WAHM: Ever Thought About Going to Beauty School?
Beauty School or cosmetology school as it’s sometimes called, is a very worthy choice of education.
I’m serious.
Do you realize that in many cases, it’s easier to emigrate to a country with a degree or diploma in beauty therapy than it is to gain entrance as say, an architect? I’m not even remotely close to joking here.
It is a career that is in constant demand, owing to the world at large suddenly within the last decade, sitting up and starting to take care of its collective appearance.
Many, many career opportunities abound if you are qualified as a beautician and these include such awesome placements as cruise ship work (hello see the world!), the opportunity to freelance, be mobile, or work from home.
It’s definitely a career worth looking at, even if you’re unsure about your future career choices, because you will be able to begin earning money straight away if you use your head, and find a niche within the market. Combining your beauty studies with complimentary therapies such as Reiki, Aromatherapy and Massage can also greatly improve your earning potential.
Women are always on the lookout for good beauticians and sometimes in fact they’re such well kept secrets that many popular beauty school graduates are booked up weeks in advance.
read moreSolar Kits Can Save Energy and Save You Money
Solar Energy is one of the most obvious resources that we do not utilize nearly enough.
If popular movies are anything to go by, the fact that we’re in 2010, means that we should all be driving (flying) around in solar powered cars already!
Unfortunately we’re not but there are a lot of awesome solar technologies available to us, even in the form of solar kits to make a drastic difference in the way our lives are run. Just imagine having enough power to charge and maintain your RV, boat or cottage without having to depend on the national grid. What if you could have power wherever you go, with a handy solar kit, there when you need it!
Clean, green, sustainable and silent energy right when you need it? Yes please! Just imagine the cost savings involved when your ambient appliances are all run off-grid powered using solar energy. It definitely is the way of the future, and we should ALL consider unburdening already over utilized state resources so that they can focus on things like cleaning up the gulf of Mexico, improving health-care and education.
Have you installed any green energy systems in your home or office? What do you utilize it for? Do you feel really great doing something for the environment?
read moreSEO: For Chicks!
Hi, my name is Vanessa, and I’m a chick who likes technology.
I don’t presume to understand everything about it, but I’m not afraid of it, and I love to try and understand new technologies and try to utilize them to improve work efficiency, workflow and ultimately improve the lives of work at home moms (WAHMs) and freelancers all around the world.
Many of my graphic design clients are work at home moms, stay at home moms, bloggers, entrepeneurs and small business owners, all of whom are trying to harness the web in some way to improve their business and lives.
So I’m passing on the bit of knowledge that I’ve gleaned from here in there in the hopes that it helps others.
So. SEO. For those who don’t know the term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. A search engine is a web based thingamajig that allows you to search for information and products and just about everything else on the web. The most popular of which of course is Google. Another example of one that is gaining in popularity is Bing, which is a Microsoft product.
So here’s the lowdown at its most basic.
Let’s say you’re an ace at making childrens linen, and you start a business from home making custom linen and develop your own line of products that you want to market on the web.
So you find a designer, get a website made, and then marvel at it’s wonder and beauty.
A week goes by, and you wonder why the phone hasn’t rung, because after all, you just paid a handsome some, for the most beautiful website in the world. Surely folks should be tracking down your ip address, routing it to the GPS and virtually banging down your door to get their hands on your awesome stuff?
So, you go to Google, type in “Custom Childrens Linen”.
…
…
That’s odd, your website isn’t right at the top of the search results.
But why!? It’s a thing of beauty that website!
Hold on a second, it’s not on the second page of results either!
There must be something very wrong!
Surely after a week the traffic should be streaming in!
In fact your website doesn’t get picked up in the first 3.79245 MILLION results.
But rather than throw in the towel, and can the great business idea that was going to let you quit your dayjob, let me tell you that there is something that can be done to help you, and that, my friends, is SEO.
SEO is the very thing (along with a few others in hand) that directly seeks to improve your search engine rankings within search engines like Google and Bing.
At it’s most basic, there are several things you can do right up front.
- Keyword Selection: Choose several phrases that you want your customers to find your website with, when they go to google. i.e. “childrens linen” “childrens bedroom decor” “kids custom linen” “cute bedding for kids” my rule of thumb for all my new web design clients, is to pick ten and work on them. Focus. Analyze the results and either keep at it, or move on.
- Use of Keywords: Then you use those keyword phrases in the content of your website. Not excessively, but repeatedly and in a fashion that is pleasing to read.
