So for my birthday, I took the day off work and now that I have had my coffee and some quiet time, I’ve decided what I want for my birthday and you can help me!

Owning my own part time home based business has given me a lot of satisfaction in that it lets me be creative and make some more money for my family so we can get the “extras” we want. Plus, I get to mentor other women and help them become business owners.

Being an entrepreneur is in my blood.

Everyone in my family tree owned and operated small businesses to provide for the family. There was a 3 generation history of shoe repair stores on my mom’s side of the family. My father’s family also has a long history of businesses and my dad has owned his own businesses since I was a little girl.

I always dreamed of having my own business, but I was one of the first to graduate from college and take a career path as a salaried worker. So, having a home business in addition to my job fills that need in me to be entrepreneurial.

So, what’s my birthday wish???

I want to help other women explore their creativity and develop home based businesses both internationally and locally.

There are two ways you can participate:

1. Make a $25 loan to Kiva.org. I started giving to this organization a few years ago A $25 loan is combined with other lenders to make a small loan to the entrepreneur in an underdeveloped country. The coolest thing is they repay the loan and then you can loan your original $25 investment to someone else. I have loaned the same $25 to 5 different people!

My most recent loan is to Myra from Ecuador.

Mayra is 19 years old and single. She lives in the city of Ibarra, Ecuador, with her parents. Young, entrepreneurial, peaceful, and calm, Mayra has her own embroidery business. She creates hand-embroidered designs on t-shirts and other clothing. She is seeking this loan to purchase cloth and thread to complete her handiwork.

Mayra has been embroidering as a business for two years. In the beginning, she had help from her mother. Now she works independently. Mayra’s goals for the future are to finish building her house and to finish her studies. In the photo, Mayra is proudly demonstrating her hand-embroidered design on a souvenir Ecuador t-shirt. Ibarra is located very close to a large market town very popular with travelers and locals alike.

You can make a loan by clicking here.

2. Start your own business by joining me in Shaklee as a Gold Ambassador and let me mentor you. I can help you start your own home based business using the most successful internet based marketing tools I’ve learned over the last 3 years ( take advantage of all the mistakes I’ve already made and get on the Fast Track to success!)
Want to work to Live Your Dreams rather than someone else’s dream?

Contact me to learn more about …

What people are doing to earn $100,000 in 15 months with FastTRACK
How to earn a car with the Shaklee Car Program!
How people are earning a trip to the Barceló Maya Palace in the Mayan Riviera
What people are doing to be a top achiever and go on safari in Kenya

View Shaklee Rewards Brochure

Have a question about this? Click here and ask me!

If you choose to grant me my birthday wish, either by donating to Kiva.org or joining my team as a Shaklee Gold Ambassador, leave me a comment below! I’d love to hear how many women we help become entrepreneurs on my birthday!

I found this awesome slide presentation on how to tweet for your business. It is a comprehensive explanation of what to tweet about. Watch this and learn how to be a influential tweeter. Then leave a comment about your thoughts on using Twitter in the same way for your home based business.

Think again. The default settings allow your friends to check you in at places where you might not even be! That could be disastrous to your reputation!

Watch this video below to see how to adjust your privacy settings so your “friends” will not be able to check you in at places where you would rather not be seen ….

Before you go, share this post with your friends on Facebook and Twitter by clicking on the buttons at the bottom of this post.

Leave me a comment about how you are going to use Facebook Places for personal and business use. Does this privacy issue concern you?

Finally, if you are serious about succeeding in your own business, please consider joining my team. Click here to learn more.

Are you ready? Do you have the skills needed to take your small business or home business online and compete?

Sign up for my FREE Home Business Marketing Bootcamp in the box on the right side of this blog. Don’t get left behind….

Some advertisers make promises so huge that you shake your head and click away or turn the page. Sometimes our kids do that too! (I promise I’ll take care of this puppy, Mom!) Luckily for our kids we give them the benefit of good intentions and usually go along with the plan.

