I’m finally getting good at this stuff. I had a goal in the past of just submitting 20 links to directories per week, whether it was one site to 20 different directories or several sites to several directories. But now I’ve speeded things up and can do those submissions in so little time that I’m hoping to do 20-40 submissions a day until I work my way through my list of sites and through the list at Vilesilencer, which has a very good list of free search engine friendly directories.

What’s the secret? Same as for submitting articles quickly - automation! All I have to do is find the right category, which I still do manually since directories are not terribly consistent, and fill in the form automatically. It gives the directories the same quality as if I filled out the form by hand, but I don’t have to waste my time typing.

Now, if you visit the Services forum at Digital Point, you can find people who will submit your site for you too, so if it’s a time issue that’s a good option. Some of them are very affordable at around $10 for submission to 100 directories. Others cost more. Just check the provider’s feedback before signing up with anyone. It’s a new feature on that forum, so most don’t have a lot of feedback yet, but if you see the little number off to the right and click on it, you can see what people have said.

These kinds of things are always a balance between sticking to your home business budget and doing what is most effective for your business. If you can earn more money in the time it would take you to pay someone else to submit your site for you, isn’t it worth the money? I’m at the borderline myself for having someone else do that work now that I have my automated system figured out. There are just so many other things I could be working on that it has to be fast. Fortunately, the automation means I can submit sites while holding my 11 month old son, since I only need to click, not type into the sites (aside from those with verification codes), so it’s a good thing to do when I can’t do other kinds of work effectively.

It’s just so easy to get distracted, but I’m once again going to try to stick with my goals I wrote up late last year. It took so long to get this new computer up and running that it was easy to keep letting things slide. But now everything is as ready as it can be. I finally even have my ergonomic keyboard and wheel mouse so everything is working the way I prefer.

Keeping up with goals can be pretty tricky, but I believe it’s one of the best ways to succeed. It gives me something to focus on and measure what I’ve accomplished. After all, I don’t have a boss standing over my shoulder telling me what to do, so I’d better be good at telling myself!

I do have some challenges that make these things a little bit trickier than they were when I wrote my goals. My son is just starting to walk on his own, but he prefers to have Mommy’s help, so he’s always coming over and demanding a walk around the house. I try not to tell my kids no without a good reason, and it’s especially hard to tell a baby no. Besides, he’ll grow up all too soon!

The challenges are one of the best things about working at home. It sounds so easy to people who don’t work at home - they think there’s nothing to it, but those of us who do work at home know better. In many ways it’s far harder than a traditional job. Fortunately, the rewards are greater too.

I just read this report on social networking, and it’s a pretty interesting read. It’s about how people use the internet for social networking - that is, to keep in contact with close and not so close friends.

A study was done on how internet use is impacting how people keep in contact with others. You’ve probably heard the fears that online networking was destroying people’s ability to interact with people face to face. This report finds no such problem; in fact, people who go online often have larger networks of friends and continue to use the phone and see people at about the same rate.

What I found most interesting in this report at a business level was how commonly the internet is used to make decisions. It says that 45% of Americans say that the internet played an important or crucial role when making one of eight decisions the report covers.

However, 5% found bad information. Fortunately, 57% found the internet to be the most important source of information.

I think there’s some good food for thought for online businesses in this report. It’s always good to know how people view the medium in which you are communicating with them. Are your visitors in the disgruntled 5% or the pleased majority? Even if you are focused on selling rather than information this applies to you.

The amount of growth online indicated in this report is quite encouraging as well. There are far more users online now and more of them have broadband connections, which tends to encourage greater use of the internet.

You may also enjoy some of the other reports on the page I linked to above. There might just be something on your target market that will help you build your business.

This is a great help whether you’re just starting out with your business or already established but need tax information. The IRS has an online classroom that includes a small business workshop, small business tax workshop, a course on federal taxes and additional resources. I’m finding it very educational.

Let’s face it. Taxes are no one’s favorite topic, but getting them wrong can cost you a lot of money. Even if you use an accountant it’s a good idea to know what is expected of you.

The information is also excellent if you don’t know how to get started in terms of setting up your company. The Introduction to Federal Taxes for Small Business/Self-Employed Course reviews the different ways you can set up. You can watch video or read the transcripts. Parts are a bit out of date, since this particular one was created in 2000, but it’s mostly still solid information. They provide a link to updates, so you can find out what the changes are.

I just took care of mine. The due date is normally January 15, but because that falls on a Sunday this year, and then Monday is Martin Luther King day, the due date actually becomes January 17.

