Even when I started out working at home for another company and I had set hours and a supervisor telling me what to do, it was still stressful. Working in an office allowed me to forget about all of the stuff I needed to do at home. I could sit at my desk without seeing the pile of dishes that needed to be done. I wasn’t distracted by the TV or tempted by my cozy blanket and paperback book on the couch next to me.

Then when I decided to work for myself instead of someone else, it became even more stressful. That security of a steady income meant I had to constantly worry about being able to pay rent or buy groceries for the week and finding enough clients to make that happen. And we won’t even talk about those days when the kids are out of school or, for some of you, having kids who aren’t yet school age.

Those visions of work at home bliss sure don’t last very long. Over the past year and a half, I’ve learned that you have to make a conscious effort to reduce and maybe even eliminate some of the chaos that goes along with working at home.

Here are five ways to hang on to your sanity while working at home:

Automate – There are so many tools out there to help you automate some of your tasks, whether they’re business related or domestic. Let’s take the TV distraction as an example. I admit, I’m one of those people that needs background noise so my TV stays on almost all day even if I’m not paying attention to it. However, I have gotten hooked on some daytime shows. Instead of letting my mind wander off, I got into the habit of using a DVR to record the shows and I watch them when I’m not working.  As far as business, take advantage of tools that will allow you to automatically schedule blog posts to publish on specific days. Do most or all of your writing in one shot then spread them out so that you’re not having to remember to go back and publish them.

Outsource – My business is built on outsourcing. I started out as a Virtual Assistant, handling tasks that my clients didn’t need to do themselves. I still make my living from people who are outsourcing tasks that they don’t know how to do or that they just don’t have the time to do. For example, through Rock Star Blog Design, I build and customize Word Press sites for people who aren’t technically inclined and have no desire (or the time) to do it themselves. So instead of wasting their valuable time trying to figure it out, they’ll hire someone like me to do it. And we all know how stressful technology can be, even for us tech geeks out there!

Take a break – It’s very easy to get sucked into the Internet all day long. I know I’m not the only at-home worker out there who has looked at the clock and realized it’s 10 pm and I haven’t showered all day. I’ll also confess to spending an entire day in my pajamas. And, yes, I’ve even forgotten to eat which is pretty bad considering how much I LOVE food. So I finally scheduled a break into my day, sometimes 2 or 3. During the day, I’ll play around on Facebook apps (Farmville anyone??) or on the game site, Pogo. At night, I’ll read a NON-BUSINESS RELATED (very important!!) book or magazine. (Just picked up the 4th Sookie Stackhouse book a few days ago!)

Be sociable – Just because so many people are using Twitter and Facebook for business doesn’t mean you can’t use it to socialize too. In fact, some of that socializing can lead to finding new clients or partners, but don’t let that become the motive for your friendly interactions. While I do have a lot of business acquaintances on my Facebook list, I also have family members, old friends, and local people on there too and I sometimes I’ll just hang out and chat with them.

Do something – It’s really easy to become a hermit when you work at home and you’re also going to find yourself facing bouts of laziness. The best way to avoid that is physical activity. In a recent post at Web Worker Daily, the author Dawn Foster talks about 4 tips for holiday season stress reduction. One of the tips she mentions is exercise. Even something as simple as a 30 minute walk around the block will make a big difference.

I’ll admit, I don’t always do these myself so I know how hard they can be. Just remind yourself to do it, schedule it into your calendar, and keep at it until it becomes a habit. (Here’s a great write-up about a service called Habitforge that will show you how to do just that, based upon the idea that it takes at least 21 days to create a new habit or break an old one.)

I’d love to hear about your own stress reduction tips! What are you doing to hang on to your sanity? Leave a comment and let me know.

Related posts:

1. Questions about working at home

What’s remarkable about it is that he’s doing as part of a project that’s a perfect example of the way social media and the potential for businesses – whether it’s a band, a bookstore, a yoga class – to reach a global audience because of the interactivity involved.

