When you think about the advantages of  Self Employment, is your first thought  More Golf? I know for most golfers who work a 9 to 5 or worse, Golf verges on a fantacy. Do you find yourself looking out a window and thinking to yourself that it is almost a sacriledge to waste such an incredible God given day inside? When was the last time you were able to in a spontaneous moment, grab your clubs, favorite golf partner (mines my hubby), and take off for a Round of Golf.
When you are self-employed you have the ability to work hard when you want to work hard, and play when you want.

Are you like most avid golfers that find by the time you finish your day at work, the daylight is gone, along with any chance to even get some practice in, let alone 18 holes. There is always the weekends, but by the challenge you find to get a tee time, you were not the only one avoiding getting caught up on all the things you didn’t have time to get done during the week?

“The Lack of Time” is a subject that I hear people complaine about so often. I get it alot from golfers  who just can’t find the 5 hours or more to fully enjoy a round of golf, that I sometimes take for granite. Maybe Time is becoming your most cherished commodity. If so what is stopping you from exploring new avenues to gain more time.  Do you really want to live life chained to a job where you don’t have the time to enjoy the money you do make?

Wouldn’t you love to be one of those people who are able to have it all?  The biggest difference between them and the madding crowd is that they think differently than the majority of people. It’s one of the secrets of successful people, they learn to control how they think and what they think about. They will not stop until they have the life they want and expect for themselves. They  do what ever it takes to create abundance for themselves and their family.

Life is to be enjoyed, and lived to the fullest. If you are the type of person with a burning desire to have it all, then don’t waste your most precious commodity. Do something about it. Find out what it takes to create the type of Abundance you want from your life.

If the money you hold in your wallet became worthless, would your family be ready? 

Family Readiness became a house-hold phrase after my husband  joined the Army Reserves and was activated. Up until that time it didn’t mean too much to me. In fact I’d say I felt totally secure, and provided for.

I was a good Girl Scout, I was usually pretty prepared for an unexpected event. We didn’t live where tornadoes, earthquakes, floods or other natural disasters had much of a chance of occurring, yet I almost always had a few jugs of fresh water, emergency flashlights, and some supplies that could come in handy if the power was out for a few days.

What the Army refers to as family readiness is making sure all the military personnel’s business affairs are in order before they are deployed. This is very important for the spouse and family who is left behind temporarily, God willing until the soldier returns home.  It is even more urgent if, God forbid the family member does not return.

For my husband and I it meant having a will, and other legal documents dealing with the care of our household should anything happen to me while he was indisposed. Basically the army tries to foresee what needs may occur and work to managed them ahead of time.

I believe there has never been a time in our history  that family readiness has been needed more. The military merely scratched the surface for me on what it takes to be truly ready.  I feel I had a wake up call  in 2001.  Since those fateful days I have taken the security I took for granite much more seriously.

It has become apparent to me that the majority of people are clueless about the need to be prepared.  Most people don’t have any idea what is involved in being prepared.  Almost all city folk assume that the conveniences like local grocery stores, city water, police protection, just to name a few will always be around. 

I’d love to be wrong about this, but I do believe it is just a matter of time before our financial house of cards comes tumbling down. If that were to happen would you be ready? Even a better more positive question might be, “will you be prepared to prosper”. 

I believe that if you come from abundance you create more abundance.  I will be sharing with you information and resources to help you create an abundance to prosper.  Through my Abundance Networker blog I will be creating a hub for people to come to to  find answers to the questions they will have for creating their own readiness plan.

If you would like to be first to get latest updates and free information that will help you prosper connect with me so I can share even more of my abundance.

I’m having a hard time wishing the unsuspecting passerby a “Happy New Year “.  I would tend to believe that the majority that I would come across have been Hoodwinked and will most likely in the coming year feel such financial pain that they are going to wish it were still 2010. 

When I hear on the news that things are improving,  I realize that people are as easily fooled now as they have been in the past. Infact I wonder what it is going to take to have people wake up and stop being deceived by those who have managed to dupe us all so badly that we now are on the verge of watching our country face financial ruin.

