Working at Home on the Internet

Working at Home Blog Carnival-Forty-eighth Edition

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Welcome to the August 31, 2007 edition of working at home blog carnival. This weeks Carnival has, as always, some really good articles. So, Sit Back and Enjoy.

And Here We Go…

advice

Pat B. Doyle presents 23 Great Ideas For Blog Posts posted at Pat B. Doyle, saying, “Running out of ideas for your blog? Check out these great tips for blog articles.”

Sam presents Computer Security. Viruses, Spyware, Spam and Robots posted at Surfer Sam and Friends, saying, “The hazards of traveling the Internet include the malicious activities of computer viruses, spam, Spyware and robots. Computer security software is available to protect you and your computer as you explore the Internet”

business

wilson ng presents The Challenge of Providing Choice posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, saying, “Some people want a variety of choice, while some people want quality pre-selected information. Whether you are selling products or ideas, how many alternatives do you provide? Here is a short article on how the number of offerings affect decision-making.”

Christopher J. Brunner presents New Advertisement Placement Ideas posted at GreatFX Business Cards, saying, “Lately there have been some new found advertising venues that will help to make your ad stand out and get noticed above the rest.”

Vandelay Website Design presents 8 Tools to Help You Find the Right Domain Name posted at Vandelay Website Design, saying, “Choosing the right domain name is essential for your online business. Here are some tools that can help.”

Raj Dash presents Bootstrapper ? Delegating Tasks: 15 Key Roles for a Revenue-Producing Website posted at Bootstrapper, saying, “Planning to run a income-earning website from home? You can do it, but as you grow, don’t forget to delegate tasks, as you can afford it, to people who can do it better. Here are some roles you may need to delegate.”

Sutocu presents Social Networking as a Marketing Model posted at Your Website Profit, saying, “Even a home business needs marketing, and social networking is the perfect way to market on a small budget.”

general

Sue Massey presents Do You Know How to Delegate Effectively? posted at Business Management Life, saying, “Delegating work to others is a High Payoff Activity. Being able to effectively delegate is essential to productivity and the operation of your business.”

Stacey Derbinshire presents 8 Secrets to Staying in Business - For Entrepreneurs Only posted at Starting a Small Home Business, saying, “Entrepreneurs that manage to stay in business share a few core characteristics that ensure their long-term survival. Learning these secrets can help you to weather the storm and hang on for dear life.”

Eric Hudin presents 5 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Marketing Overnight posted at Everyday Marketing Ideas, saying, “You run a business. You have a great product. Your customer service skills are second to none. But your marketing falls flat. Here are a handful of steps you can take right now to get your marketing back on track and make it perform the way it is supposed to.”

Tiffany Washko presents Make Money With Auction Ads posted at Tiffany Washko - Mother, Writer, Environmentalist.

Chris Tackett presents 5 Things To Consider When Looking for A Network Marketing Business posted at Direct Marketing News, saying, “As the trend of working from home continues, its important to make an educated decision before starting any company. Here are a few things you need to consider and evaluate before choosing a company.”

GP presents Lead and Be Lead posted at Fish Creek House - INNside Innkeeping, saying, “Whether in the arena of riding or as an innkeeper, it’s necessary to get out of the comfort zone”

Tom Stanley presents Top Ten Franchise Opportunities for $20,000 posted at Tom’s Franchise Information Blog, saying, “Franchises are among the fastest growing business opportunities available. Franchise opportunities now exist that will fit almost any budget.”

Matt Hanson presents Matt?s Creative Advertising Blog ? Blog Archive ? Spending Those Hard Earned Dollars On Advertising posted at Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog, saying, “Advertising can be a tricky thing. Knowing where to spend on advertising and how much to spend is extremely important in being able to grow one?s business and grow efficiently.”

Jason Rakowski presents It?s Up To You - Make Customer Service A Positive Experience posted at Learn Good Customer Service, saying, “The sad truth is that most people can probably recall a poor customer service incident before they recall a great experience. Why is this?”

humor

GP presents Redneck Etiquette and All Around Good Advice posted at Fish Creek House - INNside Innkeeping, saying, “I’ll admit to being a Jeff Foxworthy fan…. On the heels of being a cowgirl”, hilarious yet insightful Inspiration for some redneck etiquette.”

stories

edithyeung presents Career Ideas You Must Think About You Worth More Than Your Job posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

tips

Lyman Reed presents Eliminate Distractions (and Save Your Marriage) While Working from Home posted at Creating a Better Life, saying, “A couple of things that have worked for me while working at home in a small environment.”

Phil B. presents Blog Carnivals ? Phil for Humanity posted at Phil for Humanity, saying, “Do you want to drive more traffic to your blog? Well, I have a really.. REALLY easy way. And no, this is not a gimmick.”

Mike Harmon presents Accounting Tips For Those Using A CPA posted at Basic Accounting, saying, “If you are using a certified public accountant there are certain things you need to know. Here are a few important things to do when using a CPA.”

