First, you’ve gotta have some time for yourself. Whether it’s a nice steamy bubble bath at night, or a trip to the store alone, having time by yourself to just breath is going to do you a lot of good. So, carving out some time in your day or at least your week can go a long way to reducing your chances of burning out.

Then, you have to remember to take a break. I know we all do it, we get caught up in our work, the housework, and everything else and we don’t even take five minutes to just take a break. Schedule in break times like you would in a normal workday. This will help you to be much more productive and to think more clearly.

Another thing that can help to avoid burnout is to set some goals. Setting goals helps you to know what you’re aiming for and you will feel a sense of accomplishment when you achieve them. This will help you to realize you really are getting things done even when it seems like you’re just spinning your wheels.

The life of a work at home mom can be challenging, but giving yourself a break every once in a while, and doing these few things for you will help.

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Doing It All Without Burning Out

Online networking can indeed be difficult for the same reasons that it is unique, because you cannot see each other facial expressions or read each others body language comments are often taken quite literally and sometimes the wrong way. This is why networking online can be challenging.

Nevertheless, it is worth the time you will spend putting into it. Networking online can be done in a variety of ways including by joining and participating in online communities, blogging and reading other blogs and commenting, creating an email list and sharing information with this least and creating a relationship with its readers. Use the content sent to this list to drive traffic to your website or blog.

THE TAKEAWAY

These are all great ways to network online that will accomplish the purpose for which you network in the first place bringing together yourself with those in your target audience to build relationships and to create partnerships.

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Keeping it Real Online

Business development

Marketing

Community Management

Public Relations

Networking through Social Media

Blogging

Writing

Usability testing

Promotion

An authentic Mom’s point of view

Much, much more!

WHOA!  Sounds intimidating doesn’t it?  Don’t let it get ya though.  You probably do more of them than you you realize which already qualifies you.  Having some education in some of these fields can help as well. Depending on your experience and what you can bring to the table will be deciding factors. If you have always wanted to branch out and have leadership qualities about you, I highly suggest you stay on top of the lastest opportunities.

Jessica Smith over at Jessica Knows, is the creator of this genius idea and she also happens to be a Chief Mom Officer herself over at Wishpot.com

I think it’s great that companies are seeing the impact that moms have, after all, we make some of the biggest decisions in the family.  While we may not always be the ones bringing in the bacon, we are the ones that pay the bills, do the shopping, and are usually the decider when it comes to BIG purchases.  It just makes sense that we can market to women and moms better.

What?  Of course it’s a paid position!  You wouldn’t be asked to that much work for nothing!  So if this sounds like it’s up your alley, go check it out and subscribe to Jessica and join the Linkedin Group and the new Facebook group!

Oh, and let’s all support each other!  Spread the word folks!  You can read this press release about the most recent chief mom officer job that was open.

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Are you Chief Mom Officer Material?

1. Provide content and plenty of it. Search engines feed on content so in order for readers to find you, you need plenty of it. You will want your content to be conversational and reader friendly as well. After you get them there you want to keep them there and keep them coming back, so make sure your content does that for you. Blog often and make it worth reading and the readers you get will be sure to return.
2. Add your blog to directories. There are dozens and dozens available on the web today, but you will want to find those that are relevant to your target audience and submit your blog. Many will require a reciprocal link or button to be placed on your blog.
3. Build links to your blog. You can do this in a variety of ways including commenting on other blogs, participating in link exchanges, and linking to your blog from your main website or other blogs of yours.
4. Provide an RSS feed to subscribe to or the option to subscribe by email. Both options ensure that your readers will be checking in frequently. Creating a feed is as easy as creating an account with Feedburner and filling in a few boxes. They also give you the option to place a chicklet on your blog that readers can click to subscribe to your RSS feed and an option to create an email sign up box as well.

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Bring on the Blog Traffic

The mom who works outside the home often believes that the work at home mom misses out on one valuable part of working outside the home, the social scene, the office gossip, the water cooler chatter, but guess what? We don’t! That’s right we have our own water cooler chatter, our own office gossip line. That lifeline is Twitter, an online social medium that is known as a way of micro-blogging, because you can only write in short 140 word bursts, just enough to share a quick thought. With Twitter,  work at home moms socialize with other work at home moms much better than the days of the forum, where you would have to wait and check back to see when someone replied to your post, now with Twitter the reply comes in an instant.

Through Twitter moms can connect, network, gossip, vent, and more. Users can follow up to 2000 others and be followed as well. Updating is almost instantaneous with a quick click of the refresh button or, within some of the twitter programs such as Twirl, the Twitter feed is updated automatically for you.

So, never think that us work at home moms are missing out. The truth is far from it. With Twitter, our world is connecting to 1000s of other moms with the click of a mouse. We can meet others we would never have met before. It’s is better than going to a brick and mortar office. It is the new and improved office we like to call the cyber office and it serves as both our workplace and our social world.

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Twitter… How the WAHM Socializes

What’s the incentive?

