Working at Home on the Internet » Resources

How Bartering for Services Saved My Business

Joe Hauckes — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:30:16 +0000

Where to start?

There doesn’t seem to be a beginning or an end. Just a mixed up juggling of events, good and bad, that becomes a jumble in the mind. So don’t look for any inspirational, yes you can work at home and make millions post. What you’re going to get is just a sample of recent events in the life of a work at homer (me).

The Back-story…

A while back I bought a refurbished Dell laptop. It was at least 3 times faster than the desktop I was using at the time. It seemed that my productivity went up quite a bit with the new capability and I had the portability to work wherever I wanted. That’s when I decided to incorporate all the programs and services I used for work on the new computer. Good thing I did because the ‘ole reliable desktop took a dive. It died, but since I had made all most of the information transfers, things kept on moving and almost nothing was lost.

Fast forward to present…

I got some small jobs throughout the summer and things were going fairly well. Not great, but Ok. Some cash paying jobs and a barter for services. Sure it’s nice to get cash, but then sometimes providence steps in and you don’t realize it The barter for services instead of cash is what made the difference in keeping my business up and running. Hence, this post.

The Story…

My neighbors desktop was acting up and he couldn’t get anything on his monitor. So he decided to buy a new one (monitor) and still had problems with some of the boot processes. Then he went out and bought a new (read old, worn out, rebuilt) desktop for a couple of bucks and still had problems with just about everything. (All this time he had a Laptop and the monitor didn’t work on that either)

THEN he calls me…

This is not really about what I did or how I helped him with his problem, it’s about the Bartering for Services. Sure, I got his new (old) computer back up and even got him online, which is what he wanted in the first place. And I showed him how to interchange the monitor between the Desktop and Lappy so he could use either for his purposes.

The real point is that I got his Original Desktop, the one that didn’t work in the first place, in exchange for my services in lieu of cash. I figured it would be something to play around with. get it to work and have an extra computer “just in case”.

Well, the “just in case” is Now. My trusty Lappy died last week (it’s probably the Motherboard. so it is likely Totally Dead as in Parrott Dead). This whole post (and I’m sure a lot of future posts) was written on the old, dilapidated, slow, desktop that I got through Bartering for my Services. I upgraded some things like the RAM etc to get it up to par. And now, All my business contacts and information have been transferred (I have a home network and backups) to the usable computer and I still have all the programs and services I need to conduct business on a daily basis.

Moral…

If there is a Moral to this story, it would be this… In a small business, never say no out of hand if someone offers to Barter for your Services, it may just be the lifesaver you need.

How ’bout you? Have you ever Bartered for Your Services? How did it work out for you?

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Can the Working at Home Job Board Help You During This Recession?

Joe Hauckes — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:14:30 +0000

A few months back (May 12th to be exact), I launched the Work at Home Job Board. I was looking for a way to help people find a Work at Home opportunity if their situation called for such a position. Things were pretty bad with the economy, and Working at Home seemed to be becoming a more desirable setup for businesses and employees alike.

So far, there have been 105 people who have gone to the WAH Job Board searching for their own opportunity (please let me know if you found what you were looking for).

Unfortunately, we all know where the housing, mortgage, bank, speculators, and oil prices has lead. A recession. Lost Jobs in just about every industry, including on the internet. I think we all expect those numbers to climb as things play out.

But there is still hope, there are jobs out there. Maybe not in-house (their house), but tele-commuting jobs are still there. Things like Blogging, Freelancing (in lots of fields), various Tech Consulting positions and other Online and Offline opportunities are still around, you just need a trusted way to find them.

I hope I have provided that trust, and a source of finding something that fits what you are looking for in the WAH Job Board.

Disclaimer: I do make a small amount of money from the employer, not the prospective employee. And remember, NEVER pay for a job… they should pay you.

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Is NoIndex on FeedBurner a Way to Beat the Content Scrapers?

Joe Hauckes — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:39:02 +0000

A Very Short Story

In the not so long ago, I was having problems with a particular site scraping my RSS feeds to steal my content. If you have been following WAHI for any length of time, you know this is a continuing problem (many of you have faced the same dilemma too).

