MomBiz Profile: Alicia of BabyJoysReviews
May 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Periodically I’ll be spotlighting a work at home mom here on the blog. I love talking about internet marketing, and any information you can get from other moms who are doing it can help you reach your goals of starting - or making more money with - your own business.
This time it’s a blogging mom, Alicia Simon.
What is your business?
Baby Joys Reviews reviews products for babies, kids, and moms. We review products that are natural minded, made by small businesses, organic, Attachment Parenting friendly, or just natural minded. We do not sell any products. The purpose of Baby Joys is two-fold, help small businesses advertise and market their products, and to help moms find cool stuff for their kids! We 100% stand behind the products we feature, and won’t even sell ad space to a product we don’t agree with.
How do you market your business?
Many businesses I work with will put links to me on their press page. I also do many giveaways and try to get my site listed on giveaways announcement pages. I am working on more local advertising. I also have recently sent out press releases about an upcoming special event to many local and nationwide magazines.
What inspired you to start your business?
When I had my son I had a hard time finding products I agreed with, I did a lot of research (still do) and people constantly asked me to suggest products to them. Eventually it was suggested I start a review site, and I did! I think natural minded moms need reviews even more so then any one else because natural/ap/organic options can be so expensive. No one wants to pay $60+ for a sling and find out it is awful.
Thanks Alicia!
If you would like to be featured here, just copy these 3 questions and your answers in an email to me.
More information about working at home
Start your own natural online business
Here It Is - Natural Mom Guide to Blogging
April 23, 2008 | 2 Comments
Here it is, as promised: Natural Moms Blogging Guide
This nifty free report will answer the 10 biggest questions moms have about blogging. Whether you’re blogging for personal or for business, it will help you:
- Discover what makes a blog different from a website
- Why Moms everywhere are blogging for fun and money
- How a blog can help your existing business
- How to get readers, comments and traffic
- How to earn money from your blog
- What to write about and what to do if you get writer’s block
Just right click on the link above to download the report. Enjoy!
Attachment Parenting Website For Sale
April 1, 2008 | 3 Comments
My friend Jen Houck is selling her AttachmentMoms website. If you want to get started with an online business, buying a website with established traffic and incoming links is a nice way to get a jumpstart. If you are already marketing online to this market, this site might make a welcome addition to your virtual real estate.
Go take a look and see what you think. Leave a comment below with your email address and Jen will be in touch. 
Work at Home Mom Success Tips
February 22, 2008 | 9 Comments
I wanted to pass along this interview that I did with Christina Lemmey for MommysPlace, an excellent work at home Mom resource website.
If you’re considering starting an online business or are new to the internet marketing/wahm world, you might find it inspiring at least and helpful too. I talk about:
- The journey from my first website to full time wahm
- How I decided to target the natural mom niche
- Some of my early mistakes marketing online
- Tips on finding your niche
- Support - finding it and leveraging other’s wisdom
- My biggest obstacles (this one will surprise you)
- The internet and passive income (this is great for moms!)
- Advice for those who are discouraged
Tuesday Tidbits: Cloth pads for African girls, Beef recall
February 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tuesday Tidbits is where I publish little bits of news and info that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else. If you want to play along, grab the code for the graphic (I host it and all cause I’m cool like that) on the right sidebar.
1- Barbara of Mom2Mom Lounge interviewed me asking questions about working from home and enjoying passive income while raising your kidlets. There’s some valuable advice in there so go check it out.
2- Have you talked to your kids about the choking game?
3- Have you seen those Proctor and Gamble ads encouraging you to buy their tampons so that African girls can get free tampons? Don’t do it. Crunchy chicken has a MUCH better idea. Tampons, waste incinerators and voodoo=bad. Washable absorbent cloth pads=good. Ok?
She’ll be featured on the show in a few weeks so stay tuned, but in the meantime see what awesome nonprofitness she is doing for these girls who often miss school during their monthlies. Rock on sista.
4- The U.S. has announced the largest beef recall in history. This is so sad, considering the meat was earmarked for use in public schools. I’m thankful that sitting in my freezer are organic grass fed beef, pork and chicken from a small Tennessee farm who does monthly deliveries to Atlanta. I feel much safer knowing the people who handle my meat.
Ahem. Seriously folks, organic meat is worth the added expense. If you haven’t found a source of safe meat yet, try EatWild or LocalHarvest.
You Scratch My Back, I Scratch Yours
February 17, 2008 | 2 Comments
Have you heard about Scratchback? It’s kind of like a fancy tip jar, but with a nice twist for the tipper: you get a link from my site to yours.
Scroll down and look at the right sidebar here, under Subscribe to Natural Moms News.
See the links? Click on the Show some love, tip me link. You can get a link from this blog for only (right now) $3. That is VERY cheap. Considering I get $50 - $125 for advertisers on my podcast.
So if you’re on a budget and want some extra traffic to your blog or site, leave me a tip!
Promoting Your Blog
February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Since we talked on Moms Morning Show about promoting your blog, I thought I would share some ideas that I have used to get more traffic to my blogs.
- Write Articles - Turn some of your lengthier, informative posts into articles and publish them at places like Ladypens.
- Link Out - When you see great posts by fellow bloggers (especially those in your niche), link to their posts and talk about why you enjoyed reading them. They will often link back to you or become a reader.
- Read and Comment - Find other blogs in your area of interest or expertise and follow them. Leave meaningful comments (don’t spam).
