Maternity Leave and Making Money as an Entrepreneur

My “maternity leave” (and I use that term very loosely) is coming up.  As I write this post I am about 11 days away from baby Abigail’s due date but if you are a mommy already you know  how that date is really not as accurate as one would like and this unknowing about the due date can be stressful.  As an entrepreneur I don’t get the traditional paid Maternity Leave, if I don’t work I don’t get any money.  Which is a scary thought for me.

Since I have been working from home I have pretty much been in charge the money flow for my business depending upon how many clients I assist.  I’ve made sure that I work enough hours to pay for food, a few basic necessities (like Diet Coke hee hee)  and Lily’s preschool which these days can wipe out that paycheck pretty quickly.  So what will I do now that I will be out of commission for a few days while in the hospital giving birth?  Well, I plan on automating my business of course!

The Social Media world that I currently work in has opened my eyes to many passive income opportunities and team delegating.  Now, I am not talking about any type of ‘get rich quick’ kind of deals but more along the idea of affiliate marketing, scheduled promotions, automated blog posts, article marketing and ebooks which can result in passive income.  These activities take a little bit of time to set up but once they are done you can relax and enjoy the passive income.  You can read more about how to set up passive income techniques on my company website at Sunrise Virtual Services and specifically this post about Affiliate Marketing

Another thing that I will be doing is delegating some tasks to another virtual assistant to help out with some of my clients activities.  How will I make money this way if I give the work away? Simple, we will divide up the money.  For example, if I charge the client $35.00 for Article Marketing I will pay my ‘helper’ $20.00 to post the articles and I will pocket the $15.00.  While I am not making the full $35.00 I am still pulling in some money.

I will also be enlisting the help of my husband, he is a super savvy guy and really does understand my business.  He will be doing some of the tasks that I do on a daily basis for my clients and thus we are still pulling in money for the company.  Since my work can really be done 24/7  I plan on jumping on the computer and doing about an hour of work a day.  I also receive my email on my Blackberry so I really don’t need to be in front of my computer to get some of my work done or to delegate it out to someone else.

So, while I have been busy getting ready for Baby Abigial I have also been getting my business ready to make some money while I take care of our newest Cullo.

Mini Office

In anticipation of baby Abigail’s arrival we have decided to move some of my office upstairs into our bedroom.  I know what you are thinking, mistake!  But as an Entrepreneur the one thing that I will not be getting with this new baby is any paid maternity leave.  Of course, I could have set some money aside for this time and taken some time off, but I just couldn’t squeeze anything else out of my checks so here I am needing to work with a new baby.  However, I am not discouraged at all, I know that I can make this work.  At least this time with a new baby my expectations about having a baby are more realistic this time.  My plan is to work a few hours a week, and I can certainly do that with my office upstairs as that is where I am going to spend the majority of my time.

When we brought Lily home from the hospital I was in shock at how hard taking care of a new baby would be.  Before Lily’s arrival I read just about every baby book out there, was on Baby Center everyday reading about new babies.  However, I had no idea how much my life would change with a new baby, I basically felt like my life was over, at least the life I used to know was over.  I recall within the first few days of bringing Lily home Louis and I crawled into bed for the night at 7:30pm, we were so tired and overwhelmed at how hard raising a new baby was.  At this point I just wanted to pull the covers over my head and start over and I wanted to burn every baby book I had read because I felt that they really didn’t prepare me for much.

Now, fast forward 4 years and we are more prepared and realistic about raising a new baby.  We know that it is going to be hard at first, she is going to cry a lot at first until we can get her all figured out and get settled into a routine.  For now, I can work at least an hour a day and slowing increase my client load as Abigail gets older.  I know it is going to be tough, but I know I can do it!

The other reason for moving part of my office upstairs is so that Lily keeps her flippin mess upstairs in the playroom.  Often, when I working downstairs she drags a ton of her toys and stuffed animals downstairs so she can play and be near me while I work.  I love her dearly, but she can really make a mess and that drives me bonkers.  In the past I have used our older laptop upstairs and logged into LogMeIn to control my work computer downstairs but Holy Cow sitting at Lily’s playdough table and trying to work was just not cutting it for me!  So, in my defense I did try to make it work without another desk upstairs.  So, we headed out to Ikea to find a desk that would work in a small area but not look funky in a bedroom and we found this great combo of a desk with drawers and it looks like a dresser when it is closed up.