But we don’t give the advertisers that benefit of the doubt. When the promise is ridiculous, most of us will ignore it.

While over done promises send you running the other way, there has to be some kind of promise, either stated or implied, or you still aren’t going to buy.

Promises are important. Without them, no one is interested. You don’t buy something or support a cause or a candidate just because they’re there. You have to have a reason, and the big promise conveys the reason.

If you promise me great taste, and something specific that will benefit the kids, I’ll buy your Girl Scout Cookies.

If you promise I’ll have fun, or get to meet a celebrity, or learn something I really want to know – I’ll come to your event.

If you promise to change the world in ways that I think it should be changed, I’ll vote for your candidate.

If you promise to solve a social ill – one that matters to ME – I’ll donate to your cause.

If you promise to make my life happier or easier in some way, I’ll use the service you offer.

Do you see how that works? None of us are just going to say “Yes” to something without a great promise first. We all need reasons.

We all need the answer to that age-old question “What’s in it for me?” before we’ll consider buying your product, using your service, or donating to your cause. Your promise has to offer the answer to that question.

You can use promises in your personal life, too. For instance, if you’re selling a couch and you promise to deliver it, that’s a great selling point. If the kids want to go to the mall, but promise to mow the lawn if you’ll take them, you might say yes.

Whatever you’re selling, decide on the biggest (true) promise you can make. Then put it in the headline or the first sentence of your ad.

And in your daily life… when you want something from someone else, first decide what you can give in return and promise it.

I promise you’ll get better results than you would by merely asking.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marte_Cliff

I was reading Tim Ferriss‘s blog today and was surprised to see the way he is celebrating his birthday this year.  He is giving away up to $50,000 to help public school children go on field trips.    That’s right he is giving away money to celebrate his birthday.

As a former school teacher, I can attest to the importance of field trips to open the minds of our school children.  Many children will never have the chance to leave their small towns and experience the world around them without field trips.  My own community has cut funds for field trips due to necessary budget cuts.  It is sad to watch, but we have hope when we give out of our abundance to causes such as this.

Please visit his blog post and make a donation for his birthday gift.  (Tim Ferriss is the author of the book, The Four Hour Workweek.

My Unusual $100,000 Birthday Present (Plus: Free Round-Trip Anywhere in the World)

Don’t make these blogging mistakes!

There are over 50 million blogs online now. Why should you have a blog?

1. To Establish Yourself as an Expert–Personal Branding
If you have a topic you know a lot about, you can write articles about your topic and over time establish yourself as an expert. People will turn to you and your blog as an authority in that subject area.

2. To Market or Promote Your Product or Service
If you have a product to promote, once you establish yourself as an expert in that area, people will be more likely to turn to you for product recommendations or to use your services.

3. To Connect With Like Minded People
As you write about your topic, you will attract readers with common interests. You can build a community this way. Commenting on blogs and joining online communities will help you connect with people and build relationships.

4. To Build a Readership
If your content is valuable, fresh and updated regularly, you will develop a readership of people who subscribe to your RSS feeds and mailing lists. Your readers will be a targeted market for your marketing campaigns.

5. To Help People
Blogs can be used to help people solve problems. Finding out those needs and writing articles that provide solutions can help people.

6. To Make Money
When you build a readership, you will be able to promote your products and services to your readers. You can also monetize your blog with advertisements with Google Adsense, Amazon, and other affiliate programs.

7. To Have Fun and Be Creative
A blog is a writer’s platform for having fun and being about to express creativity. Being able to share that creativity with others can bring a sense of joy and satisfaction for the blogger.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_Clayton

Starting a home based business can be one of the most rewarding ventures a person can make in life, but it can also drain you emotionally and physically. Moreover, if you head full-sprint into a new business opportunity without first having a solid plan, you may find yourself making some big mistakes early on that can take years to correct.

As you start to think about a new home business, here are some big mistakes that you should take care to avoid.

