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From a Coma to My Blog

From a coma to my blog — Part 1

It’s been 2 months since I went into the hospital with kidney stones and then had my “near death experience” and I finally feel pretty much back to normal — or as close to “normal’ as I’ll ever get! lol I’m told these are some of the first questions I had when I awoke from the coma… “Where am I?” and “What day is it?” and the strangest one of all, “Oh no, did my blog expire?” lol They say everyone laughed and was relieved that I hadn’t lost my memory and that I was pretty much all right in the brain department. They say I also worried about my cat, my bills, my finances, and my house… so basically I woke up worrying! lol

I think everyone has wondered what it feels like to be in a coma and now I know. For me it was confusing. The last day that I was conscious blurred into the day I woke up, but I do know that I was irritated, upset, and felt very helpless. Waking up on a respirator is not fun! I have since learned that they have to take the respirator and breathing tube out of you the moment you wake up… it would be nice for the patient if they could take it out BEFORE you are conscious. That way you could just open your eyes and wake up peacefully… like they do in the movies! But that’s not how it is done. If you were dependent on a respirator to breath while in a coma, they take the breathing tube out the minute you wake up. If they find that you can’t breath on your own, it goes right back in and you get heavily sedated until they decide what to do. Luckily, I could breath on my own and did not become dependent on the respirator/ventilator to breath for me.

So, one minute I was “out of it” and the next thing I knew was that everything got bright and light and there was a room full of strangers, machines beeping, X-rays hanging next to me (with pictures of my kidneys, my brain, and heart, I think), and definitely something down my throat. It was hard to breath and I wanted it out. I tried to move my hands but they were tied down! (A horrible feeling!) Commands were being hollered out by a Hitler-type woman who sat me upright. Everyone started counting… 1-2-3, and what is in my throat and down into my lungs got pulled (did I say “pull”? I meant “ripped”!) out of my body and I could not catch my breath.

Hitler-Woman hollers “Cough, Cough, Cough!” I finally catch my breath and give a weak and painful cough then Hitler-Woman says “Let’s hear it for Ned!” and the room breaks out in applause — for Ned! Who the hell is Ned? Why not “Let’s hear it for JJ!”? (Later I found out Ned is the respiratory tech who yanked the tube out of my lungs. “Yeah Ned!”) lol I asked where my family was and I swear they told me no one could be here with me because they were having a Super Bowl party and one of my sisters was taking a bath! (That’s not quite how it happened, but it is MY reality. It’s what I heard them say to me. lol) You see, the day I went into the coma was Super Bowl Sunday, so that day blurred into the day I woke up but I knew there was a chunk of time missing and something was wrong.

I must have fallen asleep because the next time I woke up I was in a different room with a window, monitors, a few nurses and my family. There was also a stranger who acted like a friend. He said he was the hospital Chaplain and that he just got beeped and told that I was “starting to wake up” so he came as fast as he could. He told me that he’d been praying for me “every day since this happened” then he held my hand and everyone stood around my bed holding hands and he said a prayer for me. It was not normal for my family to be praying like that so I knew something bad had happened. Then I thought maybe something bad was about to happen. I was not sure. It was very confusing, but I did feel lucky to be alive.

Learn New Wall Street Terms

Here’s a guest post from a fellow blogger who is truly inquisitive about the economy, stock market, and all things financial. Investment terms can be overwhelming and hard to understand, but if you study up on just a few terms a week, you can become a savvy investor in no time — or at least you can talk like one!

Learn New Wall Street Terms

by InquisitiveAboutFinance

This latest downtrend or recession has taught a common man many new financial terms. These terms are not new to the financial sector, they were just buried under the good economy for some time. Now, they are becoming part of our everyday conversations.

1. Ponzi Scheme: A Ponzi scheme is also known as a pyramid scheme. It’s a fraudulent investment plan promising very high returns to investors from their own money or money paid by earlier investors rather than from any actual profits earned. One common way for the Ponzi scheme to attract investors is with the promise of high short term returns. This scheme was named after Charles Ponzi who made this scheme popular in the 20s. Thanks to Bernie Madoff this scheme was brought again into the limelight!

The US Federal Trade Commission says that because of the pyramid’s very nature, at least 70 percent of those who invest in a Ponzie Scheme will NOT see any returns and will lose their investment. It is mathematically impossible to recruit enough investors to pay out to all levels of the pyramid.

2. Uptick Rule: According to Wikipedia, “The Uptick Rule is a securities trading used to regulate short selling in the markets”. Uptick is the selling of stock or securities at a higher price than its last sale price. The Uptick Rule is a US regulation that a security cannot be sold short unless the trade before the short sale is at a lower price from when the short sale took place.

In 2007 this rule was eliminated in order to study its effectiveness. The Uptick rule is something Jim Cramer had been proposing to bring back for quite some time in his famous Mad Money. Due to the recent sell off in the markets, the SEC and Rep. Barney Frank announced plans to restore the Uptick Rule. We will see what long term effect this will have. Short term results have been good as the DOW, S&P and NASDAQ surged soon thereafter.

3. Deflation. Although practically everyone knows what deflation is, no one has heard this term so widely spoken until recently. Deflation in simple words is reduction in prices of goods and services. With recent decline in home, oil, and energy prices the economy is moving towards a less inflationary or into a deflationary mode. The FED is injecting a lot of amounts of money to increase inflation and at the same time kept the inter bank short term ratios very low. Typically the economy is in higher inflationary mode before entering a recession.

4. Hedge Fund: A type of fund that can use more aggressive strategies than other investments or mutual funds are allowed. Hedge funds are mostly used by the wealthy (and by institutions) since the minimum investment required is from $250,000 to over $1 million and no more than 100 investors are allowed into each fund. They are exempt from many of the regulations that most mutual funds have to abide by. One of the common ways hedge funds offset their losses is by short selling the market. Short selling refers to selling an investment in the hope of buying it at a lesser price.

Do you have any new terms to add to this list?

The Life of One Blogger

Here’s a post by a frequent visitor and good friend of MomsCashBlog who formerly had a blog known as consultelaine and who now has a blog named Bohemian Things. She shows us how sometimes we end up in a totally different place from where we began and just the process of starting a blog can get things rolling in the right direction. It’s a great story about finding your rightful place on the Internet and following your own heart.

The Life of One Blogger
by Elaine Murphy

When I first started blogging (again) my intention was to use my blog to make a profit. I will be the first to tell you—pick a subject that you have something in common with. Picking a subject you’re interested in, interested in learning about, or a subject you are already passionate about is a good way to go. This way you would avoid getting bored and run out of things to blog about. Okay, I got it.

As luck would have it I stumbled upon MCB free wordpress blog tutorial. The tutorial was very influential in helping me get set up with my first wordpress blog. Within no time I had a blog ready to go. Things were looking up!

My passion is hair. I love doing hair, and talking about hair. Although I am not a licensed cosmetologist, heck I could pull it off…easily. This was a passion of mine since I was a child so I naturally started to blog about natural hair care. Easy enough, so I thought. Let’s get started.

My blog talked about the latest hair trends, recommended products, and celebrities with natural hair styles. Whatever pertained to natural hair, I wrote about it. Things were starting to change — I was distracted by the template, and started wasting hours nitpicking and altering it out of boredom. I found myself changing templates more often than I would post. It was then that I realized I did not want to talk about hair every day. I asked myself…what is going on here? I became disenchanted with chasing a way to make money online and took a break from it all.

“I quit”, I told myself. Shortly thereafter I removed the blog. Here’s the irony—the blog was not, nor was it ever, about the hair. What I was essentially doing was finding someone else’s products to sell and incorporating that into my natural hair care blog. This wasn’t working for me… as much as I enjoyed talking about hair it did not seem like that’s what my blog should be about. Blogging became tedious and exhausting for me, and I did not know what I was doing. I quickly found out that I needed to learn a few things about the business…SEO, (search engine optimization), key words, Google Adsense, strategies, tips, tools, etc. I felt this extra stuff was keeping me from enjoying the process. This route took the fun out of a passion, a love I’d enjoyed all my life and still to this day. I needed to go back to the basics.

One day I received an email from JJ inquiring about my now non-existing blog—she had been keeping her eye on me and wanted to know what was happening with my blog. I had explained to her it was temporally down and assured her that I did not give up on blogging. I did not want to admit to her that I did stop. She had always encouraged me to keep trying and to stay in the online business.

Then on January 14, 2009, I popped over to MCB to get my weekly fix of encouragement and what was the title of the blog “Start a blog today.” I truly felt like it was written with me in mind. I decided to give it another try. I had missed blogging.

I would blog again only without pressuring myself to make a profit with affiliate marketing. I changed my outlook and the course of my blog… it evolve into an extension of who I am and what I do. I would write about me and my creative process and my own products instead of selling for someone else! I am an artisan. I find great satisfaction in creating with my hands, and blogging about the things I create. I create whatever my heart desires.

Now I maintain a blog showcasing products I enjoy creating. I joined a great community of like-minded crafters and artisans over at IndiePublic. I create products that are an extension of me, products I would be proud to promote. I have a shop set up on Etsy “a place to buy and sell all things handmade” were I sell my Bohemian Things with no pressure whatsoever. I truly love blogging and I never run out of ideas for a post because I am consistently creating and that’s what I found I was meant to blog about.

Had I not stuck with it, I would not have received this wonderful opportunity to share my creativity online and also have a guest blog here at MCB about “The Life of One Blogger”.

Thanks JJ. I owe it all to you.