If you haven’t had to pay quarterly taxes in the past or think you might have to do so this year, do yourself a favor and sign up with EFTPS. That’s how I paid mine, and they are very helpful. I misplaced my PIN, but over the phone they verified my information, took the payment and are sending me a new PIN. It comes straight from my bank account, just as if I had sent a check.

Let me tell you, paying quarterly taxes is a pain, especially when it comes to estimating payments, and I am so delighted to have such an inconvenience in my life! I think I’m going to have to start using an accountant soon, though, or at least pay someone else to handle my taxes because these things are just getting more complicated. My income went up rapidly a few months into this year, and filing correctly to show that isn’t as simple as the usual 1040. It’s probably just time to let a professional handle it while I write the checks.

If you haven’t heard of datafeeds but you’re interested in affiliate marketing, you need to take a look. Datafeeds can be used to quickly create a website which you can use to sell products, looking like your own store until the customer decides to buy. The merchant still handles the order processing, of course.

I spent a couple days, however, trying to update a datafeed on my fine jewelry website. The program I was using quite simply would not take the datafeed. I finally figured out, however, that the problem was not in the feed, it was in the program’s ability to take a large feed. I simply had too much data for it to digest.

Now, this was a reasonable size feed, certainly not gigantic. Less than 5000 products. I finally found it would take it in chunks of something under 4000 items, so I broke the feed up and tricked the program into thinking the were separate

Now, this store is not my cleanest effort. I use feeds from too many places, and it’s a bit of a mess. I think my eventual solution is going to be to divide the store up into parts, and use different merchants on different sites, so I can properly test who is converting without being so darned confusing to site visitors. I have some ideas for how to play around with that site so that visitors will get a much better experience. Not going to do it right now, though - it would change the site too much and Valentine’s Day is coming! You don’t mess with a jewelry site so near Valentine’s Day, at least not if you want your search engine rankings to benefit you at all.

Now, I honestly don’t know. Maybe I would have better sales over Valentine’s Day if I redid the site right now. It’s hard to say. But I’d rather not hurry that job, as I’d have to do right now with little more than a month before that holiday. Much better, in my opinion, to face the probability of lackluster sales than to have to redo the site twice. I could be very, very wrong about that, but it’s how I intend to run things. Can’t very well test the theory.

Google certainly can come up with some interesting products! This latest one, Google Pack, is a download of a nice variety of software. Some of it’s fun, like Google Earth and their screensaver, but other parts are practical, such as a six-month subscription to Norton Antivirus. AdAware is also included.

No, I haven’t downloaded it myself yet. I’m currently on a 3 month (if I recall correctly) trial version of Norton Antivirus that came with my new computer, so I figure I may as well wait a few months then get the free six months next. I suppose after that I’ll actually have to buy something or see which of the free antivirus programs are still well rated. I’m pretty picky about protecting my computer well, so I always look for recent reviews on such things.

Google Pack lets you select which programs you download; you don’t have to take the entire thing. I have Google Earth already… couldn’t resist such a fun toy. However, Google Pack comes with Google Updater, so the software installed with it will stay up to date, which is a nice advantage.

It should be interesting to see what people think of this as the months go on. I know a lot of webmasters get very suspicious of Google’s motives for just about anything, so it should be interesting to see what various people decide about this one.

In most cases, your AdSense ads will match your content pretty well. Google’s very good at this, after all. However, there are times that the ads won’t match your intent for the page, and content targeting may not be enough to improve your ads.

This isn’t something that will happen all that often, but it can happen. You may be familiar with my Home with the Kids website, which I started a couple years ago.

I’ve just added a section that focuses on telecommuting, in this case defined as a work at home job in which you may regularly have to go into the office, so it isn’t exactly what people mean when they say they’re looking for a work at home job.

Naturally, the ads are all related more to “work at home” rather than “telecommuting”. This is not something that can easily be gotten around. Can’t block the advertisers, as they’re relevant elsewhere. Content targeting can’t really do anything because advertisers looking for people who want to work at home are going to target telecommuters as well.

This may not sound so bad, but since in this section I’m looking at it from the employer’s perspective as well, they really don’t need to see an ad titled “Top 10 Work at Home” or anything like that.

In this case it really does help to find your own ads. I chose to link to books on telecommuting from Amazon. These should be nicely relevant to what people researching the topic are after. I chose a variety of books and placed their links on the most relevant page, for example, ones targeting management on the employer’s pages, ones targeting people telecommuting on pages for employees.