Who Should I Listen To, Lisa?

One big mistake that people just starting out online make is following and attempting to learn from, too many people. I definitely made this one. I’ve got my ‘chosen mentors’ narrowed down to just a few now and things are working a lot better. One of these awesome people is Lynn Terry, of Clicknewz and Self Starters Weekly Tips. Lynn has been working as an entrepreneur, most of those years online, for about 12 years now. And the really super cool thing about her is that she’s really nice and really approachable. The ‘OMG, Lisa – what’s wrong with you?’ part is that I’ve known her, followed her, since at least 2003. That is how long I’ve been a member of her forum, anyway. I have been listening to eighty-seventy-thousand other people, too, though! Now she is one of my few – and my head is not spinning quite as much as it used to!

Back to the question people ask me all the time – other stay at home moms that want to continue to stay home with their kids are usually who ask me how this all works. How do you get paid to blog? How does affiliate marketing work? How do you get listed in the search engines? I try to answer them, but, I think my answers come out disjointed. I try to start from the beginning, but, I always wind up zig-zagging and then I have to say, “Wait, back up a minute, before you do this you have to do that and it winds up being a dizzyingly circular talk! Ha!

How Do I Get My Own Site Up?

I did a few how-to posts in an effort to get started explaining things from the beginning – Lisa, how do you make money at home blogging? and Make Money Blogging – Part II. The first post will really help you just get started with your blogging. The second post offered some helpful resources for more research. Again, though, I don’t feel that I’ve explained things well.

But Really, Lisa, How Do I Get Started?

That is one thing that Lynn is really good at – explaining how, step-by-step, to do all the different things that we do. And she has a new post up, called, Starting A Free Online Business – that offers so much help to someone just wanting to get started! She just has a great way of explaining things! I’m pretty good at teaching little kids stuff, but, for some reason, I’ve really found it difficult to teach people what I do online. Lynn is awesome at that – the important thing is, you really need to follow the links within her post. She has written tutorials on just about anything and everything to do with internet marketing and she links out to them. Follow those links! Dig through her site! You will learn a lot from her!

Look at the categories of her blog on the right sidebar, also – you can dig through those to specific topics of interest to you. And if you can’t find something, use the search at the top right of her page. If it has to do with online marketing, I’ll just bet Lynn has blogged about it!

Seriously, when getting online, you need to be careful. There are some smooth characters in this arena that will win you over with their charm. All the while you think you’re learning the very best stuff from them, they’re draining your bank account or your paypal. Lynn is a REAL PERSON, not out to drain anyone’s anything. She is very smart in marketing, the online world, and entrepreneurship – you can’t lose stickin’ with her!

I realize the first post in this series was not called Make Money Blogging, but, as I’m feeling a bit ornery and cantankerous, I decided that different titles were just fine. It is my blog, after all – see that up there in the header – the part that says Lisa Marie Mary – yeah, that’s my name. So this is kinda like my pad. And my rules go. See what I mean – got that ornery thing down, don’t I?

Let’s get to the good stuff and quit all this yammerin’! A very good friend has asked me for some advice about how I do this ‘working online’ thing, and as I was mentally crafting my email back to her, I realized that my adoring public would be better served if I shared that information with everyone! (Ornery, ornery!) Seriously, though, I’m sure there are others out there with the exact same question, and it seemed such a shame to only share it with one person.

I suppose that I need to start this whole thing off with the whole Google business. Blog monetization has recently taken a very sharp turn, as Google does not want anyone buying any paid links – not in any way, shape, or form. What this means for us as bloggers is that many of us lost our Google Page Rank. (This blog is not yet monetized in any way, so that hasn’t happened yet. It is also very new, so the Page Rank is rather low.) There have been several ways to respond to this new development. Some bloggers have swept through their entire blogs removing each and every dofollow link. (If you’re not sure what that is, look it up, because, I don’t want to spend the whole post on this topic.) This means they are no longer hosting Text Link Ads and they are no longer accepting any advertising that requires dofollow. This means a lot of people are losing money, quite a lot of money, in some cases.

The other type of response is to just keep right on doing what you’ve been doing, not paying any attention to the loss in Page Rank. Some are successful with this response (still making plenty of money) and some are not.