A change in perspective

The e-mail that accompanied this post made me really appreciate the many kind and wonderful people I’ve met with this blog… and there’s a lot of them! Of course there were some jerks in the beginning, but I don’t even remember their names. It’s the good ones that make a lasting impression on me and this guy, Sean, is one of them! Here’s an excerpt from his e-mail:

“I don’t even have the time or money to invest into the website I was building, but I checked yours and saw that you were sick. It reminded me that money isn’t everything and health is the most precious thing. I wanted to pay my respect by making a post. I know this economy is full of negativity. It only takes a change in prospective for people to appreciate what was right there in front of them from the start.”

This guest post is a thought provoking op-ed (opinion editorial) about America in a time when it’s so easy to feel negative about our circumstances. After the touching e-mail, I had to know more about Sean and I asked for a bio. As it turns out, Sean’s bio is an interesting story all on it’s own. He was a successful day trader who lost EVERYTHING in this economic downturn! He’s only 22 and full of ambition, with an attitude like his I have no doubt Sean will succeed in whatever path he chooses.

Thanks Sean, I’m so glad to have met you!

America: A change in perspective
by Sean Sweeney

America is beautiful.. America is dandy.. America is like a baby reaching for candy.. Now I understand that this is a make money online blog, but I think a post of this nature is suitable for any blog. Sometimes it takes a dramatic fall for us to appreciate all that works around us. And even then, do we appreciate it as much as we should? I love you America.. I just don’t realize what we have here.. CHALLENGE: Lets 360 our lives for a second. Lets trade places with a 3rd world country.

Lets live in a place where government is against us. Lets not choose what we do for a living, how we eat and when. Lets have no choice but to stand on our own. If Americans were stripped of the only lifestyle they know, do you think they could survive? When did the distinction of being American grow hand-in-hand with being dependent? In such a fast paced world of innovations and free will, it gets too easy to lean. To lean on family, friends, the government, and even the simple tradition of visiting your favorite corner store every morning. What has been seen for decades as advancements, and convenience, and giving to our lives. What has been conceived as a right of passage to grow with everything that is offered to us, has finally shown to be a front. A front to something ugly and something purposely overlooked.

While all this time we indulged in the fruits of new-aged living.. we as Americans were losing. The more we were given, the more we wanted. The more we wanted, the less satisfied we were with the “average” of today. The less satisfied we were, the more delusional we became to what really mattered. In a place where it is more than accepted to have our own face. We chose not to. In a place where individuality and freedom cemented the foundation of our existence, we chose not to remember. Instead we followed one another. We lean so easily on those that lean on us. While the rest of the world is born with two legs, Americans should be born with three or four, if not more. With all the power in the world granted to us.. we have the power to choose our paths and the power to live freely. Yet we are born crippled. Crippled by our inability to reinforce where we come from. Crippled by the over indulgences that we familiarize with common practice.

In the spirits of a 360 with a 3rd world country. Is it at all fair to think that these new Americans would appreciate what we take for granted? These people that appreciate a blade of grass and a roof. Would they willingly work tooth and nail day in and day out to maintain this new found lifestyle? Would they let freedom be lost? Would they? I’d love to hear your views on the current economic turmoil which American and the rest of the world is facing.

I hope you get well in a hurry JJ.

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Reduce Your Debt Load

Guest Post: Written by “Shine” who helps people suffering from bad credit or debt and other various financial problems with her blog.

Debts ruin your financial stability. Although falling in debt has become a very common phenomenon these days, you should try and avert falling in a debt trap. It affects your credit score and reduces your chances of getting credit with suitable terms in future. If you are in debt don’t wait for the collection agencies to call you or for your creditors to file a lawsuit against you. Order your credit report from the credit bureaus as you are entitled to get a free copy of your credit report once in 12 months. If you find any discrepancies report the same to the credit bureaus.

There are many debt solutions you can avail if you are in debt. Debt consolidation, debt settlement, debt management plan etc are some of the solutions that can reduce your debt load. A credit counseling session can help you to decide exactly which debt relief option is appropriate for you depending on your needs. Given below are 2 of the widely availed debt solutions.

Debt consolidation

Consolidating all your debt accounts into a single account may be referred to as debt consolidation. There are 2 ways in which you can address your debt problems by consolidating your debts. One is by availing a debt consolidation loan and the other way is through a debt consolidation program. If you are enrolling for a debt consolidation program with the help of a debt consolidation company, it becomes easier to handle your debts. A repayment schedule is worked out and you are expected to make payments according to the new repayment schedule. Your monthly payments get reduced as a consequence of reduced interest rates. You can make payments as per your convenience.

The other way to become debt free through debt consolidation is by taking a debt consolidation loan. You can use collateral (secured loan) or choose to avail loan without using collateral (unsecured loan).

Effect on credit score: The effect of debt consolidation on credit score is positive.

Debt settlement

Debt settlement may be opted for if debt consolidation failed to yield results. Also referred to as debt arbitration or debt negotiation, this is a debt relief option in which you take the help of a debt settlement company or you approach the creditors on your own. You make payments into a trust account instead of paying the creditors directly. When you have accumulated about half of your outstanding balance, your creditors are approached and you request them to reduce your outstanding balance. If the creditors agree, you are allowed to pay at least 40% to 60% less on that balance than what you actually owe.

Effect on credit score: Your credit score drops when you stop making payments to the creditors. However, when you become regular with your payments again, your credit score improves over time.

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy may also be referred to as one of the debt solutions that will allow you to make a fresh start as far as your finances are concerned. With the implementation of the New Bankruptcy Laws, you have to prove your eligibility for filing bankruptcy. You can take help from a bankruptcy attorney to find out whether Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 will be suitable for you.

Effect on credit score: Undoubtedly, bankruptcy ruins your credit score and damages your chance of getting credit in future. It gets recorded in the credit report for a period of 10 years.

MomsCashBlog taking Guest Posts

Thank you for your well wishes to JJ. She has read them all and she was touched by your caring words. She’s doing better but it’s going to take a while for her to get back on her feet again and able to get back to blogging. I will be helping her as much as I can when I’m not working but I have a very busy schedule right now. In the meantime, while JJ is still recuperating she said she’d welcome some guest postings for MomsCashBlog.

So any blogger, or non-blogger who want to write a post to help JJ out can send it by e-mail to jj@momscashblog.com and we’ll look it over and put it up if it’s appropriate. Please keep the topics to something helpful for bloggers and/or about ways to make money online, or anything that might be newsworthy on MomsCashBlog.

Thank you for bearing with me. JJ will be back here soon and I still plan to help her out with the blogs. I’ve been talking to her only by phone for this week because I have a cold. She’s just had a couple of blood transfusions and is still quite weak. The last thing she needs is to catch a cold from me.

JJ is still in the hospital

Hi, I’m a friend of JJ’s. Some of you who have read the comments on Moms Cash Blog know that JJ has been in the hospital since January. She had a bad case of kidney stones and was in unbearable pain. While in the hospital her blood pressure went up very high and she stopped breathing. They had to resuscitate her, put her on a respirator and then put her into an induced coma to save her organs. She was in the coma for 5 days and she passed some kidney stones while in the coma. They said she was in a lot of pain and the stones were blocking her kidneys so it caused her BP to go too high and made her system just shut down and she stopped breathing. They were going to keep her in the induced coma for a longer period of time to give her organs a rest, but she fought it and came out of it on her own before they wanted her to.

She came home for 2 days but was in so much pain she had to go back into the hospital and they found she had more stones. Hopefully she will soon be home for good and back on her blog. Thanks to everyone for your kind words and your prayers for JJ. I know she will appreciate it when she gets back.

Taxes and blog income

I’ve gotten all of my mail out of the snowbank, and since it’s January there were some tax documents waiting for me. I haven’t received all of my 1099s for my blog income, but the rest will be coming in soon. I’ve lost quite a bit of money in stocks, but that’s just on paper as I didn’t take anything out while the stock market is down… in fact, I bought more stock in companies I am sure of and I know I’ll gain in the future. But anyways, I am actually excited about tax time this year because it means I can prove to my accountant that “You can make money with blogs”!

When I bought MomsCashBlog, I had to tell my financial advisor about it since she holds most of my money. I knew she would not understand or agree with my decision. I met her when I was on the Trade Commission in an affluent city where I was the co-owner of a retail store. She was the accountant/financial advisor/broker to all of the successful business owners on the Trade Commission, so when I decided to get serious with my money, I went to her. It didn’t take me long to realize how she made everyone else so wealthy… she doesn’t let her clients spend money! lol She makes them put everything away and invest it, and weighs every decision for it’s potential risk before she makes a move.

As you can imagine, it was not easy telling her that I wanted money to buy a blog. After all, I got her to help me save my money and make it grow. From the very first meeting when she looked at my finances, she told me to stop the “impulsive spending”. I had 72 hours to buy the blog, and I’m sure that seemed “impulsive” to her. lol She told me I was basically throwing my money away and I told her I had a good feeling about it. She pursed her lips and shook her head and said “No, I can’t let you do this, it’s too risky”. In the end she said that she always knew me to have a good head for business, but this wasn’t good business. I put my foot down and said “I’m buying it”, and she cut me the check… reluctantly!

