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• I wanted to become a professional blogger.
• I wanted to earn passive income from blogging and other internet strategies.
• I wanted to be able to add to my pension.
• I wanted to be able to help others in need via blogging.
• I wanted to be around more and not on the road speaking away from my mom since I am the only child and I am her” assisted living.”
• I wanted to help my husband sell his artwork online

I STILL WANT THO KEEP THESE DREAMS SO I HAVE MADE THEM GOALS

Ray and I decided to take an eight week webinar training in the evenings. These were great date nights. We would eat dinner then sit at the dinner table around the lap top or downstairs around the desk top with speakers turned high as we listened to Jeannette Cates talk about starting a business online.

Now we were already primed by other internet gurus we like and admire. But this series by Cates promised to help us set up our own website! I admit I thought it was going to be a static site and I would learn more about Dreamweaver. But before we knew it we had jumped into deep water and was swimming with Wordpress.org. Oh my, that was the program that looked so hard on the VTC training that I decided it was far easier to stick with Blogger.

But it was too late. We were assigned to create this Wordpress.org site and host it. We did it. We are glad we did.

Later as, as time went on, we went deeper with Wordpress.org with the guidence of my friend Cathy Perkins, the infamous Wordpress Wizard.

Ray and I were not born bloggers. But as baby boomers we were determined to learn. We now have many blogs and still learning.

What about you? What is your blogging story? Please, Please share. You can post as a comment or just email the story to me using rhspeak(at)aol.com

If we get enough stories we will publish them in an ebook to share with others

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This is probably the shortest post you have ever read on this site!

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Ok, here is my story. Once upon a time I had someone create a website for me. Why? Because as a speaker I went to enough workshops that said, “Create a website and put the url on your business card. Include articles, products and the kinds of topics you deal with and audiences you address. Oh, and don’t forget to put a current picture up and not one showing you 20 years ago.

Well, I did that, not once but twice. Both were wonderful sites done in Dreamweaver. That is one of the finest website development packages around but the learning curve is steep. So although I knew how to change pages, create pages there was so much more to learn. I could not fix my files and much more. I became increasingly frustrated.

Remember, I am a speaker, stand up, talk, engage, get creative tell jokes but not do blogging. That sounded lonely, tedious and too hard!

Then one day I attended an NSA, (National Speakers Asssociation) conference and was introduced to this thing called blogging. I purchased the CD and listened to it over and over again in my car.Although, I did not use the same blogging platform as the speaker, I decided to create my blog using Blogger.

How did I learn Blogger?
I took an online tutorial course with VTC. I would look at the video, stop and do they said, then start the vidoe again and continue. I had a blog up and running in no time! I still had my static site but I had a blog up on presentation skills. I taught my husband and he put one up on art. What was also cool was this same  video site had a lot of free  videos you could learn from before you started paying. They also had loads of videos we could not find in the stores. Video tutorials on just about anything so we signed up for a year so we could also dip our toes in stuff like Photoshop, etc.

I started looking at the tutorials on Wordpress.But at that time the installing was oh so complex. I was not ready to deal with creating databases and other stuff you had to do if you did not have a host that made it simple.

Are you ready to share your story yet?

Next, How we traveled to Wordpress.org during hot date nights.

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This is a day that made me think of physical, mental and spiritual freedoms. I thought about my personal spiritual freedom during my personal quiet time this morning. I was thankful for the physical  freedom from pain that my mom had. I pray for those who are in emotional and physical pain for them to have some freedom from it.

If you have never felt the pain of physical, emotional or spiritual bondage you will never, ever appreciate how it feels to feel free. Sometimes it is just the freedom a pain pill brings. Other times it is the freedom from crying out of grief or lost of a loved one because someone cared enough to call and talk to you.

As a baby boomers we have a lot more of a history to reflect upon. They range from personal freedoms to job related freedoms. That’s right many of you are free of your jobs but not by choice. Yet, you have created an opportunities out of the pain of job loss. Every successful baby boomer internet marketer has a story to tell you that would probably encourage you.

Well, I could go on and on but must make a trip to my moms. So, I leave

Are their some freedoms you have but have thought to give thanks for? If yes, take a few minutes to appreciate them between the fireworks and fun.

Enjoy the day!

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Then it hit me. Hey, how would I know about the online activity during a holiday unless I was online? That’s right I am one of those folks blogging and doing other stuff online, when I can, during the holidays.

So, although, I am supposed to be working on an  upcoming presentation for next week, I thought I would share this post I was writing in my mind while running my errands today.

10 Top Reasons to Blog on the 4th of July

1.  Everyone online does not celebrate the holiday so you can focus on your oversea readers

2. You just never liked hot dogs ,hamburgers and ribs. Plus everyone is not into vegi, vegan and tofu so you might as well stay home.

3. If you are blogging and remember an issue you wanted to ask your host about you can get almost instant access to 24 hour support because everyone else is busy having fun.

4. If you are have your laptop at the barbercue you can impress your friends and family

5. You can blog about holiday sales and specials.

6. You don’t have a life.

7. You might get more comments from other bloggers online who don’t have a life

8. If you blog for your job you will look like a go getter if folks see you posted on a holiday.

9. It is a good time to volunteer to be a guest blogger for someone who needs a break to get a life.

10. If you blog then Tweet someone may bring you a dinner or invite you over to their celebration.

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I even see where some other forms need to be developed. So, that is on the agenda also. I am doing a 4th of July Special just until July 6, 2010. The forms will only be $1.00 if you  use the discount code #blog30. You can see the ad in the sidebar.

