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Nell Taliercio has been blogging about her MommysPlace.net website and the recent changes she’s making to the site.

Christina Lemmey interviewed me as one of their wahm success stories over there and I thought I would share that.

If you’re just getting started you might find it inspiring and valuable too.

Cara of The Household Helper took a detour from her usual topic – household management – to talk about personal finance, namely, the recession and what we as individuals can do about it.

Her guest was Christine McKinley, a CPA who writes helpful advice for us wahm/internet marketing types. This show reminded me of my overall philosophy around finances.

I don’t believe that recession has anything to do with me as an individual, and if you listen to the show, you’ll get some good advice from Christine about maximizing your personal finances regardless of what is going on in the nation at large.

I believe in personal responsibility. Succeed or fail – it’s mostly up to me, not what the Feds are doing or not doing, not what my neighbor is doing or not doing.

I believe in choices. If gas is expensive, I can whine about it or I can do something productive. I can drive less often and with more care. I can spend less in other discretionary budget areas. I can convert my car to a Greasel. I can increase my earnings.

But sitting around wringing my hands about “the economy” is a worthless exercise.

Moms Talk Radio

On Moms Morning Show today, Kelly talked about participating in the 31 Days to a Better Blog. She also put a challenge out there at Mom Masterminds.

I’m always up for a good challenge so I jumped right in. Day One, I updated my boring old About page over at my other blog. I made it a little longer, more personal, more upbeat and benefit driven.

But I’m also going to be making some changes here too. First, moving to Wordpress. (No offense Blogger, but it’s over. I’ve moved on. It’s not you. It’s me. Ok, it is you. I found someone else!)

I have a VA working on this now. I also have a super cute new blog skin I’ll be using.

Do you want to participate? Read the 31 Days article here and leave a comment below and let me know!

Moms Talk Radio

Last week on Mom’s Morning Show, we kicked off the first of the panel style format. 4 of us discussed the topic at hand, which was Being Positive in Life and Business.

We each ranked ourselves on a scale of 1-1o. I gave myself an 8. One of the reasons I’m able to stay positive despite challenges is by focusing on what’s going right in my life.

I started keeping a Gratitude Journal a few months back. It’s not complicated. I just write down 5 things at night before I go to bed. They could be simple like “a really great cup of coffee”, or more deep like “healthy children”.

I find that the more I do this, the more grateful I feel. And when I’m feeling grumpy, I can look back and see that it’s when I’ve neglected to do this daily practice.

Most of us are amazingly fortunate to be here on this planet and to be alive and have enough wealth to own a computer and live in a warm home and have adequate food and clothing. Compared to many we’re all rich.

The mere act of sitting down every day and documenting at least one thing that you are grateful for is a powerful way to begin or end your day (I like doing it at night because I sometimes involve my kids and talk to them during the bedtime routine about what they were particularly grateful for that day).

Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions a person can feel and it’s literally impossible to feel sad at the same time.

Moms Talk Radio

There was a time when I was truly fed up with goals. Goals had gotten me in debt, goals had gotten me frustrated beyond belief, goals made me depressed and anxious and goals created tears.

Then I realized that the types of goals I was setting were all wrong for me.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t do well with outcome oriented goals. I do VERY well with ACTION oriented goals.

You see, one type has to do with what others do. Will they sign up for my mailing list, will they buy my product, will they visit my site.

The other type has to do with what I do. How often I’ll blog, how many articles I’ll write, how many pages of content I’ll add.

I don’t know about you, but I’m far better at controlling what I do than what other people do!

The other week on Mom’s Morning Show, Tishia, Chele and Kelly spoke about goals. They discussed the fact that setting realistic goals is very important, especially for a new work at home Mom. And that if you need money now, working by the hour offering your services is the way to go – and you can always build up your passive income on the side while you get some cash flowing in.

Great advice, that!

Moms Talk Radio

Kelly McCausey shared some awesome advice for people who haven’t yet begun their internet business but who want to do so… if you haven’t read it yet, go see it here.