After that, whenever I mentioned the blog or blogs, she changed the subject and would actually tense up. She thought of it as a hobby and a foolish move on my part. To her it was just some crazy idea I had and she expected to one day say “I told you so!” From then on, I never tried to convince her that blogs can make money. Sometimes when you try too hard to convince someone, they hold even tighter to their views. I’m old enough to know that I don’t have to convince anyone of anything… all that matters is that I’m happy with my decisions and I take responsibility for them. But I think she’s catching onto the fact that I’m making money with the blog because she called me in November and asked why I haven’t used any money from my funds. I told her I haven’t needed any money — that I’m using the money I make from my blog(s). After a long pause, she said “Well, you’ve got to come in sometime so we can talk about that blog thing. If you’re making money, we need to make a budget and put some away.” (Oh yeah, now she’s interested! lol) I told her I’d see her at tax time. She called me again at the end of December to tell me I should make some transactions on one of my accounts so I wouldn’t have to pay any fees…and then she said “How’s that blog thing doing?” (she’s warming up to it and she’s curious!)

So if like me, you have someone who doesn’t believe in your ventures with monetized blogging, or any other dreams you have, you’re certainly not alone. Monetized blogs are in their infancy, and not everyone knows or understands how online advertising works. Also, not everyone will go along with your ideas or your dreams, and they may even be envious of you for having good ideas! Sometimes it’s smarter to just keep quiet about it and wait them out. Before you know it, you’ll get a chance to prove yourself to others. You’ll be the one to say “I told you so, I knew I could do it” just like I will be doing with my financial advisor/accountant when she does my taxes. She will see that in a few short months, I made my investment back and I’m still making money. Keep the faith and don’t ever let others deter you from doing what you want. or what you truely believe in!

Our New President

One of my friends called me last night and asking if I received my invitation to Barack Obama’s inauguration. I thought she was kidding, of course, but she said, “No, we really got one for the work we did on his campaign!” To think, I might have an invitation to the Inauguration in my mailbox! I haven’t been to the mailbox since January 3rd because it’s in a 6 foot snowbank… and anyways I thought I only had bills and they get taken care of by direct deposit, so why bother looking at them? (lol) I drive by the mailbox every day, but haven’t bothered stopping. This will surely make me think differently about picking up the mail.

It’s a “Commerative” invitation so that doesn’t mean I was invited to THE inauguration, it is pretty much a symbolic gesture. (and a nice one at that!) This has been one of the most inclusive events that has happened in Washington, D.C. in quite a while. I know I’m very proud to have Obama as our president and it’s heartwarming to see the world is excited about our choice. It’s not often that people from all over the world come to participate in an American public inauguration. Like the millions of Americans who will be in Washington today, they want to see history in the making.

Good luck Obama! (Sorry I can’t make it, but I’ll watch it on TV. lol)

Start a blog today

I am not a technical person and I want others like me to know that they can start a blog without being super technical. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from bloggers-to-be who feel overwhelmed by Search Engine Optimization. So, this post is for anyone who is hesitant to start a blog because they want to learn everything about blogging and SEO before they take that first step.

When it comes to blogging, the first thing to remember is “he who hesitates is lost”, so start a blog today. Don’t wait for the perfect time because there will never be a perfect time. If you’re a perfectionist and you’re trying to learn everything before you start a blog, you will surely be lost. I jumped right into blogging and bought MCB without knowing much about it. I’ve made some mistakes, but blogging is a “learn by doing” process. If you wait until you know everything then you’ll never get your blog off the ground. So I say just start your blog and learn as you go. Lucky for you, there are hundreds of bloggers out there ready and willing to help you with great posts about SEO and anything else you need to know about blogging.

WordPress (and other blogging software) is designed to get you noticed with Google, so don’t feel like it’s the end of the world if you don’t know all about SEO before your start your blog. The makers of blogging programs know how search engines work and you can be assured that the software and plug-ins will help to steer your blog in the right direction. If you’re not technically inclined, you should focus on learning WordPress (or whatever software your blogging platform uses) and get the momentum on your new blog by posting frequently and using keyword search tools.

Another thing you should do is comment on blogs. Get in the habit of making comments because when you have your own blog you will have to make comments. If you have an extended question, first make a comment, then send an e-mail to the blogger with your question. (I’ve gotten a lot of help this way!) Most bloggers love comments and e-mails from non-bloggers, and they are happy to answer your questions. This form of networking gets you the answers you need, but it also gives the blogger a topic to post about. Of course, you want to be smart about who you write to… if you send an e-mail to a blogger with 100 comments, the chances of you getting a reply are pretty slim. Stick with the smaller blogs that have more time on their hands. (They’re usually nicer, anyways! lol)

If you don’t have a blog yet but you’re interested, check out MomsCashBlog’s Free Blog Tutorial.

Give and You Shall Receive

People who know how to make money have several things in common, and one of those things is that they give to others who need help. Most wealthy people give a lot of money to charity or their community. You might think it’s because they are rich that they give, but could it be that they are rich BECAUSE they give? Giving is a very important aspect of the Laws of Attraction and making money… if you give more freely you will receive more freely. What goes around, comes around, as they say, and it’s as true for money and kindness as for anything else. Money and kindness are meant to flow. In most major religions, it’s known as the “law of reciprocity”. When you give to others, it will be reciprocated — meaning whatever you give will come back to you, and MORE, from one source or another.
John D. Rockefeller was known to say whenever he gave money away, even more came right back to him! He started working when he was very young and gave his earnings to the church because his mother told him to. Later he still gave freely not just because it was the right thing to do but also because he saw that giving to others just made good business sense. He was known to be a “mental mathematician” which helped him greatly in business matters. Rockefeller carefully planned every venture he got into and it was always mathematically calculated to bring him money with little to no risk. I think it’s fascinating that a man who didn’t take risks gave so much money to charity. It shows he truly believed in the laws of attraction, or the law of reciprocity. He expected it would come back to him 10 fold and it did! He had the bank records to prove it. Whenever he gave money, he would earn even more money from another source.

You don’t need to be a Rockefeller to be a giving person and benefit from this law of nature. It’s about the Universe rewarding us for keeping it moving in a positive direction. Ze, known as Mominator.com and her husband have been working on a project that is now ready for the public. It is a new video site appropriately named Kind.TV where anyone is welcome to load video clips showing acts of kindness being done in their community. It’s going to be a great place to see what others are doing to make the world a better place, and get us all inspired to do the same. I think this is a wonderfully innovative idea and I wish Ze and her husband much success with Kind.TV. I’ll be checking it often and maybe I will throw in a few acts of kindness myself. It’s a great idea!

You Don’t Need Good PR to Make Money

There’s a lot of talk about Google Toolbar PageRank this week with the New Year’s update causing blogs to show less PR and others gaining it — but on the whole it looks like Google is getting strict for 09. Mine went from 4 to 0 in the last round and I didn’t expect any new year changes, but I’m not too shook up over it. I am living proof that you don’t need good PageRank to make money with your blog! I’d much rather make money at home than have good PageRank, but of course, both at the same time is great! lol Unfortunately, with some of the ways blogs make money your PR will drop within a few months of using them.

Google penalizes blogs PR who use TextLinkAds, sponsored posting, pay per post, and some other proven money makers. As as blogger you have to decide what is most important to you. If you are blogging only to get PageRank then you’d better stay away from those types of money makers. On the other hand, if you want to make money with your blog, then you should look into them. But first, you need to get traffic coming to your site because you can’t make money any of those ways without having a good amount of traffic.

A big mistake some new bloggers make is to focus too much on PR. They think seeing good PR on the toolbar means a site is making money but that’s not always true. Someone who wants good PR can optimize their blog to rank well with Google and still not make any money. You could have a well optimized site with great PR, but if you don’t make money on a steady basis, what good would that be? It might be fine for those who are blogging for the sheer enjoyment of blogging, but most of us want to get a return on our efforts. The fact is most blogs get penalized by Google BECAUSE they make money. So bloggers sometimes have to choose between making money on the Internet and getting good PR. Most will never get both at the same time. Look at John Chow… he makes good money, has a team of professionals, and is only a PR3. If he just had his site optimized for PageRank and didn’t worry about making money, he would be much, much higher.

PageRank has nothing to do with making money and they don’t want it to. It was a mathematical method meant to identify the “importance” of a website with the most credible news organizations being at the top (CNN-PR10, NYTimes-PR9, Yahoo-PR9, etc.), and to keep educational and government sites high in searches in their field of expertise. On the Internet anyone can say anything on a blog or website with no accountability of truthfulness. PageRank was meant to keep the most used, “truthful” sites at the top for credibility purposes.

Make Money blogs are a bit of a nuisance for Google as far as PageRank is concerned because techies keep “cracking the code” of PR and have come up with SEO techniques and strategies to get higher in rank. It has turned into a game of cat and mouse between Google and tech bloggers — sometimes Google is the cat, sometimes they are the mouse. lol

One thing to remember is that PR is outdated as soon as you see it on the toolbar, so if you don’t see good PR on the Toolbar that doesn’t mean your site isn’t searching well. If you want to make money but keep your blog ranking well in searches just make more frequent posts and repeat search phrases or keywords that fit your blog niche. (Some do 3 or 4 times a day to get it going which will get the search engines searching your site several times a day.) Remember it will take about a week for them to catch on and search you regularly. After 2 or 3 weeks of blasting those posts out, do search of your site on your browser and you should see your blog come up in the ranks!

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Adsense made easy with Adsense Addict

The following post is a present from Steve of adsenseaddict.com to help new bloggers better understand how to make money with Adsense. I had some problems with Adsense, but when I found the Adsense Addict I grew to understand it better. I’ve met some great people blogging and Steve is one of the most helpful bloggers around.

