Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

Okay, now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t too bright to shake the ink cartridge from my printer just to make sure it was empty. And as soon as I did it and saw the cyan ink stain on our new light beige colored carpet, I panicked. Google to the rescue! I typed “how to remove ink stains from carpet” got this answer from Buzzle.com

I quickly grabbed some cotton balls, some rubbing alchohol, and worked on the carpet stain. Thank God it worked. If you work from home, I strongly recommend that you get some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol to keep on hand. Not only will it remove ink stains from carpet, but I remember how my kids used to grab my pens and write on our curtains, walls, furniture, anything they could if I didn’t keep my pens from my home office locked up. You want to have the “tools” to clean up those accidents when they happen.

Whew! The stain is gone. Just thought I’d give you a heads up. That was handy to know how to remove that stain. And I’m so thankful it worked!

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I’m back from my trip to San Francisco to tape a segment on working from home. If you’d like to see the segment from The View from the Bay in San Francisco on Monday you can watch it here.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=viewfrombay&id=4982269

There are 2 segments. When the first one finished, just click on the second picture below the player and the 2nd one will air.

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In a recent interview on The View from the Bay, Mike Dooley, one of the contributors to the movie The Secret, shares how our “Thoughts become things” in our lives. The movie The Secret shows how we can use the power of words and images to inspire life changes.

Here are Mike’s 5 guidelines for visualizing life changes:

1. Visualize no more than once a day.

2. Visualize no longer than 5-10 minutes.

3. Imagine every conceivable detail: sights, sounds, colors, textures, etc.

4. Put yourself inside the picture.

5. Dwell only upon the end result or beyond, not “HOW” you’re going to get there.

Here are related posts with teachings from The Secret:

• Quotes from The Movie The Secret
• The 1 Secret That Will Change Your Life
• Get more in life by being grateful - how gratitude (and my gratitude rock) are changing my life
• The Power of Gratitude
• Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
• Staying postive when your business hits bumps in the road
• 5 Keys for Creating your Dream Life from The Secret

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The whole family has been excited about my trip to San Francisco to appear on the tv show The View from the Bay. And my kids have been great about helping me practice for the interview. Well, last night we were taking what we call a “power bath”. Everyone gets in their swim suits, we fill the tub sky high with bubbles, light candles, and hang out and talk. It’s a great way to get one on one time with the kids.

And my daughter grabbed a shampoo bottle and said, “Welcome to the bathtub show…. I’m your host, Nicole T - Tell me Kristie, how did you start Doing in your Bathrobe day.” And then she’d pop off these questions about, “How you can avoid work at home scams.” “How do you like working from home” and so on.

Oh my gosh, we had so much fun. And my kids became these crazy television hosts with wild questions. It was a blast. So if you ever want a really fun way to prepare for a television interview, you’ve got to try the “The Bathtub Show” technique. You’ll love it!

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This weekend I am traveling to San Francisco to tape a TV show. And what’s really great is that even though I’ll be away from my business, my business will still be earning money. One of the best things I did for my business last year was automate my email marketing by setting up an autoresponder series to help readers with the biggest challenges they face in their business.

The shopping cart system I use makes it so easy to setup an email marketing campaign like that. In fact, you can load up an entire year of marketing messages setup to go out automatically to your subscribers. Now that’s a business on autopilot! Powerful stuff! (You can even try my favorite shopping cart free for 30 days here)

That makes a smart marketing system that works, so I don’t have to.

This is one of the great tips I got as a member of an exclusive mom mastermind group. If you’d like to check it out, you can get a free 7 day pass here. I guarantee you’ll get tips, support, and information that will grow your business. Grab your free >7 day mom mastermind pass here.

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Here I was all excited that I was a “big girl” and publishing my 2nd podcast episode. I edited the podcast, uploaded it, made a post in my podcast category of my blog, and ran into Itunes to see if it recognized the new episode. I waited…. waiting some more, checked a few emails, okay… let’s just say that 24 hours later the episode still hadn’t posted.

So I called in my trusted podcasting coach Kelly McCausey, how got some things fixed for me.

I also Googled and found this great advice by Scott Bourne on how to ping Itunes when you post a new episode.