So I thought I’d share a video with you that may be the proof you need to see that we have indeed been hoodwinked. It is time we all open our eyes and ears and start preparing ourselves for what lies ahead.

Those who believe that things are improving will be the hardest hit. I have no intention of hobnobbing with a bunch of ostrich who want to believe that the US Government, The Federal Reserve, or Our Banking Institutions have our best interest at heart.  How about you? Will you be a victim or a survivor?

If you see what I see from the video, you will take action now to be prepared for what ever may lie ahead. If you do, you will have a better chance of being in control of your life and the life of your family. You may even find ways of providing a service, product or solution that will be sought after and enable you to profit in these challenging times.

I hope you are not too offended by the language of the video. To me it is worth overlooking to hear what I consider one of the most educational 30 minutes  ever produced.

Stay tune for readiness information.  I will be sharing both urban homesteading ideas, and ways to financially prepare yourself for what ever we all may be facing in 2011.

Where you one of the hording crowd who participated in this years Black Friday? If so was it all that you thought it was going to be?  Did you come away feeling like you made some real savings on your purchases? If so, you might have been duped like most of the population these days. Thinking you saved some money during Black Friday was most likely an illusion of our present financial situation.

I heard a report that the amount  people spent this year during Black Friday was an average of $300 a person, which was up from last year. Hip Hip Hooray!!! people are spending money that must mean our financial crisis is over.  What they didn’t report is that people were able to buy a whole lot less for their money this year than last year. Basically our dollar is worth less now so it takes more of it to buy the same amount.

Which brings me to the key point of this post. Where is your thinking, right now during these economic times. Are you living in fear as you see our food and staple prices starting to soar?  Or are you living in hope that things are on the verge of getting better.  The third option is to live in abundance, believing that no matter what happens to the American dollar you will be financially secure.

The reality is the more money the government prints, the less value our money has. What is really being printed is nothing but debt, IOU’s that will be handed down to our children and grandchildren.  

I’d like to believe that the people are waking up to what is happening.  Sadly most people are left in ignorance believing they will be saved by our government. When in reality the more dependent you are the more effected you will be when the American dollar bottoms out.

Many of us realize that we need to take responsibility for our own financial security, ( not through hand outs from the government) but by preparing ourselves to be solution providers. Realizing that YOU  are your most valuable asset. You have a million dollar mind that can create financial freedom and security, if you use it.

Not long from now the majority of the population will be waking up to a real serious situation, and they will be looking for help.  Will you be on the side of the Helpless or the Financially Secure? It’s all in what you think.

If Money talks, it is too bad it isn’t able to give us a personal biography.  Maybe then most of us would not now be racing to figure out just what we were not taught about money. I say racing because I do believe time is running out for the American dollar.  The impact the death of the dollar will have will be devastating for those who out of ignorance (primarily no fault of their own) do not see it coming and thus are not prepared.

To say I am Ticked Off about what I was not taught about money, is really very polite and understated. I’m actually so angry I’m seeing red.  I feel betrayed, and maybe what’s worse really ignorant.  I have always prized myself of being well read and felt fortunate to have had what I thought was a good education. Money 101 (or the history of the dollar) was not a subject available to me, even if I knew I needed or wanted it.

Economics was not my primary field of study.  I had no desire or propensity to pursue accounting or banking accept on a need to know basis.  What I didn’t realize was that I was deliberately NOT being taught about Money.  This is actually true even for those who are business majors. What we don’t know that we were not taught will cause us to be victims of a educational system that has as it’s underlying goal to create dependent citizens.

I was an education major. My passion in life has always been to contribute to society by helping people discover life’s abundance through education.  There is nothing to me more rewarding than seeing someones eyes and face light up at the realization of one of life’s mysteries. Maybe that is why I feel so incensed that valuable information that is vital for financial health has been withheld from the public.

Little did I know when I started my own business that I had taken my first step to a life of independence, and away from being part of the flock being lead to slaughter.   It is now one of the vehicles I am using to help others do the same.  Now more than ever we need to come from abundance and take responsibility for our own education.  We need to learn about Money, how we can not only survive, but thrive in todays economy.

