eAction

Well, I think I need to take this post to explain what’s been keeping me busy before I get back to my lesson-type blogs.

What I’ve been doing has certainly been about Linux too.

I’m setting up a small business to provide virtual assistant services to people who have web businesses, but that’s more like a vehicle by which I can train interns to help me with my own work-load, and also to see to it that I’m not the ONLY one who knows how to access various websites that I’ve set up for missions and ministries. Since I’m starting this business on a shoestring, I’ve had to be careful not to buy more than I can afford at any given time.

I did get a good deal on computer desks on a Boxing Day sale at WalMart, but I’m still scrounging for free computers that others cast off, because I know that for the most part I can get them up and running with a Linux distro.

In fact, this will strike you as good news if you are a keen linuxer; I intend to run my business on Linux operating systems only, and will offer all my training courses on that alone. I hope to convert all my student/interns to favour Linux above all else! I want to train them to troubleshoot their own problems, and hope that out of these people will arise some who will take on the challenge of offering truly excellent technical support in our city of Saskatoon to all those who will start switching to Linux.

It makes me glow to think I may have a part in spreading a good thing!

However, this stage of fixing, and borrowing parts from one old computer to make another one operational, and the hours it takes to install operating systems like OpenSuse 10.3 (especially if there’s a glitch and I have to do it all over again)… whew, it does call for extra doses of patience!

Friends are becoming aware of my need and are offering me their old boxes from the basement, and that’s okay because when I get a system all set up, I’ll be happy to give it away to a needy person, once I have a good set of training computers set up.

Really, I’m only asking God for four right now. I think I can train best if I have small classes for now.

Once this business is roaring along, you may find that I’m giving more updates here, and will have more detailed reports to give on how to do various things. For now I’m begging more time to get it all set up. Please?

Thanks!

So how is your business doing this January? Got the winter blues, or is this your most productive time because the winter weather eliminates other distracting things you could be doing?

I hope the latter is true for you. But if you know me at all, you know that I urge self-discipline and dogged perserance. So if you need someone to put a kindly arm around you today and remind you of that again, here I am to do that.

((((A hug for you))))! And I’m whispering in your ear, “Hang in there! Work hard now, and it will be easier to give yourself some time off when the lovely weather comes, and your loved ones beg for some of your time. It will be worth it in the end.”

I know – because I need this kind of talk from a friend myself these days. Setting up my Azaleas Virtual Assistants business is taking longer than I’d thought it would, and I am having to hang in there, and keep at it – for the sake of my long-term goals. Hey, when this gets off the ground, I’ll be getting a steady income, and I’ll be teaching others what I know. They will rejoice in their new skills and will be grateful to me.

I’m still setting up old computers in my office and haven’t had time for good publicity yet. So I’m running at least a month behind, but good things have happened too, and my brother made a suggestion last week, that gives me fresh home. More another time.

You may be running a wee home business and apologizing for it, thinking that you can only call yourself a true business person when you have a commercial location, and you go in for regular business hours, and you deal with the public every day. I’m here to explain that thinking away.

For the last ten years I’ve been calling myself (mostly privately) a business woman, and running it from my computer at home. I’ve tried hard to be orderly and systematic about how I run it, thinking that some day it will be easier to adjust to a real business in some office location. Well, since the beginning of December 2007, I’ve been preparing such a business where I plan to offer training in those basic office skills you need when you run a home business. When I find some exceptionally good workers I plain to hire them so I can delegate more of my work to them, and take on more commercial clients. However, this process over the last six weeks has proved something to me. There are wonderful advantages to running a business from home. Wistfully, I think how I’d like to go back to that comfortable lifestyle.

For your home business you don’t;
- need to pay for all kinds of licenses and government documents
- have to re-decorate and make your office ready for strangers
- have to buy up desks and computers and set things up for others
- have to go out in bitterly cold weather to walk or drive to the office
- go home and worry about unfinished work at the office
- nor do you need a presentable wardrobe to wear at the office.

All that is not to say that you run a home business lackadasically, and make do with a pitiful income. You can apply high personal and ethical standards, and do very well from home. You must weigh the advantages and justify your choices accordingly.

You might be asking what kind of business can you run from home that just calls for quality time in front of the computer? Good. I should clarify that I’m talking here mostly about a web business. One that you run from a web site which generates your income. One where, once you have built the core of the site, you can maintain it by adding a page or so a day, and checking for contacts from visitors to your site via your contact form, and those responding to your blogs, or whatever. If you are making digital sales you need to send emails to make sure they got their download okay, and build relationships with your customers by email or chat, or whatever. (See work from home for more).

It is quite possible now to run a straight information site about a topic you know well, and can write easily about to add to your site on that passion or favourite subject. If you add Google adSense ads to your web pages (no cost to you), it can bring you a quiet stream of income that is deposited regularly every month in to your bank account. Such a web business is perhaps the easiest to run. You can add affiliate links too, for more income that requires nothing of you, but to write good informational pages on your site’s topic. Or, you can write e-books with your knowledge set up in a helpful manner – and sell these.