Here is a picture of the desk when it is open

Office

Here is a picture of the desk when it is closed

OfficeDesk

What Can HootSuite Do For You?

Hootsuitethumb2

HootSuite is a tool that you can use to manage your Tweeting habit, for free!  There are several functions you can do with this amazing tool.

  • You can manage all of your Twitter profiles in one place.
  • Track your Tweeting statistics
  • Multi-column layout with customizable tabs
  • Create customizable groups of friends, coworkers, celebrities
  • Embed a column on another site so you can see the Tweet stream of a specific topic on a blog or website
  • Feed your blog (I am currently using Twitterfeed..but will be updating to HootSuite soon)
  • Integrate your Ping.fm account so that you can update all of your Social Networks at once with a single Tweet
  • Schedule Tweets – This is my personal favorite!
  • View user information about other people without going to their profile

You can view demo videos here about how these features work.

For more social marketing tips check out my business site – http://www.SunriseVirtualServices.com

Twitter Tips I’ve Picked Up

I  have a few Twitter Tips up my sleeve and I’d like to share these with you.

Use a colorful background or wear a bright color in your profile photo.

This tip I picked up from Erin Blaskie. She explains that by having a bright profile image your Tweets will ‘pop’ out more within someone’s Tweet Stream, makes sense to me.  Check out her Twitter profile image when you follow her you will see how much her Tweets actually seem to jump out at you.

Join Twitter Directories

There are several Twitter directories you can join and once you do so people can find and follow you based upon common interests.  Some directories to join are:

  • We Follow – http://wefollow.com/ – This one is my favorite because it ranks people in differnt categories (they place themselves in the categories) but it is still fun to see who the top Celebrity Tweeters are or the top Social Media people are.
  • Twellow - http://www.twellow.com/ – Known as the Twitter Yellow Pages
  • Just Tweet It - http://justtweetit.com/ – Find other people who Tweet what you Tweet

Completely fill out your Bio, Upload a picture, Create a Background Image

People are more likely to follow you if you have a completed Bio. Also, be sure to use your real name in your profile so that if someone searches for you, they can find you!  Isn’t that the point of being on the Internet anyway so that people can find you?  Also, you can create your own background instead of the stock Twitter backgrounds.  There are a lot of web designers who will do this for you for a small fee.  My favorite designer is BKB Designs , her name is Katherine Boroksi and she Designed my company logo and she can whip up something for you in a flash.

Tweet  and Retweet

To stay relevant, you need to Tweet what you think!  You will find that you create the most converstation with people if you actually interact with them on Twitter and ReTweet their thoughts as well.  Don’t just ReTweet a celebrity Tweet, actually Tweet things that are of interest to you as that is how you will create a community of like minded followers.

You can also follow me on Twitter at – http://www.twitter.com/dawncullo

For more social marketing tips check out my business site – http://www.SunriseVirtualServices.com

Schedule Your Facebook Status With Hootsuite

I have been using Ping.fm to post Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace & Plaxo updates for my clients.  What I have always wanted was a (free) way to schedule these updates.  Similar to what SocialOomph does for your Tweets.  With SocialOomph (previously known as TweetLater) you can schedule your Tweets far in advance which makes for promoting my clients events much easier.

Finally, HootSuite has come to the rescue and now are providing a new service where you can schedule your status updates on many social networking sites.  This has really made my job a lot easier as I don’t have to ‘remember’ to post a specific status update daily.  The great news is that you can even schedule updates to your Facebook Fanpages as well, yippie.

hootsuite1

For more social marketing tips check out my business site – http://www.SunriseVirtualServices.com

Share and Enjoy:

Facebook Photo Privacy

You can adjust the settings for your the photo albums you post on Facebook, and even for the photos that your friends tag you in.  To adjust the settings you will need to do the following.

  1. Create separate lists of your contacts.  These lists can be as simple as “friends”, “family” or “co-workers” etc.
  2. Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile Information > Photo Albums
  3. Next locate Photo Albums from the list and click on the Edit Settings Button

All of your photo albums will now appear and from the drop down lists you can select who can see your photos, but you can take that a step further by actually selecting specific lists from not seeing your photo albums.