Now, you are probably thinking, “Total waste of time” or “Too much work”. But try it and see if you like it.

Meanwhile, Have a safe and wonderful holiday weekend!

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Now, I am not going to share ALL  of the categories but the few I do share can tell me where I need to improve. Of course after you stop looking I will be looking at all the stats.

Direct address/Bookmark?link in email?Links from an Internet Search Engine

What Search Engines are connecting to this site?

My revelations and future actions

Yes, it is true that most of my action came from Google. But some action also came form 9 different search engines. Two folks used a Social Bookmark! In this case I was Stumbledupon. Actually someone contacted me on Facebook to let me know they Stumbled me. MY ACTIONS? I am going to get busier in those bookmarking sites!!!

Finks from an external page(other web sites except search engines)

external links

My revelations and future actions

I noticed that there is one site that I joined that serves the highest number of links. Here is a little more about them

Tamazu is a categorized collection of blogs. This site is split up into niches so you can find your need in a click! Tamazu has many types of blogs, and we accept blogs in all languages, so don’t miss all last news of the world. For each niche we have top list. Come see Blogger services blogs and discuss!

This site allows you 2 blog submissions per day. But you must do reciprocal linking.

The next highest is Twitter. This is the place that all the BLOG CHALLENGE folks had to hang out to tweet their posts. Now, I am going to sneak over to the month of May to see how it was different. Ha it was only 5 and Stumbleupon was higher at 6 so my action is to keep hanging out in Twitter and submit my sites to more directories.

Finally I will share a f ew of the top posts for this month. Or rather those with the most views. Are you ready?

post with highest views

My revelations and future actions

The post, 10 Top Reasons Why Baby Boomers Should NOT Use Social Bookmarking had the highest views as of the 29th of this month with 360. My decison?

Do more posts with Numbers in the title.

Ok, that is enough for tonight.  This baby boomer must get rest and be up early to walk and prepare for a workshop plus attend a meeting. I hope this motivates you to check out your stats and make some decisons. Of course there is much more so take your time. Have fun!

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What If You Are Using Blogger or Wordpress.com?

Well, I currently use both Blogger and Wordpress.com for my FREE hosted blogging. I have never used a service to track statistics on Blogger but I found a service that does it free.

But wait! Did you know that Google owns both Blogger and Google Analytics? Well, they would not leave their blog site without a statistical interface for too long. Here is a tutorial for adding Google Analytics(Which I also use for this self-hosted site) to your Blogger blog.

Wordpress.com has a built in blog statistical interface. It is quite good. It will also tell you the posts that get the most attention. Check out the stats on one of my recently neglected sites.This is what you will see directly on your Dashboard on a Wordpress.com site. It shows the top posts for the week and also the most active. If you place your cursor on the graph it will show the number of posts for a given day. Since I have not been as active for a few moons there is not a lot of activity. But that will change..

Rosiesblogclass.com stats on Wordpress.com

Now see what happens when I click on the Blog Stats Tab on the Administration Panel.

Blog Stats on Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com stats for Rosies Blog Class

Wordpress.com stats for rosiesblogclass.com

Note that now you can search by Days, Weeks and Months. You can also see what sites have sent you traffic, top posts on your site, search engine traffic, clicks, a summary table, incoming links and how many email subscribers you have. In my case I am using Feedburner.com.

Conclusions

Based on this short look at my stats I have decided to link to this site post in a post on the Rosies Blog Class site. I will also resume posting other tutorials. You know the same would be true if I looked at my ATM balance I would decide that it needed a deposit.

Part 2 will deal my self-hosted stats for my other blogs.

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Now,it is my premise blogging can be a shake and bake occasion also when you are working with a blog team. How?

Well imagine this scenario:

You need to post about the steps for grading a vinyl LP before posting it on an auction site. You could do the research, post it and it is up.  Now that may take you a few hours and that includes quality control.That is the fried approach.

But if you are doing the shake and bake team approach it goes something like this:

Team blogger #1 does the research on grading vinyls using the Goldmine system and sends that information to Team blogger #2 who  writes the post and puts it in draft.

Team blogger #3 creates a title and inserts it into the post. Now, that may seem like a simple task but to make the title engaging can take a little trial and error.

Team blogger #4 reviews the post for any errors in grammar.

Team blogger #5 creates the tags and indicates the category. He or she may also indicate if it was part of a series using a plugin like Organize Series in Wordpress.org. (Or any other method depending on the blogging platform)

Now Team blogger #6 will upload and size an appropriate picture(s) into the post. In this case it would be a pictures of a vinyl LP and cover at high magnification.

But alas, we are not finished yet. Team blogger#7 will now preview the post and add any appropriate monetization links like affiliates if they relate to the record collecting business.

Finally, Team blogger #8 will preview the post, check to make sure all the links work and publish it or schedule for publishing.

Now you may not have as many team members but even if there is only a few each one can play a role that will save time, insure a quality post and make your blogging efforts healthier both mentally and physically.

Each member of the team can then say, It’s shake and bake and I helped!”

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