In the next few weeks I will be sharing information you might not have learned about in your education from school, home, or life. Information like:

• What’s the difference between Inflation and Deflation
• That the Federal Reserve is not a government institution or a bank, nor does it have any reserves.
• What are the major forces that cause people to suffer financially.

And a lot more. I am looking forward to helping others to learn what I have fortunately just learned myself. The angrier I get the more driven I am to free others through education.

 A great way to get your blog out there in the public eye is to use Blog Directories to promote your blog. What they do is list blogs by category and the search engines tend to like blogs listed in them. 

It seemed like a lot of work to list my blogs in all the directories, and I didn’t know where to begin.  I decided to look into some of the better free blog directories to see if I could get some exposure for my blogs. It was really easy to do, and once you have it done  you are set.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a free account at the directory. I found that blogexplosion.com was a good one. Once you have an account you register your blog with them and they do the rest.

Another great thing to do is to submit your blog to all of the directories at:
www.rss-feeds-directory.com/blog_lists.html . It takes a little time because you do end up with some verification work. Basically you get a fair number of e-mails from various directories verifying that you are indeed a real person and want your blog listed.

I think what ever you can do to get your blog out there in the eye of the public is going to make a difference. Having your blog registered in directories and allowing  RSS do what it stands for Really Simple Syndication the better chance you will have to getting your Blog noticed by the search engines.

Next time I will go into some guaranteed ways of sweet talking those Search Engines.

What is a Ping?
 
Let me use a slightly over-simplified explanation of a somewhat ethereal, syber-space event.
 
What do you automatically think of when you hear Ping? You think of Pong, right? Well, the game of Ping Pong does give a pretty good description of what is going on when something is Pinged.  Like so many computer terms, you may not see anything happening, but the result of Pinging your blog can make a big difference whether your blog gets noticed. 

A Ping is a message or notification that your computer has put some information out on the Internet, and gives the receiver an idea of what that information is, for instance a Blog Post. And since you want our material to be noticed, it behooves you to Ping the information you are putting out on the Internet, including your Blog Posts.

To get the most out of Pinging you can use services that will save you a whole lot of time and get your information Pinged to many search engines. It many cases the service is free and easy to sign up for.  It may take you a little time to verify and or confirm your subscription to the search engines. I believe it is well worth your time to get the exposure for your blog.

Here are some of the Pinging Services that I have found useful:
                                     
http://pingomatic.com/  You can submit your blog to all the directories they list and they will Ping 15 services at one time.

Even better than that is http://www.pingoat.com/ . They will will ping over fifty
blog ping services all at once. Which means you don’t have to hunt for ping services and manually ping them.  Pingoat pings over fifty blog ping servers (growing)
with just one click.

You will want to ping your blog post at pingoat.com and pingomatic.com each time you make a new post. Give them a try, we all want to be noticed and Pinging will help.

Next time we will talk about blog submission sites.

How do you get your blog to get noticed on the Internet? There are two major factors that come into play:

1. The Search Engines
                  &
2. Your Target Market .

If you can find a way to get and keep the attention of one, you will start seeing some results.  Find a way to be loved,  sought after, and followed by both and you have the potentential for greatness. 

The secret is to develop practices that work towards both; Not only attracting your target market to eagerly wait for each post, but also satisfy the criteria that the search engines look for in their blog approval. The search engines and your target market do have a direct impact on each other.

There are times when you need to specifically work to gain the search engine’s favor. Search engines speak a different language than your target market.  What the search engines are looking for are statistics:  
        How frequently are you making posts 
        Whether you are using Keywords that people are searching for
        How long people are staying on, or returning to your site
        Whether people are sharing your blog post with others
        How many hits your blog is getting

Basically a search engine doesn’t evaluate your material based on whether you have valuable content.  A search engine is not a feeling entity it is merely a machine that can make or break whether your blog shows up when people are looking for what you are posting about. It is a wonderful occurrence when your blog post gets on the first page of a search engine, it’s then that you know your target market will have the opportunity to see what you are writing.

