Win a MissNowMrs. Gift Car

d! Bride’s Name Change Service! A perfect gift for a Bridal Shower or Holiday Gift for a New Bride!

Contest Ends Monday night!

I spend most days working alone in my home office and never really spending time with people and I realize I need to get out more!

Buy the way, I bought the new Motorola Droid 2.  I’ll let you know how I like it.

These entrepreneurs are enthusiastic and eager to start but, there’s lots of planning to do and “Miles to go before I sleep”!

If you’d like to join us, leave a comment below!

I’ve gotten a few responses and I hope to start talking to people soon.  First time I’ve been enthusiastic about anything in weeks!

Christy and I have exchanged a giveaway and have begun chatting about other ways to help each others sites. As an affiliate marketer, giveaways are tough for me. I don’t have any products and have to beg my merchants to give me something that I can send to giveaway sites. It’s just one more thing I need to learn more about in order to improve my sites.

Thanks, Christy for sharing your story with Busy Women Direct!  I hope all our readers jump on The Giveaway Train!

Do you have a story about becoming a Mompreneur?  Please share it with us!

Some of the offers online sound like the guy screaming on a cable commercial “Get rich quick by using my plan for getting $1000 affiliate commissions by midnight!”.  Others are just boring lists of what to do and what not to do to be a successful internet marketer; however, I did find some that seem promising.

Affiliate Business Blueprint
How to Promote Product Launches

I’ll be checking out many of these in the coming weeks and I’ll report back to you about what I find.

Please leave a comments or idea!

By Laurie Cohen

My guess is that there isn’t a website owner among us who wouldn’t like to increase traffic to their website.  I’ve tried many methods, guest blogs, reciprocal links, social marketing and others, but the one that seems to work the best is posting a contest or giveaway.  It’s time consuming, but usually brings in the new subscribers that we need to keep our websites growing.

Here are some tips for creating a giveaway:

Select a Prize-Find a product from either your inventory or from a vendor; many vendors are more than willing to donate a prize for a giveaway. From my experience, if it’s less than $50, it won’t attract many people.

Gather Your Information-

• Write up a description of your prize, create a page on your site to list the product description and contest rules.
• Add a photo of the product, the dollar value and, if the product is from a company, other than your own, the merchants name.
• Create your contest rules (contest dates, required information, age, how many times someone can enter, legalities).
• I also add a disclaimer at the bottom of my giveaway page:”

o   *Please note that by entering our contests you are subscribing to the online mailing list of Deerfield Marketing Associates, the parent company of ForBrideandBaby.com, BirthdayPartyKidz.com and HalloweenKidz.com Your information is safe with us! After subscribing, you will receive our weekly exclusive subscriber coupons, be eligible to win our current monthly contests, and you will receive our subscriber newsletter. To avoid unwanted emails, be sure to add your interest to your profile on the welcome email you will receive.”

• Copy your sign up script from your (how people subscribe to your newsletter) to this page and instruct your visitors to subscribe to your site to be eligible.  Remember: THE GOAL IS TO GET NEW SUBSCRIBERS

Promote Your Giveaway-

• Add a blurb or graphic to your home page promoting and linking to the contest page.
• Gather a list of sites that allow you to submit you’re your contest for free. These sites will require that you add a link on your site back to them.  You can create a separate web page for this and it can easily be just text links. Try to find sites that are in your niche, such as “Contests for Moms”
• Cut and paste the information you have gathered into the contest site forms.  They will ask for URL’s of your contest page, links page, and some may ask for a “winner’s page”.
• Send an email letter to your existing subscribers offering to enter them in the contest in exchange for them updating their profile.  This helps you clean your mailing list and validate email information while gathering more information in exchange for a prize entry.

Don’t get discouraged if the process seems to take a long time. It took me a few months to get into the rhythm of creating a giveaway and promoting it, but it’s been worth it.  Most of my giveaways generates anywhere from 50-200 new subscribers depending on the product and it’s value.  There was, of course, one that didn’t get a single subscriber…I’ve yet to understand why, but, as in all marketing, it’s trial and error.  Just hang in there and find what works for and your website. Keep experimenting and trying new things because websites are like our kids, they need to be nurtured and they never get boring!

This article was originally published June 8th, 2009,  on Home-Based Working Moms eNewsletter

Save Money and Your  Exercise Your Brain – June, 2009

We have all heard these two  statements: “The brain is a muscle and needs to be used” and “If I only could do that myself, I could save a lot of money”.  Learning new things keeps our brains actively exercised and saving money is important when you own a small business, so let’s talk about combining these two activities .

If you’re not a computer person, get yourself an old fashioned steno notebook.  Keep your notes ALL in there, use one side only and when that side is done, flip the notebook over and start on the other.  When the notebook is full, date it, and put it away.  I’ve got notebooks from last year and refer to them often to find things I knew I had.

To organize your notes on your computer, start by preparing an “Instructions folder” on your computer.  You can do this either in your email program or in the root directory of your computer or, To add an instructions folder to  Outlook or a similar program go to “Inbox” , right click, click New Folder, title your folder “Instructions”.  When you close, you’ll see that Outlook now has it’s own place to keep all those little notes that people give you about how to do this and how to do that.  Now, you can simply drag any emails containing instruction into this folder so   you can review them in the future.  If your email program doesn’t have a similar feature, to create a folder on you computer, you can add one to My Documents by right clicking in the document box and  selecting “New”,  “Folder”.  Of course, I’m a PC, so if you are a Mac, you are on your own!

Now that you  have your folder  (I also keep a printed version in a 3 ring binder), what kind of information should  you save?  Every tidbit, morsel, and long description of anything you would like to repeat in the future.  Unlike other professionals who like to keep secrets, people who work at their computers all day will gladly spend lots of time explaining to you what they did and how they did it, so take notes and keep them.  Also, be willing to share you own information.  The more you give to others, the more they will give back.

Here’s a great example of using stored information.  I needed a new Twitter page and am just learning how to create graphics properly, but I remembered someone telling me the sizes need for a Twitter page and found that in my instructions folder.  It came from a simple email with a colleague.  Armed with this information, I decided to use my brain to figure out the rest.  About an hour later I had a twitter page and I had step-by-step instructions of how I did it.  That information is now printed in my notebook, documented in my instructions file and ready to use the next time I want a new Twitter page or someone else does. By the way, feel free to tweet me at Celebrationz4U on Twitter and I’ll gladly share any information I have with you!

Here’s the key secret to making this work…ask questions.  If you are asked to send a graphic to someone, ask: What size do you need?  What resolution?  What format?  Questions like these give you keywords to explore when finding instructions on how to do something. Then Google the info and you’ll be amazed what you find. Don’t be afraid to try something new, you’re a businesswoman and a mom, you can do anything and learn new things every day, saves money and exercises your brain.  When you are speaking with someone with whom you have developed a rapport, ask “What does your job entail?”  Let them know you are interested.  Tell them what you do extremely well at and offer  to share information.  You’ll be surprised at what great info you’ll get and, as a side benefit, what good friends you’ll make.

New footnotes: Over the years since I wrote this as new website owner, I’ve come to learn one other important lesson…do what you are best at..if the job entails some skill you know you just haven’t mastered, hire someone to do it.  In the end, it’s much cheaper!

I am just not sure whether it’s my site or just the economy.  I have learned one thing, though, it’s time to cut out the extra work that costs money and cuts back on profits.  As I look at what to do moving forward as a website owner, I am going to take a very close look at what worked in the past and what didn’t.  I think that working on four websites at once, clouded my judgment and is totally unrealistic.  It’s time for a new game plan!