1.Think Big, But Not Too Big
Thinking big is essential to starting a new business. You need to have a large goal to aim for when starting your business, both to motivate you to succeed, but also to have something to measure your progress against. If your goal is to eventually make $10,000/month working from home, you can easily see that after a year, if you’re making $2,000/month, you’ve made it to 20% of your goal. Setting your sights too high, however, can have the opposite effect of discouraging you and stopping your business in it’s tracks. Hitting that $10,000/month figure can be a huge achievement, but if you’ve set your goal to make a million per month, that $10,000 will feel like a drop in the bucket.

2.Good Is Good Enough.
French author Voltaire famously said “the perfect is the enemy of the good” and striving for perfection can stop any business in it’s tracks. Along the same lines of thinking big, but not too big, learning to be okay with good is the only way to launch a business and not beat yourself up when you meet small snags. Only a minute percentage of businesses will ever reach the multi-billion dollar status, but when your metric for success is a modest and achievable goal, you set yourself up for success in the long run.

3.Fast Eats Slow
For so long, big business has had the power and girth to annihilate any small business that stood in it’s way. While in many industries this may still be true, the prevailing mantra for small businesses is that fast beats slow, not big beats small. Use your size to your advantage when you’re starting out. Think of the time and energy it would cost just to switch over to a new, more efficient, piece of software at a company of 100,000 employees, but at a company of 5 or 10 people, the cost is negligible, but the benefits can still be huge.

*************

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_J_Stein

Since I love a challenge, here goes….

* My first post

I know I need to market online, but where do I start?

Now this isn’t exactly my first blog post, because when I first started blogging, I didn’t have a clue!  Those first blogs I built in 2004 don’t even exist anymore.  I used to use FREE sites like blogger and wordpress.com and I learned they can take down your content in a minute.  I’ve abandoned some of my early works and I’ve had some of my blogs shut down.  But, this link is to my first post that is still standing on one of my blogs called Internet Marketing for Blondes. It exists because I wised up and bought my own domain and hosting accounts.

* A post I enjoyed writing the most

How to Make “Kickin” Pimento Cheese in 5 Minutes

I enjoyed writing this post because I had a good time filming this cooking demonstration and doing something to help promote one of my favorite local farmers and our farmer’s market.   What I like most in the video is the sound of the cheese sizzling after it comes out of the microwave.  It’s down home fun and what we do in small towns in America on Saturdays.  It’s from my blog, The Wellness Lady.

* A post which had a great discussion

The Wellness Lady is going it TRI again, Day 1

I wrote this post when I decided to train for an indoor triathlon at my gym.  It seemed like it would be easy to do when I saw the training schedule…   Anyway, getting great discussions on my blog is something I can see I need to work on.  One of the strategies I have just started to become more disciplined in is commenting on other blogs.

* A post on someone else’s blog that I wish I’d written

It’s not so simple to narrow it down to one post that I wish I’d written, but I would like to say that I wish I had created the blog, The Social Media Examiner.  I love all the posts and find the design and graphics to be fun and entertaining.
* My most helpful post

How to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page to Promote Your Home Based Business or Personal Brand

This post has received the most visits and revisits.  I continue to share it with business owners who are just getting started with Facebook marketing and don’t know the difference between a profile page and a fan page.

* A post with a title I am proud of

Where Can I Find a Cute Twitter Button for My Blog?

Need I say more?

* A post that I wish more people had read

Breakthrough Your Fears and Begin Video Marketing

I just made this video today and published it on my new website at CarlaClayton.com

The top internet marketers are now recommending a personally branded blog as a hub for all of your internet marketing activities.  So, I’ve just started this blog and would like to develop readers here.

Comments on the 7 link challenge:

This exercise has taken me over an hour to complete, but I believe it has been valuable from the standpoint of evaluating my work, celebrating success and determining future goals for improvement.

If you are serious about blogging, take the challenge.  Then,  leave a comment here so I can read your posts too!