I echoed Kelly’s words in my comment. Last week I stated that I was also committed to improving my existing projects and sites this year instead of beginning anything new – but that doesn’t mean I won’t experience growth.

Content site #1 (not in terms of how old it is, just that it’s the first one I’m working on improving) has already seen an increase in affiliate sales and activity (in the form of emails from subscribers). I’m stoked about that.

Everyone’s been talking about their goals for 2008 lately. When Kelly posted that she has made some BIG changes in her business in her efforts to keep focus and that she wanted to improve all her existing projects this year, I decided to share my own goals.

I’m also devoting this year to improving my existing projects. Nothing new!

I shared this goal with the ladies on Moms Morning Show last week as well as my fellow Mom Masterminders, and it seems that a few of us have a similar idea. I did release a new product this month, but it has been in the works since last month, and it is being sold on an existing site that fits my target audience and larger goal, so it doesn’t count.

However, for the remainder of the year, I will not do any of the following:

• Buy new domains
• Launch new products
• Start new websites

I recently finished up my 2007 financials/paperwork and was happy to see that I did double my income from 2006. And as I wrote about earlier, I unloaded a bunch of sites and projects and still didn’t see a decrease in my income (which I was actually expecting!).

So, I’m even more determined to continue reaching my current target markets with the products and websites I already have. To that end, I’ll be spending one month on each of my existing projects just improving and tweaking.

Thankfully I have the ladies at Mom Masterminds to give me their feedback. I’m also going to post my progress here so that hopefully you can benefit and also share your thoughts.

Just off the top of my head, here are some of the things I plan on doing:

Content Sites

• Review the home page. Is there a strong call to action? Good copy?
• Look at my autoresponders. Are my thank you pages recommending a product? Read the emails that are scheduled to go out. Do I need to change anything? How are the affiliate products converting? Do I need to update any redirects?
• Look at stats from AdSpy and see how I can tweak the Google ads for higher clicks.
• Do keyword research and see what hot products or pages I can add.
• Write articles to promote the site and improve traffic and search engine listings.
• Continue providing informative free reports to drive traffic and affiliate commissions.

Products

• Tweak sales pages and track results of changes made.
• Provide affiliates with more resources (more articles, ads, reviews, reports, etc)
• Write articles to promote products

What about you? What are your goals for 2008 (post your blog url in your comments if you like) and how are you going to bring those about?

The voting is officially closed for Mommy Hobby! Now the fun begins. Who should win? Please read the comments on the first post and let me know who you think the site should go to.

Let me say that I was very impressed by some of the entries. We got some really heartfelt comments and it’s obvious that these women feel strongly about the topic. We even got a poem in the comments!

So ladies, who should win? Let’s “meet” our contestants before the voting commences, shall we?

• Bron Mitchell of Australia is a mom of 3 who loves crafts and comes from a long line of crafters
• BusyMe! aka Loreena Walsh is the poet of the group

• Melamom is into scrapbooking and has a scrapbooking business
• Moon Dancing Nana is a grandmother who enjoys making toys from organic or recycled fabric and clothing
• Sarah aka Hot Mommy enjoys making crafts to sell at local fairs
• Tricia Ann Gardner of GardnerDragonFlyDreams enjoys many hobbies and has big plans if she were to win the website
• Kelkat is a homeschooling Mom who believes crafting “is about expressing yourself in a new and creative fashion that actually leaves a part of yourself with the item”
• Yvette Medina of MelaMom
• Anna Campbell of Women Business Owners says that “life is but a hobby”
• Heather of FairyMe, an Atlanta Mom (my homegirl!) of two girls

Please leave your comment below and tell me who you think should win and why. Have fun!

Just a reminder in case you haven’t signed up already for Lynette and Kelly’s FREE Membership Site call. Sign up here.

If you’ve ever considered launching a membership site as a brand new business or a new avenue of your existing business be sure to listen in tonight. A membership site practically guarantees that you will earn consistent residual income in your business.

The call is tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern so don’t hesitate.