The WAHM community is a small community.  If you are just starting out, it may seem huge, but the core has been interconnected for years. It’s taken me a while obviously to post this and I really struggled with how personal it hit me. But I’m always about everyone learning from what I learn, so here I am all out there for you to pick-a-part.

It was shocking and horrible to get up late this morning (6/28, yes that was a bit ago now) and find out that Denise Willms had passed away suddenly on Sunday.  Devastating for a few reasons.  The unexpectedness for one thing.  She’d just celebrated her birthday on Friday turning barely older than I.  Our kids are of a similar age.  I can remember when she was a complete newbie and took over WAHM-articles from my good friend. It’s been awesome to watch what she’s done over the years with it.

Being the same age and being so young this is hitting home for me. I can take a look at my life right now and like the direction I’m going with both family, friends and work. No, I’m not making the money I would like to, but that’s not what people will remember about me anyway I hope. My hope is that I’ve left everyone, especially my family, with many moments that they can start with…”Do you remember when…?” I want to be home to leave those moments, not away working so many hours that I miss out on the moments.

If you would like to leave your condolences a memorial page has been set up. I know Denise touched a lot of people’s lives and many will miss her.

I felt it hard because I am not where I want to be. With my family and friends, yes, but in biz…NO. I felt it extra hard because I have more than I want on my plate and more than I want associated with me if something did happen. Telling isn’t it? Drop the crap woman!

Denise will continue to touch my life. It’s unbelievable to me that she won’t hit me on twitter at any moment. I’m wondering if it’s even worse for online relationships to move onward than the offline? I’m not comparing how much more she touched those in her life she had daily interaction physically with, but I am wonder because I didn’t have the daily. So here I just keep waiting for that quick blurb from her It’s difficult to believe it will never happen and my heart goes out to her family. She will be missed and I will put her memory to great use. I will keep my priorities in check and keep enjoying every second with my family that I am given

This week was my week to post the Spotlight a WAHM at Eccentric WAHM and I chose my friend Angie Newton to spotlight. You can read more about her and her site at the spotlight post.

For a little change up I asked Angie, ” What was the hardest thing for you in that first year of business?” I figured this would be a great question to answer for myself as well.

For my online business the hardest part was just moving ahead and stop worrying about everything I didn’t know how to do yet. I was creating sites with html back then as this was in ancient times and there was so much to learn with the coding that it was mind-boggling. Let alone moving on to SEO techniques and actual marketing.

For my offline business (personal training) it was definitely the marketing myself. I’m not a pushy sales person. But in this case I had to learn to be more assertive. In the training industry if someone has come up to you then they are interested in your services. Beyond showing them how I can help them, I had to push them towards the sale. Very unlike me and out of my comfort zone for sure.

What’s for dinner? Do you dislike hearing this question as much as I do?

Whether getting home from work, running the kids to activities or getting to our own evening meetings, dinner can sure get in the way. It’s not easy to find a schedule on some nights that is perfect for everyone to eat, let alone a time to cook that meal.

I do enjoy cooking, it’s just that being such a busy mom I don’t have the time most nights or I’m too tired to enjoy it. Menu planning and once a week cooking have changed this.

Each week I take a few hours. I head to the grocery store with my pre-written shopping list and then get cooking my main dishes. I can enjoy cooking again and have found I love it even more. It feels great to have all the dinners cooked up and ready to go for later use.

I always toss a couple of the meals in the freezer for the end of the week. This way there’s a quick answer to, “What’s for dinner?” I keep the week’s meal list on the fridge and cross them off as we eat them. It also helps to let one kid pick which meal will be next. Less arguments about eating said meal.

Plan for the week and spend less time in the kitchen!

I’m not sure if everyone knows that I’m also co-owner of Easy WAHM Websites. I know, who can keep track right? The scary thing is I’m actually getting better about how many sites there are.

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.

There are just some days that going incredible from the first second of waking up. Yesterday was just such a day. One of those days I didn’t want to go to bed because I was so productive on projects, the paypal was rockin’ and emails were positive. Who could want to end a day like that?!

I don’t at all. I’m thankful that tonight hubby is loving watching movies and playing with the dogs as we get the kids off to bed late. lol They are a teen and tween now so it’s part their fault for not going to bed on time The horrible part is that at 9:30 it was getting close to my new bedtime. DOH, that is hours and hours past a normal bedtime I would have. So it was bound to hit me again. I know that part of my being up late is this addiction to a good days business.

I have new projects that are going great. I set up a newer design at Once A Week Cooking. It’s a brand new theme that I am testing for the designer. I’m in love with it and adapted my theme in a very short time. I’m excited to get a link out for everyone when it’s ready for sale. I purchased an ecourse that I had high, high, OMG high hopes would come out. I will be adding it and new coaching options in the next couple of days. We have our latest event out for sign up at Mom Chats and it’s all about pampering mom. An ebook will be launched at the event as well.

