What happens when your computer crashes?

You may have already read, but the OlderWiserWomen computer suffered a hard drive failure...on Thanksgiving Eve! No fun at all. I was lucky enough that we had more than one in the house and my partner insists that we share.

However...all my work in locked in a non-functional disk. Fortunately, I did backup. New drive should arrive tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to restore without difficulty.

Do you have a plan in place? What kind of back ups are you doing? How often? Do you keep a copy of your back up off premises?

You can bet my plan is getting an update! It's true...it's not a matter of if, but when...

Do you have problems getting projects done?

I dont know about you, but sometimes its so easy to get off tasks and just not accomplish the things that I want to.

Well right now, Im participating in something called the 90 Day Product Factory. Its been wonderful. Its like a giant, supportive mastermind group where everyone is working hard to come out with a product in 90 days or less. Many are producing more than one. The support, education, and partners are wonderful. I can hardly wait to bring everyone the new resources, partners and products that Im discovering (and making).

But thats not what this article is about. In the Product Factory, I learned about something called an Integrity Day and its been awesome! What is it?

Basically, you commit to something that you are going to accomplish and then check in with the group (via a bridge line) on an hourly basis. For example, you commit to say...writing an article or a page on you website or even clean your bathroom. You call in on the top of the hour, say what you are going to do, and then hang up. The entire hourly call lasts 5 minutes or less each hour. When you hang up, you actually do what you said you would. When you call back in the next hour, you report what you have gotten done and tell them what you will do in the next hour. People get amazing amounts of work done!

Why?

First of all, you get totally focused on what you want to get done. Secondly, you are committing to what you want to do to a group of people not your partner or friends who may let you off the hook. What happens if you dont follow through? No one gets on your case...chances are you will do that yourself. Its your own word, your integrity that is at stake.

Give it a try...I think you too will be impressed. Personally, this is something I would like to keep going long after the completion of the Product Factory.

And by the way, check out the Product Factory. Its amazing.

Barbara
OlderWiserWomen

Building Your Own Website.

This is the course I needed a few years ago. I love this course and reference it frequently. While I do lots of reading, the videos are excellent in showing you step by step how to do something.

I think Jim talks about it clearer than I can, so here's some information from him. If I can answer any questions about this, don't hesitate to ask.

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Can You Really Get Your Own Website?

- by Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.7DayeBook.com

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Despite the fact that most of us take the Internet for granted, it still holds a lot of mystery, even for people who use it every day.

Plenty of people surf the web, send email, get news, check stock information, and use instant messenger, but the thought of putting up their own web pages leaves them shaking with fear.

However, with all the changes online in the last few years, putting up your own website rates easier than ever and creating any website breaks down to 5 main elements.

** HTML Pages:

Seven or eight years ago it cost $75 an hour to get a web designer to hand-code an html document for you to display on the Web.

A simple website used to cost thousands of dollars.

Now, software will do it for you better, faster and for less than the cost of dinner and movie.

In fact, Microsoft Word (the ever-popular word processing program from Mr. Bill Gates) allows you to convert your word processing documents to html pages automatically.

They may not be as "s~xy" as a high powered web-designer's work, but my experience shows that the slicker pages with all kinds of dancing and flashing "junk" don't do as well as the sites that load fast and get to the point!

Bottom line: After just some minimal instruction, if you can use a word processor, you can create your own Web pages and link them together to form an effective Web "site."

** Domain and Website Hosting:

Domain names used to cost $70 or more to register for a year, but now you can get your own dot-com for only $8.95 per year at www.GoDaddy.com.

I personally paid more than $100 a month for basic website hosting back in 1998, but you can get better, more full- featured service now for less than $10 a month!

In fact, for smaller sites, you can get a domain name AND a year's hosting at www.DotEasy.com for only $25 a year.

** FTP To Your Web Server:

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) intimidates people more than any other part of the website building process... probably because it *sounds* intimidating.

The word "Protocol" makes me think of some dreadful medical procedure out of a Frankenstein movie!

Yet FTP is simply the process of transferring (uploading) your web pages from your computer to another computer called a Web "server."

A Web server is just a computer permanently connected to the Internet to "serve" files to your website visitors.

That's all it is... just another computer that Web surfers connect to in order to view your Web pages.

Go to www.SmartFTP.com for a free program that works virtually identically to "Windows Explorer" and allows you to just "drag and drop" html files to your Web server.

** Pay Me!

If you wanted to accept credit cards on your website five or six years ago, it cost hundreds of dollars just to apply and it felt like you needed a National Security clearance to get accepted for a merchant account.

Now you can quickly, easily, and securely accept credit card and even check payments through your website with no monthly fees.

