Why Pay Monthly For Software?

There was a time in my business - the early days - where I would have turned my nose up on paying a monthly fee for any web based software. How little I knew inexperienced I was then. Sadly, it took me a big loss, a full day of anxiety to appreciate the value of using hosted third party applications.

What happened?

My web host shut my account down and deleted all my web sites. It felt like being thrown out of my own home. The reason, a script I had installed the day before had gone wrong - very wrong - it flooded the web hosts’ email servers to the point it almost crashed the server. Not only did it hurt, I was absolutely embarrassed. Here I was, thinking I was so smart and could install a script or two plus save money.

It’s been many years and many lessons learned since but that memory is as fresh and raw at certain periods today as it was back then.

Today, I use several hosted web based software and yes I pay monthly for them. It did not come easy of course. When I started using Aweber, I didn’t have that much money coming in but I knew the importance of sacrificing early profits.

The best part? I don’t have to worry about them.

• I don’t have to spend valuable time upgrading the software
• I don’t have to worry about people hacking it
• I don’t have to think about the software being compatible with the server or crashing it
• When the system goes down, I have someone to ask and demand for answers
• When the system goes down, I don’t have to upset my schedule and delay my projects further to fix it. I know that they have the properly qualified expert developers to work on their system. People whom I am not able to afford on my own.

If you’re struggling with a decision about money and paying monthly for software. Allow me to help make the decision easy. The first and most absolute basic, spend it on an email newsletter / autoresponder system.

How Do I Make Links In My PDF Clickable?

So you purchased an ebook and you saw they managed to make it look really nice. The links are clickable, including text and images. You say “I want that too” but how? Well, I can’t tell you how that person did theirs but can certainly tell you how I do mine. Using a fabulous piece of software (and free too!) called OpenOffice.

In OpenOffice, I can make URLs clickable and I can also make text and images clickable. Beware many tools that say they can make clickable links in PDF. A great many of them can only convert URLs to links so unless you write out the URL in full e.g. http://internetbasedmoms.com it won’t recognize that’s a link to convert. But that can be a problem sometimes.

What if you want to create an affiliate link and don’t want those long ugly URLs? What is the site you’re referring to has a long ugly URL and it just doesn’t look good in your PDF. Can’t you make the text clickable like click here? Absolutely you can using OpenOffice.

I write my report in OpenOffice Writer which works just like Microsoft Word, highlight the text I want to make linked and click the hyperlink button , put in my URL and apply. Voila. Link. Then to make a PDF, just hit the PDF button . How easy is that?

What about images?

Those take a few more steps but just as easy. First, you insert your image into the document. Click Insert >> Picture >> From File…

Then right click on the image, click picture.

In the pop up dialog box, click the hyperlink tab, type in your URL then OK all the way out. That was easy wasn’t it?

What’s Filling Up Your Web Hosting Space?

Many web site owners don’t make it a habit to check their disk space. Hey, I don’t do it on every single web site I have either. Maybe because disk space is so abundant and frankly, cheap these days. But if you do max out your web space, your site could be crippled especially if you have blogs with comments and forums where people enter data and gets saved to your site.

You normally don’t have to worry too much about that happening because most web hosts will send you a warning email when your site capacity reaches a certain level like 80% or more.

Some of us have big sites and that’s OK but if you don’t have a very active site, you don’t host a lot of multimedia files, where could all that web space go to?

Here are some other scenarios.

Forgotten mailbox. Your site is a mini site or opt-in page, you did set up email at one time but never checked it. Somehow or another this email address gets on a spammer’s list, or you have set up the email somewhere but simply forgot all about it.

Default mailbox. Most if not all web hosting accounts come with a default address. Some web hosts have this default address active and ready to receive emails. If your host does this and you don’t check it, sooner or later this address will fill up with emails because the default address is a ‘catch all’ address. It receives all emails that do not have a real user. For example, you set up yourname@domain.com but someone (usually spammers) send an email to admin@domain.com the default address catches and stores this. Before long, this inbox eats into your web hosting space. To ‘turn it off’, set the default address to fail or bounce. I prefer fail. If you don’t know how to do this, check with your web host.