Here’s a brief description of the project:

• Download music tracks
• Record your own ideas
• Upload for worldwide release

The tagline of The Public Record site says it’s “the first large-scale, truly interactive recording process”. and at the wheel of it is Tommy Lee – yes, the guy with the sex tape but more importantly the drummer for Mötley Crüe. Tommy is giving musicians across the world an opportunity to record the next CD, “Public Mayhem”, by Methods of Mayhem.

As some of you know, I combined my love of both music and social media to form Cherry Bomb Promo and help bands use the Internet to their advantage when it comes to promoting their music. So The Public Record just totally excites me. There are so many bands out there that still have no clue how social media can work for them. In fact, a lot of them don’t even know what social media is. They don’t have Twitter accounts or Facebook fan pages and that’s why they come to me.

So how does this apply to us non-musicians?

Thanks to social media, we all have access to some amazing opportunities – everything from Black Friday deals last week to job opportunities with major corporations or, as in this case, recording with a major rock star. Some you have to look for, some just kind of fall into your lap.

When you do run across these opportunities, be open to them! We all have our obstacles – a fear of failure, a fear of success, anxiety over not being good enough. Face those fears and do it anyway.

Think back to some opportunities you’ve had in your own business. Did you pass any of them by out of fear? Did you grab onto them? What happened as a result? Did it improve your business or did you learn from something that didn’t work out?

I’d love to hear about your own experiences with opportunities. To get the conversation, I’ll share two important results I’ve had.

After one opportunity, one of those that seemed like fate, I learned not to settle for less than I deserve based on promises for something better in the future. I lost a lot of money and my kids and I suffered for it because I was foolish enough to put someone else’s needs before my own when the situation didn’t justify doing so.

After another opportunity, I learned that I was better than I thought at doing something I was afraid I was clueless about and I’m quickly realizing that I’m not only better than I thought, I’m actually pretty damn good at it!

Related posts:

1. Refocusing
2. My guest post on WAHM 2.0

With all due respect to Jason and to Inc. it was a pretty boring piece. You know how people complain about those mundane Twitter updates about what someone had for breakfast? That’s kinda what this article is like.

Except for this quote from Jason:

It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything.

Thank you!! That’s got to be the most intelligent tidbit of common sense I’ve heard in a long time. Since when did success depend on how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have? Unless you’re actually having some kind of influence on all of those fans and followers, Jason is right…this crap doesn’t mean anything.

Quantity versus Quality

Take someone like Lynn Terry, for example. At the time of this post, Lynn has over 9,000 followers on Twitter. Sure, that’s impressive although when you look at someone like Darren Rowse a/k/a ProBlogger, it may not seem like a lot. But when you look at WHY Lynn Terry has that many then you can start translating those numbers into how successful she is. She doesn’t have that many followers because she spends all day on Twitter trying to pump up those numbers. Most of her followers are people who read her blog or have a membership at her Self Starters forum. She is successful because she provides value to her readers, subscribers, members and followers. She is successful because she learned the hard way what it takes to make money online and she continues to learn and share what she’s learned with those 9,000+ people. Lynn is successful because she is working.

On the other hand, I’ve seen people with just as many followers, if not more, who really don’t seem to be doing anything. I check my list of followers regularly and, before I decide to follow someone back, I check their Twitter updates. I don’t look at their numbers and think “Wow, they’ve got 13,000 followers, they must really be Someone Important!” I look at what they’re actually doing on Twitter. Are they interacting with followers and giving suggestions or advice? Or are they just spewing out their affiliate links for the Next Big Thing or sharing links to their own blog posts hoping that at least a handful of those 13,000 people will read it?

Having a ton of followers or fans is another one of those “quality vs. quantity” arguments. It’s about the message, not how many people you can shout it out to.