Cool tip Scott on how to ping Itunes, thanks! And great blog on podcasting on audio, video, and photography.

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After reading John Jantsch’s book, Duct Tape Marketing, I have decided to get my act together and create a real marketing plan. Being a highly creative “get things done” person, I am a bit embarrased to admit that for 10 years I have not had a marketing plan. I have had a sense of what I wanted to accomplish. And with high energy bursts, I’d pulled off some pretty cool marketing feats. But this year to stay more focused, I am going with an internet marketing plan.

Here are 10 steps to creating an online marketing plan

1) Define your target market
2) Create your marketing message - Who you are, what you do, how you provide value.
3) Review your marketing materials and tweak for consistency with marketing message
4) Review your product offerings to see which revenue streams are generating the most income
4) Choose your top 3 marketing methods you want to focus on for each area of your business
product marketing, lead generation, customer relationship marketing, publicity, seo
5) For each of those marketing methods, set goals with deadlines and action steps
6) Make a list of the people, resources, materials you will need to gather to complete those goals
graphic design, print costs, postage, web design, marketing consultants, assistants
7) Review your clients to identify the top 20% that bring you 80% of your business
Plan a “keep in touch” strategy to enhance those relationships
9) Plan and implement an email marketing campaign to deliver keep in touch messages and sales messages that deliver value to your customer base online
9) Write down your marketing goals and plans and post them in a place where you can review them regularly
10) Commit to take action - and track your results!

If you don’t have a copy of John’s book, Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide , you seriously have to grab it — good stuff. It’s solid and practical - no fluff or hype here. I have always looked up to John’s special brand of “sticky” advice and his book is stellar!

Do you have a marketing plan? What top marketing methods will you use this year? Share your marketing ideas here.

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I have alarming news for anyone who sells ebooks as unsecured PDF’s. The new version of Adobe Reader 8 has a button that says “save as text”. And sure enough, if you click it, it converts the text in the pdf file to a txt file.

I noticed this just yesterday when my client sent me a news story as a pdf and I was just about to open my tool that converts pdf’s to text when I noticed that Adobe has this new feature.

So if you think that your pdf is protecting your ebook from theft, think again. Imagine how easy it would be for someone to take your entire ebook, rewrite it a bit, and republish it as their own. That’s not a very comforting thought is it. And yet I’m sure it will start happening more and more. As far as other formats, I’ll be researching into other formats.

I know that exe is a possibility. But it’s kind of a pain because usually people have to download a reader to open the exe with.

Anyone else have bright ideas for alternative pdf formats?

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I am what you call technically challenged. Yes, I can create a killer looking website, but when it comes to working gizmos and gadgets, I need a little help. I am working on kicking up the quality of the recording of my new podcast, Speaker Success Talk Radio. My awesome podcasting coach, Kelly McCausey, tipped me off that getting the JK Inline patch would allow me to remove the hum from the phone line and make the volume of my voice and the guests voice be the same.

(If you are interested in podcasting and want to start a podcast, this podcasting course by Kelly shows you how!)

And so when my JK Inline patch came in the mail, I was so excited. Except I didn’t know what the heck to do with it. And so I packed up a box with my land line phone, assorted cords, my JK inline patch, 3 different headsets, and my laptop and headed off to Radio Shack. The manager there was so nice. I dumped out my box of stuff on the counter and said, “Can you help me hook this up and make it work?”

What a nice guy! He spent 20 minutes hooking up all the assorted cords and parts and actually did some test recordings till we got everything working. Now that’s service!

Anything worth doing well, is worth doing poorly at first until you learn the ropes. Have you ever been afraid to try something new in your business because you were afraid you didn’t know how or that you would look like a fool? Have you had a technology that had you baffled? Share your adventures in business here!

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If you want to learn more about speaking, multiple streams of income, branding, publicity, sales and marketing, then you’ll want to check out my brand new podcast Speaker Success Talk Radio.

Speaker Success Talk Radio features top notch guests with superstars from the speaking industry to hot internet marketers who share their secrets for making real money online as a professional speaker, author, or information marketer.

Take a listen to our first episode in an interview with Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart who shares tips for how publicity gets you known as an expert.

If you are an Itunes user, you can subscribe to our podcast feed here:

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