There are thousands of mom bloggers already online. Many of them are making money, and most of them are trying to make money. Do you have what it takes to be a profitable mom blogger? I believe that any mom blogger can start to generate a profit from her blog with the right approach and learned skills. That means you too.

It does take some study and some work. You will not become a millionaire overnight. Now that we have that cleared up let me reiterate that you can make money blogging. It might not be the same type of blogging that you are thinking of right now. How serious are you about making money blogging? You might have to adjust your thinking, your habits, and your schedule, but you can make a profit.

Here’s some ways to start a blog that won’t work very well.
**the willy-nilly-slap-something-up approach,
**the kiss-up-to companies approach,
**the controversial approach to get attention,
**the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach, and
**the guilt-my-family-and-friends-into-reading approach.
Go ahead if you want to try them. You might see a flare-up of popularity before everything goes down the drain. If you do try them you will learn some good lessons, but you will also waste some valuable time.

While you are working on building traffic to your blog you can add affiliate links and become an affiliate marketer. You don’t have to have your own product to sell; you can sell an already finished product for a commission. You can also use your sidebar as a place for an ad network. They find the advertisers; you wait for the profit.

Just because anyone can start a blog for free does not mean that there isn’t a necessary skill set. The good news is that the necessary skills can be learned and developed by anyone with the will to learn. There are profitable bloggers of all age levels from middle school to senior citizens; and of all skill sets from drop-outs to college grads. Blogging is a good thing to know. Most websites have them and the skill of blogging is a marketable asset in and of itself.

Just doing what you can and hoping for the best will only get you so far. If you want your blog to make a profit then you need to study and learn the best way to do just that.

If you want to learn more about blogging, gaining more exposure in the blogosphere, building great relationships and incorporating new profit points into your content be sure to sign up for the Smart Blogging Skills 10 week course.

The first thing you should do after setting up your blog is to set up your social media accounts. You might already have some accounts set up; now you need to make sure you are using them the best possible way.

Social media is an amazing tool for anyone online, and especially for moms. One of the top reasons moms spend time online is to be social. They are looking to make friends, find information, share what they know, sympathize with others, and maybe even make some money.

Social media sites are set-up so moms, or anyone, can pop in and out and easily share. They are always busy with a ton of traffic and you need to direct some of that traffic to your blog. However, you need to make them want to come interact with you because your sign is so compelling; not be forced to drive past because someone has a whistle and white gloves.

If you want to make friends on social media sites here are 5 things you should avoid:

1. Boring conversation about the details of your life
2. Links in every update
3. Constant bragging
4. Only retweets
5. Constant quotes

None of those things are terribly wrong. In fact, each of those things will appeal to someone, but not if that’s all that they hear from you. It’s the mixture that’s important.

If you think, “I’m blogging to make money, not friends” you won’t get anywhere online. Readers visit people they like and shoppers buy from people they know. The key to using social media sites the right way is honest interaction. Here are five tips that might help:

1. Be yourself. Don’t set up a persona.
2. Use your best level of conversation. Don’t talk like you are at a sleepover with your friends; talk like you are at a networking conference.
3. Search for a topic that you like and talk to people about that topic.
4. For every tweet you post about yourself reply to someone else.
5. Strive to build people up and never tear people down publicly.

Don’t be intimidated by the unwritten rules of social media. Instead watch, read, and learn how to go about things the best way so that you are accepted easily and hopefully, spread around. You want people to associate good things with your name and brand.

Building relationships, gaining trust, becoming friends, honest interaction – those take time; but remember that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

If you want to learn more about blogging, gaining more exposure in the blogosphere, building great relationships and incorporating new profit points into your content be sure to sign up for the Smart Blogging Skills 10 week course. If you sign up for the next course starting on March 30th you will have group coaching added to the already incredible coaching ecourse.

1. Article marketing. Articles that are published on your website can be rewritten and used for article marketing purposes. The rewriting process is simply a matter of changing the content by changing the wording, not the overall concept or information in the article. There are tools online that you can use to ensure your ‘rewrite’ is considered ‘original’ by the search engines.  But I don’t recommend using them as the sentences will usually not make since and the grammar may become strange. Content can be rewritten by you, a virtual assistant or outsourced to a writer for a nominal fee.

2. Blog posts. Large articles can be segmented into several smaller blog posts. In fact, often one paragraph in a larger article (1000 words or more) makes a great blog post because it’s very specific. All you need to do is write an introduction and a short conclusion and you have a great blog post from content that’s already written. Or you can rewrite a shorter article using the strategy in #1 to create a unique blog post.