It’s NOT a Numbers Game

Don’t get all caught up in the numbers. Don’t compare yourself to other people and think they’re doing better than you because they have more followers. Look at it this way… if they’ve got all of that free time on their hands to spend on Twitter then they must not have very much work keeping them busy. Unless someone is paying them based on how many followers they have – and I know some of these ads or sponsors or PR people do take things like that into consideration but they’ll learn – then it just doesn’t equal success.

The next time you’re checking your own Twitter profile and you find yourself obsessing over how many followers you’ve gained or lost, ask yourself: Would I rather have 500 people who actually care about what I have to say or 5,000 people who don’t even listen to me?

No related posts.

One particular piece of advice I remember getting that went against everything else I’d been learning was that, if you’re running a service-based business, you shouldn’t be worrying about blogging. The advice-giver said it was just one more thing you’d have to fit into your schedule and gave an example of one particular service-provider who had plenty of business yet they don’t even have a blog.

This didn’t really sit well with me but every time I’ve started to feel guilty for letting my blog go stale, that little piece of advice would pop into my head and I would wonder “do I really need to be blogging regularly anyway?”

Since I don’t have an answer to this question, I decided to ask people I trust and admire: Michael Martine, Grant Griffiths, John Haydon, and Danny Brown.

When I say “ask”, what I really mean is that I fired off an email at 1:30 a.m. sucking up to them and telling them how awesome I think they are (I do!) and by the time I woke up and checked my email this morning, they had all taken the time to respond which really says a lot about what kind of people they are to take time out of their late-Friday/early-Saturday to share their thoughts with me. Great guys, I tell ya.

Ok, enough of my rambling….here’s what they had to say:

From Michael Martine

You need to be blogging regularly if the date of post publication shows, because people have a bias against what they perceive as “old” information on the web. If you’re not displaying dates, then it doesn’t matter as much, but it still matters. The reason why it still matters is that regularly updated sites get crawled and indexed more frequently by Google, and this is generally better for your search rank position (provided you’re doing other necessary search optimization tasks). If you’re using WordPress self-hosted and you have the Google XML Sitemap plugin (which you should), then you can alter its settings to tell Google to crawl your content according to the frequency with which you publish.

People crave consistency, so establishing a rhythm is key, regardless of how many times a week you post. Posting frequently means you’ll generate more content at a faster pace, and the more relevant content found via search, the better for a site’s search ranking.

Your readers will respond favorably or unfavorably to changes in posting. Pay attention to their reactions, and adjust accordingly. On Remarkablogger, the majority of my readers indicated in a poll they’d rather receive larger doses of content less frequently. When I delivered, my numbers shot through the roof. You’d think posting less frequently would mean less traffic, but that has not been case. I now receive more traffic.

From Grant Griffiths

Short answer, yes.  And to even be more knee jerky, why wouldn’t you want to post regularly if you have a service-based business?

A service business is just that, it is a business.  And like any business, you want to market and promote your business.  You want to be found and you also want to be known as the place to go for information about your particular type of service-based business.

In fact, it has been shown that in today’s business world, 75% of those looking for a service-based business are going to the internet to find what they need.  And if you have a presence online, you are going to be found. But, more than that, you need to make sure you can be found and blogging will accomplish this.

Blogging as a service-based business on a regular basis also positions you as a thought leader or opinion shaper in your particular area of service.  There is no reason that a service-based business should not be blogging on a regular basis.

From John Haydon

Yes, yes yes! In order to create trust with folks, you need to give them value first – then they buy. Blog  posts (to me) are ways to give away free stuff to thousands of people at a low cost (you write the post only once, but it gets read a thousand times). You’ll notice that all of the successful real estate agents teach people how to buy a home or select a mortgage.

The second reason is SEO. I rank #1 on Google for “how to make a Facebook Page”. Part of that result is due to the sheer amount of posts I have on Facebook. I’m no expert, but I think Google also looks at how current an article is.

Note: John also followed up his email with a link to this post about relationship management.