- Blog: Yes, every business needs a blog these days. Why? Because search engines pay attention to fresh content. They are far more interested in websites that post new and exciting content (using your keyword phrases) on a regular basis rather than a static website that says it once, and keeps quiet for all eternity.
- Links: Inbound links are the best way of improving a websites ranking, and search engine listings. This means that you should be posting content to your website or blog that is so fresh and hot and interesting, that other folks are creating links to it. See how I linked out to the phrase “work at home mom” in the very beginning of this article? That creates good SEO for the website that I linked to. If a website that is ranked higher than yours, links to you, it counts heavily in your favour, but a link of any kind (except from a spam site), will count in your websites favor.
- Deep Links: Sometimes you post content, and want to refer back to a previous article that you’ve written, or a category of articles. This is great for SEO if you can refer back to your older articles to keep them fresh. When you link to content that you’ve already posted on your own site in the past in order to help folks find information more easily, it’s called Deep Linking. Take a look at the link I created at the very top of the article on the words “work at home moms” that link takes you directly to an article that I wrote about work at home moms and the challenges they face.
There are a multitude of ways in which search engine optimization can help your website and these five that I have listed have really only touched on the tip of the iceberg. For complete help in this area, you need to enlist the help of an SEO specialist, and usually your web designer can put you in touch with one, or will in fact be working in conjunction with one to optimize your site anyway. It’s not however your designers responsibility to provide this service as a matter of course, and should be requested by you. Also, SEO is not an overnight thing. It takes time, and quality interesting content. If you have those two ingredients then success will surely follow.
read moreHome Decor: Construction and Metal Roofing Options
Building your own home seems to be so in vogue right now. Either that or renovating the perennial fixer upper!
With the increase of television shows showing home renovations, it’s clear that the folks who watch TV like this kind of show. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I love those TV shows like Extreme Home Makeover, where someone benefits from a brilliantly constructed new home, and more than that, I love to see all the different options of how to construct certain parts of the house, and the various materials on offer.
Often we think more about the interior of a home, and the materials on offer, but when building or renovating a home, the exterior materials are of more importance at the start of the project as naturally the interior can be dealt with later.
Metal roofing is becoming a popular material for use in roofing, because of the relative low cost factor, as well as the ease of installation of the panels.
New advancements in technology make metal roofing a better choice than ever before, especially since they now offer better protection against possible leakage due to new breakthrough designs in technology. They’re now also virtually maintenance free and offer increased protection against heavy winds and extreme temperatures. Definitely worth investigating as an option for renovating or building your dream home.
read moreWhy You Need to Spend More Time on Facebook: How Social Media Can Connect WAHMs to Their Professional Network
By Guest Blogger, Kristi Gaylord
The benefits of being a work-at-home mom are widely known.
We’re are able to spend heaps of quality time with our kids, avoid shelling out fistfuls of cash for an expensive professional wardrobe, avoid lengthy and stressful commutes, and, perhaps best of all, we can work in our pajamas and slippers, workout gear and sneakers, or jeans and a t-shirt.
The personal and creative freedoms associated with working for ourselves are a big part of why we chose this career path.
Yet despite the many positive aspects of this work situation, there are drawbacks to at-home self-employment. Sometimes attempting to work with young children around (or underfoot, or on our laps) is all but impossible. Sometimes we find it difficult to separate the different spheres of our lives since we both work at home and live at work. And sometimes we feel isolated – cut off from the corporate offices, team-building activities, and coworker banter some of us left behind in pursuit of a more flexible schedule.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Evolving technology has enabled WAHMs to stay connected to the “outside world” in ways not available to us even two years ago. Myriad online tools and resources exist to allow us to connect and network with former coworkers, business partners, clients (both current and potential), and friends across the globe with minimal effort.
Here are some ways we can build our businesses, add clients, connect with others in our field, and stay in touch with friends and former coworkers who can help us grow our professional network.
Join the NessWorld WAHM Alliance
If you’re reading this, chances are you know a little bit about what Vanessa is trying to accomplish. NessWorld is an alliance of WAHMs who want to market their businesses to their local communities. Designed to provide WAHMs with exposure, professional opportunities, and networking capabilities, Vanessa will set up your free profile page, and then help you promote it to your network. You can also access tons of helpful articles about running a business from home, including those on how to create marketing opportunities and advice on how to grow your business while maintaining a good work-life balance. Best of all, you can connect with other moms who are awake with the sun and trying to get some work done before the kids get up.