As you can see in my Mobile Uploads I have blocked my Networking & Co-workers list from seeing these photos.  When they go to my photos, that particular album will not appear in my Photo tab.

FacebookPhotoPrivacy1

To block a list of people from seeing a photo album select “customize” from the drop down list type in the name of the list.

FacebookPhotoPrivacy2

To block specific lists of people from seeing photos and videos that you have been tagged in you will pretty much do the same thing.

Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile Information > Photos and Videos of Me

Select the edit button and adjust your settings as necessary. If you want to block a specific list of people you can just type in the name of the list in the “Hide this from” section.

FacebookPhotoPrivacy3

Do You Want To Start A Virtual Assisting Company?

Do you want to start your own Virtual Assisting company? Are you wondering where to start?

About six months ago I was was wondering the same thing.  My questions didn’t go unanswered very long because I found Erin Blaskie who is a VA Coach.  She is a super fantastic VA Coach because she is on top of the latest in Internet Marketing techniques and tools and she has had her own successful VA Company since 2004 and has served over 300 clients.

I purchased one of her products and it really helped me to get my business started, the product (Build Your VA Business) is now a self study program.  However, Erin is now doing a LIVE updated version of this program.  This is a 10 week live program and you can jump on board now.   Here is a link to Build Your VA Business 2.0 where you can get all the information about the program and to register.  Training with Erin live is the best option because she give so much information during her training classes.  Also, once you buy one of her products if she releases an update you get access to the new information so I’ll see you on the calls!

Shorten, Share and Track Your Links


I have been using TinyURL for quite some time to shorten my long links while using Twitter, however my colleague Erin Blaskie showed me an even better way to shorten long URL’s. The service is called bit.ly and you can not only shorten your URL but you can also view the analytic for the link.

Once you have shorten your link and use it you can immediately start to see the analytic information. Below is a recent one I used for a promotion on my Mommy Blogging site.

There are other features about this service that make it fantastic.

History

Bit.ly will keep a history of your links, this is a great feature if you do affiliate marketing and you want to shorten your links and track them.

Sidebar Bookmarks

Shorten URLs from anywhere with either one of bit.ly’s bookmarklets. They have made available either a sidebar widget or a standard tool bar bookmark then share your bit.ly link in your Email, on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere!

Blog

To keep up on all things bit.ly check out their bit.ly blog.

Tell me what you think about bit.ly or what service do you use to shorten your URL’s?

Twitter Verified

verifiedHave you ever thought of following a celebrity on Twitter but just not sure if it is really them sending those Tweets?  Well, you are not the only one who has had that thought that cross through their mind.

The good folks over at at Twitter in San Francisco are working on saving us from fake celebrity accounts. The are currently in the process of verifying celebrity accounts to be sure that they are authentic.  They are creating a new Verified Account program in which they will do their homework and find an official person connected to the celebrity who can verify the account.  According to the Twitter Blog they are planning on rolling out the program this summer.

Until then, the best way to be sure you are following a 100% genuine grade A celebrity is to go to their website and see if they have a link to their Twitter account.  Even better some celebrities have publicized their Twitter ID’s on their talk shows or while doing interviews.

Oprah is one such celebrity who announced her Twitter ID on air.  She devoted an entire show to Twitter in April 2009.   She tweeted live for the first time on TV with Gayle King by her side and even had Evan Williams co-founders of Twitter on the show with her.  You can be sure that this Twitter account is the real Oprah http://twitter.com/oprah

These accounts have already been verified by the celebrity either through their website or themselves via their own talk show or while on another show.

Gail King – http://twitter.com/kinggayle
Jimmy Fallon – http://twitter.com/jimmyfallon
Ashton Kutcher – http://twitter.com/aplusk
Demi Moore – http://twitter.com/mrskutcher
Ellen Degenereshttp://twitter.com/TheEllenShow
Shaq – http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ
MC Hammer – http://twitter.com/MCHammer
Anderson Cooper – http://twitter.com/andersoncooper
Sean Diddy Combs – http://www.twitter.com/IamDiddy

Who are the celebrities that you follow?