3. Reports. Collect like articles and blog posts to create a unique report. You’ll need to write an introduction, a conclusion and some transition paragraphs to make the report feel seamless. However, you’re creating a valuable product you can sell or give away from content that’s primarily already written. If you’re an affiliate marketer, also include a page at the end with resources readers can use that pertained to the report.

4. Guest articles/blog posts. You can rewrite articles to publish on partner websites or as guest blog posts to boost awareness and credibility.

5. Autoresponders/newsletters. Use your article content to create autoresponders or newsletters. Many of your prospects do not visit your website regularly to catch up on new content. You can publish your best articles in a newsletter or you can summarize them, or publish a teaser and link to the article on your website. Thus increasing website traffic.

6. Ebooks. Just like creating reports in #3, you can create ebooks by collecting groups or chapters of like content. Sell it or give it away as a bonus, lead generator or viral product.

7. Ecourses. Use your articles to create short lessons for an online course which you can again give away or charge for as an information product.

It should be noted that all of the points here are on how to make the most of your article content; however, if you have books and reports, they can easily be segmented into articles, blog posts, ecourses, newsletter content and autoresponders.

Whether you’ve written the content, outsourced it, purchased PLR or a combination of all three, it makes good business sense to make the most of your investment.

Not so much for either anymore. This blog is and always be about my working online and my interaction offline. I can’t help that. I’m a people person and no matter how much I work online and how much I LOVE working online, I still need that personal interaction. I’m killer at customer service and that is personal no matter how we try to change it.

So right now I’m working on a mix. Yes, online biz still. I still have my offline biz but it’s light and then I am actually looking for a small offline job to have that steady paycheck between. It’s just that time. I’ve put a couple of clients above my own work and frankly it really messed up my own stuff. So now it’s time to rebuild.

Working WAHM has always been about the best resource to use. Not the most affordable, the cheapest, the latest or the one that will make ME the most affiliate money. So I need to get back to basics for ya and move to the resources. Like Hootsuite…wanna hear my love affair tomorrow? Better comment if you do or I’ll ignore it!!

Well unless you completely ignore everything I write, you know I absolutely love wordpress. I converted the last of my websites to WP about 2 years ago and it is all I personally work in now. The majority of my clients also use it or their first project for me is typically converting to wordpress. As with any medium it’s impossible for me to know everything. So I’m really looking forward to the Hot Seminar Series this year. It’s all about wordpress!

Just a few of the topics to be covered in this weekly series are choosing themes, security, branding, plugins and so much more.

This is a 9 week seminar filled with information.  The Hot Seminar Series has grown each year because of the incredible experts brought to the table.  This is not a pay as you go or an expensive series.  9 weeks of priceless information, with downloadable mp3′s to listen to as often as necessary and also video to watch later.  This way if you can’t make the wednesday night session’s you won’t miss out on the content!

Go get your subscription to the Hot Seminar Series and commit to learning and growing your business this summer.

But lately every blog has just been hit by so many commenters loading their name field with keywords. I appreciate that many of them are actual comments, but I am getting really ticked off at the blatant lack of etiquette by keyword loading.

It’s fine, cause what you may not have been told is I CAN CHANGE IT! So many have names in their email, I’m sure they are fake, but I still go and put that name instead. If I like the comment enough I’ll create a name from the website and email combo. It’s still a legit comment, I’m just not giving you the keywords for a one time posting.

One of my sites has been hit for so many months that I’m actually going through and deleting the url for the commenter along with adding their name. I figure that site ended up on a list as it’s one website in particular that keeps returning. I’ll slowly make my way through all the back comments I wasn’t paying attention to and get them all deleted as well.

Keyword loading isn’t friendly at all. It isn’t networking. I understand that it’s getting you some backlinks for the search engines, but not on my blogs. In fact if I have to correct it more than twice, your url will be deleted from all comments. So you’ll be posting out of the kindness of your networking heart

But my partner Loretta started a theme this week on our site when she posted How NOT to Leave a Comment on a Blog. I have a post that went up today in the topic, “Spam vs. Trash“.

The more popular your blog/site becomes, the more spam you have to deal with. It doesn’t matter if you have a spam plugin, you still need to skim through that folder a little to make sure no one was put there by accident. As some of my sites have gotten larger I’ll be honest and say it’s rare I get the chance to even skim the spam folder. So don’t put links in your replies or it has a good chance of not getting posted. Especially if you have never commented on a blog before.

Now I’m feeling a little silly about something. I’m not afraid to admit it. Goodness, if I knew everything you wouldn’t get to learn from my trial-and-error posts right?