This doesn’t even touch on the coolness that is my VA clients that went down today! I’m telling you, today is just an incredible day.

Tomorrow is going to be the same. I know how it happened, I know I stayed positive and I completed projects. Yes, some of it was just the luck of it happening on an already good day, but much of it had to do with how productive my day was.

I should also stress that I knew I had limited time to get stuff done. My MIL had ankle surgery in December when she destroyed her ankle. Then hubby hurt his leg as well and was immobilized. I hadn’t realized just how long it had been since we visited. I am blessed with awesome in-laws and that is saying a lot as I have 4 of them. lol So the odds were totally against me! Spending time with my MIL and stepFIL kicked butt. Even more kick butt because I had gotten my projects done before leaving to visit so I wasn’t doing the toe-tap-let’s-go dance. I was able to visit freely and enjoy. Then get home eventually to work, work, work some more

Did I mention it was an incredible workday? Here I post before I even check my emails this morning. Drinking a little coffee and psyching myself up for another incredible day. I know that my mental outlook DOES have some pull on how my day will go.

Are you ready for some serious internet marketing coaching? Stay tuned, it’s opening for sessions very, very soon!

I’m looking for opinions on phones.  My upgrade is coming soon and I’m not sure which one I should get.  Now that I’m searching around there’s also the Palm Pre Plus in the mix.  I never hear anything about the palm’s and didn’t even know they were around still until the new commercials started coming out.

My husband has the droid and absolutely loves it.  He hasn’t had a single problem with it.  He’s not a techy and found it very easy learn.  BUT, he’s also using it for different things than I will.  His is to check emails, especially to get his work emails, and browse the internet.

I know many that love blackberry’s and swear by them.  My aunt has had many over the years.

One major thing I wonder about is the keyboard.  I’m used to my full keyboard on my texting phone.  If I switch to a blackberry is that small thing going to tick me off constantly?

The other thing I was worried about was the smaller screen, but the new Palm Pre has a full screen and the slide out keyboard.  Still a small keyboard though.  So the droid has the full screen and the blackberry curve still has that small boxy screen.  Will I care?

But those are just cosmetic things really.  Yes, the keyboard is important to me, but I’m sure I can get used to anything except for a touchscreen only.  My major thing is what I will use it for.  I want the storage so I can write documents on it when I can’t get a signal (which hubby hasn’t had happen yet with his droid)  Honestly, it would be used mostly for emails on vacation or when we are out and about and I’m waiting for a family member, twitter because I’m an addict, and then blogging.  When I have a connection I’d love to be able to work on blog posts right in my wordpress admins instead of always having to use my paper notebooks.

Honestly, after reading this I guess I’m asking any of you blackberry users why I would want a blackberry instead of a droid?  Droid also works with google which I use every day.  It dawned on me that as long as I have a connection then I can use google documents and I only need storage for when I don’t have wifi or 3g coverage.  Which would come into play with either phone since it will be verizon no matter what phone I get.

Also, if anyone knows, I see that the blackberry curve just took a major dive in price.  So anyone know if something better is coming out?  I hate getting a new phone.  It never fails that they come out with something better a couple of weeks after I buy one.  lol

Yikes, I dislike having such a negative post and thankfully I had some comments on it so it brought it to my attention. So this post is to counter that with some great forums to go check out!

I’ll also comment that I’ve been frequenting forums for over 9 years now. Sadly some major one’s that I learned the most from are so full of spam I won’t send anyone there any longer. But there are still some incredible forums out there that I am a part of and I’m more than happy to promote them!

My first place to send you is my favorite, Mommy’s Helper Community. I am a major moderator and I visit a few times a day to check for where replies need to happen and to start posts. It’s never a negative place. You are never made to feel stupid when you ask a question. In fact if you ask a question, just be prepared for very long reply posts to read. lol

The second forum I will run to on my forum check days is Classy Chic Forums. I joined the Classy Chic’s way back in my ryze days. ROFLMBO That seems so far back, I just never did get into ryze. But I did get into the Classy Chic’s and Shelly Hill from all of that Super thankful I found Shelly! Amazing thing is I’ve run into her in so many other places as well. Like the first boards I mentioned and also…

Here at Work at Home Space! I found Sophia’s forums by following a google search for my reprint articles I put up a couple of years ago. Her site was so friendly that I made a point of stopping by a few times a month. Now I make sure and hit it weekly at the least. If you are looking for some online jobs Sophia has a huge amount of them posted everyday for you to go and research.

Alright, that’s 3. Go check them out and report back. Or better yet…hit me on the boards. My username on all of them is busymomma I think I’m actually going to do some spotlight sites. Boards, etc. This post has me thinking of some new ways to point out some great resources!