Publicize Your Twitter

It is important to add your Twitter URL (or ID) to your Facebook, your Website and your Blog.  This will help your current connections to find your Twitter URL (or ID) and start to follow you on Twitter.

By adding your Twitter URL to your Facebook, Website or Blog page people will then be able to quickly follow you on Twitter by clicking the link and going to your Twitter profile.   Your Twitter URL is http://www.twitter.com/username or ID  for instance mine is http://www.twitter.com/dawncullo

To Add The URL To Your Facebook

The link can be added to your Contact information under the Info Tab in the Websites section.

1. Click on the INFO tab in your Facebook Profile.

infotab

2. Scroll down to the Contact Information section

3. Hover your mouse over the Edit button / pencil area until it appears and then click EDIT.

contact

4. Scroll down to the WEBSITE section

5. Type in your Twitter URL (remember it is http://www.twitter.com/username)

fbcontactedit1

6. Click the blue SAVE CHANGES button.

7. View the link on your profile Home Page under the INFORMATION section.

fbcontact

To Add The URL To Your Website and Blog

Do a quick Google search for “Twitter Buttons” and you will come up with a laundry list of  designs. My favorite site is Twitter Buttons but there are a lot of new sites popping up all the time so check those out too for a design that fits into your Website or Blog theme.

1. Once you have found the design you like input your Twitter ID in the box at the top of the page and click “GO”

twitterbadge

2. The site will automatically generate an HTML code below the design.

3. Select copy code and then paste to it your Website or Blog.

4. You can also past the code in a notepad document and save it for use later.

5. This is an example of a design from  Twitter Buttons

Go ahead, click on the badge, see what happens.

I found this one on Twit Buttons

Twitter Button from twitbuttons.com

If you are unsure how to do then add this to your Website or Blog page this could be a great task to delegate to a Virtual Assistant or a Web Site Editor.

If you have a WordPress Blog site I can help you with this task.  I offer this as part of my Blog Update service.  Send me an email if you are interested in adding your Twitter ID to your blog.  My email is dawn@sunrisevirtualservices or you can Tweet me.

Twitter Button from twitbuttons.com

[tags] Twitter, Dawn Cullo, Sunrise Virutal Services [/tags]

Your On Twitter, Now What?

Congratulations, you made it on Twitter but now what?  The first thing to do is to find people to follow because if you are Tweeting and no one is listening to you then what is the point, right?

  • Click on the FIND PEOPLE link and type in a person’s name, a company name or Twitter ID.

You can also find people by using a keyword search.

  • Utilize the search box on your profile and enter keywords such as your target market or keywords associated with your business.
  • The search will reveal other people who have used that word in their Tweet or Bio.
  • Click on their profile to view their page
  • You can elect to follow them by clicking the FOLLOW button.

Here is a good plan of action for finding people to follow, this should keep you busy for a little while.

  1. Locate your friends and family
  2. Search for business associates
  3. Search for your “competition”
    Remember that following your competition is a good thing becuase you can keep an eye on what new products or servcies they may be featuring.
  4. Seek out companies
    Following local and national companies can be fun and beneficial to you because you can hear about company news instantly and even take advantage of coupons and discounts only offered to Twitter followers.  You can also send Direct Messages to these companies and get answers quickly from real people without waiting on hold!  Some of my favorite companies to follow are:
    @JetBlue
    @HomeDepot
    @WholeFoods
    @nordstrom
    @hotwire_deals
    @Overstock
    @OReturns (Overstock Returns)
    @rubbermaid
    @Sharpie
    @BestBuy
    There are a zillion more companies to follow just search for your favorite ones in the search box under the Find People link.
  5. Follow News Tweets
    No need to wait for the 5 o’clock news or look it up on the web.  Get news updates instantly by following local and national news stations as well as newspapers.  Also, try digging a little deeper to find your local news anchor’s Twitter Page
    @cnnbrk
    @andersoncooper
    @ricksanchezcnn
    @foxnews
    @LaTimes
    @NYTimes

What are some of your favorite people or companies to follow?

TweetStats, it’s all about the numbers.

TweetStats, it’s all about the numbers.

I just started to use this Twitter Tool called TweetStats.