Boost Your Facebook Time
Yes, that’s right. You need to spend more time on Facebook. This social networking website is more than a place to reconnect with the boy who broke your heart in 11th grade and secretly gloat over the fact that you have aged much better than he has. Create a Facebook page for your business, send your clients and friends invitations to join the page, and post business-related updates on your wall (Think: “Working on an exciting new marketing plan for Company X!” rather than “On my forth shot of tequila and still going strong!”). Fill out your profile with links to your work, share articles that interest your clients, and even market your products by posting special offers or packages.
Get LinkedIn
If you’re not already on LinkedIn, you should be. LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site that allows users to create and maintain a list of business contacts. The contacts are called Connections, and users can also see those connected to members of their contact list (similar to the Friend Lists of your Facebook friends). This helps you broaden your own professional contacts or client base. Ask a happy client, or a former manager or co-worker to write you a glowing recommendation to appear on your page, and you have an online business profile available to your entire business network, and their connections as well.
Get Your Tweet On With Twitter
As it is with the other social media tools, Twitter has radically changed the way we communicate. It’s a great way to let your network of friends and business contacts know about a new project, informally collaborate with others in your field, or reach out to friends when you’re having a tough day at the “office.” Tweets are short (140 characters or fewer), quick, and to-the-point, and can instantly relay information to both your personal and professional networks.
In many ways, working from home sounds like the ideal situation for moms. But staying connected to the professional world many of us left behind is challenging when the demands of our families and jobs eat up most of day. Social media tools allow you to quickly and easily harness the awesome connective power of the Internet and put it to work for you and your business.
read moreWAHM: Staying Organised
So you’re a mom. You have kids, you work from home, and just when everything is going fantastically well, you get a bunch of holidays thrown into the mix, a pile of wonderful work that is both challenging and exciting, and you really have no idea how you’re going to get everything done. Then, one of the kids gets the flu, and well, the craziness ensues.
Welcome to the life of a Work At Home Mom!
Just when women were breaking through glass ceilings in the corporate arena, all over the world, we go and decide that it’s not enough to simply become managers and She-E-Os, but now, we *really* want to have it all, and we go and give ourselves the most difficult position of all.
It’s called, ‘I-Want-It-All’-syndrome, and it affects women who have left the corporate world, to have kids, and then decide to work from home. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do from home, but if it’s work that brings you a much appreciated income, and you arrange your schedule around the needs of your children and spouse, and you have a household to run as well (those without full time cleaners and nannies – yes that’s us!), then congratulations! You’ve just signed up for the ride of your life. A rollercoaster ride that will be absolutely exhilarating in places, downright terrifying in others, and best of all, you-cannot-get-off.
Hurray!
The key, to maintaining at best a sense of calm, and at worst, simply your sanity, I have found, is organisation.
Keeping your life organised through the use both real and electronic diary’s, calendar applications etc is absolutely essential to maintain order.
My own personal system consists of a regular diary in which I plan my day using a pencil.
Call it a first draft if you will. A statement of intent.
It’s also the place where I jot down any information taken down during the day, like telephone number from new contacts etc. It might sound archaic in this digital age, but I prefer to think of it as a fail-safe back up, in the event of a power failure.
From here I transfer any contact details into Apple “Address Book” application, and any appointments into iCal, Apples built in Calendar application.
Even though these are perfectly good standalone applications, they also work fantastically well together, and of course, your mail application also works seamlessly with both of these in terms of accessing email addresses and confirming appointments.
Even better, they can also be sync-ed with an iPhone and also Blackberry (which I do) so you carry all your contacts, to-do’s and appointments around with you in your handbag.
It definitely makes life a lot easier, and a lot less stressful, and you are less likely to forget things if they are easily accessible on an item like a smartphone. I set my reminders with alarms so that whether I am sitting in front of the iMac, or out doing a quick grocery shop, or on a school run, that I am is instantly reminded of tasks which require completion.
It is in this spirit of organisation, and efficiency, that I have decided to set up a weekly posting schedule on NessWorld, rather than trying to keep up a daily post. That way you’ll always know when to tune in for the latest updates, and I have a whole week to work on a post that is helpful, informative and as chock-full of information and news as possible.
Kicking off the weekly postings, which will be on Tuesdays, will be a guest post, from highly esteemed blogger and professional writer, Kristi Gaylord who is a WAHM with a pre-schooler, and toddler twins!
In Kristi’s post tomorrow, she talks about the benefits of social media marketing for WAHMs, and how we can use it for networking to support one another.