Databases. Have a forum or blog that you rarely use or check in on? Spam comments filling it up? Well, deleting spam comments and spam posts reduces your web space too. Database counts as part of your web hosting space.

Backups. Check to see if you have any automatic backup scripts running that saves the backups to your web space. Download the backups to your computer and delete them so they don’t fill up your hosting. Also, if you ever do a backup through Cpanel, download and delete them too. That normally fills space quickly because the backups are like a duplicate of your site.

Next time you wonder where all that space went, check these common culprits. Use the disk space viewer feature in cpanel or your web host control panel to find out where the biggest files and folders are.

Greet Visitors By Where They Came From

Have you ever visited a site from StumbleUpon, Digg or some other place and be greeted with a message that said something like “Welcome StumbleUpon fan, enjoy your stay and don’t forget to give us a thumbs up.” Its kinda cool isn’t it? It acknowledges your visitor, makes them feel welcome and hopefully they will reciprocate with another vote for you.

The good news is, this is very easy to do. If you run your web site on WordPress, there are a couple of plugins. To make it easy for you, I found two.

• Refer Notes
• WP Greet Box

If you’re using something else, HTML or any site builder this is also easily done but will require some technical elbow grease. Ask your techie to help you with that. Technically inclined? Then check out this short tutorial and code sample.

Neato: Organize With Wallpapers

Now this is what I call maximizing your computer without a lot of work or extra software that will gobble up your system resources. These desktop wallpapers have a dual purpose. Remind you of processes and even help you organize your day to day work files and applications.

One of the things I like to do on my desktop is to download apps, PDF reports, audios etc temporarily. I keep them on my desktop so I can see these as ‘action items’. This will really help these action items stand out and remind myself what else is outstanding.

If you’re good with the graphics, you can always create one yourself too. Let us know when you do so we can update the post to feature your work as well.

EZ Access Desktops - Grab 6 different wallpapers organized into sections.

Layered Desktop - 2 different types of wallpaper

GTD - if you’re into Getting Things Done.

15 Tools To Track Time & Productivity

Tracking time sounds so easy. You clock in, work, clock out. That’s billable time right? Yes. But in a home business setting like many of us have interruptions like the baby crying, the kids fighting or the Orkin man knocks on your door to do an inspection. This makes it a challenge because you have to clock in and off sometimes in less than 1 minute.

In MomMasterminds, we also recently discussed yet another challenge that is not brought up often enough. That is charging for every minute you earned, including your email time. Most of us service providers are pretty good about charging phone time but email time? We get the illusion the email is only going to take 2 minutes but how often does that 2 minute become 20 minutes because you needed to research your answer?

How often does that one quick email turn into 10 replies by the clients, "for clarification", each taking another 2 minutes for you to read, understand and respond? They all add up but that’s another blog post ;)

Here are 15 time trackers you can use to help you out.

RescueTime - You create an account, download this little application and start the clock. It’ll track each application or web site you’ve been working with and time spent on it. Great if the bulk of your work is on the computer. No data entry, but I found the tagging tedious. I liked that it is automatic but at the time of use which is a few months ago, I could tell how much time spent using an application but I couldn’t easily tell how much of that time was for which client. I needed to tag that time manually each time. You can do that in bulk just once at the end of the work day, but if you let them pile up, beware.

One thing I do really like about this. It’s a great way to tell how you’re using your time while at the computer. You know those days when you feel you’ve worked all day but done nothing? Well, use RescueTime for one week and you’ll know exactly where you are leaking those hours.

Toggl - Free, but with premium accounts if you want more options. Super easy and straight to the point. 100% online or download a little program to help you track time.

Printable CEO - Not an electronic tracker and incidentally, the one I use. Love it, love it, love it. Yes it is paper - I just like the opportunity to quickly jot down a stray thought or two sometimes and electronic solutions don’t always make it easy for me to do that without clicking several times. By the time I click through, the train of thought is lost :( that’s why I like paper for some things. Printable CEO has a variety of different task and time trackers you just have to choose the one that suits you best.

Slife - works a lot like RescueTime. Free, Mac only.

Klok - downloadable software that runs on Mac or Windows. Free.

Legos - Like to play and work at the same time? Check out how this creative software developer tracks his time using Legos - really! The Legos your kids play with.