I never paid attention to the keyword loaded names in the comments. I thought they were odd, but for some reason it just never clicked as to why they were doing it. I guess a big reason was they were actual comments with thought put into them that you could tell they read the posts. So I didn’t necessarily pay attention to the name. Just kind of shined it on. Well Loretta woke me up to that thankfully and I’ve either changed the names to names that were in their contact email addy or I made up a name. No wonder why one of my blogs gets hit so hard with a certain site. DUH! If I’m approving their comments of course they will come back frequently and load it up.

I did comment to Loretta that she was much nicer than I am. It takes some effort to only get sent to my trash file. Most of the irrelevant comments get sent to spam. With the amount of blogs I have, it gets pretty easy to see a pattern over the years for spam comments. Yes, there are days I’m feeling nicer and I will just send most things to trash, but those are really rare. I just don’t have any tolerance for spam. Put some thought into a comment or move on. I don’t need them taking up my time and they aren’t worth my time.

Not when I have so many awesome people that are commenting with tips, suggestions, and encouragement that aren’t afraid to put their name with their comment and earn some link love the right way.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a total comment whore, just like any other blogger. I just don’t want my blog filled up with these fun comments, “Great blog! I have you bookmarked. I look forward to reading your future posts.” Really? You can’t get more creative than that? lmbo

So don’t be a spam commenter. Put in your name, you can include a quick description sometimes in that name field as well. But that will depend on your comment. If it’s no more than a great post, then don’t load up any keywords at all in that name field, it’s rude. You aren’t contributing to the quality of the post, just trying to ride the wave of the traffic created by the blogger. A quick example might be my putting a comment on a food blog with the name as Val – menu planner, or a health blog as Val – personal trainer. Typically I won’t though. I’ll let my comment speak for itself and my url is in the appropriate place as asked.

Here are a few reasons why maintaining your website is important:

# Attracting the search engines – Search engines are important to the livelihood of your online business, but they don’t like “dead” websites. Websites which have been left static without updates or fresh content are a no-no in the online world. Another thing search engines don’t like is broken links.

As you build your web pages it’s easy to miss broken links. A good strategy is to double check every link you add to your website. Inevitably you may miss some or some may become broken with time (as web addresses change and so on). Regular maintenance and “check-ups” for your website will help you spot these broken links and keep your customers and search engines happy in the process.

# Updating information may increase your sales – Regularly looking over your website will also help you make changes and adjustments as necessary. For example, you may have started promoting what was a great product two years ago but now that product may be outdated and not so great anymore. By updating your website you may find products and promotions which are a better match for your visitors. This means more money in your pocket and more satisfied visitors.

Look through your old web pages to see if there are any promotions which can be updated or given a little extra “oomph.” Times change and on the internet time moves at a faster speed – keeping up with the times is important and you can do this by simply looking over your pages and tweaking as you go along.  Updating your information on the pages will also help your page be picked up my the search engines more.

# Keeping track of your stats is important – Another part of your basic web maintenance is keeping on top of all your visitor statistics. It makes sense to regularly go through your website and check how many visitors you have on a monthly basis, where they’re coming from, how they’re finding you, what pages they’re accessing and so on.

A running log of these statistics will help you quickly identify any potential problems such as loss of traffic or reduced income from sources such as Google AdSense and so on.  But make sure you don’t get caught up in checking your stats too often.  Checking them monthly is usually more than enough unless you have run a special promotion.

Regular basic web maintenance for your website is important. It can help you keep up with changing times, help to attract more visitors and ultimately make you more sales. If you find this task difficult to squeeze in, try scheduling it in for a set time each month or every few weeks. It shouldn’t take long and the time investment may make all the difference to your business. And finally, if you don’t have time to do the web maintenance yourself you can always think about hiring an assistant to help you with this task.

By not starting new projects it leaves me time to get back into the original projects I started years ago. Now some of them haven’t necessarily been neglected, but they sure haven’t gotten the attention that they deserve. I’ve neglected to put the personal touch into one site in particular and spent some time tonight trying to rectify that.

While posting new articles to the site I found a renewed energy for it. I’m not sure where my lack of passion came from, but I definitely found it again and writing articles wasn’t too difficult. I got 2 PLR articles rewritten, 2 recipes added and 2 fully original posts added as well. I’m set up for until next week now with posts.

I’m now also contemplating having a new template and logo made for the site, but we’ll see. I need to watch the extra spending at this time and there are probably some color and picture tweaks I can do that will make a big difference with