Nothing happening

Here's why:

I fell down the stairs. When that pain was 75% gone, I developped a severe toothache that took almost 3 weeks to go away. During the toothache, we discovered that my sharpei (the dog that I wanted since I was 4) has a serious liver disease/defect. This has cost over $700 to get a "probable" diagnosis, which will only be definite with more money and if it's definite, it means an expensive surgery. Had 3 teeth pulled (toothache) and 1 filled all in the space of 3 hours on Tuesday - my choice, but still hurts today, Sunday. Oh, and Eric has had a particularily nasty cold for the last 3 weeks - can you guess where this is going? Right now I have 2 blocked ears, one is particularly painful, my throat feels like it's the diameter of a quarter and I know the only reason I'm not sneezing and coughing up a fucking lung is the Nyquil which isn't helping me sleep.

So those of you that have been wondering where I am, sorry, but I REALLY haven't been in a chatty mood. Especially after we were presented with the vet bill, as we've decided I either need to pick up a ton of side work online or go get an offline job. So forgive me please if I sound bitchy right now, or if I don't post for another 3 weeks. I've done absolutely NO work pretty much since I fell because the second I start feeling somewhat ok physically, something else keeps popping up. Can someone tell me exactly why it is that if bad things happen in threes, why I'm on number 4, at least???

As for last month's total, I'm so not in the mood to go add it up right now, but it was in the vicinity of $200-300. Nothing spectacular, quite dismal actually, which is also not inspiring me to work real hard. I also haven't been really keeping up with everyone's emails and blogs or rather, I tend to be several days late, when commenting is moot. Sorry about that as well.

Ok, wow, bitch and pity fest over. Sorry about that, but I so just needed to vent. I hope everyone else's life is going a bit better right now. I know I shouldn't bitch - I'm not dying, no one around me has died (knock on wood!) but I'm just in a major funk of late. The crappy weather every weekend (the last month has brought 90% rain every fucking weekend) sure isn't helping either. Who's ever heard of daily HIGH in JUNE of 56F/13C??? Anyhoo, hopefully my next post will bring good tidings of health, happiness and good weather!

Tara :)

Howdy

I'm sure everyone is wondering where I've been... Under strict orders from the hubby, I was recouperating from my fall. The strict orders came when I thought I was well enough to get some work (computer and offline work) done and set myself back a week. Holding a baby (friend's first grandchild) for an hour probably didn't help either, but what a cutie! So I've barely been at my computer for the last couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who wished me well, I'm almost there. Still have some twinges when I actually attempt to do to much (like laundry) but I have to get things done as I'm moving down to the trailer this weekend. We brought down a bunch of stuff last weekend, but there are odds and ends that still need to be dealt with.

I still haven't done any work really since the fall. A couple of link fixes that needed to be done, but that's about it. I'm probably not going to get much done this week either, but next week with no distractions, it's back to work I go.. Hopefully I'll be almost 100% because while my desk chair is very comfy when I'm healthy, it's been VERY uncomfortable since I fell. If worse comes to worse I'll work from the lazyboy ;)

So that's been my exciting life in a nutshell. Oh, and unless I forgot something, my income for April was just slightly over $150. Depressing, but this month is going quite a bit better, and I'm on track to get an Adsense check in June for April/May, since I didn't make enough in April. Here's to everyone having a better May!

Tara :)

Since I last posted

Well, got quite a bit done on Monday and Tuesday last week. Wednesday was a slacker day, but I was determined Thursday to get a bunch more done. That didn't happen though. What DID happen was on my way to my computer (after stopping for my 1st coffee of the day) I slipped a la cartoon (banana peel style, legs in the air, etc) on my basement stairs. Bounced a couple times and landed with my upper back and tail bone on the edge of 2 steps. Wind completely knocked out of me. Took about 2 full minutes to be able to breathe again and then the pain kicked in... Suffice to say that for about 5 days, breathing/talking/walking/sitting/moving/lying down/lifting/bending and all round being alive was no fun. To put it mildly. However, I'm now on a full night's sleep (couldn't sleep for very long from the pain for the first few days) so I'm on the mend. And that means (hopefully) I'll be able to get some work done again! Word to the wise - DON'T fall down the stairs! If you do, take 4 Excedrin Migraine pills, they helped alot. Just don't expect to sleep as they contain 65mg of caffeine each ;)

So, on the agenda this week (besides packing up for the trailer) is go through my links for the 2 pet sites as they are finally seeing a small trickle of SE traffic. Get some link exchanges done for them, but only quality ones. Write more for the new site, which I'm dying to get out of the way. Try not to fall down the stairs again (so far so good). Figure out how we're going to buy new trailer I want to buy. (new to us, but not brand new) And so on.. lol

I guess that's about it for now. Still a little tired and out of it, so while I'm sure there's more to tell, can't think of it right now. Have a great week!