Maybe you’ve heard me say it before, the Internet is a writer’s paradise. Almost everywhere you turn you will see that writing skills are needed to make an income on the web. Those who can’t write want to make money too, so they have to hire a writer. If you can write well, you save yourself that expense and can charge to do it for others. Another stream of income for you that you can earn from your home business.

It is good to register your home business name if it is other than your own name, and to do careful bookkeeping for all your expenses and profits. You should have a desk and computer dedicated to your home business, and guard that area so when you sit down there, you are really “in your office.”

But oh, the advantages of working from home;
- no office lease or rent to pay, or parking
- you can use the furniture you already have or scrounge at second-hand shops
- no signs to paint or pay for
- flexible hours (dash into the kitchen to start lunch or supper, and be right back)
- flexible days (take time off for a funeral, or shopping when necessary)
- wear extra socks and your old housecoat if you feel chilly

Let me be sensible and say that there are some things to overcome in starting a home business too. One of the main ones is disciplining yourself to stick to the schedule you set for yourself, and to persuade family and friends that you really are NOT available to socialize during the blocks of time you are working. (Living alone is an advantage here too, if you can keep from curling up to nap or watch TV or get distracted by other fun activities).

Where do I get all my home business ideas from? Glad you asked! Here’s some links to a large and informative site;

Advantages of a home business

Case studies of people who have succeeded with this plan

More about straight INFO sites and products

Take a video tour – part of the SiteBuildIt Course.

Again, my sincere apologies! This month has been unusually busy, and I’ve coped fairly well, because just as one stage of starting my new business for January was done, the resources were there for the next one. I took on an extra job which has been eating time up by the clock full as I try to prove I can do this. Between whiles I’m sneaking in some time on my Christmas mailing too.

This morning I got up before 4 am, to go with my neighbours to the airport, and then to bring back their Durango. However, it was too cold so the airline would not allow them to take along the dog they want to give to their grandson. We returned and went back to bed for a few hours.

All the while I was beginning to feel feverish and with swollen tonsils…. I’ve taken alternative health measures, and allowed myself to work at a slower pace at home. But after 11 am. we made another run to the airport. This time the temperatures had come up enough so they could take Noka along. In all of this I plumb forgot about this eAction blog/ezine!

Now the day is almost done, but I’ve managed to get more legal documents sorted out for my business. Last week I managed to get the painting done, some wall-papering and steam-cleaning over there in my office suite, but if you’ve been watching for an email from me…. I’m truly sorry, I’ve really neglected those because I’m hoping I can catch up with them over the holidays.

For those of you who like my long chatty Christmas letters, you’re welcome to this year’s. I managed to get it online on Tuesday morning. Go to read and/or download it from this page; Eventful Year 2007. It is a review and photo story of my very Eventful Year, and a tour of my little house.

I do wish you my heartiest Christmas Blessings, and the hope that 2008 may turn out to be for you and your business, just GREAT!

I’m going to stop making promises about next issues. Just know that my blogs are important to me, and when at all possible you’ll discover I’ve written something on schedule.

When things settle down to a dull roar in the new year, I’ll fill you in on my adventures in starting up a small business in a rented office suite.

God is so Good! Sometimes that’s evident in all the work He gives us!

I was starting an entry on using pico in shell last time, but a long distance call came in and swallowed up all the time I had saved for this blog.

Things have got still busier for me in the last two weeks, as I’m preparing some offices for a business I will start in January. Literally, I’ve been away from my computer for about three days in a row, both last week and this week. That means I’m way-way-behind in a lot of things.

On top of everything else, my old computer refused to accept a new hard drive when I tried install it over Dec 1-3, so I had to give up and get another computer. Setting it up ate up a couple of days too!

So-o, I’m begging off here, and may not get back to this until January. Even then, my schedule may be rocky at first, as I’m going to be takiugn on interns, and until I’ve taught them the basics, I will still be very short on time for my usual blog entries. Once my internship plan is rolling along smoothly, I’ll be able to delegate some of my work to them, and get back to writing here and in other areas of commitment with more focus and time.

May you have a blessed Christmas and New Year, and may all the interruptions that happen to you, be for improvements and greater success in the end too.

that there won’t be an issue of the eAction this week. I’m very busy cleaning and preparing an office suite for a new business to start in January. I simply can’t be in two places at the same time. Hopefully I can give you a full update on the 20th of this month.

Take these extra minutes you’re gaining by not reading a full issue to catch up on your own work load.

While my American friends are pausing to count their blessings and consider the goodness God has brought into their lives, I’m in a pensive, weighing some pros and cons mood too today.

There are times when I wonder if the people on the mailing list for this (Ezine Edition) of the eAction are really getting to see each issue and whether they are reading them. Would anyone but my number 1 fan notice if I cancelled this effort?

(I confess that I have most of the ezines I’ve subscribed to filtered automatically into a folder, and I haven’t had time to look in there for a long time – I bet others are doing that too).