Contextual ads do well on any type of blog. Readers are used to seeing text ads on blog and major websites and most importantly, they click on them… so at some point you’re gonna have to learn how to use Google Adsense. As you’ll see from this post, the Adsense Addict makes it very easy to understand but you’ll want to keep reading his blog to know everything about Adsense and how to use it. I am grateful for all the help he has given me and for this helpful post. Merry Christmas, from MomsCashBlog.

Adsense Made Easy

Google Adsense is one of the most popular ways to make money online. You can make a nice little income from Adsense and here are a few tips on how I get the most out of Adsense.

Before you start using Google Adsense you need to find out which keywords pay the most as these are the ones we will target. For this I use Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Let’s say you are targeting the make money niche. Type your keyword in and hit get keyword ideas. This will
bring up a list of keywords we can choose from.

If you look at the first column this will show you the Advertiser Competition. Try to target keywords that have a high level of competition. The other column we need to look at is the Approx Search Volume Month. This show us how many times your keyword was searched for in the last month. For example I will use the “make money” as my niche. After using Adwords Keyword Tool, I have picked 3 key phrases I will use, make extra money, make money fast and make money from home. Now I need to find out how much these pay in clicks. Here I use Google Adwords Traffic Estimator.

Entering my 3 key phrases into the traffic estimator we then need to add our country then continue. The only thing I look at here is the search volume, estimated avg CPC and estimated clicks. Make money fast looks good with an average of 110 clicks and $2.40 - $3.60 per click. (I usually halve this amount as a guide.) Now we have our keywords we will use in our post, the next step is to optimize Adsense so visitors to our site click on our Adsense ads.

Adsense for Content is one most of us have seen on websites which uses text links. Adsense gives us 2 options here with Ad units and Link units. Ad units include banner ads and text links with a description and URL underneath. Link units displays a list of topics that are relevant to your pages. One difference between Ad units and Link units is that if you use Ad units you are paid everytime a visitor clicks your Adsense ad. Link units require 2 clicks, once when a visitor clicks a Link unit on your site and then click this will bring up another page with a series of Adsense ads and the visitor has to click on one of these ads before it is credited to your account.

Once we have decided on which form of Adsense we will use, we need to decide on things like borders and the color of the ads. Most people recommend no borders and I tend to agree here. One thing you need to do with Adsense to get the most clicks is to make your Adsense ads look natural and part of your site. Color is another important factor when using Google Adsense. Blue is the most popular color people use for their ads as this is a natural color for links and some even say visitors to your site are more used to blue links. If blue doesn’t suit your website just try to use colors that you already use and try to blend the ads in.

Another step I usually take is to track which ads I have placed on my site and find which one works best. You need to track your ads using Google Adsense to know if you are getting the most dollars for your clicks. I won’t try to explain here how to set up tracking ads as this is a whole post on it’s own but there is plenty of information on this online.

As an example here is what I might have setup. I have placed Adsense ads on top of the blog post and an ad block in the right sidebar. Google will place the highest paying ads into the Ad unit above my post and the next highest paying ads in the right sidebar. On a site, Google reads your page across the top then left column, middle and then right column.

After tracking the ads we find that more visitors are clicking the Ad unit in the right sidebar and not many are clicking the ads above the post. The higher paying ads are in the top post so maybe you need to replace this with another form or advertising, mayabe an affiliate banner or something.

Creative Thinking Equals More Money

The ice storm hit New England hard and while I was without power I was very cold and very bored. All I wanted to do was go online and get to my blogs. Well, I really wanted to do ANYTHING and everything that required electricity! I wanted to go online, I wanted a hot cup of coffee, I wanted to watch TV, wanted to blast the stereo, wanted to cook up a storm, and I wanted to take a nice hot Whirlpool bath, all at the same time! Since I couldn’t do any of those things without power, I decided to sit down with pen and paper to brainstorm and plan more ways to make money online.

Like many people, I use my computer to write posts and take care of business, but a friend of mine who teaches classes in creativity says that we should make a habit of sitting down with pencil and paper to really get our creative juices flowing. When we sit down to a computer our brain automatically goes into technical mode. Using a pen or pencil switches the brain to a creative mode and makes it easier to think up unique ideas and get them onto paper. My friend’s creativity classes used to be full of artists and writers but over the past 2 years she’s become the “creativity guru” for successful business people who want to become more creative in business and marketing. The best entrepreneurs have ideas that are unique and that’s what gives them the edge over their competitors. If you want to make money online don’t just focus on the technical stuff. You should also learn whatever you can about ways to think creatively.

When we stick to the same routine and do things the same way every day, we have the same old thoughts and ideas day after day. We get into a non-creative rut and we stay there. Making money online requires creative thinking so changing things up every once in a while gets our mind going in different directions. To come up with unique ideas you need to find ways to think different thoughts because different thoughts bring different and better results in business. You need to think of new ways to make money. Most people don’t make money because they are stuck in the same pattern of thinking as everyone else. You have to be original to hit it big in the online moneymaking business. You should always play around with new ideas so that your product or business will be different and more noticeable than your competitor’s.

Since I had no power I sat down with a pen and pad of paper and thought up new ideas for unique online business opportunities and I up with some fantastic plans that were so good I have to keep them secret. Within a half an hour of brainstorming and freehand writing, many wonderful online business ideas flowed out of my mind and onto paper. By the time I was done I had 6 pages of ideas and in the end I came up with some interesting ways to make money. Now I’m excited to try them out on one my blogs to see if they work!

Use MomsCashBlog’s Free Blog Tutorial to start a blog and make money online!

Using the Alexa Toolbar for Better Ranking

When I first took over this blog, I knew the basics of PageRank and the Alexa Traffic Ranking… but I wish I had known how important it is for a blogger to be using the Alexa Toolbar! So now I want to make sure that other newbies to the blogging world know why you should install this handy little SEO plug-in even if you don’t have a blog yet.

Alexa collects website traffic statistics for every website on the Internet and displays these stats on Alexa for all to see. At Alexa.com you can look up the stats of your own blog or type in the URL of any other blog/website online to see the Alexa traffic stats for that site. Keep in mind it’s not a true reading of website traffic because most of Alexa’s statistics are generated from Alexa Toolbar users. Basically, it’s a percentage reading of traffic based mostly of those who have installed the Alexa Toolbar plug-in on their browsers.

When you start a blog it will take some time for your website to appear on the Alexa Traffic radar. To help speed things up you need to install the Alexa Toolbar. By installing the Toolbar onto your web browser you’ll be helping your own Alexa Ranking and the ranking of the sites you visit. The more visitors you have using the Toolbar the better ranking you will get with Alexa.

Like Google, Alexa gives each website on the Internet a rank but since Alexa’s numbers are based on traffic percentages the numbers are larger and it ranks from high to low, with low meaning more traffic. The top traffic ranking is a #1 and Yahoo holds that spot right now. In the beginning, your number will be in the millions because there are millions of websites on the Internet that you are competing with. The more visitors your site gets from the Alexa Community (users with the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browsers) the lower your number will get. Having your number go down to 100,000 or even 200,000 is good, and less than that is even better. Here’s one way to look at it: If your blog has a number of 165,000 then you know there are 164,999 sites out there with a better rank than you.

Techies and/or bloggers will be more inclined to install the Alexa Toolbar or other SEO plug-ins that include the Alexa Toolbar, so some say that you’re only getting a reading of the percentage of techies or bloggers that visit your site. It stands to reason that if you have a technical blog and most of the users have the toolbar, you’ll have a good Alexa Ranking, but the system does allow for a small percentage of traffic outside of the Alexa Community. The average web user doesn’t install the Alexa Toolbar so if your blog is about a non-technical topic such as gardening or beauty products you might not have a good Alexa Ranking because most gardeners or women into beauty products would not care or even know about Alexa. It doesn’t mean you don’t have good traffic coming in, it could mean you don’t have many other bloggers or “techies” visiting your site. Even though a good Alexa Ranking will give you bragging rights, you don’t need good ranking to have a successful blog.

MomsCashBlog’s Alexa ranking went so far up (which is not good!) this summer that it was off the chart and was no longer displayed on Alexa! However, at the very same time my other stats told me that MCB had the most REAL traffic in it’s history and I made the most money during the same time period that I lost my Alexa ranking! Obviously, I lost some “techie” visitors over the summer, but I gained some non-techie visitors and I made some good sales. I don’t worry too much about my Alexa ranking because my goal is to make money… and ranking well on Alexa doesn’t necessarily mean you make more money. Still, a good Alexa number gives your blog more credibility so if you have a good rank, be glad! If you don’t have good Alexa, don’t sweat it… just keep blogging, strive for good content, install the toolbar, and the rest will fall into place. (My ranking finally came back up to 210,805.)

You can install the Alexa Toolbar and become a member of the Alexa Community from either the Internet Explorer browser or Foxfire and you don’t need to have a blog to do this. If you want to install it onto your Foxfire browser you have to go to the download page from your Foxfire browser. (The download is on the same page for Foxfire but it’s called “Sparky”.) Upon installing it you’ll have a small bar chart down in the lower right-hand corner of your browser which will change with each site you visit. Some SEO plug-ins have the Alexa Toolbar built in and displays each site’s Alexa ranking along with PageRank and other stats helpful to bloggers. Once you use the Toolbar and encourage your readers to install it, you will definitely see better ranking, so do it now!