Courtney Tuttle presents Search Engine Optimization For Yahoo posted at Make Money Online Free With Court, saying, “Learn to make more money with the internet by adding traffic from Yahoo.”

Fiona Lohrenz presents Tips for Starting a Day Care posted at Child Care Only.

Bragoo presents Weekly earnings update posted at How To Build A Website Blog, saying, “A slow but sure way to make money online and avoid the costly mistakes I have made. making money online isn’t easy, but the rewards are tremendous.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of working at home blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. If you would like to host one of my Carnivals, just use the contact form to make arrangements.

Remember, when you submit an article, please fill in the Category and Remark Fields to add your own description of your post.

Please Submit only ONE Article per Carnival, additional articles Will Not Be Accepted.

Since this is a community endeavour, please feel free to advise me through comments or my contact form if there is something you think I can do to improve the Carnival.

Technorati tags: working at home blog carnival, blog carnival.

August 31st, 2007 at 06:17am | Posted by Joe | Carnivals, Work at Home | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

A Short Story on Professionalism

A Short Story

I tried a new plugin, Better Comments Manager by Keith Dsouza and I couldn’t get it to work. At ALL… on either this Blog or on My Computer Back in Service.

So, I checked to make sure that the file was downloaded properly and unzipped correctly. I created a new folder on the server and Re-Uploaded all the files that were included in the original download.

It still wouldn’t work for me. It seems to work for most others, if comments on his post are any indication. There were some exceptions of course, but only a couple.

I’m not sure why, maybe it was intuition, but I logged into one of the Blogs using FireFox and tried it again. It worked with no problems. So, I tried it on this Blog using FireFox and it worked perfectly. But it still wouldn’t work when I used Internet Explorer.

I have written before about how things work differently on various Browsers and the importance of CrossChecking. It seems that Plugins are no different in dealing with different browsers.

The Solution

I sent an eMail off to Keith to let him know about the problems I was having using IE7 and explained politely that there are a lot of IE users out there and that they may not be able to use his plugin as well. Therefore, he was probably not reaching a big portion of his intended end users.

Within 2 days I got a return eMail from Keith with a link to a new download that contained all the necessary fixes. I am quite sure he didn’t write the fix just for me, but it does show how professional he is when it comes to his work. He made sure that something he wrote, that has his name on it, performs at or above the expectations of the end user.

Epilogue

Better Comments Manager works as promised.

Responding to comments individually or en mass is simplified through the Admin Page of your WordPress Blog (In IE And FF).

I would highly recommend it to anyone who has any comments to answer, especially if you have numerous comments on a particular post. There is a feature included that will show you ALL the comments on a post so you can respond accordingly.

Keith is just starting to write some plugins for WordPress after changing over from the Joomla platform. (He wrote quite a few add-ons for them too).

If he shows as much dedication to his projects in the future as he has for BCM, then you can be assured that his plugins, or anything else he shares, will work as promised.

August 29th, 2007 at 06:10am | Posted by Joe | Plug-ins, Reviews | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

What Day of the Week is Your Best Day?

 I was going over my stats the other day trying to figure out what the best day of the week was for posting about various subjects to reach certain types of readers.

• Monday I get a lot of  traffic from the search engines. The most common search terms are “work at (from) home” and “internet work”. No big suprise there. But, what type of posts should I concentrate on writing for that day? I thought that the Work at Home Tips series was the perfect thing for Monday’s. So, with the exception of today, I will try to continue in that direction.
• Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday and Sunday are pretty hap-hazzard in who stops by. I get a bit of a mix from SE’s, Return Visitors and Referrals from other sites. I’m not sure how to really handle that type of variation in visitors. These are the day’s I usually post whatever happens to come up. It could be about something I read about, thought about or just about anything else that has to do with writing, stats and of course, working at home.
• Wednesday is almost always the best day of the week, especially with visits from Return Readers. These are the one’s that are more likely to click through from RSS and comment on a post and are Bloggers themselves. That is why I usually present more of the Plugins and fixes and other information pertinent to blogging and people who use the medium for Home Business. This is also the day I am more likely to ask for opinions on things that pertain to this Blog or my Business. I trust my friends and value what they have to say.
• Friday is all about the Working at Home Blog Carnival. Most of the traffic I get is from people who like carnivals, work at home, run a business etc. It’s been around for so long, I think people just naturally stop by to see what’s on the menu each week. Most are referrals from the Blog Carnival Home page or people participating in the carnival. That and a lot of regulars stop by to see if there is anything interesting happening. The Carnival is a Keeper.

I haven’t had a poll in quite a while, so maybe it’s time I had another one. I would like to know if you have ever really talken an indepth look at who visits your blog and what day of the week ends up being your most heavily trafficed day.

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

The poll will be in the sidebar all week, so if you want to think about it and come back to particiapte, that’s Ok. If you would rather just leave a comment instead, that’s Ok too.

August 27th, 2007 at 10:58am | Posted by Joe | Community, Organization, Polls | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post