Tempo - Free for one user, one project. You can also use it with SMS, Twitter, email or your phone.

1Time - Online time tracker for teams. Nice: Clients can view the hours worked, employee reporting, track holidays and absent days plus project expenses. Free for one user, 20 projects.

Harvest - Free for one user, 2 projects, 4 clients. Nice: Invoicing feature, estimate vs time spent report. Quickbooks export, different roles for teams.

Tick - track time and budget. Free for one project.

SlimTimer - Track tasks and time. Web based, free.

TrackMyPeople - time tracking for teams. Includes a downloadable widget for desktops.

TSheets - not free, starts at $10/month. Upgrade for team use. Track time from cell phone too.

88Miles - No free plan, starts at $5/month. Quick and easy punch in/out concept.

Time Stamp - Finally, can’t close the list without this one. A favorite of many VA’s I know. Desktop based time tracking software. Free.

Photo credit: Satendra Mhatre

How About Your Own TV Channel?

Today, there are so many methods of reaching your market, I’m almost jealous of newbies. There are blogs that are so very easy to publish, audio tools that are simple to use and most of all video resources and web sites that don’t require a broadcasting degree to use nor millions of dollars to set up.

One of the most exciting development technology wise is the advent of live streaming video. Anyone with a cheap $20 web cam and even cheaper microphone can launch their very own TV channel. Best of all, most of these sites do it for free. The only thing you need to do is to show up. How easy is that?

Ok, I exaggerate. You still need great content. But many of us already have great content that can be re-purposed into a live video show. A video channel allows you to truly bond with your market. I know, for us moms, video is a bit intimidating especially when you start thinking about those toys in your office, combing your hair, getting yourself presentable but why not? We used to do that every day working outside. Granted, you may have opted to work at home so you don’t have to, but making ourselves presentable and beautiful does wonderful things for our psyche. Really! Think of how you felt the last time you went for a hair cut, did your nails, put on some make up and dressed sharp?

Furthermore, have you not noticed all those reality shows on the big TV networks? Watching people who aren’t perfectly made up, have a perfect house, perfect kids, perfect body or fairy tale endings are remarkably interesting these days. Don’t underestimate yourself. A TV channel for your web site or business may just be the thing to drive traffic to your site and propel you further into your expert status.

Interested to get started? Check out these live video broadcasting solutions.

• UStream
• Justin.TV
• Mogulus
• Yahoo Live!
• BlogTV
• Stickam

Don’t forget to have fun!

Online Presence More Important Now Than Ever

A few weeks ago, word got around to us that my brother-in-law who owns a successful painting business was hit with a huge problem. It’s a long story but the bottom line, he had lost his (long time) phone number and forced to get a new one. Here’s something you need to understand about his business. A big chunk of it is done by phone. In fact, you can say pretty much all of it.

No phone - no orders.

He could of course take time to call each one of the customers. But because of poor record keeping, he didn’t always have numbers or addresses of all customers. Besides, some of them had already started calling. They knew of no other way to reach him.

At such a time, a simple web site would have been so very helpful to him. Granted, most of his customers do not live online like we do. But, had the web site address or even email address been on his card, shirts and other material, his customers would have used it as a backup method to contact him. Also, the web site would have been a good way to let customers know of the new number.

Even if your business is humming along perfectly offline, keep in mind that as time goes by, the population will be replaced with more people who are web savvy. Having an online presence is more important now than ever.

Uploading With cPanel

The very first time I encountered cPanel was in 1998. After working 10 years on it, it is so easy to forget that for others it is a challenge. Recently, it came to my attention, some of my friends were having a really tough time understanding how to upload a file on cPanel and then find the URL for this file. This usually happens when they are publishing a new image or PDF book they want to offer for sale or free download.

As such, here’s is a quick tutorial on this matter. Just so you know, the process is the same be it images, PDF’s or even an MP3.

Log in to your cPanel, find File Manager, click to open.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the new window, click public_html.
This is your web folder. Anything you put in here is viewable on the Internet. Anything outside of this folder is not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decide where you want to upload the file to.
You can create a new folder and upload it in there or upload directly into the public_html folder itself. For simplicity’s sake, we’re uploading into the public_html folder.
Click Upload file(s).