Make More Money With Multiple Blogs

By now, most of us have heard that the best way to make money blogging is by having more than one blog. With multiple blogs you can diversifying your niches just as you would with mutual funds in the stock market. A good mutual fund invests in several different types of stock with several different companies. The money adds up and because all of your eggs are not in one basket, mutual funds are safer than investing in just one stock. The same principal applies to blogs but with blogs you don’t necessarily diversify for the safety of the investment because a blog doesn’t cost much to run. With blogs, you diversify to make MORE money. The average web hosting for a blog is around $7 a month and with most hosting companies you can also get unlimited add-ons for that price, so why not have more than one blog? All you have to pay for is a new domain name but if you don’t want to buy a name, you could even start some more blogs using a free hosted site such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com and use those blogs to drive traffic to your main site by linking them in your posts, or sidebar. (WordPress.com and Blogger.com provide free hosting but you do not own your domain name and there will be restrictions on ad usage.) By having multiple blogs in different niches (categories) and getting streams of income from all of them, you could make a very hefty yearly income right from your own home.

I have recently started two other blogs besides MomsCashBlog and later I hope to start more. I plan to keep them separate from MCB and I even have a friend who is interested in blogging and is working with me to learn about blogging. (and it’s great to have someone to dish with about blogging! lol). MCB makes pretty good money but I want to branch out and make MORE money and learn all I can about how to make money online. I can then pass what I’ve learned onto everyone who comes here. I am enjoying the process and the creativity it takes for each one of them. What I really like is that I can use all of the different aspects of my personality on my different blogs. With this blog, I’m pretty much boxed into a tight niche where I am teaching what I’ve learned about making money online so it’s not really appropriate for me to just talk about myself or certain things that interest me.. on the other ones I can say whatever I want and there’s freedom in that.

Whether you have multiple blogs or just one blog, you really should have a product or information to sell or give away. Of course you can have a successful blog without a “product”, but having something that people want or need gives others extra incentive to come to your blog and will bring in some money and traffic. Clickbank.com is a good place to get products to sell. I haven’t used Clickbank yet, but I do plan to choose a product to sell from them soon. If you haven’t been there yet, go now to check out all of the things they have to offer. (and by the way, I don’t get paid anything by telling you about them… I just want you to know what’s out there!) Once you see all of the e-books ranging from diet plans to gardening, software downloads , game and entertainment downloads, and everything else they have to offer, you’ll be inspired by all of the possibilities to make money from selling someone else’s product. You can display and sell the product as a hoplink on one of your blogs (here’s an example of a hoplink from one of Clickbank’s products: How to Make Money by Flipping Websites .

Actually, you don’t even need a blog to sell a product from Clickbank like you do with some affiliate programs. Just go to Clickbank.com, create an account and go to the Marketplace where you’ll see hundreds of products waiting for you to sell. However, if you do this, you would have to advertise in order to get it noticed on the web. (But if you do have a blog you can advertise your product for free!)

Some of you might be thinking “I’m not making much money with ONE blog, so why would I want two or three?” Conventional wisdom tells us that when something isn’t working, we should “give it up” and move onto something else… but conventional wisdom is what keeps most people from being inventive and experimenting and learning to make more money. In the case of blogging, if one isn’t making enough money for you, instead of giving up on blogs altogether, try adding MORE blogs to your portfolio. You can have income flowing in from each blog which will add up to some big money. Also you’ll be learning more creative ways to make money and it will give you more confidence in the blogging world. You might really enjoy running multiple blogs, or at least the experience could help you zero in on a niche that works perfectly for you. Blogging and making money online is all about experimenting and trying different things until you find what works for you!

By the way, on one of my new blogs I added the new Ping List from my previous post and much to my surprise I got comments on my very first post. Three of them were SPAM, but one was from a company willing to pay for a link to my new site! So make sure you use a good ping list to get your posts noticed.

For those of you who don’t have a blog but are thinking about starting one, check out MomsCashBlog’s Free Blog Tutorial and start making money online!

Don’t Forget to Ping Your Blog

I know there are a lot of people who have recently started blogs with MCB’s Free Blog Tutorial, so I just want to remind you to get your list of pings for your new blog. Pings are a way to notify the big sites like Google and Technorati, etc, every time you put new content out on the web, so it is very important to ping each post you make. There are many, many ping sites and the more you notify, the better. In WordPress it is easy to ping your posts because all you have to do is put this list in and your blog will automatically ping with each post, or each change you make to your blog.

Just copy the following Ping List >> go to Settings >> then Writing>> and down at the bottom will be a section called Update Services with a box where you will Insert/Paste the Ping List. After that, just Save Changes and you’re done! The next time you write a post check down at the bottom where the comment/Ping section is and make sure the Ping box is enabled.

For more information about pings, read Learn how to ping your blog in MomCashBlog’s April archives where my predecessor, Krysti, wrote a great post about pings. (Note: She has a list there, but I have updated and added to the Ping List since April so you should use the following list because the more ping services you have, the better! The New Ping List was given to me by LloydLopez.com. Thanks buddy!)

MomsCashBlog’s New Ping List (copy and paste this list into your Write Settings)

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

http://www.packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.php

For those of you who don’t have a blog but are thinking about starting one, check out MomsCashBlog’s Free Blog Tutorial and start making money online!

Should You Send Daily RSS Feeds?

Are you one of those bloggers who feels the pressure to write a post every day on your blog and send your RSS feed out with every post? Well, not so fast! You could be turning off your readers by doing this. Many behaviorial studies have been performed on internet usage and they’ve found there is a point where people turn off when they get too much e-mail information from the same source.

Advertisers who sent e-mails LESS often, had MORE of a chance of getting their e-mails opened and possibly responded to. For an advertiser the golden number was one e-mail a month, unless they had a special offer that “really wowed” the customer and enticed them to open the e-mail. In that case, 7 times out of 10 it would get read, but any more than that, and the customers would turn off to the e-mails. Advertisers who use e-mail campaigns find that if they send correspondence to the same people regularly, they quickly turn off to the mail and even find them to be a big nuisance… especially if they’re received on a consistant basis. The campaigns that sent e-mail ads every day, and sometimes more than once a day, got the worst response. These e-mails were sent to the delete box and the recipients thought of them as having little or no credibility. The more e-mails they got from the same source, the more the recipient considered them scams and of course they would not get read! This is very important information for bloggers because the same could be happening with your RSS subscribers if you overload them with e-mails on a daily basis. You could be thought of as a “pest”!

This flies in the face of conventional advertising (as opposed to online advertising) where the more a person sees the name of a product or service, the more prone they are to remember and respond to it positively. It’s true that familiarity with a name causes people to have a good association with that name, but if you are “pushing” that name or brand onto a customer and intruding on his privacy, it has the opposite effect. (E-mails are considered pushing ads onto a customer whether they agreed to give their address or not. People feel their mail is a private space.) If an advertiser pushes a brand or product with too much correspondence, the recipient perceives them to be a nuisance. The more mail they get from an advertiser, the more they think of them as not just spam, but SCAM. As a result they completely tune out, skip over it, and want absolutely nothing to do with the advertiser anymore. The brain puts them on the back burner and they always become thought of as unimportant and irritating.

How does this relate to your blog? Do your own survey and find out. How many RSS feeds do you open and read each day? Do you read RSS feeds and go to the blogs that barrage you with e-mails every single day and sometimes more than once a day? Probably not. If you’re like most people, you read them in the beginning… when you’ve first discovered the blog and liked the information they gave you, or the way they made you feel when reading the blog. After that you start to get too accustomed to seeing their name on your daily Inbox list. As each day wears on, your subconscious mind tells you to ignore that certain e-mail, along with all of the others you see daily and don’t respond to.

As bloggers, I think most of us make our rounds on the blogs according to the comments we get on our own blogs (so don’t ever underestimate how important it is to comment on other blogs if you want to up your own traffic!) I visit whoever comes to my site and makes a comment or leaves an Entrecard and of course I have my favorites that I visit weekly like ProBlogger.com, JTPratt.com and others to see where they lead me. I’ve tested myself after hearing about the studies and I know that I tend to become immune to seeing the same mail daily… I DO block it out… I’m sorry to say that I do delete a lot of RSS feeds in my mailbox because I cannot keep up with them.

If you do post daily there is a way to combat the problem of people tuning out to your RSS e-mails. Send your RSS feeds on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and give an excerpt of each day’s post just as John Chow and some of the other big bloggers do. It gives the reader a breather from seeing your name all of time and makes your name pop out and get attention. It also gives them a chance to decide which posts they find to be interesting. You’ll definitely get a better response that way then by giving your readers daily feeds of your posts and overloading them with information.

For those of you who don’t have a blog but are thinking about starting one, check out MomsCashBlog’s Free Blog Tutorial and start making money online!

Can Blog Burnout Be a Good Thing?

I must admit that “blog burnout” was one of my biggest fears when I first bought MomsCashBlog and I’m sure other bloggers worry that they too could burn out some day and end up with a dead or inactive blog. All bloggers feel that pressure to perform and burn out can happen to anyone. There are many reasons for a blogger to stop posting on a blog. Sometimes it starts with writer’s block, or just plain disinterest. A blog can also go inactive for personal reasons, with life taking priority over blogging. Then some bloggers make a conscious decision to leave one blog… making a name change, and a change in blog content and/or category that is more suited to their desires and land the “big one” in doing so. Maybe we shouldn’t think of blog burnout as a bad thing because in many cases it can be the push we need to take blogging in the right direction. Burnout can actually open your mind to new ideas, and that’s a very good thing!

