Feedburner fix

For some reason, the feed for my softball blog wasn't working properly. I think it had something to do with changing over hosting for my softball site. The feed would only show my Aug. 30 post as my most recent. Even though I've posted many, many times since then, my feed wasn't updating. It still showed the Aug. 30 post as the most recent entry. That was the last post I made before switching hosting companies in the beginning of September. I don't know if the problem is related to the change or not, but that's the only thing I could think of.

I'm still not exactly sure what the problem was, but I ended up changing the server path where blogger publishes my feed to. Then I went back to feedburner and burned a new feed with the new location. That seems to work fine. I'm not too worried about the change because I didn't have much of a readership with the old feed. I'm thinking that Aug. 30 showing as my most recent post may have been discouraging people from requesting my feed??? It probably looked like I didn't really keep up with entries. We'll see if this correction helps circulation or readership at all.

I'm just glad I have a feed that's up to date!

Debt - Ugh! New Goal!

Debt ~ It's so easy to get into and so tough to get out of. Just two years ago, DH and I had no credit card balances. Now we've definitely got more than I'd like. Therefore, my new BIG goal is to get rid of all our credit card debt by the end of next year. That means I'm really going to start working my at home businesses!

We're also going to have to start getting creative with earning $$$. Before, when just DH worked I had time to look for other ways to earn $$$. Now that we both work it's easy to get caught up in just taking your paycheck and making ends meet with that. There are probably other opportunities out there, we just haven't been looking for them. If we are going to "pay ourselves first", we better keep up with finding ways to get the bills paid as well.

Wish me luck in my quest to get rid of credit card debt by the end of 2006! Anyone want to join me in this challenge and get rid ot your debt too?

1st Article ~ On track

I'm just about done with my very first article for the local magazine that asked me to write for them. My deadline isn't until Nov. 14th, so I think I'll just hang on to it for a bit and read it over again if a few days. Sometimes it's good to go back to a project after a bit of a break. I'm also asking a friend, who works for the magazine, to look it over and tell me what he thinks. So we'll see what feedback he has before I go back to it and make final revisions.

ON Track ~ also, I'm on track to earn another check from Google this month!!! I'm so excited. I just earned my very first check last month and that took me about 5 months to do. When I earned that first check, my next goal was to earn a check every month. I can't believe that I'm on track to do that already! I'm so thankful for Mom Masterminds ~ without them, I wouldn't be at this point. Much of my increase in earnings is due to the training and mentoring I receive there.

For any of you WAHMs out there with an online business, or if you're thinking of starting an online business ~ I highly, highly recommend getting involved with Mom Masterminds ~ they are offering a FREE 9-day eCourse right now that you can take advantage of. If you'd like me to answer questions about MM ~ I'd be more than happy to do that for you!

Birthdays and Halloween

Whew ~ we just got through two birthdays (DH and oldest DD). Actually, we still need to do a party for DD. Her birthday was yesterday (Monday) so her party will be later this week.

For DH's birthday, I treated him, and myself :) to a manicure/pedicure. I also got DD a gift certificate to the nail salon for her birthday since I knew she'd want to go once she saw that my nails were done.

Now we need to get through Halloween. We still need to get the kids their costumes! At least we already have candy to make goody bags. Our cul-de-sac does a haunted house each year and all the families make a certain number of goody bags to give to the kids once they get through the haunted house. We are working with another family this year to do a maze in our section of the haunted house. Halloween is less than a week away and we haven't worked on that yet either!

After Halloween, on the 2nd, I'll be doing a Student-Athlete and College Recruiting Seminar for Leahi Soccer Club. Then on the 3rd, DH, baby, and I fly to Maui with the high school softball team I coach. We'll be on Maui for the weekend. Our team will play some pre-season games/scrimmages while we're there. We return home on Sunday. Our girls will be staying home because right now, I just don't have an extra $1000 to bring them along. Of course, they aren't too happy about it. They only reason DH and baby are coming is because I don't think I'll be able to handle being away from baby that long. So DH is coming to bring him and take care of him while I'm doing coaching things. Also, we won't need to rent another car or get another room for just DH and baby. It's just one more airfare. If we brought the girls we're talking 4 more airfares, a car, and another room. I'm looking forward to the trip though. It should be a lot of fun!

