Recently I read this excellent post, ‘You are not a bad person and you’re not doing it wrong’ by Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz, a very straight talking blogger that helps small business owners market their business more effectively.

It’s about how so many small business owners feel overwhelmed by the sheer level of communication and ‘relationships’ caused by email, Facebook (notifications, messages, groups, pages, fans), Twitter (replies, followers, DM’s, and tweeting), LinkedIn, blog comments (commenting on blogs, replying to your own), Ning (notifications and replies), phonecalls, etc and the self imposed expectation and pressure that results.

I’ve made no secret of how stressful I find email – Every time I shrink my inbox by deleting and replying, more appears like a frickin’ mushroom cloud!

Each time these are replied to, they open up the possibility of further replies, and create more ‘relationships’.

Every day brings a new influx of relationships.

In between all of these relationships, you’ve got a child (or a few) who also need you, your home, partner, and other things in life, never mind actually running your business.

I loved when Naomi said “Web 2.0 is like a goddamn pyramid scheme. Limitless growth. Limitless connection. Limitless access, relationships, “friendlies”? It can’t happen.”

As women and mothers and business owners, we put a huge amount of pressure on ourselves. We’re ambitious, we’re competitive, and we often demand a level of perfection and ‘output’ from ourselves that we don’t expect from others. I think when they ’sort you out’ after childbirth, some of us get guilt and a hyperactive battery put inside us because so many of us are in overdrive.

A lot of the mum’s that myself and Ali know are under a lot of self-imposed pressure trying to be superwoman. They want to have work/life balance, run a successful business, have time for themselves, cook fantastic meals all the time, get 8 hours sleep a night, hang out with friends or chill by themselves, have quality time with their partner, and continuously offer to take on more.

We want to do all of this and spend a load of time online building ‘relationships’ with others and let’s be real, sometimes we’re online for social interaction.

We’re all trying to squeeze more time out of the day but there will always be 24 hours in a day, and seven days a week. Something has to give somewhere. Personally I’ve realised that there’s a lot more balance in my life when I’m balanced in my thinking which follows through to my actions.

We can’t be all things to all people.

How are you going to physically find time to maintain all of the relationships that you build online without it impacting offline?

This is not about giving yourself a hard time but it is about getting realistic about what you need to do and what you’re doing out of self-imposed pressure, fear of missing out, and what can sometimes be not so great time management because unless you have someone who is going to manage your inbox etc (I’ve been having a regular fantasy about having a virtual assistant), if you’re not already, some time soon you’re going to feel overwhelmed.

Trying to be and do everything doesn’t work and as Naomi pointed out in her post ‘There is no wrong because there is no right‘ when it comes to all this trying to keep up every connection and connect with everyone online.

Breathe out, take off your superwoman cape, and stop giving yourself a hard time. If you can’t ‘keep up’ with all the ‘connections’ and ‘relationships’, that’s OK – most of us can’t unless we want to sacrifice our offline life and spontaneously combust.

Also check out Helen from Business Plus Baby’s post on Work/Life Balance – Do we really need it?

Image source: SXC

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. How to be an Amazing Mum When You Just Don’t Have the Time: The Ultimate Handbook for Hassled Mothers
2. Getting Medieval on Your Inbox – Sorting & Filing Your Way to Empty
3. Set boundaries for a better working life so that people don’t take the mick!

I have so many things to think about, I’m driving myself batty trying to remember what I saw when, and why I want to remember them. Writing blogs on a variety of subjects, coolhunting, noting ideas for stuff to get for the house (we’re about to go into a major phase of redecorating), and a mind a whirl with ideas, it’s surprising my head hasn’t popped off.

Thankfully I have notebooks but I’ve found something online, visual and far more organised – Evernote, a web based software that lets you save your ideas in web clips, snap shots, snippets of texts, documents (premium version), voice notes, emails and more. Evernote captures everything and automatically organises it plus you can tag and also create notebooks. It even makes printed and hand-written text inside images searchable – basically, it helps you ‘remember everything’.

