All AdSense publishers have to deal with Google’s latest change to the TOS. We now have to have a privacy policy on all websites with AdSense. JenSense, as always, has a good review of the requirements. She’s also going to post a privacy policy that meets the new requirements as soon as she can.
Fortunately for me, most of my sites already have privacy policies. It’s pretty easy to include one as one of many default pages when creating a site. But I am having to go through and drop in my usual policy on those sites I hadn’t bothered with.

And of course I will have to check and see if it meets the basic terms. In my basic policy (the one used on this exact site, in fact), I do mention Google as a possible source for ads, although I’ve been using Yahoo here. It also talks a little bit about cookies. I’m just not sure it’s enough, since Google wants something said about web beacons, which is a factor I’d never considered before.

Of course, if you haven’t used a privacy policy on your sites before, and you have a number of them, this could be a real headache. It’s not just adding it, it’s linking it to the rest of the site. If you use includes or a CMS, this can be pretty easy… but a bit of a pain if you don’t.

I have things most of the way taken care of already, since only some of my sites need this. Once I know exactly how I ought to be phrasing things, no doubt I’ll change it a little to be more precisely matched to the new policy.

It’s been crazy around here, since shortly after my last post. I mentioned the kids were sick, which took up pretty much all the time I’d had scheduled for working on my ebook release. The only thing I managed was that bit of research on protecting my ebook from unauthorized downloads.

So of course as they’re getting better, I get the flu too. That is how it works most of the time. It’s a really annoying bug that has me often sleeping late in the morning and fully capable of taking a 3-4 hour nap in the afternoon if I let myself. Drives me nuts.

I’m determined to get this thing done, flu or no flu. Still sick, but getting to the point where I can function at least a little bit, and that’s enough. I just won’t stay up so late for a while so that I still get enough rest.

I’ve been doing a lot of research in the little bit of spare time I’ve had these past few days. I’m behind the schedule I had set for myself of launching by Monday, but I have what I consider a good reason.

Two kids. Both sick with fevers in the 102-103.5 degrees F range. Sometimes you have to take a step back and just be a mom.

It’s frustrating to have to slow down, though, especially since I’m trying to get this launched quickly for a very good reason. My husband was laid off from his job a few weeks ago. So this launch really matters to our family. It’d be nice to make up for that lost income.

I want to have my downloads protected, even though I know once the product is downloaded it’s easy for people to share the files. I just like to use what protections I can that won’t make the experience unpleasant for my customers.

Right now I’m pretty sure that I will be choosing DLGuard. It’s between that and Easy Download Protector. Both look to be excellent products, but when I check them out, I see a lot more comments about DLGuard by people not associated with it. But I’ve seen from a few trusted sources that I could pretty much be happy with either one. That’s good to know.

The one tossup for me right now is deciding to actually make the purchase. While I’ve been planning this ebook for some time, I didn’t anticipate having to launch it on a tight budget. Spending over $100 for either of these solutions is just a little painful right now. But I also see them as an investment, something to protect my sales.

It’s an interesting thought process to be going through… protect my sales right from the start, while increasing my cost to launch, or take a chance on losing a few downloads to scammers and buy the software once I’m earning some money.

I’m finally just about there. Nearly done writing and editing my first ebook. It’s definitely been an adventure.

Of course, if you want to make money from ebooks, writing your own is decidedly the slow way to go about it. Writing takes time, and there are plenty of writers who will gladly do the job for you for reasonable prices, or private label ebooks already written and affordable. But this was a topic I wanted to handle myself.

I’m working on details like the sales page now. That and deciding for certain if I’ll use Clickbank. Probably, if only because they take care of paying the affiliates, and have tons of them. I like that kind of simplicity, and the competing services don’t have that. You have to remember it yourself, although I understand they make it easy.

Finally, I’ll be figuring out download protection. You can’t 100% keep an ebook from being passed around, at least if you’re doing it in PDF as I am, but you can do your best to keep people from downloading it directly from your site without permission, and that’s what I’m considering.

The topic? Cooking with small children underfoot! Something I’ve dealt with quite a bit.

