I’ve been spending some time thinking about the tools that help me the most in working on my home business. I’m not talking about the forums and such that I find valuable (maybe another day), but the actual tools I use to get my work done.

A word processor

I don’t care if it’s Microsoft Word or one by another company, a good word processor is a must, and something most computers will have already. It’s useful when I want to write articles, brainstorm and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Throw up site after site and hope something sticks? Put your heart and soul into one really great site? Something else?

Despite what some people think, search engines don’t particularly hate affiliate sites. They hate sites that don’t have something unique to offer, which is something many affiliate sites fail to do. That’s a big difference.

But putting everything into one site is risky too. If something goes wrong, all your efforts can go down the drain. Having at least a couple sites, even if they are on related topics, does have its advantages. You are less likely to lose all your business if your rankings drop suddenly. Flexibility is a wonderful thing.

I had a great time reading this post on this very topic over at SugarRae. Affiliate marketing is evolving and will continue to evolve. As she notes, the people who thrive won’t be relying solely on the latest technologies. Rather, it will depend on who has great strategies for running their sites.

Many of the points she makes are things I’ve been realizing myself over the past year. Most of my sites are run either with blog software or with Instant Site Comments, so that people can interact with me. Which I use depends on how I want to run the site. I love having the flexibility to decide which is for me. I’ve also been focusing on how to take advantage of social bookmarking, which is something I should have gotten into much sooner. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s looking promising that states still will not be able to impose new taxes on internet access. According to Wired, the moratorium on that is likely to be continued.

The reason for this is that such a tax could seriously impact the number of people who use broadband internet, and slow the development of more broadband services.

Various economic studies show that a 1 percent change in the price of broadband leads to changes in subscription between 1.5 percent and more than 3 percent, Ellig said.

That’s a pretty big change, especially when you consider that states charge about 10-20% in taxes on telephone services. Do that to broadband internet and you’re potentially facing a major drop in usage.

But there are still chances for other kinds of internet taxes. States always want to protect local merchants and get the taxes they consider to be due to them. Talk of requiring online merchants to collect state sales taxes comes up periodically, for example.

This issue is very important for people working online. If you’re an affiliate, it will impact your merchants far more than you if sales taxes need to be collected by online merchants, but if you sell something subject to sales tax, collecting it for the various states could be quite a burden.

My own feeling on the sales tax issue has always been that it should be treated the same way catalog purchases always have been. There are enough similarities that I think this is reasonable.

I do expect that through the years there will be tax issues to deal with online. Exactly how they come about and what they will be for, I don’t know. But it pays to keep an eye on these things.

Technorati Tags: internet taxes, online sales tax, internet tax moratorium

I read about this lawsuit over on 5 Star Affiliate Blog. Reading Kellie Stevens’ take on this is helpful too. I, for one, am glad to see this happen, since the networks have not tried very hard to get adware companies off their sites even when such behavior is against their TOS.

There are two lawsuits, one for merchants and one for affiliates. After all, both parties are damaged by this. Affiliates lose commissions and merchants end up paying out commissions unfairly.

I suspect that how this turns out will greatly depend on how well the judge can be made to understand the technologies involved, as well as what business practices are acceptable. This isn’t going to be an easy topic for most, as many judges don’t seem to be all that comfortable with technology. Just think back to that substitute teacher who got in trouble over the adware popups. If the lawyers and the judge had understood the technology better, they would have made a better decision in the first place.

If you want to read more about this, go to CJclassaction.com and read up on it. If you’re a merchant or affiliate with one of these companies you may even want to sign up.

Technorati Tags: adware lawsuit, cj, commission junction, valueclick, befree, affiliates

One of the things that can really be a pain at times is getting your websites reorganized. But there often comes a time when it really is necessary. Otherwise your websites can become cluttered with old information and hard to use.

It really can be a help to take a good look at how things are going on all your site regularly. What’s painful is taking the time to do so.

Start out by seeing if all your sites are doing what you want them to do. Are they worth keeping? Sometimes it’s just time to sell a site rather than keep trying. If it’s not inspiring you to keep it up and it isn’t earning what you want it to earn for you, maybe it’s time to let someone else have a go at it. Sell that site.

Even the sites that are doing well you should go through and make sure they are current. Some topics hardly change at all from year to year. Others change significantly. Read the rest of this entry »

I love my home business. I don’t always earn what I would like to (ok, most of the time I don’t earn what I would like to. But I do okay.), but the potential and the flexibility keep me going.

But there are more advantages than that.

1. Sites can earn at any time, even when I can’t work on them for a time. I’ve had a few times lately where I’ve had to go out of town and not had the time to log in for a few days. Things keep going without me.
2. I can work as late as I want… except when my husband starts to complain. That rather important balance between working and family.
3. The confusion of other people when I explain what I do.
4. The envy when they get it.
5. The longer I do this, the easier it gets.
6. I can follow my personal interests and make money from them.
7. No one looking over my shoulder as I work; my husband has learned to not look when I’m typing or I freeze up. I love having people read what I write, just not when I’m actually writing it.
8. Stopping for the day or for an hour because I feel like it or the kids really need me.

There’s plenty of frustration too, days when nothing seems to go right. But all in all, this is a tremendously fun way to earn a living.

Technorati Tags: home business, earn money, work at home, wahm

I must admit, I love working at home. It’s so flexible and I can decide when I want to work.

But I don’t have a laptop, and there have been times when I’ve really wished I could use a bit of my downtime on a trip to get just a touch of work done. I don’t just mean writing blog posts, which can of course be done from any connection. I mean getting remote access to my computer and really diving into things.

RemotePC looks like an interesting option for those who need that kind of access. I don’t think it’s for me, as my need is maybe once or twice a year, but I can picture people needing it if they, like me, don’t have laptops and sometimes go on trips where they aren’t doing tons of fun stuff the entire time.

I like the idea of being able to work on one computer as though it is my home machine, though. I’ve had to take the occasional urgent, family related trip these past few years, and sometimes when things quieted down in the evenings it was hard to come up with something to do. Being able to make up for lost productivity due to an unexpected trip would have been nice.

Oh, those silly, silly people at Google! Updating their policies on a Wednesday rather than a Thursday! What is this world coming to?

Hey, they started it.

The policy changes are pretty simple, although it sounds like bad news for poor quality MFA sites. Google now requires AdSense pages to conform to the same quality guidelines as AdWords landing pages do. They pretty much want substantial and relevant content, things that will improve the user experience.

But they’ve also now decided that you can place up to 3 link units on a page. Honestly, I’ve never been sure why they limited those to 1 before. The link units are great when you need something smaller than any of the ad blocks.

Technorati Tags: google adsense policy changes