- Blog Carnivals - Submit some of your best posts to Blog Carnival for more link love and traffic.
- Write Good Content - No matter how hard you work at building traffic, if your blog is boring you won’t keep people around. Show your personality, be informative and don’t run totally from controversy. This is probably the most important tip. If your content is good, people will link to you more and you will find yourself getting contacted by media.
- Consider Keywords - When you write posts, think about keywords that people could use to find you in search engines. Blogs should be people friendly first and search engine friendly second, but it doesn’t hurt to name your title (and in the case of Wordpress blogs) and post slug something catchy that includes keywords and phrases.
- Blog Frequently - People who love to read blogs like to read blogs. If they click on your site and you haven’t updated in a week or more, they might remove you from their feed reader. If you find that you don’t know what to blog about sometimes, read this article: What in the world do I blog about?
How I Got Out of Debt
February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment
I’ve been meaning to post this for several months, but listening to Marie Ynami interview Christine McKinley on her podcast reminded me. They talked about Christine’s free teleseminar (which is now passed but if you check out her site she offers this information in ebook format) all about getting out of debt.
Basically, this is what I did to pay off my credit card debt:
- Stopped using the cards - You can’t get out of a hole unless you stop digging!
- Paid off the smallest card first - I did this for the psychological boost it gave me. It had a small balance and getting it over with made me happy.
- Created a large visual - I put a large chart on my office wall with my debt, income and savings. It was exciting to see my savings and income grow each month while my debt got smaller!
- Sold stuff of value - I got rid of things that didn’t mean a lot to me but that could be turned into cash. And I disciplined myself to use that money towards the debt.
- Started an emergency fund first - While this seems backwards to some, it helped me feel safer and in control. I thought it would be awful to get out of debt and then have all 4 tires fall off my car or have some other emergency and have to get back in! So having that “baby contingency fund” gave me real peace of mind and made me feel proactive instead of reactive.
- Ramped up my income - I worked hard in my business to step up my earnings.
- Tracking my spending - I kept a small notebook in my purse and wrote down EVERY penny I spent. Just the act of doing that curbed my spending! Plus it pointed out weak spots (coffee and books) that I could work on.
- Rewarded myself for being frugal - I budgeted a small amount (less than before but still something) on little treats for myself so I wouldn’t feel totally deprived.
- Transferred balances - I transferred balances on two cards to one that offered zero interest for 6 months. And I paid it off in 6 months then closed the card. Teehee! I beat the evil credit card companies at their own game!
- Read a lot about personal finance - I read a lot of books during that time about debt, personal finance and emotions around money. I discovered some great blogs!
- I made sacrifices - I temporarily stopped paying my kids an allowance. I talked to them about my goals, about debt and about what we would do when the debt was paid. One of the things I did when the cards were paid was buy my oldest a guitar. I also didn’t buy myself new clothing for a few months. I just kept focusing on what I wanted, which was to not be beholden to anyone, and did whatever I could to meet that goal, which meant sacrificing things that weren’t as important to me.
- I spoke my goal out loud - I shared my goal with others who were close to me, and because of that, opportunities came my way because I had declard my intention.
I hope that helps someone else
Postpartum Depression and Work at Home Moms
February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment
WahmTalkRadio this week was really wonderful. I have never really thought about the implications of depression and postpartum depression for the work at home Mom, but Wendy Piersall did an awesome job of not only sharing her personal story, but giving other moms some advice if they find themselves in that situation.
When I listened to the show I thought about my I’ve always speculated about postpartum depression - I believe that PPD is multi faceted and there are several factors that come into play, but that most of it is due to the modern family situation that Moms find themselves in. Making new moms spend most of their time alone (in the case of a sahm) with a new baby, isolated from family and support, is a recipe for disaster and a modern invention.
Wendy reiterated something that I said on Mom’s Morning Show last week too… that “faking” happiness works! She said that she had to remind herself to put a smile on her face when she sat at the computer. Some of her practical suggestions for managing a case of the blues or full fledged depression are:
Get out in the sun. If your depression is caused by or made worse by Seasonal Affective Disorder, this will definitely help. Put your home office in a sunny area of the house, not the basement or a closet.
Eat your vegetables. Good nutrition supports a healthy mind AND body. Getting some fatty fish would be a good idea too, since the Omega 3’s have been shown to help depression. There are other foods that help S.A.D. listed here.
Schedule spirituality. It’s easy to forget about the things that fill our buckets, but we can’t afford to leave it to chance. Taking time to meditate, pray, do activities that remind you of your spiritual need.
Nurture your social life. When you’re feeling blue, often the last thing you want is to socialize, but isolating yourself makes things worse. Force yourself if possible, to get out and be around people. Even if all you can do at first is take your laptop to the coffee shop.
How do you make money with a blog?
February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment
Today on Moms Morning Show Chele, Wendy, Kelly and I discussed making money with a blog and promoting your blog.
When Kelly asked, “How do you make money with your blog?”
My answer was this: “The quick easy answer is, the same way you make money with any other site: selling your own products, selling someone else’s products for a commission, Google Adsense and selling advertising.”
Wendy shared a word of caution when it comes to Text Link Ads and other sponsored posts, she said that Google recently decided to punish blogs who did so, which led to a decrease in her income.
Kelly also asked if there were any bloggers that I had learned from. Absolutely - I mentioned Tiffany Washko, Alice Seba, and Kelly McCausey. I made the observation that you can learn great blogging from ANY good blogger, regardless of their niche or the content of their blog.