The zone I fall in is the ’sitting on the fence and waiting to see what happens with all of this’ department. I am not making much money at all, but, I have not taken my advertising off my sites, or added nofollow to them. I could do so, but, I’d still not be making much money. So Google would love me, advertisers would still not. The sites left with page rank, I could monetize, and then Google would slap them. So I don’t know. I think what I’m mostly waiting for is for Social Spark, by Izea, to come out, and see how well I do with that. I will talk about that a bit later, when I get into the companies that help monetize blogs.

Also, in the meantime, I’ve been focusing back on My Very Own Mail, and learning all about internet marketing again. I am studying affiliate marketing, infoproduct creation, membership sites. I’m also working for one of my two blogging heros and that is not only a great opportunity, but, also such an honor. So once you get into the fray online, you will see that there are jobs to be had, as well. I will admit, though, that when you are first getting involved online, they can be tricky to find. I think a lot of people find them on the WAHM.com forum, but, I’m not totally sure on that.

My two blogging heros? They would be Wendy Piersall of eMomsatHome.com and Galya McCord of MomGadget.com – these two ladies just rock and you can learn a lot from them. One of my WAHM heros, that I’ve been looking up to long before I got into blogging, is Lynn Terry of ClickNewz.com and SelfStartersWeeklyTips.com. There are all kinds of WAHM’s and marketers and WAHM marketers out there. You need to know who to trust – don’t let yourself be fooled by slick marketing, and waste money on silly programs that are just fluff and crap. (Not that I’ve ever done that, oh no, not me.) Anyway – the very best way to know if you can trust the person you are attempting to learn from online, is personal referrals. I completely stand by these three women, they are smart marketers, brilliant webmasters, and more importantly – they all have HUGE hearts! You absolutely can trust them. Be careful out there – the web is full of creeps, some of whom are very good at posing as upstanding web citizens.

While in the middle of sitting on working on this post, Wendy posted this awesome link to resources to help WAHM’s out in their businesses! It is on a very interesting blog called Bootstrapper – it’s a cool blog with lots of lists. And that list is great! Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with information, though. That is one of the biggest downfalls of being an online entrepeneur – distraction, and learning too much. If you’re constantly learning, you don’t have any time for ‘doing’ – and ‘doing’ is where the money is! Action! Never forget to take action!

Then one last link, that got twittered this morning by Caroline Middlebrook (thanks, Caroline!). It is an AWESOME article by Courtney Tuttle that you must go read – right now! Starting a Blog That is Not a Time Sucking Money Pit

So now this trailing, wandering, meandering post on working at home online is through – for now. I do have more to share with you. I’m starting a new blog – I’ve moved one from a subdomain to its own domain, and I am taking notes as I get it set up and start marketing it, so that I can share those with you.

P.S. If you’re thinking, ‘Man, this post sure is rough, for all that ‘editing’ she talked about!’ …I didn’t actually get to any of the editing and fixing and reformatting, those activities all transpired between my two ears! I’m just darn sick of this post sitting here – I’ll make better, more coherent posts …someday ….soon ….I swear!

The next thing I wanted to talk to you about was something that Roy Montero shared with us that I really liked! He was talking about how so many of us spend (waste) so much time …preparing …making sure we’re ready …fixing. And that so often it’s “Ready ….. Aim …. …..” and that “Fire” just keeps getting put off again and again and again. He really heard this from another marketer, but, I can’t remember who it was, but, he says that what we need to be saying, instead, is….

“Ready – Fire – Aim!”

I just love that! And I can relate so much to the preparing, learning, gathering more information, getting ready… Ugh! Just do it, already! As I go into this new year, I’m going to keep that one simple phrase in my head …”Ready – Aim – Fire!” And I think it was Roy that said,

The important thing is that we just go.

That’s good stuff. So often I need to be reminded to just do it. Action, action, action! There is a lot of positive talk like that at The Warrior Forum. There are some really awesome marketers there, from whom I’ve learned an awful lot!

Getting back to the webinar, though, one of the things we were doing was helping Deb Gallardo with her site, The Story Ideas Virtuoso. Deb has a great ebook coming up that will help aspiring fiction authors in the process of finding their story ideas. Everyone was chiming in and giving Deb advice on what she could do to her blog to make it better and it was really interesting hearing all of the different tips. I love listening to/reading blog critiques, because, I always garner ideas for my own sites that way.