Then I recall, on the other hand, that I started this so I would have a block of time ready and the habit in place for helping my growing downlines when it would be time to coax and guide them along. It happens that I expect to burst my downlines wide open in another month or two, so this is the wrong time to quit. I need to hang in here for the sake of a future situation.

Do you ever run into this too? You must! You can think of several reasons to quit something, but then you remember WHY you are doing it, and you know deep down in your conscience that you would lose rather than gain by quitting. So let’s hang in there!

It’s time to talk about MyPowerMall again. Ginny Dye’s enthusiasm is very catching. I know she’s not a perfect human being and probably has some ways that rub me the wrong way, but it is that enthusiasm and her grand and generous ideas that are causing the program to take off. Just yesterday she went back to the restaurant where she gave birth to the idea, to celebrate the first anniversary. And celebrate she should! Look at what she’s accomplished in just one year!

She’s founded a new online business that is harnessing the power of consumers to shape their own economy – and eventually it will shape it on a national and global scale. Already there are over 78,000 members in 206 countries. More and more of them are shopping in over 1000 stores she has lined up to work with her mall. The flow of cash all over North America is picking up momentum!

But if you listened to her “call” (even the delayed recording on the site, as I did) this week, you will know that starting in January things are going to EXPLODE with MyPowerMall! She has found a company who will set up in-house debit cards in conjunction with MasterCard. All members can be paid promptly by direct-deposit into those debit cards. These cards can be used in off-line shopping too, such as at your local grocery store or gas station, etc. Every use of your debit card will bring you more rebates and commissions.

On top of that, if you convince more merchants to come onside with MyPowerMall (at no expense) YOU will gain a percentage of all business done with them through the MPM debit cards by members. Can we even fathom what that will mean?

How many years ago did cell phones first come on the scene? A big of digging, and I learned it was invited in 1973 by a Martin Cooper who worked with Motorola. It still involved a suitcase full of batteries back then. These handy pocket phones have only proliferated in the last five years or less. In the same way, online shopping has been around for quite a while – at least a decade or more – but it is about to bust wide open, like the cell phone. People are going to shop online as fluently and commonly as they flip open a cell phone to call home.

If you had known five years ago what we see now with cell phones, and someone had said, “For 10 bucks you can have a share in the company that makes the phones,” would you have snapped it up?

Well, guess what. We now have such an opportunity to buy in on the “online shopping” that is going to grow like a huge snow ball and sweep the world. In January, Ginny is going to cut down on deadwood in the membership by asking us to buy at least one dollar’s worth through our malls every month, or we forfeit our mall. I think that’s only sensible. Else her system might break down. But it is – and she says always will be – free to join and get a PowerMall in your own name.

If you just want good deals and great rebates, sign up for the Personal Mall, but if you want to multiply your streams of income over the next 2 to 5 years many times over, then it is sheer stupidity to ignore this. I mean there may be some good reasons to decline on personal or moral issues, but speaking generally signing up is the obvious choice.

Then resolve to at least do a few things to insure your benefits. 1. Learn to shop online through your mall
2. READ Ginny’s training lessons that come by email the first 30 days.
3. Make some business cards or postcards or flyers to hand out as invitations to others.
4. Make sure your mall URL address is on them all, and you give it out at every opportunity.
5. Don’t nag or bother people, just keep handing out invitations cheerfully.

If you really want to make it big, use free advertising online, and if you can afford it go for paid ads too, both on and offline. Even if you are not good at math, you should catch on that the bigger your downline of real shoppers the greater your income will be.

Yet, important as that is, I think it is better to teach people how to shop online and then sign them up, than to persuade them to sign up for all the money they will make them, and you. Even though that’s what I’ve just done here.

My excuse is that I want to show you that this is you-can’t-lose business op because that’s why you are reading this – you want to do business online in such a way that You can have God involved and blessing your efforts.

Now if you haven’t signed up yet – go hear Ginny tell you all about it in one of the short audio movies here; MyPowerMall

(Incidently, not quite 100% have a cell phone yet; I don’t).

I’m re-discovering AdlandPro for advertising these days., as I’m going back to place more free classified ads. Anyone can go place up to 20 free ads in the system. If you tire of them, delete them and place new ones. AdlandPro

They do slide down the classifieds pages though as new ones are placed, so you have to devise a schedule when you will “edit’ them or “post new ads” so they show up at the top where they will be read again.

If you want to write scads of ads, you should at least join as an affiliate. Then you’ll need to place a link or banner to AdlandPro from your site, but that gives you the privilege of placing as many ads as you want. AdlandPro Affiliate You’ll still need to edit or replace them to keep them fresh and visible.

But if you start paying for your advertising at AdlandPro you get better services. Your ads are automatically renewed for you, and sent out to larger databases of classifieds sites. Become a Gold member, at Gold Member at AdlandPro and get ALL the advertising deals for $24.95/month.

Note: Lots of other Classifieds sites, like Craigslist, and Kijiji do NOT allow you to advertise affiliate programs. AdlandPro does.