The other day I met a young mother who is home schooling her two young boys.  

While we were talking I introduced her to the world of blogging and making money from home.  She had never heard of blogging and she is not alone in this.  Hardly anyone I meet, including family on my recent trip to NZ, know about blogging and when you consider that there are around 98 million blogs on the internet and the number is growing daily, I find it incredible that people haven’t stumbled upon the term somewhere.

But then when I mentioned it to my husband he pointed out that he and our immediate family only know about blogging because I am so involved in it along with the affiliate marketing side of having an online work from home business.

Paula and I have been working with our various blogs for a little while now and realised the potential for making money from this medium in the early days. 

Of all the people that I have told about blogging, and I mention to anyone willing to listen, only one has taken up the challenge and that is my daughter Varinina.  My granddaughter Demelza started a blog but teenage angst has gotten in the way of her progression with it. 

Now we all know that it takes time to build up a blog that people want to read and keep coming back to, so it has to have something to offer that is interesting and/or informative.  The content needs to be well written and easy to read. 

If the blog is about a product such as our area rugs  or lingerie blogs then you are able to add Google and merchant ads that relate to your product and this will generate an income for you.  It won’t make you an overnight millionaire but as your online traffic increases you should be able to make a nice little income.

The next biggest single thing you need to do is get traffic into your site, so you will need to promote your blog to sites like www.spicypage.com, www.mybloglog.com, and any other number of blog directories and communities that can easily be found on the web by typing ‘blog directories’ or ‘blog communities’ into the search engine.

So we now know that:

• the content needs to be well written
• place Google ads on the page
• place merchant ads on the page
• actively promote your blog to get traffic

Blogging is not only a way to produce an income, it is fun especially when you are writing about things that interest you. Once you join a blog community and start to read other peoples blogs you will find some are personal diaries, some are humourous, some topic specific and most make great reading.  Sometimes you will come across something that clashes with your beliefs, simply move on, do not get involved in silly name calling or online arguments, remember to respect other peoples point of view, they have a right to their opinions as much as you do.

I have been in New Zealand for a family related holiday and so Paula has been left holding the fort. And a great job she has done as always.

I am finding it increasingly frustrating that casual internet rates are so high when you are travelling. Hotel charges seem to be very high and are in blocks of 12 or 24 hours.  If you are travelling around the last thing you feel like doing late at night is to sit and start blogging, well I prefer to go to bed.  And in the mornings we were up and out early so no time to blog. 

I also find that wifi isn’t readily available which is something I thought would be fairly widespread by now.  The hotspots in Auckland were few and far between and all required payment. 

In the end I decided simply to do the blogging when I got back to Australia. So if you are interested in Auckland NZ head on over to www.traveltripz.com  just be warned there is a lot of family stuff  interspersed with the travel stuff.

As we all know by now, working from home is the reason I can up and go whenever I want. No work timetables to adhere to, simply take the time as you want to. 

As I am writing this I can hear a multitude of birds outside my window. My computer is set up in a postition whereby with just a slight turn of my head I can see the trees outside and hear the little sparrows chattering away to each other. It sounds like a party going on out there with what looks like at least 20 or 30 of them jumping from branch to branch. Goodness knows what they are saying to each other but it sounds like a group of old ladies at a quilting bee with no one able to get a word in.

It won’t be long and my two dogs will pick up on the chatter and run outside and scare them all off but for the moment they are too content playing inside and making a mess of my carpet with dirty paw prints.

Now there is silence…and the chattering has stopped. Who knows what has silenced them - maybe the grandaddy of sparrows has had enough and told all the youngins to quieten down. Or maybe they are discussing where to head off to next. Who really cares.. I am just having fun watching and enjoying the fact that I am at home, working from my computer…just loving life!

Only just recently I realised that Wordpress places a ‘nofollow’ tag on Comments left in blog posts. Thinking that this was just a default and that I could override it, I went searching in my Wordpress admin panel for an option to do just that. Well to my surprise there was none. Not sure why Wordpress feel they need to protect us by not adding a simple option like this but there you go. So next step was to find a plugin for it. Fortuantely this wasn’t too difficult and I found a great list of the different types of plugins over at Andy Beard’s website.

I chose the Dofollow plugin as it seemed the quickest and easiest and it turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought. Just download the file and copy the extracted folder to your wp-content/plugins folder and then activate the plugin in your Wordpress admin panel. That’s it! - too easy!

Now if you have gotten to this point and have no idea what the ‘nofollow’ tag is then you deserve a medal for sitting through all this geek speak. Nofollow is an attribute that is added to the code in a link and what it does is tell the search engines not to follow the link. So in other words, if you have left a Comment on this blog and added your website link then if the nofollow tag was applied the search engines would not follow the link through to your website. Basically it was introduced to stop the spread of spam on the internet.

We believe that if someone leaves a comment that is worthwhile and provides value then they deserve a unobstructed link back to their website so we have removed the nofollow tag on all comments.

We have set our Comments options to ensure that no comment goes live unless it is approved by us so we will see how all this goes. Bear in mind that leaving comments like “great post”, “cool” and so on will not be approved.  Also comments that are obviously used word for word on multiple websites will be deleted. We have already received some of these and although we have approved a couple it is not likely that any new ones will be approved.

We definitely love comments so if you have something constructive to say then let us know.

Article provided by Ishta Roth

My grandmother is an internet success, and spends her free time enjoying the pleasures of working to her own schedule. She loves the laid back attitude she can finally take advantage of after over 20 years in the public sector.