The really cool thing was that while we were on her site, there was a headline in her Blogrush widget that just jumped out at me. The title was

When This Occurs, Pack Up Your Dinosaurs and Leave the Room

I have to say that before even clicking through and reading the article – I love that! And then when I clicked through, I was pleased as punch! It was the perfect note on which to end this great session of looking forward and taking action in the new year! The article was posted at a blog called Gnorb.net. You can find the actual article here: Dinosaurs. It’s a positive article, especially for those of us with entrepeneurial blood, in which the author quotes a fabulous piece out of “Zen in the Art of Writing”, by Ray Bradbury.

And on that note, I’m packing up my dinosaurs!

I’ve told you here before about Lynn Terry’s free weekly webinars. She is so helpful and provides so much support, help, and information – all for free! The webinars are held every Tuesday at 11am Central time. It’s a really great format, because, it’s very interactive. There is a screen where Lynn can show us different webpages, and there is audio, which is controlled by Lynn – so not everyone is talking at once. And there is also a text chat, where you can ask questions and discuss the topic at hand freely. I really enjoy them!

Today our focus was on the new year, of course! Everyone is thinking all about the new year – the internet is abuzz with articles and blog posts about ‘how can you do differently than 2007?’ and ‘what are your goals for 2008?’ And of course, ‘how do you plan to get there?’ And that is a lot of what we talked about today. The whole thing ran for two and a half hours today! That is a long one. Now, the actual webinar is only an hour, but, often – Roy Montero (who hosts the webinar) and Lynn will stay after for a less-formal chat and discussion.

I just wanted to share with you a couple of the highlights that were very useful to me today. I am sure that I am going to miss a lot of stuff – but, for me personally – this is the stuff that struck me between the eyes and I felt compelled enough to write down.

Lynn shared with us about a book that has made a big difference in her organization and clutter habits. And actually, the book was freeing for her, because, it helped her to realize that she really is organized. Things might look messy, but, she knows where everything is and can find it for you in two seconds flat! I can so relate to that! The book is called, “Organizing from the Inside Out” by Julie Morgenstern. Lynn has mentioned it before, and I just haven’t looked into it yet. Given that, number one, she’s mentioned it more than once, and number two, it freed her up to realize she already was organized – I should really check it out! The author has written another helpful book, too, and that one is called, “Time Management from the Inside Out”. I am definitely going to check into those books! I should have some Amazon credit due to me from MyPoints – I know just what I’ll use it for!

Lynn did also mention another book, too. She frequently talks about this book, as do many marketers I’ve come across online. That book is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Lynn says that this book completely changed her mindset! Awesome! It is another one I have been meaning to read, and just haven’t gotten around to, but, I could really use a change in my mindset. So I’ll be checking that one out, too!

One topic we discussed was ‘information overload’ and this, of course, led us to email. Ugh…I know so many of us are so bogged down by our emails, especially if we are involved in marketing online. (It is definitely not a problem confined to internet marketing, though, as my mother is a controller for a private tennis club, and deals with way too many emails, too!) As online marketers, though, we are trying to stay on top of what’s hot and fresh on the internet. We think we need to catch every morsel of information, and save it some folder for ‘later’. Oh my gawd – what a horrible cycle! I am so bad about this. Lynn sent us to a blog post she’d made on the topic of information overload in the form of emails, and one thing right in the beginning of the email did that ’striking me right between the eyes’ thing again (emphasis mine):

Your priority should be putting out content… not absorbing it.

That is good. I mean – good! I might just print that out and hang it on the wall over my desk! Focus, people, we need focus!

I think that is a good note to end on for today – I’ll share the rest with you tomorrow! Stay tuned…

Lynn is a wonderfully sweet person and an awesomely powerful marketer.  I’ve learned a lot from her over the years.  And I am loving her weekly webinars.

If you would like to get the notification email in the morning (when she sends it to everyone) then just visit this page: Lynn Terry’s Weekly Webinars.

Just get signed up there, and in the morning, you will receive the notification and in it will be the instructions for how to sign into the webinar.

I hope to see you there!