name or personal details without permission, but you can answer general questions.

Quick Tip: Anytime someone emails you a question or you answer a question on a forum, copy and paste the question and answer into a swipe file. This way you always have fresh ideas you can use to write articles, blog posts, and even products.

Bundle your blog posts and/or Articles – You probably have a lot of content right on your computer. You can easily take previous blogs posts and articles and bundle them into a product. You’ll need to elaborate and flesh it out a little so that it has real significant value but it’s a great starting point for a product.

The most important thing when creating a product is to just get started. It’s easy to procrastinate when you’re entering the unknown but you’ll feel much better once you get over the “hump” and have your first draft ready. Once that’s done go through it again, edit ruthlessly and you’ll be the proud owner of a new product.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with a few tips on creating a product outline (this will cut down your writing time dramatically).

5 Cool Things You Can Do With Google Docs

Have you tried Google Docs yet? Well you should! I find it particularly useful for several reasons.

• I can move from desktop to laptop easily. No network to permissions to mess with, no USB drives or (gasp floppies!)
• I can work on my docs anywhere - with Internet connection of course
• I can work on any system, doesn’t matter what the operating system is
• I can share documents with partners, assistants and affiliates

As if that is not enough, Google Docs has some pretty neat features.

1. Saving a document to PDF
   
   You hear people ask this all the time, what is the best PDF creator, or how do I create a PDF. Well, for starters, there is no ‘best’ PDF creator at least in my eyes. PDF creators are pretty generic but if you’re short on funds and don’t want to install anything on your computer let alone learn to use it, upload it into Google Docs. Then save as PDF.
2. Add comments
   This is very useful for working with others. Example co-authors, ghost writers or even just your assistant. You can even color code it for different people.
3. Find out what changed
   Under the Revisions tab, you can quickly find out what you or anyone else collaborating on that document changed. I personally love this when I write an email or article and have someone else (like a native English speaker) look over it. I can compare my sentence with theirs and learn tons. Great for copy writing coaches or mentors.
4. Create presentations
   
   Oh yes, this one they just added. No more getting copies of your presentation or forgetting to bring them to your clients’ office. It’s all on Google.

   This is very exciting because you can hold a teleconference call and have everyone log in to follow along. When they log in, they can also text chat with every one else who is viewing the presentation. No more expensive conference rooms. So wish I had this when we did the Blogging Starter Pack call in 2005!

5. Keep a timesheet for billing
   I’ve used every imaginable software out there including Timestamp. And while they are all good, I wanted something where clients could log in to see the hours spent in real time. I also didn’t want a new system, additional cost and for the client to learn a new system or create yet another login. Google spreadsheet pretty much answered all of that for me.

   Almost everyone I know has a Google account so they don’t need to re-sign up for anything. I invite them as viewers to my spreadsheet and using simple mathematical formulas, all I do is enter the date, time in and time out. The spreadsheet calculates a running total of hours and billable amount.

   I keep one spreadsheet file for each client and each file has several sheets up to 12, one for each month. This way, the client can always tab through the sheets for each month to review for their own accounting or, they can print, save or share with their accountants quickly and painlessly.

Selling toys on eBay

Can you believe Christmas is right around the corner? Every year it comes faster and faster - and although it is my favorite time of year… it always sneaks up on me. I love decorating and celebrating with my little ones - but, I have also come to look forward to one of the absolute hottest seasons on eBay! Many markets come to a stand still during the holiday months; however, on eBay… toys are hotter than ever!

This will be the 4th year I have published the Holiday Toy Selling Guide - and every year I am amazed at this incredible opportunity for sellers. Seriously - it blows me away. Most people are spending the holidays looking for toys for the little people in their life - and when the shelves run out in the stores… many turn to eBay. And why not? - it is one of the most visited sites in the world! The question is - are you going to get in on the action? :-)

The selling season is very short for toys during the holidays - it lasts maybe 8 weeks… but, it can be so profitable. .. and it isn’t just for established sellers either! A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from someone whose 14 year old daughter used my guide to make $1700 her first 2 weeks selling on eBay! And she was a new seller too. The opportunity is there… but nothing will come if you don’t act. If you have been sitting on the fence - thinking about selling on eBay - this is the time!

Here are a few pointers for getting started selling toys this holiday season…

1. Don’t be deceived by the recalls…
We have all heard about the recalls this year - and although it may scare some of the toy shoppers this season… I don’t think it means that people are going to be staying away from toys all together. Analysts are saying that toys are still going to be one of the biggest sellers this season - they just might shift from what was expected to be hot a few months ago.

2. Research what’s hot…
Because the season is short, there really isn’t time for trial and error. Pay attention to the media - and if you have kids in your life… pay attention to what they are interested in too. After you have a list of what you think may be the hottest sellers, spend some time researching on eBay to see how these toys are performing. Do this regularly - because what is not a hot seller this week… may be through the roof next.

3. Save your receipts…
and become very familiar with your stores’ return policies. Stores have cracked down with their return policies - so be sure you don’t have any surprises if you end up at their return counter trying to return something that didn’t sell.

4. Take advantage of lay away…
Unfortunately, many stores have drastically changed, or removed altogether, their lay away program; however, if you can take advantage of one - do. You can put items that you think will be hot on lay away and then once they are performing well - buy them and turn them around on eBay.

5. Don’t panic…
Some things will sell - others won’t… it is just a part of the game. The best thing you can do is minimize your risk by educating yourself. The shelves will empty at the stores Thanksgiving weekend- it is after that weekend that online sales seem to skyrocket… so be patient :)

Remember - this really is a short selling season… if you are considering getting on board with selling toys this holiday - start researching NOW… you just might have all of your holiday expenses funded by your eBay profits. :)

Service with a Smile

Sometimes it is hard to smile in every situation, especially if you are having a difficult day. In involves consciencely taking the effort to put a smile on your face. By doing this, it automatically put a smile in your heart.

Changing your mood is as easy as changing your mind. You have to decide to be happy and not let anything or anybody get you down. If you are not approaching your workday with a happy, positive attitude, it will consequently effect your business.

Positiveness and Happy faces with a smile is infectious. You be the one to change the people around you. You become the thermostate rather than the thermomitor.

I have found that when you smile in the face of adversary conditons, that is truly a great service industry formular for success.

Why not try it next time someone is unhappy with the service work you have done. Be pleasant, smile, and offer whatever sensible solutions that will remedy the situation.

Also, don’t forget to always smile for you and do something each day that is nice for youself. If you are not happy, it is really hard to convey that message of happiness to others.

Elaine Gordon Evans

www.elainegordonevans.com
www.elainesamericanmaid.com

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