StandOutBlogger is one blogger who’s known for finding the positive lessons in life and he’s shown us by example that blog burnout can lead to success. At the very least, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and at the very most, it can catapult you into a new direction that is more intuned with your real “self.” I’ve been a follower of Tom since the days he ran the now inactive blog ThomasSinfield.com, (which, btw had a PageRank of 3 when he left it.) Thru email contact, I asked him a few questions about making the switch. I knew this could help other bloggers who are feeling burnt out and may be at a crossroads in deciding which direction they should go in the blogging world.

Tom The StandOutBlogger

“When I first started blogging about August last year I started blogging under my personal name. The blog ThomasSinfield.com, had about 180 subscribers before I started thinking about the longevity of my blogging career and how I wanted to be able to build assets-not just income. ThomasSinfield.com started to burn me out. I had no real posting direction and honestly didn’t really put that much thought into where I wanted the blog to go.

Over Christmas I had finished up my real estate traineeship and decided to leave the company I was working at. I took 3 months off work and that is when ThomasSinfield.com really started to take off. However in about February I started working as a builders laborer full-time and that is when I stopped blogging. I guess I struggled with the idea that I wanted to be a full-time blogger but I had a full-time job. During the period of trying to do both just before I stopped, I was probably getting 2-3 hours of sleep a night — which is probably the main cause of me burning out!

I just burnt out from trying to run too many projects and I literally stepped away from the internet for about a month. It was then that I realized that even though I had built this blog to a salable level I couldn’t sell my name.

Then in my time off I decided to create a brandable blog — and I sat down and thought about what I wanted it to become. What I realized was that no matter how big I built my blog, if I ever wanted to get out of blogging I would just have to stop, because there was no way I would be selling my name. This is why I decided to start a fresh with a new blog.

I have started approximately 10 blogs over the last year. ThomasSinfield.com and StandOutBlogger.com are the only ones that have lasted the test of time. I sold two of my blogs: entrepreneur-blog.com and incomediary.com, but both buyers seem to have run them into the ground! And the rest I started and just lost interest in it. Now I have decided to focus my efforts on StandOutBlogger.com as I aim to make it into something big.”

As you can see, it was a combination of things that caused Tom’s burnout but he used that as an opportunity to make a new “plan” to leave his namesake blog and become the StandOutBlogger. He could have just stopped blogging altogether, but he didn’t. Instead he thought it over and changed direction! Tom started the StandOutBlogger in May and soon afterwards had a PageRank of 3 with an average of over 300 unique visitors a day and about 180 subscribers. He has an Alexa rating of just over 112,000 and is constantly working on ways to improve both rank and rating. ThomasSinfield.com is still an inactive blog that has over 160 subscribers, even though he has not posted in about 3 months. Tom said he does not have any immediate plans for the blog at the moment, and he’s still not sure what he’s going to do with it.

The truth is that just because a blog is inactive, many people still read and enjoy some of them. Most readers don’t care when a post was posted, they’re just searching for information and if your blog has the info they are happy. Also, inactive blogs can be a source of passive income if the content is good. Some bloggers say they’ve made more money with the blog while it was inactive than they did while it was active!

So if you feel like you’re burning out, or if you’re blog just isn’t cutting it for you (maybe you think you chose the wrong niche or name) don’t think of it as a sign of failure… Instead, it could be a signal for you to make a change! In life a ”burnout” or ”crisis” usually leads to better things because it makes us take action. If something isn’t working for you then try something else until you get it right.

Thanks Tom, for taking the time to answer all of my questions, and for giving us inspiration! (btw, I have saved some for other posts!)

Blogs Help People Escape Reality

I’ve been helping out in the presidential campaign so I’ve been quite busy this month and will be until this is over. I belong to the League of Women Voters, and also the Democratic Party, but I go either way in any election… I vote for whoever I like and think is qualified for the job, just as the League does. (It just happens to be that more often than not, the Democratic Party is more inline with my point of view than the Republicans are as a whole, so I stick with the Dems.) While getting back together with a group of people that I haven’t seen in a few years, I ended up telling them I’m “running a blog”. Interestingly enough, everyone had something to say about blogs… but no one knew that blogs make money!
To most of us who are here to make money online, this is hard to believe anyone wouldn’t know that blogs can make good money. I don’t know about you, but since I got this blog all I seem to read is “how to make money with blogs” so with my narrow vision, I would never imagine that others didn’t know BLOGS MAKE MONEY! Do they think we do this for FREE? (lol) Well, yes, come to find out, they do think we are all blogging for the fun of it and the mainstream of “Main Street” doesn’t have any clue that we’re making money from the blogs they read. (That’s a good thing.. let them think what they want. lol)

Now the Political Community has been taking polls all along with this presidental campaign and I know the big issue on everyone’s mind has changed from Iraq to Health Care, to Oil Prices, to The Ecomony becoming the top worry of all, at this point. Personally, my most important issue is still Health Care since I’m caught between a rock and a hard place with insurance. It’s kind of like this… people who have a low FICO credit score can’t get credit, I have a low health score, so I’m on an “emergency plan”! I have too much money (or assets) to qualify for any type of government health program so one more BIG operation and I could lose my house and everything else I’ve saved for. (So, even though the polls change, I still consider Health Care to be my top issue along with The Economy no matter what the polls say.)

My Unofficial Poll About Blogs

Since all I’ve been dealing with is polls these past few months, I decided to do one of my own. I’m always curious about what kind of blogs the average person reads. (OK, it’s not an official poll, I just asked a few questions! lol) When you’re in a room with 10 or more people on a daily basis and they’re all willing to talk about blogs… you might as well ask which blogs they read. It was interesting to find out what kinds of blogs politically minded people were into so I thought I’d share it with you all.

The Results

An overwhelming majority of the people I talked to like to go online to read about blogs with animals in them! Yeah, they like animal stories and blogs about pets. They love to watch YouTube videos with “stupid pet tricks” (Who knew… politicians are human! lol) They also liked to see pictures from the National Geographic site or any site that showed those type of videos and told stories about wild animals. That was the overwhelming top pick of blogs for these people. The second favorite was “mommy blogs”… and the third was “entertainment blogs”. Even though these people are into politics.. some are politicians, some are spouses, children, and friends of politicians… but they DON’T go online just to read political blogs!
If you haven’t already noticed, many people like to go online to escape everyday life!! That’s what I got from my poll. After that, I recently read in the NY Times that a large amount of women do a lot of searching for men’s World Wrestling sites where they can contribute to the wrestlers’ storylines. Evidently many like interactive websites where they can network socially about the WWE. Women are the fastest growing sector of people playing video games online. You may also want to look into starting a website in the niche area of online video gaming. Women in particular want or need a place that they can go to escape for a quick 20- 25 minutes during their day at home.
This is good to know if you’re starting a blog, or even if you already have one or more blogs. Remember, you’re blog can be a good escape for others and that’s what most people are using the internet for. Make use of this unofficial poll and give the people what they want! You have a great opportunity to make money online by finding out what people read and watch on the internet. Use it for all it’s worth. If you have a pet, or you love animals then start blogging about pets and animals… or get the topic into your blog. Use ads on your blog that have to do with pets. People will buy them. Anything you can buy for yourself, you can buy for your pets these days, so we know pet items sell very well. If you know anything about wrestling then start a blog and talk about wrestling! Hey, if so many of the women in the world like wrestling then you can confess to liking it too. It could be very profitable for you and the Great Escape for others around the world.

NOTE: If you already know who you’re voting for, or if you’d like a little privacy and/or time to think about the issues on the ballot, then you should “vote early”. In my state, we’re getting a lot of good response to early voting so check and see if your state’s into it too. All you have to do is call your Town Office or City Hall, and they’ll send out an absentee ballot for you to fill out and send back in or bring in to the office. Many towns/cities stop early vote the week before election day… but you still have time to ask for a ballot and just drop it off at the town office or city hall and get your voting done early! Happy voting…

Fear Driving the Stock Market

We’ve seen a lot of loss in the U.S. stock market this week with the Dow going down below 9000 for the first time in 5 years. Our bad economy is having a global effect hitting the Asian markets, the European market, and all others too, I’m sure. Despite the crisis with financial institutions and it’s effect on housing and mortgages, The Wall Street Journal and others in the know agree… it is lack of confidence that is driving this poor economy. Yes, we had problems, and we put a safety device in place but it caused a lack of confidence in people and now fear is causing more problems than we started with. t’s like when someone screams fire in a crowded building and everyone panics. They all run for the exits and people get trampled and hurt, even when it’s a false alarm.

We’re being told that we should not panic even after this “black week” of seeing the Dow go down below 9000 for the first time in 5 years. It’s hard not to panic, yet we really have no other choice but to be calm. When you’re in panic mode, someone telling you “don’t panic” just doesn’t always seem to sink in. If you think of this as the same advice they give in any emergency situation, then it makes sense. Fear and panic puts you (and everyone else around you) in harm’s way.

Recessions Can Make Millionaires!

It’s recessions (or crashes) like these that can make millionaires out of investors. If you keep a steady head and refuse to panic you can make money but you have to think long term. Warren Buffet makes his money solely from the stock market and is he letting fear dictate him in this market? No way! Warren just surpassed Bill Gates as being the richest man in the world by making over $8 billion in this past month (earnings from the end of August to October 1.) As Warren has said many times before, all we have to do is think smart and use this and every recession as an opportunity to buy low and sell high just as we are supposed to do. He puts his money where his mouth is and he buys low (but of course low to Warren Buffett can be considered very high to the rest of us! lol) and when he does sell, he sells high. Warren invests for the long term and he doesn’t panic and pull all of his money out of the stock market while it’s down… and neither should we.