Being at home and starting her own internet business has improved her temperament immensely, and her inner and outer wellbeing and health have increased. She now sparkles with a relaxed energy and beauty.

My mom is a work from home mom as well. She enjoys working from home for the simple benefits of the wellbeing of her family. She is home to greet my sibling’s everyday, and she takes a keen interest in their lives and personalities that other mothers might miss.

My mother can tell by looking at her little people if they have had a good or bad day - whether they ate all their lunch, got detention or an award. She knows when they are tired and hungry, or overactive and hungry, but most of the time she knows when they are happy and hungry.

Every night my mom makes a healthy home made dinner, and every morning after breakfast she sends the little ones to school with a smile and a packed lunch full of home made goodies.

During daylight hours my mother is an internet fiend. She blogs and complete surveys, she writes internet articles and sends email like there is no tomorrow. When she completes her daily techno “job” she attends to her other areas of expertise. She cleans her house, bakes yummy food (which she almost always lets me try first) and she still has time to call me, spend time with me and show the same amount of love and care with me, an adult, as she does with her smaller children.

The women in my family are smart and strong and independent. In my spare time I read their blogs and do my best not to be lazy and do nothing during the day while I am at home, and go to work at night.

I love to see pictures on their blogs and I remember the stories and anecdotes they post with humour and widescreen colour and surround sound memories. Working from home has improved the lives of my mother and her mother. Everyone should enjoy the freedoms these women enjoy because once in while all women need a good massage and brilliant manicure.

When this blog started out as a Blogger blog, we had a page rank of 3.  Over time the blog evolved and we bought the domain name ‘Just Loving Life’ because we thought it more appropriately fitted the direction.  The blog was originally called 1st-in-unique-gifts and we were writing about so much more than just gifts.

Paula followed Googles instructions in putting in the redirect to the new domain.  So I merrily went on submitting the posts for which we were eligible under the PR 3 for Pay Per Post. We thought misguidedly that the PR would transfer over to the new domain name.  Wrong - Just Loving Life remained as it was and the old blogspot URL went to zero.

So the question here is, did Google penalize our site for duplicate content since we had both the blogspot and the Just Loving Life domain name running concurrently? If so then Google really needs to do something about it since they have so kindly provided the option for blogspot owners to use their own domain name. At the very least Google should advise users on what they should do to reduce the duplicate content issue.

Since the duplicate content issue was a concern we transferred the blog to Wordpress and trashed the old Blogspot blog. Of course now we have been rejected for the last 6 posts done under that blog name in Pay Per Post.  Fair enough as we no longer have that page rank.  I am only writing this for those Blogger blogs that are thinking of getting a domain name.  Just be careful as you may lose your pagerank. And if you are going to change do it sooner rather than later.  

Article provided by Nia Sowden, author of Survival Wytch and Cooking with Nia

Why I became a blogger, why I like blogging, why I don’t like blogging

I love blogging. I was introduced to blogging by my mother who is a seasoned writer, traveler and all-round consumer. Her blogs are about shopping and traveling and movie reviews and crazy happenings in the world.

Mum and her best friend are delving right into the ‘webs’ belly’ and reaping the benefits of running an online business and community connections that are still only a mystery to me as I’m fairly new to blogging.

I began with a blog at Blogger.com. But there are lots of other places to start including Wordpress.com

By joining communities at mybloglog.com and Spicypage, you get to read the blogs of others who like the same things as you do.

Becoming a member of other communities and posting comments on other blogs, posting discussions in forums, joining groups and branching out into an exiting web of over 96 million other bloggers from all over the world, you can really discover how amazing the internet is.

I use my blog to tell my friends what I am doing and what life is like in a new city. It is cheaper to have an online diary or blog than to write letters or phone everyone, so I keep up with news about family members and their friends and anyone can read it.

Read the rest »

We love new and interesting articles on our blog and like to add at least one new article every day. In the past it has always been me or Wanda who has written up the articles but we have now opened it up to anyone with a flair for writing.

If you have a work from home success story, know a bit about Affiliate Marketing, have experienced the world of paid surveys or are making money with your blog then we would like to hear from you.

We also like articles relating to self improvement, positive thinking or the law of attraction but they must relate in some way to working from home.

We will happily link back to your blog or website in the article.

So if you ready to add a work from home story please head over to our Submit Article page to read our submission guidelines.

We took a break today to go shopping and to the movies to see Die Hard 4 (awesome) and Chuck and Larry (lots of fun).

On returning home I noticed how lovely the Cherry Blossom trees were looking.  The flowers have just come out over the last couple of days.

It made me think as I went back to work, how lucky I am to be able to sit at home  working on the computer and look out on such a beautiful display. Beats having to sit in an office all day hidden away from the light of day.

By guest author Nia Sowden author of Survival Wytch and Cooking with Nia

I am a freelance writer and this is my perspective on working from home. I’ll share with you what I have found to be the advantages and disadvantages.

I began working from home when the kids were little, having part time jobs cleaning or selling products or preparing and selling food to cafés and being a day care mom. This meant that I could be at home for my children after school.

I loved the freedom of being my own boss and having my own hours. I always made sure I had something freshly baked for afternoon tea, I loved having time to potter around or tidy up in the garden or create a mess. I love sculpting in clay and styrene so having time to practice my art was important to me, working from home means I can do whatever I want to do.

What I have always loved about working from home is the choice of having my own schedule, creating my own time and being my own boss. I can shop when I want to, visit my friends, see a movie and go to the beach.

I have returned from working full time outside the home, to working from home writing articles.

Read the rest »