Check back tomorrow!
read moreOnline Grocery Shopping: Saving a Packet, or A Total Racket?
This week I decided to try online shopping. For groceries rather than the kind of items that one would usually shop for online, i.e. dvd’s cd’s etc.
With both kids home during the school holidays, the idea of loading up the car with all assorted paraphernalia simply to pop to the shops for groceries, having to wrangle them both into a trolley and then having no space left to actually put stuff, *really* didn’t appeal to me.
You know what I mean right?
So I thought I would give one of our local stores the benefit of trying out their online shopping facility.
The website in question was easy to use, and fast to figure out the navigation, and I was able to get my shopping fairly quickly.
The whole process really opened my eyes to the possibilities and pitfalls of the concept and I thought that sharing my experience might help others avoid the potholes on the virtual super highway.
Whether or not you choose to shop for groceries and basic necessities online, boils down to what you find more valuable to you.
Time vs Money
This is the question you should ask yourself:
If you are able to save an hour by shopping online, is that one hour more valuable to you, in terms of using the time to earn money by working on a project (if you’re a WAHM), than if you were to down tools, and go directly to the store to save money by finding bargains and specials that are not online. Consider everything right down to the gas/petrol required to get to the store, the distance travelled, the energy expended etc.
Here are some other pointers that can help you to improve your time management and cost saving ratio as well as some other interesting facts about doing grocery shopping online.
- Make a Menu Plan: Do not deviate from that plan. Download our handy meal planner to help you plan out a weeks meals in advance. It can be used in both Excel or Open Office, and is fully customizable and free.
- Shops with a List: From now on that is your Indian name. Make a list for groceries, based solely on your meal planner (did you download it yet?) and on any additional cleaning materials, other household items you may need. Ladies, chocolate is not a necessary household item, nor can it be categorized under ‘cleaning materials’, no matter how much you’d like it to.
- Do not browse: Browsing unnecessarily leads to spending unnecessarily. Yes the boxes are pretty. Yes the pictures are colourful, but IGNORE them. You have a list. You are “Shops with a List” remember?
- Environmentally Friendly: Consider that if 20 people shop online, that would otherwise have driven cars to the store, you are actually saving some bad emissions from being released into the air. Yes, the delivery guy still has to drive to your house, but take one car versus twenty? Basic math says you’re helping the environment.
- Temptation Not: You won’t be tempted by the freshly baked cinnamon rolls and coffee if you can’t smell them right?
The Down Side: There is also a down side of course, and by shopping online, you will not be able to see any specials that are only available in store. Items that might have been marked down are not listed on online grocery store sites, so where you could save quite a bit by buying bananas that are ripe right now, and needing to be sold immediately at rock bottom prices.
- Premium Only: Sometimes when you shop online at a big online retailer for groceries, all orders are received at a centralized depot, and very often they will only carry the premium brand version of the product that you are looking for. So where at your local store you may have as many as three to four different brands of nappies available to choose from, they may only carry the most expensive premium brand. Ditto Olive Oil. Ditto Chocolate. But chocolate wasn’t on your list though right?
- Expiry Dates: My online retailer has a feature which allows me to send a note to the ‘personal shopper’ who will be picking out the products for me. I use this to instruct them to please select the item that has the expiry date as far in the future as possible i.e. milk/bread/meat. Failure to do that, results in the products I’m ordering to be expiring within a day or two of them being delivered. Fact.
- Package Sizes: This again, is probably not the same at each retailer, but watch the package sizes carefully. You may be buzzing to discover this amazing bargan! Then when you receive it, you realise that it’s because you ordered the 100g bag instead of the 250g bag. If you aren’t there in person, at least read the fine print.
- Bulk Bargains: Be aware of the bulk bargain trap. Buying the larger item in order to save money, isn’t always cheaper! Make sure you work out the difference in price per pound/kilo/gram before selecting the bulk option. Fact.
- Local Products: This is a thorny issue as we all have it drummed into us that we should buy local products. I understand why. But I do not endorse this when the premium foreign brand is double the quality of the local one, and half the price. Fact. Yes, I’m talking about Tate & Lyle Demerara Sugar Cubes (ZAR 17.99) vs Hulettes Brown Sugar Cubes (R34.99). There is JUST no excuse for this sort of pricing, carbon foot print or not. If local brands want to compete, they’d better do so on equal footing. Charging double the price and hoping to guilt us into buying it will NOT fly with me or any of the other consumers I know.
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