Well since you asked, it’s a $20 Amazon Gift Card! Who doesn’t like Amazon right!? OR, if you prefer, I can Paypal you $20 bucks

Ready, set, GO!
Click Here to take my survey

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Tell Me More About You

This is what I do.  I have this tall shelf where I added the labels Monday through Friday.  When I get a product, I simply place in on the shelf of the day I received it.  Then, I go to my handy dandy notebook (oh my gosh, did I just say that??? Freakin’ Blues Clues!) and put it there.

How do I put it there?  Well, lemme just tell you;)

You can use a spiral notebook or binder or whatever you want, paper clips, and a writing tool.

Use one sheet of paper per review.  Whatever you’re reviewing, put it down as the title.  Write down the date you received the product or when the post is due and the blog it’s supposed to be published on.  Now use a paper clip and attach any paperwork you got with the product (if that’s the case) and p-clip it.  When you go to do your product review and you are testing the product, jot down the pros and cons on that same peice of paper in your notebook for reference when it’s time to do your review.

If it’s a website review, create a folder in your inbox and store all review emails there.  You can even go as far as creating subfolders for product reviews, website, and service reviews if you want.

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Do Product Reviews? Get Organized!

I start off by walking you through getting your own domain and web host.  From there, I show you how to  create the blog.  There are a few pictures included for those of you who need a visual;)

If you are interested in moving from blogger or just starting a blog or website, use this tutorial with step-by-step instructions to help you.

Download the ebook today!

P.S.  2 more ebooks are in the works right now so if you download this ebook and stay subscribed, you’ll be among the first to know about them!

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How to Create a Self Hosted Wordpress Blog

I’m rrepublishing this post since I’ve updated the list.  I have removed Start Logic and added Register.com.  They are having a super special right now so check it out!

Before I created Blogging with Cents, I did countless researches for web hosts. I ultimately went with Bluehost for 2 main reasons–One, they were in the Top 5 of all the reviews I read and two, many of my fellow blogger friends use Bluehost–. I knew if I ran into trouble, I could just ask my questions in the forum and receive numerous responses immediately.

There were some nice alternatives and I thought I would share my top 10 with you just in case you are looking for a web host. (Which, by the way’ switching from blogspot to my own host has been the best thing I’ve done!) I am putting these in order based on reviews, the first one being the best.

HostMonstor–Free setup & domain, cPanel,$5.95~~Probably the best of the best.
Register.com–$4.95 with a guaranteed 100% uptime!
Bluehost–Free setup & domain, cPanel, $6.95~~Unlimited domains & Excellent Cust. Service

Hostgator–Free setup & $15 domain, $9.95~~Unlimited domains…quality hosting
LunarPages–Free setup & domain, Free domain for life, $6.95~~The BEST Cust. Service
Godaddy–Free setup & domain, $6.95~~Top pick for novices

Honorable Mentions:
EasyCGI
iPowerweb
1and1
midPhase

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My Top 10 Webhost Picks

Winning affiliate marketing is heavily dependent on a steady flow of site traffic. Without it, ads wouldn’t get any impressions or clicks. Advertisers would quickly abandon this marketing method and affiliates would have to go back to their 9 to 5’s. But to attract new and returning visitors day after day is not easy. However, there are a few things that can be good to have in mind when you’re building you affiliate site.

Always Update Your Content

A static page does little for new visitors and absolutely nothing for returning ones who have seen it all before. Constantly adding new content and updating it will not only show that your site is active and expanding to search engine but it will most importantly become a source to which internet-user will more frequently visit.

But simply putting up texts and paragraphs won’t do much good either. A lot of text on a website is perhaps good for search engine optimization purposes but in order to increase your site’s popularity the texts have to say something as well. Like a visit to Perez Hilton’s Blog or CNN’s website has become a daily routing for millions of Americans, you want people to be affected by your website’s content.

To make things a bit easier you can divide your content into two parts, static pages that work as the foundation for the site and require little editing like about us, welcome texts and other descriptive texts. And continuous content such as news and new articles.

Optimize Your Content for the Search Engines

The first thing you should do, and have in mind when publishing new content, is to optimize it for the search engines. Without it, your pages and content stand little chance of ranking high in Google. By understanding which keywords or keyword phrases your potential visitors are using when searching Google, Live or Yahoo you will be able to implement them into your content. Google’s Adwords Keyword tool, Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery are great resources to find out which search terms people are using and how many searches that has been made on a specific term.

After you have established a list of keywords that are relevant and cohesive with your website it is time to put them to use. The first thing you can do is to insert meta data in the <head> section in the code of a certain page. Meta data consist of a meta Title, what Google uses as title in search results, meta description, what Google commonly displays in search results as a description of the site, and meta keywords, not considered to make any difference anymore. Inserting your primary keywords into the meta data is according to the search engine a sign of relevance and increases your chances of ranking high when somebody searches on your keywords.

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The Importance of High Site Traffic Volume