I’ll be sharing my progress as I make it. I have a busy week around here even without trying to get anything done online, so my progress won’t be too fast, but I’m hoping to release it by Monday or sooner.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of posts on starting a home business. There’s a lot to learn, but the most important key of all is to simply get started.

I thought I would finish off with some resources that will help you to get things moving:

Blogging

Wordpress - Best software for starting your own blog. Get your own hosting so you don’t have to worry about being deleted.

Blogger - Best free solution for blogging. There’s still the risk that your blog will be deleted, but it doesn’t happen only because you’re trying to earn money with your blog.

Site5 - My favorite host. I’ve used a number of them, and overall Site5 has pleased me the most. Generally great uptime, and even though customer service is through email, they’ve always been quick to answer me and solve my problems.

Article Marketing

Article Marketer - If you want to schedule your articles to go out to a huge list of article publishers and directories, this is the best and easiest way to do it.

Ezine Articles - One of the best article directories out there. If you do your article submissions manually, submit here even if you submit nowhere else.

Affiliate Marketing

The Super Affiliate Handbook - Rosalind Gardner’s ebook that is just about a classic for affiliate marketers. Most useful for beginners

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - Perry Marshall gives you more advice than I ever could on succeeding with Google AdWords. A must for the serious pay per click marketer!

Wordtracker Free Keywords - Find out if the keywords you’re thinking of are being used by searchers. The paid version is valuable for pay per click marketing, but the free one will get you started.

Build a Niche Store - The easiest way to earn money from other people’s eBay auctions! I’ve had some good success with my BANS stores and will continue to discuss them in the future.

Commission Junction - Sign up for eBay’s affiliate program or any of thousands of other companies through Commission Junction.

ShareASale - Another great affiliate network. The companies here are often smaller, but that can be great for niche marketing.

Linkshare - Yet another affiliate network. They have some really big names signed up with them.

Clickbank - Looking to sell ebooks and electronics products? Whether you’re doing it yourself or want to sell someone else’s products, Clickbank has a huge number of affiliates and products waiting.

List Building and Management

AWeber - The top rated autoresponder. Take my word for it. Start with a paid service if you’re going to build a list. There’s so much that can go wrong with free options, and moving often means losing about 90% of your list.

GetResponse - Another reputable autoresponder. Once again, you get what you pay for. Don’t go free.

Optin Design - This helped me to significantly improve my optin rates for my newsletter on this site.

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Niche
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You?
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics
Putting the Pieces Together (current page)

I got a package in the mail yesterday from Ezine Articles, and thought I’d share the results with you. Every here and there, they send just some of their “Expert Authors” a little something. Last time I got a coffee mug. This time it was a mouse pad.

But what I really liked was that they included some stats for me. First of all, the stats told me I need to work harder on my article marketing. Fan that I am of it, I only sent them 66 articles last year. My goal is 1/day. But then I wasn’t doing heavy duty article marketing for a lot of last year. Still, I want to do better. Should have done better.

My most viewed article got 1400 page views. That’s not too bad, especially since 642 people clicked on the link to go to my website. That’s not bad, close to half the people reading the article go to visit my site.

I checked in Google and found that the exact article title, in combination with my name, has 141 results. I combined it with my name because the title in this case may not have been unique, and one would expect my name to appear anytime someone included the resource box as they are supposed to.

And the article is one I wrote and submitted in 2006. It’s been there a while.

I checked my other stats, since Ezine Articles gives some really wonderful stats. That article far outperformed my others, with twice the clicks of its nearest competitor. That tells me I was on to something with that one. On the other hand, some articles appear to have been published more often, another facet to consider.

Now, I do my article marketing a semi-lazy way. I do all my own writing rather than use a ghost writer, but I submit using Article Marketer. I have a lifetime membership with them, and it really is easier than doing it by hand or even with article submission software. I’ve been trying to use part of each month to write up an entire month’s submissions, and then I use Article Marketer’s system to send them out one a day. Keeps me from having to think about it the entire month.

I hope I can come closer to my goal of 1 article submission per day this year. I already know I’ve missed some days, but I still keep working at it, to see how far I can come with it. Just think how much more 365 articles can do in comparison with a mere 66!

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Niche
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You?
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics (current page)
Putting the Pieces Together