TweetStats will Graph your Twitter Stats including

  • Tweets per hour
  • Tweets per month
  • Tweet timeline
  • Reply statistics

Here is a view of my Tweet Cloud, the bigger the word the more I have Tweeted about it.

tweetstats

This is one of the many graphs that are available.  This one illustrates who I have sent an @reply to and how often.

tweetstats2

There are a ton of Twitter Tools out there these days, what are the ones you find most useful?

If you like this tip and want more like it then hop over to my virtual assisting site SunriseVirtual Services and sign up for my email list.

Privacy Settings on Facebook

Do you want to adjust how your Facebook activity appears on your friends News Feed?

Under the Settings section (top right) go to Settings>Privacy Settings> News Feed and Wall

fbpost-privacy-settings

Now check or un-check items you don’t want to have appear on other people’s news feeds.

privacy-news-feed

Bonus tip !

Click the Social Ads tab so you can adjust your Social Ads privacy settings.  You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Social Ads by seleting No One from the drop down list.

privacy-news-feed1

To Twitt or not to Twitt

Yes, you should use Twitter for your business and for fun.

I think that Twitter is the coolest customer service tool since the phone! Where else can a company get instant, and I mean INSTANT feedback about their product? You don’t have to find the company’s phone number or wait on hold until you can talk to a customer service person. I personally have communicated with DirecTV about how happy I am with the free Nascar HotPass this season, and yes he responded right away! I also have been known to communicate with the local news guy about a few things too. It is like direct access to these companies and we should all be taking advantage of this great technology.
Here is how to get started:

  1. Sign Up. Go to http://www.twitter.com/ and sign up for a free account under you name or your company name.
  2. Create a short but sweet bio and upload a pretty picture of YOU, not your dog or your pet parrakeet, just you or your company logo.
    You can create a custom background and upload it or choose one of the nifty ones provided by Twitter. I created one in photoshop and saved it as .jpg. Just remember to keep it simple.
  3. Get a Twitter Desktop Management tool. Go to http://www.tweetdeck.com/ and download an awesome desktop management tool to manage all the awesome Tweeting you will be doing and receiving because Twitter is like a dorito chip, once you start with one, you can’t stop. There are some other great tools to use as well such as http://www.tweetlater.com/ where you can schedule automatic Tweets to go out on specific days at specific times and it helps manage other Twitter goodies such as keyword searches and sending out automatic direct messages.
  4. Start Tweeting! You have 140 characters to work with , so keep it short. OK, so now what do you Tweet about? You can Tweet about anything you want, what you are doing, what you are going to do, comment about a show you are watching, something or someone you want to promote. During Nascar races I follow a handful of people and we all comment about the race, it is great fun. We also use hash-tag the # sign after each Tweet so we can keep track of the conversation. Not sure what a hash-tag is? Check out this YouTube video by @MariSmith – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE
  5. Start following people. Here are some people that I recommend following right away you will get some great content from them @MariSmith @JoeComm and me too @DawnCullo.The easy way to add people to your Tweet Stream is to follow a few people and then look at who they are following. You can also do a search for people or companies on Twitter. Some companies to follow are @DirecTV, @CNN , @Zappos to name a few. You search here http://twitter.com/invitations for people or companies. I even follow my local news stations and local traffic alerts on Twitter. I actually found out the my husbands company was going to lay off workers before he called to tell me, I heard it on Twitter!
  6. Interact with people and learn the lingo.RT = ReTweet
    If you see a Tweet go by and you think it is cool you can Re-Tweet it. Just use the letters RT before the Tweet.

    @ = Responses
    If you want to respond to someone use the symbol @TheirName such as @DawnCullo before your comment. The replies will be placed in the Tweet Stream for everyone to see.

    DM = Direct Message
    You can send a private message by using letters DM before your content and it will be sent to the person in private.

    To make it easier on your self down load TweetDeck and it will automatically put all the corect letters before your special Tweets based upon the action you select when you hover your mouse over their tweet.

    This is a screen shot of TweetDeck. I have it set up in 5 columns. All Friends Tweets, Replies, Direct Message, Favorites (people’s tweets you don’t want miss) and TwitScoop, which shows the trending topics based upon the popularity of words in various Tweets.


There is so much more I could say about Twitter, I could go on for days. So check out my main resource on all things Twitter http://www.marismith.com/blog/ for some great info.
See you in the Tweet Stream.

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