From Danny Brown

I’d say you need to be blogging as regularly as you have something worthwhile to share to your readers (whether they’re potential clients or not). It doesn’t even have to be about your particular service, but an off-shoot of it that’s still relevant. It’s a great way of showing your skill sets, knowledge and passion all under one cool roof. But… if it’s just filler for filler’s sake, this will come across and put you back a bit.

So… yes, but only if it’s “worth it”.

Now watch the other guys completely contradict me

Nope, Danny, they didn’t! In fact, all four of you gave some great advice! And it confirms some of my own thoughts, especially when it comes to two of the main reasons I think blogging is a great “tool” for marketing your business – you’re providing fresh content for the purpose of search engine ranking and you’re providing value to your clients and readers who may become clients.

Thanks again to Michael, Grant, John and Danny!

To anyone else who may be reading, what do you think? Do you have a service-based business? If so, how has blogging (or not blogging) affected your business? If you don’t have a service-based business but you’re a consumer, would it influence your selection of a provider if they were blogging regularly?

Related posts:

1. Secrets of WordPress and SEO
2. Headway theme rocks my world…and my blog
3. Nominations for Twitter “Must Follow” List

Today I unsubscribed from the list of a major, well-known Internet Marketer. Why? Because of the subject line of his email… “Copywriter Commits Suicide?”

I understand that you’re supposed to use your subject line to catch their attention and stimulate emotion but sometimes the reaction your subject line gets may not be the reaction you wanted. Sure, I opened his email instead of deleting it…but that was just to get to the unsubscribe link.

Did the copywriter whose product this marketer is trying to sell actually kill himself? No. It was a reference to “professional suicide” which he’s supposedly doing by giving something away for free.

So why make light of something as serious as suicide just to earn some affiliate commissions? Is it really that effective? I’d love to find out his stats and see how many of those emails were even opened and if there were others that unsubscribed.

There are better ways than this to write attention-getting subject lines. And if you’re delivering quality products and valuable information to your clients and customers, they’re going to open your email and read it no matter what the subject line is.

In fact, I don’t even pay attention to headlines. I check to see who its from, because there are certain marketers I trust…and one that would use a sensitive topic like suicide for profit isn’t on that list. I don’t care how rich he is or how many others may trust him. I don’t.

P.S. Avoid the cuss words in subject lines too…unless you’re Frank Kern.

Related posts:

1. Failure to deliver

Actually, I say “running” your business but your target market should be something you figure out when you’re starting your business. Looking back at the planning I did when I started my own business, I didn’t realize what a huge piece of the puzzle I was missing by not doing more research and carefully considering and evaluating my target market.

When someone asks you who your target market is, what’s your answer? (If it’s “I don’t know”, we need to talk!) Do you just have a one or two word response? If it takes you a nanosecond to answer that question, you probably haven’t put enough thought into it. Your answer should be something more than “parents” or “small business owners” or “work at home moms”!

Don’t just write out a list…try to really picture your ideal client. What is their day like? Are they busy? Are they checking their Blackberry while they brush their teeth and taking conference calls on their Bluetooth on the way to their corner office downtown? Or are they so busy with kids and school and appointments and carpooling that they haven’t had time to check their email in a week!?

One of the first questions people will ask when thinking about their target market is “How much income do they have?” Take that a step further and ask yourself what are they spending their money on. Do they travel? Do they invest? Do they splurge? If you’re marketing some kind of luxury item, you may not get very far with the frugal types. But if you’ve got some kind of info product or other item that helps people save money, then frugal folks are your friend!

There are plenty of outside-the-box questions you can ask when you’re evaluating your target market. Instead of listing what kind of job they may have, think about what they do on the weekends. What are their hobbies? Would they rather read People magazine than the Wall Street Journal?

You get the idea, right? Don’t just make a list…create a character!

Oh, and once you’ve chosen a target market, don’t think of it as being set in stone. Times change, needs change, even your business changes. If you’re feeling stuck or like your business has hit a plateau and you still feel like there’s room to grow, go back and revisit this process. You may benefit from  changing your target market, adding an additional one, or just try to get to know your existing market a little bit better.