Wasting no time, I quickly downloaded the free iPhone app, the Mac application, installed the Firefox add-on, and followed @myEN on Twitter, which basically once they DM you the link, you can set it up so that you can tweet stuff to it that you want to capture and save for later. Mega useful, you can do stuff like snapping photos of business cards/brochures at trade shows so you can remember who’s who and even store contacts, snap stuff like receipts, travel tickets or even the whiteboard at a meeting (v cool), keep an organised notebook of stuff you like, clip pages directly from your browser, empty out those thoughts and ideas rambling around in your head and make a todo list, and even share notebooks with everyone or just with specific people (premium feature).

I’ve always got emails that have a snippet of something that I want to reference at a later date – snatched and put in a notebook. It’s free for up 40mb of storage space per month although you can’t do stuff like uploading docs or sharing your notebooks with individuals instead of with ‘everyone’. If you want the extra bells and whistles which boosts up 500mb, it’s $5/mth or $45 for the year.

Loving it, loving it. Be gone mush brain!

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Diary Hunting: Mum’s Diary by Mum’s Office
2. Image editing & drawing with Skitch
3. Collaborating with Google Docs

Is this the ultimate in office relaxation?
The USB Aromatherapy Oil Burner delights your nose and clears your mind with just one drop.
Simply add one drop of the included aromatherapy oil onto the little X on the USB stick (see above). Step two, pop the stick into a USB drive (horizontal drives preferred to prevent drips – boo – not good for my Office Mac).

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Office Candy: OMFG/ASAP File Totables
2. Office Candy: Filing Cabinet Business Card Holder
3. Office Candy: Michael Fish Office Mug

Are you one of those peeps who spend a lot of time looking for colors to use online?

Do you ever look at a site and think – “ooh! that looks lovely? I wonder what those colors are?”

Then let me introduce to one of my favorite online tools, Colorzilla.

ColorZilla is a plug-in extension for Mozilla Firefox browser and the Mozilla Suite.

Although it’s aimed at web developers and graphic designers with color related tasks, like choosing website colors, it’s a very handy tool which I use more than I thought I ever would.

Once you have installed Colorzilla you are able to get an instant reading of the colors any website is using with just a quick click of the mouse. There’s also a built-in palette browser which lets you choose colors from pre-defined color sets and  you can save the colors in custom palettes available online.

To give you just one example, I’m working on a website for a client at the moment – it’s a second site but needs to have the same look and feel as the original. Getting a list of the colors from the original site would be a tedious job, involving contacting her previous designers, noting them all down, checking for typos etc.. Using Colorzilla I was able to grab the colors from the site immediately and give the new techies an online link to the color palette – problem solved in nano-seconds!

Download Colorzilla and have a more colorful life online…

photo credit: Jimmy_Joe

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. From Business Idea To Launch – Part 3 – Branding
2. Entrepreneur’s Corner: Keeley from Simply Colors
3. Guest Post: OpenOffice.org excels (pun intended)

I, like a lot of self employed mums am obsessed with snatching back time, harnessing, and managing it, so when Tabitha from Mimimyne tweeted me about web based time management, productivity, and project management software, RescueTime, I was immediately curious. In a nutshell, it tracks websites and applications that you’re actively using and shows you via graphs what you’re basically doing with your time. If you imagine a piece of software that basically gives you a smack on the bum and says ’stop fricking kidding yourself’, this is it.

Aside from tracking websites and applications, it also tracks document usage on pro packages, and creates an interesting picture of what you’re doing with your computer time. It has various levels of usage and is suited to both individuals and businesses with employees that you may want to ‘monitor’ (bit Big Brother stylee though innit?) and personally I think it’s useful for providing really useful data to help you bring about real change. You can pause tracking or ‘edit’ the data by removing stuff you don’t want in it, plus you can track offline time by adding in meeting and phonecall times.

The charts shown give some insight into last week although it’s not that accurate as I forgot to click something on my Mac for full access plus I was also away for a chunk of the week….

Why will you want to use it?

There’s what we believe we spend our time doing and what we actually spend our time doing – this is a great tool for making you get real.

If you’ve tried various ways to figure out where your time is going and given up, RescueTime does it with no effort and will probably mention stuff you haven’t even thought of.

Have that imaginary colleague interject and tell you that your time is up on a particular application or website by setting up alerts.

That same imaginary colleague can also be the killjoy you need and block out distracting stuff so that you can focus on what you need to do.