Check out PayPal.com, ClickBank.com, and PaySystems.com for more information.

** Targeted Traffic:

Unless your Website exists strictly to serve family or friends, eventually you'll need some traffic.

Hundreds of books exist to teach you how to get website traffic from free search engines, your own affiliate sales force, publishing articles online, and even how to quickly get hundreds of other sites to link to you.

No matter how you choose to get traffic, remember, "All clicks are not created equal!"

The key is to only pay for tightly targeted traffic with a specific interest in what you sell on your website.

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Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the creator of an amazing course that will teach you step-by-step and click-by-click how to finally create your own money-making mini-sites...

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"Finally! A Quick and Easy Way For YOU to Painlessly Set Up Your OWN Moneymaking 'Mini' Websites... Without Being a Computer Geek, Buying Expensive Software, or Paying
Outrageous Fees To A Webmaster!"

Click Here => http://www.MiniSiteCreator.com
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Self Publishing, pdf and pre-selling

I recently answered a question that someone had about using pagemaker or another program to format her book in. She also asked about pre-selling. Hopefully, you will find it helpful.

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I don't know anything about page maker. Do you have MSWord or WordPerfect or something similar? I believe you can produce your document in those programs and convert it to pdf. I know you can in Word. Adobe has an online service for converting up to 5 documents into pdf format for free or use a free program called pdf995.

• http://createpdf.adobe.com/
• http://pdf995.com/

The best place to get information on how to format etc, is from Dan Poynter. There is a bonus call recorded from the last product factory. Listen to it, but also get his book "The Self Publishing Manual". Another excellent book that Dan has out is "Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts into Books". Both are excellent.

Also visit his website at www.parapub.com - he has lots of free tools. The call also spoke of a template (he gives you the link to get it - free).

I discussed this at length with a friend who just came out with her book. She is sorry she did not follow more of the advice laid out in the book, especially when it comes to getting a editor. One cannot possibly see what they have written. I totally agree with that one...we are just too close to it and our minds see what we want to say, not what we've written.

As far as pre-selling, you can do that easily (easy is relative). I'm working in this right now as I have a chapter in a book coming out in December. It goes to print this week, and I just got the final mms this weekend. So if anyone else has suggestions...I'm all ears.

Things to consider:

• Discount the price
• Offer free shipping
• Offer the ebook as a bonus so your customers can have a digital format now and the physical book when the printing is done.
• Offer other bonuses with the book
• Consider doing a teleclass as a bonus to discuss certain principals or aspects of the book to those who purchase pre-publication.

If the book is not yet completed, you can start with an e-course, first chapter, etc. I understand that Stephen King put out one of his books in digital format, chapter by chapter. I'm not even sure if the hard cover book was ever published.

Hope this helps,

Barbara C. Phillips, NP
OlderWiserWomen™

Getting Started on the Internet

I'd seen this course around the internet for years. I didn't buy it, figuring it to be all hype like so many other things. I think we all become jaded. Heck...if you are like me, I bet you bought some things that just didn't work (junk perhaps?), got put away and never used.

This isn't even the first product I purchased from the Internet Marketing Center. In fact, what I purchased first was a set of excellent DVD's. I was amazed at how much I learned watching them. Things that were just not clicking for me were finally making sense. While I was already working on the internet, I decided to purchase this course. I just wish I had done so earlier. Using the dvd’s along with the book has done wonders for shortening my learning curve.


Every time I open up one of the two binders, I find and learn something else. The workbooks, the cd's, the quick start guides...there is so much information.

But, I don’t worry about information overload with this course. It’s arranged so that I can break it into bits and pieces, working on just the areas I need to at the moment. I like that because I’m not always a star- here-finish-there sort of person. I like to move around.

I use this course in a few different ways. If I know that I’m weak in an area, I’ll turn to that part of the course and read up on what I could be doing. Other times, I’ll just skim the table of contents and find an area that I’ve not even considered and see what’s being said.

I’m no techno-geek (heck, I’m a medical provider!), so I was worried if I would be able to understand it all. That was needless worry! It’s easy to read, easy to understand.

All this information is great...as along as you put it into practice. Kind of like exercise...knowing we need to do it does us no good unless we take action.

I encourage you to check out the course, I cannot imagine that you would be sorry.

Here's a hint that I did not know before I purchased the course and wish I had...if you go thorough this link, and sign up as an affiliate of the program, you can purchase the course through YOUR own affiliate link...and YOU receive the commission. Talk about a winning situation for all concerned! Is it legal? Absolutely! They are the ones that told me about it!

Until next time,

Barbara C. Phillips, NP
OlderWiserWomen™