Your target market is primarily looking for Value. They want to know:
     Does this blog provide solutions to problems that I am having?
     Does this blog come up when I type in the words that describe my problem?
     Does the author post regularly enough to keep my attention?
     Is the blog interesting, easy to understand, read and put to use?
     Can I trust the content and the author?
     Is the author genuinely concerned about me or just trying to make a sale?
     Do I enjoy and look forward to the next post on this blog?

As you can see, some of what the search engines are looking for are satisfied by providing what your target market is looking for in a blog.  Some of the practices that you can start applying to your blog to get it noticed are:

1. Use keywords that describe the problem your target market is searching solutions for. Use them in your title, in your first line, and throughout your post.
2. Provide solutions to their problems. People will visit, stay on,  return to, and pass on a blog post that over delivers.
3. Post regularly.  Think of your blog as your home, if your friends came to visit and you were never home, they would stop coming around.

In the next few posts I will be talking about other ways you can get your blog having an active presence on the search engines and in the eye of the public.

The TrafficSwarm ad said:

Here’s how to get more traffic, more leads, and more online sales
(even if you’re a rank beginner and never made a nickel online.)
So I thought I’d give it a try. To my delight it is a traffic-generating system
worth considering.

Here are some of the benefits you might find useful to your business
especially if you are new to Internet Marketing.

#1 It’s FREE if you only want to run 10 ads at a time, or just want to try
     it out to see what you think of it.

#2 If you like it, like I do, it will cost you as little as $30 a month to run
      unlimited ads. You also with that cost have the opportunity to earn
      referal income.

#3 You can test your ads for free before you risk spending money on
      pay- per-click. I put up two different ads on the same day, and one
      received 50 hits, while the other got only 1 hit. I knew almost instantly 
     which was the more effective ad.  

#4 Real people are choosing to click on your ads, so it is targeted to those
      who are interested in what you have to offer.

For most people getting high-quality targeted visitors to their site is
probably one of the hardest things to do… unfortunately it’s also the
most important.

The reason it’s difficult for most small business and online marketers is
that the majority of popular site promotion strategies either take up a lot
of TIME, cost a lot of MONEY, or are TOO RISKY.  Right?

Well, that is why I wanted to let you know that I have found TrafficSwarm’s
fully automated traffic-generation system really can send 1,000s of targeted
prospects to your site, every single day, absolutely FREE!

I love to take my laptop when I’m watching golf or football (two of my passions,
that I hate to miss out on) on TV and get some work done clicking on the ads
that are of interest to me.

I earn all the credits I need to fund the ads I have place on TrafficSwarm
while doing something else I enjoy.  It really is that simple.

You can check it out at:

http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?790465

What is the second most important thing to focus on to get conversion
in your home-based business?

 The simple answer is Focusing on Your Target.

To effectively do that you need to know certain
things. You need to know:

• Where you want your business to go

1. What kind of money you can see yourself making
2. Who are the people you will be serving
3. What is it you have to offer

• When do you want to get there,
  along with mile posts like:

1. Where you want to be in 3 years
2. Where you want to be in the next 90 days
3. Where you want to be at the end of this week
4. What you will accomplish tomorrow

• Exactly what that will mean to your life

The more emotional the response to this, the more likely you
will do whatever it takes to make it happen.

• How much time are you will to spend

You need to to willing to invest a little blood, sweat, and tears,
in your business, along with valuable time to make it happen.If
anyone tells you differently, frankly they are lying to you.

• What activities do you need to do to make it happen

You may not know the answers to all your questions about how
you are going to build your business, (actually many of the answers
will come once you are in action). You do need to have a plan of
attack, like road map. When you travel say across the country you
first get out the big map and chart from say Pittsburgh PA to
Sacramento CA, a long highlighted line. You then break it down to
segments of the journey, using individual state maps.

By breaking your activities down to manageable segments you can chart
your progress easier, and stay on the right track. It is essential to have
these elements of your target in place, and to focus on them.

A great wrestling coach, Howard Ferguson once said:

“Desire plus sacrifice plus discipline equals preparation.
Preparation plus success equals confidence.
Mental toughness plus pride equals perseverance.
If you have confidence and persevere, you will always have the edge.
If you have the edge, you will succeed. Eventually.”