I went back to a huge forum recently.  Huge as in really helps my links even when I’m not trying.  It has always been a negative place, but those links are just so good at times.  I need to rethink if the links and traffic are worth the headache.

Tonight I redid that.  I posted to twitter about a post without putting the actual post up.  BUT I did send by friends to it.   After 5 sweet posts asking for how things worked, I got tired of it and I was getting way too angry.  I’m not ignorant and just because I have under 100 posts on this forum doesn’t mean anything.   My posts and my sign up time only show such because I can’t get into my old account.  The site was sold a few years ago and I’ve never been able to get into my old account.  I’ve been a member there from just about the beginning and you can bet I was building websites while most on said forum were still trying to figure it out.  Meanwhile, I WAS BEING TAUGHT BY THOSE THAT TEACH AT YAHOO CONVENTIONS!!!

Yeah, I got pissed of course, I hate ignorance and I hate ignorance that is pushed towards others.  The funny thing was I never went off or got pissy while posting.  I was honestly asking questions and this person did nothing but put me down.  So I did a great thing and I stopped posting.  Not my norm, but I don’t have time to keep going somewhere so negative.  But yes, I did sick my friends on them.  lol

What the heck is a copywriter anyway? You’ve probably heard people talk in the last few years about copywriting and how much money you can make off of it. There are all kinds of writing that someone can do, but copywriting is definitely one of the most profitable.

Copywriters produce material that helps sell a product or service. They can write slogans, advertisement letters, anything that sells. And if you can write copy that makes something sell, you could make hundreds or even thousands of dollars for very little writing. Typically in the WAHM world, copywriters will write up the copy for the sales pages for your ebooks, autoresponder series or other product.

The reason copywriting can pay so well is because even some of the best writers can’t write a good piece of copy. While good copy can make a business a lot of money, bad copy can cost them a lot as well.

Before you get started on trying to become a copywriter, it’s best to determine if it’s a good fit for you. While it’s great to make tons of money, you probably won’t get too far if you don’t have the basic skills. Here are the main things to consider:

* You obviously need to be a decent writer, that’s a given, but you also need to have a creative flair to come up with unique ideas and content.

* Copywriters also need to have great discipline and drive. You generally have to be your own boss, make yourself meet deadlines, and constantly learn new things.

* Copywriters need to have a unique understanding of all different kinds of people and markets. Great communication and knowing what makes people tick is imperative.

* Be adaptable. The field of advertising is constantly changing. If you don’t change with it, you’ll quickly become obsolete.

So, after reading the above you think you have what it takes to become a copywriter. How do you get started?

Study, study, study! Being a copywriter can really pay well. Being a good or even a fantastic copywriter can make you very, very rich. While not everyone is going to make millions of dollars a year copywriting, no matter how hard they try, you can guarantee you’re not going to make that much if you don’t try. Being a good copywriter means keeping up on all the good techniques and knowing which ones are actually going to work online.

If you’re trying to start your own business, or apply for a job, you need to do some research before you start. Read great advertising and copywriting books; it all helps towards your education. A good book to jump start you copywriting expertise is Copywriting for the Electronic Media: A Practical Guide.  Writing copy for online is different than for radio or hardcopy.  It’s also a good idea to find some newsletters to subscribe to so you know the latest techniques and ideas.

Once you’ve gotten yourself a good basis of what copywriting is, you’ll want to decide if you want to work for an ad agency or if you want to go into business on your own. This is going to depend on your time, resources, and self-motivation, but also on your background and networking skills.

You will also want to make a few samples of your work before you even apply for jobs or look for work online. This will give them a good basis of what they’re paying for (and many people require it before they’ll hire you).

If you are starting your own business, you’ll probably have to start small and build up as you expand your customer base and your skills improve. You can visit online sites that allow people to bid on projects and grow from there.  Elance is a great place to find jobs.

Just remember to never get discouraged. Become a copywriter and work around your families schedule. Copywriting is a tough industry. Build your portfolio and become very profitable.

Please be aware that links may take you to affiliate products that I do make a percentage of sales from.

Christa has been working on this super fun and informative site for months now. She is such a talented web designer and then her writing is top notch on top of that! Of course it really helps that I have a thing for pinup girls and that is her theme. But she’d know that as she created the pinup girl site for my Firefighter Wife blog. lol

She chose me as a spotlight for January and I was blown away with what she wrote. I mean, wow.

As I move forward in 2010 and kiss 2009 away with glee, I will keep working hard to remember that people are listening to me. I will work diligently to keep up the informative posts that I know so many do read.

But feel free to leave some comments so I know I’m not talking to myself all the time lol

Thank you Christa for making me your spotlight on Eccentric WAHM!