No related posts.

Now on the surface, it may not be obvious why I’m just so tickled with Headway because you’re just seeing the standard stuff – header, sidebar, posts, footer. The beauty of it is under the hood. Kinda like seeing a beat up rusty old Camaro then popping the hood and seeing an absolutely immaculate 502 big block engine! (Ladies, keep reading, I’ll have an analogy that makes more sense in a minute.)

But you can’t make a car look pretty just by throwing a kickass engine in it. So just imagine if, by turning the key in the ignition, the exterior magically transformed and you were left with a shiny custom paint job. That’s how easy Headway is! Well, not literally…but close.

From the minute I installed the Headway theme, it took me all of about 30 minutes to get it looking the way I wanted. Thanks to a “drag and drop” layout editor and theme options that allow you to choose font styles, size and colors right from the menu, what usually takes me a couple of hours was done in a fraction of the time.

I didn’t have to tinker around the CSS at all. In fact, I only added one single line of code and that was to use a tiled background image instead of a solid color. One. Freaking. Line.  You can also edit each page’s layout so that, for example, your ‘About‘ page doesn’t have a sidebar but your ‘Blog’ page does.

Now, with all of that time I saved, I spent some time playing around with different layouts, widths, colors and other style changes. Changes are easily made, whether its the location of your navigation bar or whether the ‘Comments’ link on each post goes under the post title or to the right of it. No minor detail overlooked! Even adding a favicon (that little image that shows up in your browser’s menu bar when you visit a webpage) was as easy as just pasting the link to the location of your icon file.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it that I haven’t discovered yet and I had to force myself to move away from the laptop because anyone who knows me knows how much I love customizing WordPress blogs. I can totally see myself changing my blog design like I change purses. (See, ladies? You know what I mean, right?)

Don’t just take my word for it. I want you to see what others have said about Headway and how they’ve customized their own blogs using it.

• Here’s my good friend John Haydon’s post about why he switched to Headway. He’s got some great videos that will let you take a peek under the hood. (See the differences in how his blog looks compared to mine? Headway works great for both business and personal blogs…not that mine’s “personal” but it certainly doesn’t look as ‘professional’ as John’s.)
• Danny Brown is also using Headway but not just as a blog theme. He’s donating 50% of any profits he makes from affiliate links to the 12for12k.org charity.
• And another post from another friend, Michael Martine a/k/a Remarkablogger who, even though he’s a devoted Thesis user and has not switched, is still very impressed with Headway and has a better detailed explanation of why than I do.
• Of course, you can always get more details and take a tour at the Headway Theme website.

P.S. Just a quick disclaimer…yes, those are affiliate links and I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase Headway through those links. My opinion of Headway, however, would be just as high even if I never made a single penny from singing its praises.

Related posts:

1. Secrets of WordPress and SEO
2. Do you need to blog regularly if you have a service-based business?
3. Why I switched from GoDaddy to Name.com

Transferring domains is a lot more of a pain than I thought it would be. There’s all of this back-and-forth between the old registrar, the new one, the people who do the private domain registration thing… but its finally done! And I now have one less domain registered with GoDaddy.

I’ve been transitioning all of my domains over to Name.com for a while now – I have about 30 domains – and I’m down to about 4 left that haven’t been moved yet. Someone asked me on Twitter the other day why I switched.

My response? Name.com is extremely simple. The layout of the account management page is very clean, navigation is uncomplicated. Take a look at this screen shot comparison. The first image is what Name.com looks like when I log in and click on “Account” at the top. On the right, GoDaddy.

(Click thumbnails for larger images.)

Now, maybe its just me, but GoDaddy is much more complicated when it comes to navigation. Actually, the way it looks now is a recent improvement. It used to be a lot worse but it looks like they’ve cleared out some – but not all – of the clutter and extra menus. Without bogging down this post with a bunch of screen shots, I’ll just tell you that something like changing the nameservers on a domain takes about 2 clicks of the mouse. First, on the menu on the right, click on Edit Nameservers, then enter the new nameservers and click ‘Submit’. Oops, almost forgot….it’s actually 3 clicks because you have to click ‘Remove’ to get rid of the old ones.