Presentation - how it went

Well I got through my first big presentation! I did get nervous, but doing the presentation was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I'm getting more and more comfortable speaking in front of groups. In fact, the thing I liked least about the presentation was that I didn't have enough time! I actually wanted to stay up in front of this group longer and talk more ~ LOL.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any sales right then and there, but I did pick up "Contact Sheets" from a most of the Athletic Directors that were at the meeting. The Contact Sheet gives me their contact information along with the products that they are interested in. About 1/4 of them checked off every product! Some didn't check off anything at all. I will follow up with all of them and try to close sales. I will also talk with those that didn't check of products to find out if it's because they aren't interested at this time or if it's because they felt the product wouldn't benefit them.

As far as talking in front of groups, I'm actually looking forward to my first seminar. I'm doing a Student-Athlete and College Recruiting Seminar for a local soccer club during the first week of November. I think it'll be a lot of fun! Rick Wire, the President of Dynamite Sports, did tell me that he thinks once I do a seminar I'll be hooked because it's so fun. I think he's probably right about that. We'll see how that goes.

Big Presentation ~ Yikes!

I have my biggest presentation yet for my offline biz tomorrow. I'm going to be talking to 20+ Athletic Directors about Dynamite Sports. Hopefully things go well. If so, October should be my biggest month yet!

Me, who does NOT like to talk in front of people; me, who does NOT like sales ~ I'm going to get up in front of a group of people and speak and try to sell them something. LOL ~ that's just how strongly I feel about Dyanmite Sports and what we do for high school student-athletes across the country.

Wish me luck!

Website WAHM and writer?

I was just asked, yesterday, if I'd be interested in writing sports related articles for a local magazine. Yikes! I really don't see myself as a writer. It's not what I love to do, but I do find it easier when I'm writing about sports. The magazine is published every other month, so there wouldn't be pressure to write every week or anything like that. I think I can handle it. It'll certainly be an interesting experience and I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try. I'll definitely blog about it again if I actually do begin writing for this magazine.

For now, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. They've given me a topic, but said they would also tell me the direction or focus they would like for the article. So that's what I'm waiting for.

On Track so Far!

Last month I finally reached the payment threshold for Google AdSense. My next goal was to be to earn a check every month. So far, I'm on track to do that in October! Hopefully, things keep going at this rate! Yippee!

My First E-Book

Well, my very first e-book is in it's finishing stages. I'll have to look it over again to proofread once more and have a cover made, but that's it. Once those two things are done, I'll have my very first e-book available at AllAboutFastpitch.com. I don't want to reveal what it's about just yet, but I'll be sure to post when it's ready!

Goal Update ~ Press Release and Article

A while back I posted goals of writing another article and finishing my very first press release. Well, last night and this afternoon I submitted my very first press release to the two local newspapers. We'll see if either one is interested.

I did finish another article and I posted in on my site. It's also posted on another fastpitch softball site already and will probably be posted in a sports blog soon as well.

So Yippee! I accomplished both of those goals this week. Now I'm trying to figure out how to organize my business time so that I can concentrate a bit more on Dynamite Sports. Right now, that's where I'm getting paid most. So at Mom Masterminds, they said to spend more time on "money-making" tasks and possibly outsource your other tasks. Now I have to work on a plan to execute that piece of knowledge I picked up. I'm probably doing way too much on my softball site. I need to step back re-prioritize and do things in a more efficient, more productive manner.

Best affiliate day yet! Google AdSense

Today is the BEST Google Adsense day I have ever had. The idea of generating more revenue with additional websites is starting to pay off! I earned twice as much today as on the day of my previous Google AdSense high. If only things could stay that way. I'm also learning what pages generate more $/click so I'll have to work on getting more traffic to those pages somehow.

It's nice to have these "banner" days every once in a while. It helps keep you motivated!

Yay - SE Ranking for Dog Website

Cool ~ the search engines finally found our Blue Pitbull Website! I originally decided to build it so that DH could get excited with me about SE Rankings and about me being on the computer working on a website. LOL ~ it now ranks highly on MSN for two of the main keywords I wanted to rank for! It also ranks #1 on Yahoo for "Blue Pitbull Studs". It's cool, but I'm a bit jealous because my fastpitch softball site, which is my baby, doesn't even rank that well and it's been around much longer. I've also put a heck of a lot more hours into it! Oh well. That's okay, it's nice to know that what I'm learning about SEO does work. Of course this site still doesn't rank very highly on Google, but it has been indexed by Google so that's a start. I don't expect much from Google yet though because the site is so new. Hopefully, one day, Google will like 808BluePitbull.com.