Are You Buying HIGH and Selling LOW in the Stock Market?

We all know the first rule to the stock market is to “Buy low, sell high” but historically that’s not what the average individual investor does. Most of us don’t usually make much money in the stock market because we do the EXACT opposite. Individual investors tend to only buy when times are good and they hear how well the stock market is doing in the news. As a result, they make a few bucks here, and a few bucks there but the minute the market goes down, most individual investors actually SELL their stock and get out… so not only do they not make any money in the stock market, they lose money. Then they go back and do the same thing again when times are good and the market goes up. (and it ALWAYS goes up!)

Many people stop putting money into their 401K plans, IRAs, and mutual funds when they hear things are bad in the market. When you do this, you miss out on a great opportunity to be buying stock at a low price which is the whole point of investing. If you keep putting your money into your fund regularly, you’re buying shares in the fund at a low price and that is GOOD! (You’re buying low and you’ll sell high later on!) The worst thing someone can do is to close their 401 or retirement plan just because the market has crashed. Not only do you lock in your losses, you also have to pay the capital gains taxes on those losses, and a 10% penalty on top of that! Wow, talk about a loss…

Don’t act out of fear!

So don’t act out of fear! Keep a level head and know your options. If all of this talk about the stock market really bothers you, then just don’t look at your statements for a while. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what the experts advise and hey, we really don’t have many other options, do we? If you’re already in the stock market you have to ride it out, and look for opportunities to buy some good stock if you have the money right now because there are deals to be had (and there will be more!). The only other alternative is to take a loss. It’s your money and your choice, but don’t let fear rule your actions.

Save on Monthly Bills by using a Track Phone

If you’re looking for ways to save on monthly expenses, your cell phone should be one of the most obvious places to cut. When debt experts help clients with their budgets, one of the first expenses they look to cut is the cell phone (and cable or satellite plans but that’s a whole different ball game that I won’t get into now! lol) I know many of you are gasping because you feel you could never live without your cell phone, but remember, it’s a luxury and not a necessity, so you really could live without it if you had to. Still cell phones are a convenience and a great safety device so if you need to adjust your budget and can’t give up the cell, some debt experts suggest using a pre paid cell phone to save money. With a pre paid cell phone (Track Phone), there are NO monthly bills and you get to control and decide how much money you spend on your own cell phone use. You buy as little or as much airtime as you want, when you want it.

TracFone wireless is a pre paid cellular service that purchases “airtime” from the big cellular companies so you can use it wherever you use a regular cell phone as it uses their towers. Their price per minute (or unit) is the same and sometimes even better than most cell phone plans… but there is no monthly bill and no contract… and no credit checks, either! They have more cellular customers than ATT and Verizon combined. They also sell the best brand name phones from top manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia, Kyocera, and LG so if you’re into fancy gadgets with the latest technology you can get it, just as you would with a cellular plan. But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care about all that bling and you really want to save money (like me!) then you can even get a phone for less than $10!

For the past year I’ve been cutting my expenses and simplifying my life so I have been using a TracFone and NOW I only pay about $8 a month to use my cell phone! Can you believe that? Of course, I don’t talk as much on the cell phone as I used to so I’ve changed my habits to really cut costs. I’ve gotten a lot of my friends and family to change over to the TracFone and they love it and have saved a lot of money too, so I figured I might as well sell the TracFone on my blog. That’s what a monetized blog is all about… advertising and selling the products and services that YOU use and that YOU believe in. I know from experience that it can save my readers a lot of money and it can help some of you get out of debt.

My TracFone only cost $9.99 and I go online and purchase $25 worth of airtime and that usually lasts me about 3 months. The cell phone plan I had last year cost me $79 a month, so this is a HUGE savings. I also don’t have any monthly cell phone bills or contracts to worry about. I buy my airtime when I need it. By switching to my TracFone I have cut my yearly cell phone expense from about $1,020 all the way down to about $150. for the whole YEAR! Not bad, ah? Because I pay upfront and have no “plan”, I’ve changed my habits too. I no longer talk on the cell phone just to use up all of the minutes like I used to with a monthly cell plan.

Kids and cell phones

Let’s face it, we’re not doing our kids any favors by putting them on our cell plan and letting them talk and text all day long and then fight with them when the bill comes in and you have to pay for the extra minutes they used. TracFone has a patented technology that displays remaining minutes right on the phone, so they know when their time is up and they will soon learn they have to get by with however many minutes you give them. Another fact is that doctors are warning us that cell phones may cause brain tumors in some kids who use them excessively because it is theorized that their skull bones are not thick enough to deter the cell waves. (Texting is OK because the cell phone is not held up to the ear… and yes, you can text with TracFone!)

Take a good look at your budget and see if you could be saving money by changing from your cellular phone plan to a track phone. I know for a lot of you it will really make a BIG dent in your monthly expenses like it did for me!

Get a wireless phone starting at just $9.99 at TracFone.com

Suze Orman Says to Protect Ourselves in this Economy

Last week, Oprah had Suze Orman on her show talking about this economy and what we can do to protect ourselves. Anyone who’s ever seen Suze Orman knows that she’s a straight talker and uhh, how should I say this, a little scary. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I would want her as MY financial advisor because I couldn’t handle being face-to-face with her looking me in the eye asking what I spend my money on. (I know where my faults are and don’t need a lecture on it.. or do I? lol) But I understand that Suze knows what we need to do to become financially secure and even wealthy, so I take her advice to heart! Most Americans are spending money that we don’t have and there are many ways that we could cut back. We make excuses to hold onto the things we can’t afford and the time has come to “save ourselves” as Suze says, “and save our children to make sure they have the essentials of life… such as health insurance, and not just THINGS.”

To protect ourselves in this economy we’ll have to downsize, tighten our belts and change our ways. We’re going back into a cash economy because there will be no more credit for some of us and for others, the credit we do have will be lowered and watched carefully. The institutions we’ve been borrowing from have been borrowing money to give us the loans, and they’ve been borrowing their money, and no one ever really had the money to back it up. We’ve been living on borrowed money for so long that we take it for granted and hope and pray everything works out. It’s time to get REAL and save ourselves from financial ruin because hoping and praying can’t pay the bills. We need to become proactive to survive in this economy.

Here’s some advice from Suze and other experts recession-proof our lives and get thru the next few “rough” years and hopefully come out on top. Most of it is common sense, but we can all use a reminder from time to time to get us motivated.

If you don’t have the money to pay for something… DON’T GET IT! – Buying things like big screen TVs, expensive clothing that you don’t really need, toys for kids, Big Boy Toys and electronic gadgets just puts your further into debt. You may think these things make you happy, but being in debt is far from happiness.

Never buy anything that you can’t pay for in 3 months – Of course this doesn’t pertain to a house or a car, but it does pertain to other things for the home, such as a washing machine, or a refrigerator, etc. You shouldn’t try to get the biggest or the best if you cannot afford it. Choose something that can be paid for in 3 months. Otherwise, you could be in big financial trouble down the road as the interest gathers on your credit card. Put things on a lay away plan rather than using your credit card.

Think about keeping your car for 10 years, instead of trading it in every 3 or 4 years –Many successful people believe this and did not buy flashy cars UNTIL they became rich enough to afford it (and some still don’t buy cars to show off their wealth!). Warren Buffet has billions of dollars and he says that more people could be millionaires if they would stop spending it on cars and toys. Save your money and when you’re rich, you can buy whatever you want.

Get a second job if you have to – Many people feel like it’s over if they can’t pay the bills, but nothing is so big that you should give up and throw in the towel. You just have to work harder and that might mean getting a second job to get out of debt… or you might want to do this to make even more money than you already have. Even though the job market is getting scarce, there’s always something you can do to make money… (remember, there’s no scarcity in blogland. Use MCB’s Blog Tutorial if you don’t already have one and make a blog your second job!)

Stop trying to keep up with The Jones’ – Just because your neighbor has a new big screen TV or a new SUV doesn’t mean you have to go out and get one. Chances are your neighbor is in debt up to his ears and you will be too if you try to buy things just to look good in others eyes. (besides, it shows your insecurity when you buy to impress others!)

Cut down on unnecessary “gadgets” – We live in an age of technology but we must remember that most technology is a luxury and not a necessity. If you can afford to buy gadgets by all means do so… but make sure you’ve taken care of your family’s basic needs of food, clothing and shelter first.. and then save money for your retirement or if you lose your job (which is a good possibility in this financial climate). Gadgets and toys should only be bought after everything else is securely paid for.

Keep putting money into your 401K –If you’re young enough and have 10-20 years before you will retire, then keep putting the money into your 401K retirement plan or other mutual funds. When the stock market is down you will be gathering more shares so when it goes back up, you can have twice as many shares at a better value! Many millionaires and billionaires are made during times like these. (Just be careful what companies or “sectors” you invest in!!)

Watch your FICO score closely – Keep your eye on your FICO score because they do make mistakes. Check with all three companies and write a letter if you find a mistake or you had a good reason for a late payment, etc. Your FICO score will be very important in the next 10 years.. People who have less than 750 might not get a loan from now on, so keep it as high as possible by paying your bills on time.

Teach your children the value of a dollar – We’ve all gotten so used to buying anything we want and we have taught our children to expect things to appear out of thin air whenever they ask for them. This is doing a huge dis-service to your kids because they never learn to appreciate the fact that you have to work for your money. It also has long term psychological ramifications too. You are teaching your children that happiness is having things so when they get older they will keep buying things to make themselves happy. We all know that is not the true meaning of happiness. It is good to “want” something. A child or person who never has anything to strive for in life, will never succeed at anything worthwhile. So teach your children that there are other ways to be happy.