Tara :)

Oops

I really thought I'd blogged last week. The fact that I didn't in the end doesn't surprise me though, I've been totally goofing off for a while now. I've started to correct that now though tonight. I'm researching merchants (in order to research/write articles), I've written a few articles and despite the fact that I got up from my nap at 2 pm (I was up before 8, wayyyy to early for home) I'm still wide awake, so I think I may have a few more articles in me tonight. I still have between 20-30 product pages to write for the new mega site though (and several are already written, how scary is that?!), not to mention more keyword research, setting up email collection, figure out the scope of my newsletters and much, much more. So while I was hoping with a bunch of hard work I might have this site up soon, the reality is probably more likely within a couple of months.

So tell me, is anyone else having C R A P P Y sales and Adsense this month? I don't think I'll be seeing an Adsense payment next month, it's so bad. I've had 3 sales.. admittedly they've been pretty decent commissions, all 3 between $10-20, but still. Thank goodness I put some cash aside before quitting, I'll be needing it next month!

That's about it, but in case you were considering buying Keywords Results Analyzer, Dr. Andy mentioned that the new version is going to be released this week hopefully, which in turn means the price will go up from $67 to $97. I still haven't had an opportunity to play around with the new version yet, but everyone who has is raving.

Oh, and a quick little bit of link love for my buddy Chrissie who had a great time at and talks about Pubcon, the Webmaster World conference. I'm thinking from the sounds of it I'm going to have to go to the next one, especially since it's in Vegas, where I'm dying to go back to :)

That's all she wrote folks!

Tara :)

Busy busy bee

Sorry for the delay in posting, but to be honest, I spent most of last week goofing off, plus I wanted that last post to be good and spidered for all potential JM customers to see in the SERPs.

So here's what I've done since yesterday, and most of this was today even:

• bought an Adsense site... with losing income from my 2 pet sites (see below for more on that!) I decided to see if this will work.
• bought hosting and transfered DNS to new host. got them to give me 3 months free even though I signed up without the special.
• added my Adsense code to said site, managed to screw it up, tried to fix it, emailed the seller to help me.. lol now fixed.
• added StatCounter code to new site to track traffic
• wrote/tweaked 4 pages for the new site.. 1 product page and then the About us, Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. They are ready to publish now, though the rest of the site isn't.
• bought the domain PawTails to replace a1-dog-info.com. bought it for 10 years - and look Ma, no dashes!
• bought the domain Gone To The Bridge to replace pet-memorials-info.com, also bought for 10 years. (if you don't get the domain, google "rainbow bridge")
• fixed templates (I LOVE "find and replace" in Front Page!) to reflect new domains and published them. hopefully I'll start seeing some traffic (and money) soon!
• finally wrote out all the pages that need to be written and tasks that need to be accomplished before or right after the new site goes live.
• updated my goals page to reflect the new sites and some new goals.
• added up my income from last month... ok, that was last week, but here it is anyway... $425.
• watched the remake of The Ten Commandments... YUCK!
• blogged my boring life ;)

I think I may FINALLY be back into the working from home mindset. It bloody took long enough! I will say this though, talking to people like Andrea and Colin and Brad sure does help. Whether it's just to kvetch about you know who or to bounce business ideas off each other, talking to peers is essential.

As for this month's financials... well... let's just say that I REALLY hope the 3 "new" sites take off VERY quickly otherwise I don't think I'll get an Adsense deposit this month. Pretty much only 1 sale ($18 commission though, no complaints!) across my sites. But, if not this month, next month will be great, I have a feeling :) Of course, don't you know while I was looking through Google for inspiration for the new domain, I found my pet memorials site (with emax's info) on the 2nd page for my main keyword.. argh.. life sometimes! lol

Anyhooooo... that's all she wrote for tonight folks. Have a good hump day!

Tara :)