Of course, it happened again, but instead of trying to deal with the culprit as I did with the last thief, I started looking around for a better solution – one that would work for ALL such nefarious content stealers.

Gary over at Phoenixrealm seemed to be having the same problem, Bad Guys scraping his feeds. He was lucky enough to be alerted by a reader of his to the problem, so he put the question to his community.

In reading the comments section, I noticed a response from SEO Carley telling about a service provided by FeedBurner. NoIndex. Frankly, it could have been there for a while and I just never noticed.

A Possible Solution?

Go to your FeedBurner account, click the Publicize tab and down at the bottom click on the NoIndex link in the sidebar. By default it checks off “Indicate that your feed should not be indexed by search engines”, however, you need to Activate the Service. There is also a place to check if you do not want your feed indexed by Yahoo Pipes.

For me, this is in the experimental stage, if the feed isn’t indexed by the search engine spiders, it is highly unlikely that it will be picked up by the Scrapers Spiders.

In the same vein, it may not be picked up by some of the services you want to grab your feed. Things like We Blog Alot, Blogwise and services like Ping-O-Matic may not work either. Don’t know, I have to keep a close eye on some of these services.

How About You?

Have you tried the NoIndex feature in FeedBurner? Has it helped solve Your scraping problem? Is there a better way that you know of?

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Poll Results Positive, Going for the Job Board

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:42:53 +0000

Ok, the results (although really disappointing) of the Should I Start a WAHI Job Board poll are in. Only 3 people voted, 2 Yes and 1 No Opinion. There were No No’s.

The reason I took the poll at all was to get YOUR opinion as to the need to offer some Work at Home opportunities to people who really want/need to Work at Home but have no real idea of where to find anything.

So, with the underwhelming poll results and my own gut feeling, I decided to create the Working at Home Job Board. As I mentioned in the poll post, there seems to be a growing search surge of people looking for ways to make a living Working at Home. Now, the only (and probably the hardest) thing left is to find Companies, Individuals, Small Businesses and Employers who have a need for Home Based Employees.

There will be a small fee to the Company for a one month placement. No charge to the prospective employee.

Any ideas on how to find interested Employers would be most welcome.

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Three Services that May (or May Not) Be the Future of Blogging for Business

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:47:59 +0000

Just a little update on what I’ve been trying to accomplish recently in the World of Working at Home on the Internet.

I mentioned last week that I wanted to move more into the Future using Blogs/Video/Screencasts as a tool to increase business on the internet. While I won’t go so far as to say the efforts so far have been a failure, I will say they have been less than expected.

Not because there is anything wrong with the mediums per se, but some of the programs aren’t living up to their potential and frankly, neither am I.

One service I do like is Revver. It is really easy to use, takes up no bandwidth on my server and produces quality video for presentation. No download to deal with, just upload your video to their service once you have signed up (it’s free). They even have the option of using Ads on your Vids (50/50) if you like. I did a Video using Revver about the next service, if you’d like to see it.
Pamela for Skype is a Bust. (No link because I cannot recommend it to anyone in good faith) The concept is great, an addon for Skype (no affiliation) that allows for some features not included in the actual Skype service like recording Audio conversations that can be published. But the main thing that attracted me was the potential ability to record Video Interviews for publication at a reasonable price. The price is no problem ($24.95 for the Pro version), the Problem is that IT DOESN’T WORK.
Lastly, I have been tinkering with a service called FreeScreecast. I have done a few “test” screencasts and the procedure is really quit simple. Download the Screencast Recorder, Record your screencast, Upload it to their server. You even have the ability to include Audio so you can describe what you are doing to your audience. My problem is that I keep on making mistakes during the recording. I get part way through and mess up on Audio or bring up the wrong screen on Video. I guess that will come with practice (I hope). But I plan on doing a lot more with this service once I get it right.

How about you, what have you been up to? Have you tried any of these services? Thoughts?

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