Don’t stop paying your bills… don’t give up! – This is very important, especially for anyone who is in financial trouble. Get a different home if you have to.. Downsize… get an apartment.. whatever you have to do. Know that things will get better. It’s not the end of the world and nothing to be ashamed of if you have to sell your home. It’s only the end of the world if you make it so in your mind. With hard work, you can and will build back up to buying a home later when things get better. Learn from your mistakes and buy a home within your means when the time comes and the time will come! Money comes and it goes, so there will always be another chance to get that house you’ve been dreaming of. You have to have a good attitude and know that you can make the best of anything and that things will always get better if you do what is necessary to get yourself in a better place as soon as you’re back on your feet again.

Get Debt Counselling if you need it – If you’re in financial trouble and cannot pay your debts, find a free debt counsellor in your area that you can talk to face-to-face. Check with a University in your area, or a government Cooperative Extension Program, your credit union, or even the military if you qualify.

Backup Your Blog: Part 2

In the Part 1 of Back Up Your Blog, Andreas gave some great instructions on how to back up your blog and Secure your cPanel. A backup is the most important thing we can do to protect our blogs IF a hacking or any other trouble ever happens upon your blog. I think he made a fantastic point about practicing the back up process to make sure it works and to get used to doing it. It is very common for bloggers to have faithfully backed up their blogs only to find out the backup didn’t work properly. So, as Andreas said… practice the backup often until it becomes second nature and easy to execute when you REALLY need it.

How LloydLopez.com helped secure my site

Now here’s a few more helpful things you can do to secure your site. Lloyd Lopez secured my site after helping me with a Feedburner, and other problems I had after my data transfer fiasco. Lloyd works in the technological field and his blog, which he does in his spare time, is about techie stuff too. We’ve been in touch by phone a few times and he’s one busy guy because I know his work schedule! (Holy Smokes! lol) But as you’ll see on his blog, he still seems to get in some time to have fun with his friends and goes to a lot of resorts for his work retreats… (Must be nice, Lloyd!! lol)

Among the other qualifications that he needs for his work, Lloyd is also independently “Brainbench Certified” in the following: Computer Technical Support, Technical Desk Help (Microsoft), MS Windows XP Desktop Administration, Computer Fundamentals, Information Technology Terminology. Lloyd will do Blog Consulting if time permits. So if you ever need any extra help that you’re willing to pay for, I can attest to Lloyd’s good reputation and professionalism and I recommend him highly! I’m keeping his name in my “little black blog book” as I’m sure I will need him sometime in the future! lol

Automatic Update
The first thing Lloyd recommended and installed for me was the WP Automatic Update Plugin since it’s the easiest way to upgrade your WordPress blog especily if this is the first time that you’re upgrading.

Installation is easy…. you download the zip file, unzip it, upload the resulting folder into your plugins folder and activate it. Once activated, you have a new entry on your Manage page in your blog’s WordPress admin, called Automatic Upgrade. When you activate it, it will walk you through the steps. This way you can secure your site by upgrading to the newest verions, making sure your plug-ins are up-to-date and always having a backup.

WordPress Backup Utility
Lloyd also recommended and installed a WordPress Backup utility program. It will send your backups to your e-mail address on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (whichever you prefer). But remember, have it come to a different address than your blog webmail address, just to be safe.

Login LockDown
Lloyd installed a Login LockDown on my site. Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. After someone makes a certain number of attempts to log in to your WordPress within a short period of time from the same IP, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that IP. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery. Currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. (It can be modified from the Options panel to be however many you want and within what time period you wish.) If the log in attempt was from someone who as authorized to get into your WordPress account then the Admisitrator can release the locked out IP manually from the panel so that they can get in. If it was someone who was not authorized then you know someone has attempted to get into your blog and was trying out different passwords. As you can imagine, Login LockDown a great thing to have for security reasons.

Passwords

Both Lloyd and Andreas stressed that we should have a strong password. Some people use passwords that are easy to figure out, like a “favorite” word and a few numbers (birthday, etc) because it’s easy to remember. If it’s easy for you to remember… it’s definitely hackable by almost anyone! Instead, you should keep a little notebook of your passwords since the good passwords (strong ones) should not be memorizable… they should be “garbled”. As Andreas said in the previous post, don’t use dictionary words. Use a combination of letters and numbers and symbols to make a strong password and make a habit of changing your passwords often.

Ask Your Host About Backups

You should be asking your hosting company if they back up your blog and if they don’t, then get a different host who does. I use HostGater for MomsCashBlog and it is also what you will get when you use the Free Blog Tutorial. Hostgater backup blogs every Sunday. Get to know your host by calling them and seeing what they have to offer you and how they work. If a blog disappears or is having problems, you should call your host first thing. (sometimes you will find that they are having trouble on their end and it’s not your blog being hacked. lol). I’m the kind of person who does business best over the phone. HostGater and I have had a lot of talks and I would never deal with a host who I could not talk to in person. Trouble shooting requires good communication and phone conversation are the best form of communicating that I know of.

I hope this was helpful to some of you. If anyone has any further suggestions to help others secure their blog, please leave a comment to help others out. I know my readers get a lot of good advice from the comments as they’ve told me so thru e-mails. There’s a lot of new people deciding if they want to start a blog with the Free Blog Tutorial and they value the opinions of seasoned bloggers… (they also visit YOUR blog afterwards!) And, and always, if you’re thinking of starting a blog and have any questions, make a comment here and someone will answer you!

Back Up Your Blog: Part 1

After writing The Hacking of Taylor Blue, I looked for some info and options for safeguarding our sites from hacking. What I learned is that there is no “surefire” way to keep your blog safe from being hacked! If someone with the technical know-how wants to hack your site, they can do it! What we can and MUST do is back up our sites as often as possible so if it ever does happen, at least we can save our data and start over with relative ease.

Because I know that we all have different ways of understanding information, this will be a two part series starting with some information from a good “techie” blogger friend of MomsCashBlog, Andreas of Xaviermedia.com giving us useful info on securing our cPanels. The next post will have more info on back ups and a little about hacking. If you have any questions, make a comment. Thanks Andreas!

Secure Your cPanel Account

by Andreas of XavierMedia.com

cPanel is one of the best control panels I know and my company Xavier Media is using it for most of our own hosting accounts. But as always a control panel (or for that fact any software) is not more secure then the users using them. Therefore you must make sure that anyone with access to your cPanel account is not the weak link causing your site to get hacked.

Get a secure password

In cPanel there’s a fantastic function that will help you to select hard-to-guess passwords for your accounts. You can even use it to generate passwords you’re going to use on other accounts too.

Then click on the “Generate Password” button to generate a random password. The nice thing with this generator is that you can select how long password you want, if you would like to use uppercase, lowercase and numbers. Just hit the regenerate button until you get a password that fit your needs. Please remember that a password should be minimum 6 characters (more then 8 is even better), should contain at least one uppercase letter (not the first or last letter) and if possible at least one number in the middle somewhere. If you add symbols like +, -, ? and % then you got a pretty strong (good) password already at 6 characters.

This generator can also be used if you need to choose a PIN code. In that case just deselect everything except numbers and set the length to 4 numbers.

What you should remember is to select as long passwords as possible and never use dictionary words (words found in any dictionary). Not even if you make one or more of the characters uppercase, since those passwords are the most easily to hack .

Backup your data offsite

Next step in securing your cPanel account is to make sure you got backups of all your files, databases and email accounts somewhere offsite. By that I mean somewhere not located on the same server as your hosting account. The offsite part is important because if a hacker gets access to the root passwords for a server they get access to the entire server which means that your backup and files are both in the same amount of danger. By having your backups located on another server you add a small amount of security for your backup files.

It’s also good to have backup files on another server just in case same thing happens to your server that happened to 1000’s of servers at The Planet earlier this year causing 100,000’s of web sites to go offline. If you had backups offsite and this happened to you you could get a new hosting account somewhere else and setup your site there until The Planet solved their problems. Everyone else with their backups on the same server had to just wait for The Planet to restore all servers again before they could get their web sites back (some never got their sites back ).

In cPanel you got two options to do backups. One is the full backup where all your files, settings, databases and email accounts are backuped and the other option is partial backups where you have to download the files, databases etc as separate backups. I prefer to use the full backups even if you need to ask the server admin for help if you need to restore your account.

To do a full backup of your account I suggest you get a cheap FTP account with someone else other then your hosting provider. Then click on the “Backups” icon in cPanel and finally “Download or Generate a Full Backup”. Select “Remote FTP server” and fill in your FTP details (for your second FTP account with the other hosting company). I would like to strongly point out to never use “Home Directory” as backup destination since that’s way to dangerous in case something happens to your server.

In case you filled in a valid email address in the Email field, then you will get an email confirmation when the backup file is ready and has been transferred to your FTP account. The beauty with this is that you never have to download any backup files to your own computer (all you have to do is fill in a form ).

The first time you do this type of backup you need to login at the destination FTP account after you got the confirmation email to actually make sure that your backup is there. You should also test your backups at least once per year (i.e. make sure you can restore your account from a backup). This is because I’ve seen way to many examples where backups where missing or didn’t work when they where needed the most.

About the author

Andreas is the Development Director at Xavier Media which he also co-founded in 1996.