On GoDaddy, I’d have to sit here and stare at the screen for a couple of minutes to try and remember where I even go to start the whole process. Do I look under the “Domains” drop down menu across the top of the screen? Do I look under “My Products” on the left and then click on “Domains” or “Domain Manager”….?

There are also a few other reasons why I’ve been moving all of my domains to Name.com, including:

• Google App integration
• Free (and simple!!) private WhoIs registration
• Cheaper prices on renewals and transfers
• Quick & personal customer support

Anyway…all of that just to tell you why AprilTara.com was down for a few days. And if you’re a domain addict like I am, try Name.com next time. No affiliate links or anything here, just personal opinion.

No related posts.

Now that I’m back on track, I’ll be posting more often and I’ll be doing some guest blogging for others so keep an eye out for those!

Basically, I’ve spent the past year struggling to obtain and then maintain a decent income from my own business..and it just became way too stressful and overwhelming! Between the economy and the constant struggle to find more clients and projects (plus some “brain fog” issues caused by my health situation), I was burning out FAST.

Now instead of struggling to keep my head above water and get my bills paid, I’ve taken on an amazing job that was a perfect fit for me – combining my tech skills and my interest in both marketing and the legal field – that will allow me to keep my business albeit on a part time basis yet still have a steady income. In addition, I’m also doing some work on the side helping local bands create and manage an online social network to promote their music.

So what am I going to do with my blog? Well, since there’s really not much need for a blog over at my business site, I’m going to use AprilTara.com to share what I’ve learned over the past year while building my business as well as any advice I have as a result of my experiences and any resources I may have or that my colleagues and social media friends send my way.

Thanks for your patience and, as always, if you have any comments or questions, you can email me at April@AprilTara.com

No related posts.

Twitter is basically just a simple form of communication, much like the telephone.  Do you need anyone to tell you how to use the phone? Didn’t think so. So why do you need someone to tell you how to use Twitter? You don’t.

Just use some common sense.

Remember that Twitter is a public place. Anyone can see it once you’ve posted it, even if you delete it later. “Anyone” includes your boss, your ex-spouse, your babysitter, your neighbor, your son’s soccer coach, your mother-in-law, your daughter’s boyfriend…not just now but in the future too. So don’t say anything that you don’t want to become public knowledge.

Have a personality.

When I gain a new follower, I do a quick scan of their latest tweets. There are a few things I look for:

• Are they updating often, or do their last tweets say things like “Happy Thanksgiving” or “Merry Christmas”?
• Are they carrying on conversations, or are their tweets just about the mundane details of their own life?
• Are they just here to spam everyone by posting nothing but links to a sales page or blog post?

If you’re not interacting on a consistent basis and contributing to conversations, then your Twitter account is just going to be very dull. Even if your tweets contain inspirational quotes and similar Deep Thoughts, its still just lifeless. When you log in to your Twitter account, think of it as walking into an informal dinner party or some kind of social gathering. You wouldn’t stand there talking to the wall about what you made for dinner every night last week, and you wouldn’t stand on a chair in the middle of the room spouting off scripture or random quotes from the latest Oprah book club selection.

I’m not saying that every tweet has to be an @ reply and that you shouldn’t share an inspiring thought or two. Conversations have to start somewhere, right?

So as long as you’re not totally blowing it like this chick who cost herself a job offer with just one Twitter post, don’t keep wasting your time reading every new blog post or e-book about “How To Use Twitter.” Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.

P.S. There are always exceptions, of course. Those blog posts that tell you how to use new Twitter tools or those Twitter accounts that post things like limited time kickass deals or breaking news can be a good thing.

Related posts:

1. Nominations for Twitter “Must Follow” List
2. Measuring success