 

 

 

 

 

Click Browse [1], select the file you want to upload [2], OK [3], then upload [4]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll be returned to the file list screen. From here there are two ways you can determine the URL of the file you just uploaded.

1. Anything that is inside your web folder (public_html) is accessible by typing your domain name in the browser, followed by a slash followed by the file name. In this case, the file name I just uploaded is inside002.gif so I would enter this in my browser http://websitename.com/inside002.gif

That’s it. Easy. But what happens if you uploaded it into a folder you named ‘pictures’? Then, you simply add the name of the folder into your URL like this.
http://websitename.com/pictures/inside002.gif

2. Get cPanel to tell you. When you are back in your file list screen, find the file you just uploaded. Then click on the name.

 

 

 

 

Look to the right side of the window, you will see the information about that file and the file URL. Simply copy and paste that URL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Problems?

I see strange characters in the URL.
That’s normal when you upload files with dashes in them. Modern browsers and web servers put that in there so the image or file will load even with the special characters but as a rule, it’s best not to upload files with spaces in them. Either remove them or use dashes and underscores for easier reading. Keep in mind though that dashes and especially underscores can be really difficult for people to remember or type in.

20 Billing Solutions For VAs

Being a service provider is a lot of hard work, challenging but also fabulously exciting at the same time. This is especially true when working with a good client on a stimulating task. The only thing that kinda sucks is billing. An oxymoron don’t you think? After all, that’s why we are in business right? To earn money.

Over the years, I’ve seen, used and tried many applications / methods. Lately, there seems to be an even larger smorgasbord of options billing systems to choose from. Likely because the Internet has made it so much easier to freelance. This is good news for us freelancers and VA’s.

If you’re one of those looking for a solution that will fit your work style here’s a list for you to start with. These are not recommendations but rather a list of solutions I’ve come across.

Freshbooks - This is more established. Good reviews.

Citrusbill - Looks like a pretty new system, a bunch of features are still in development. UK based.

Invoice Place - Not as pretty but if it works, who cares right? Supports multiple currencies which is handy for clients overseas. Other than invoicing it also helps you manage supplier billing and inventory.

Simply Invoices - What’s nice about this is that it works with time / project tracking tools like Basecamp, More Honey, Tick and Harvest.

Xero - This is not just a billing system it’s a whole web based accounting system. It is built by a company based in New Zealand and supports accounting / banking practices in New Zealand and Australia.

Blinksale - One of the winners of Webware 100 in 2007. Says you can import from Basecamp but how exactly this integration works is not explained.

Zoho Invoice - Ah! One of my favorite web wares other than Google. I’m excited to check this out as I’ve only recently found out about them. Multiple currency support, recurring invoices, freely import and export your own data makes this quite interesting to check out.

BillMyClients - It’s nice that like Freshbooks, you can send physical invoices.

OpenAir - Manage your staff’s billable hours as well as invoicing. One of the people I work with uses this to bill me. As a client I only wish for one thing. That I can click a link to pay the bill instead of having to log in to PayPal, copy and paste the amount, type in the reason for payment etc.

Cashboard - This actually looks promising. You can track time as well. They even have a desktop time tracker so you don’t have to log in to track time. Works with Basecamp and has a quote/estimate feature.

SimplyBill - What it says on the box. Simple, uncluttered, straight forward.

Invoice Journal - Gotta throw in a free solution somewhere :) No fancy eye candy but it looks like it can do the job just as well.

BambooInvoice - Did I ever tell you I love open source software? It’s no wonder that I just have to seek out an open source billing system. BambooInvoice is interesting indeed. Free and you know at all times you are in control - the problem with hosted software is you never know who is really looking at your data. The down side is of course, now it is your responsibility to take care of that data and secure it.

Others that I have not took the time to tour, review their features.

• FreeAgent
• AcuInvoice
• Simple Invoices - Another open source solution.
• Ajax Invoice
• Intuit’s Billing Manager - free
• InvoicesOnTheRun
• CurdBee - free

Now the only bad part… you gotta choose one :) Enjoy and hope one of them works out for you.

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