RescueTime has its own idea of what it determines as productive, neutral, or distracting, but this can be tweaked to suit. My business is web driven and with a few of the sites driven by coolhunting, some sites that I use will come up as distracting when I really was working not shopping etc.. Some may consider the idea of having so much insight into your activities as depressing – be warned, it’s an initial shock to the system when you see where your time is going.

It can cost as little as $5.30 (14 day trial available) to use Solo Pro but there’s a free option (you can’t block out or set rules, plus it only stores 3 months worth of data), Solo Lite, which is ideal if you want to get initial insight to rescue your time. And of course, there are business packages available which are particularly useful when you’re working with teams of people.

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Easier form building with Wufoo
2. Trying Out: Freckle…for time management rethought
3. Reader Question: What blogging activities do you do in a typical week?

Put Away Your Phone. Really. You & It Won’t Die.

Tempting as it is to check your Blackberry or iPhone (or whatever phone you have) all the time, you’ll just wreck your own head and be distracted. It’s better to be focused. Give full attention when you’re doing activities and it’s a lot easier to do chores if you’re not reading tweets… I have phone breaks throughout the day and it really doesn’t feel like I’m getting the DT’s.

Plan Activities

I have a box of activity stuff plus they have the Gironomo tent (a playhouse) which they both love hanging out in and we have storytime moments dotted throughout the day. Use the time to get down to their level and play with them, but likewise, if they’re occupied, you can get some work done. Get out of the house as well – you’ll get cabin fever otherwise! I highly recommend Kids Craft Weekly for inspiration – subscribe to their newsletters which are themed and often just require stuff you probably have lying around.

Ask for Help

Seriously, the sky won’t fall down because if you don’t ask, people assume you’re managing fine until you explode in a tirade. Don’t get sucked into that mindset of ‘People should know that I need help’ because these same people may think you’ll just do stuff in your usual superwoman ways. Lean on relatives or ask a friend if they can take yours and you’ll take hers on another day. Obviously don’t take the mick!

Put on your Autoresponse

This is basically your Out of Office setting. Tell them you’re on a ‘reduced schedule’ or whatever is appropriate. This manages people’s expectations, tells them you’re ‘away’, and prevents you from feeling the urge to read and respond to all mails immediately. Don’t become a slave to email because you’ll get ground down by it. Don’t be afraid to say that you respond to email in bulk – Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week responds to emails once a week for a few hours. Way less stressful than responding to every ‘ping’.

Pre-write information and instructions

Write an FAQ page and link to this on your autoresponses, your contact page etc. If you regularly get emails asking about the same stuff, include this on your FAQ, or have prewritten emails/PDF’s that you can quickly bung across in the mail. This not only saves them time, it saves you time.

Keep It Simple

One thing that’s come out of the past few weeks is streamlining and making things as simple as possible. For example, online invoicing system Freshbooks means I turn around an invoice in less than five minutes leaving me no excuse to put things off. I even have the iPhone app and it links up to online accounting systems like Kashflow.

Get chores out of the way whilst the kids run amok

I do wonder about my logic sometimes but I’ve finally realised that tempting as it is to hang around on Twitter in the afternoon continue working, that getting dinner out of the way, along with other tedious chores is better than trying to do them all as soon as the kids go to bed and then looking up and seeing that it’s 9pm and you still have work to do.

Set up some space at the dining table for a little people’s office space

My 32 month old daughter will sit beside me and draw and do sticking which means that I can get some work done whilst she’s busy. Based on personal experience, I suggest you distance yourself from glitter… Little ones like pretending to work especially when they’re really honing their imaginative play skills.

Keep a List(s)

Over these past few weeks, I’ve found that things keep popping into my head. I have a few spots for jotting down notes and I put them together when I finally sit down to work. Toodledo is quite handy for storing them online – they also have an app for your phone. Mind you, good ‘ole notebook and pens work best for me!

Adjust & Manage Your Own Expectations

Every day I teach people about getting real over on my relationship blog Baggage Reclaim which means I need to take my own advice. Something has had to give over these past few weeks. I’m not superwoman, and highly recommend that you get real about what you can really expect from yourself output wise. If it’s a short-term thing, it’s a good idea to look at it like a break (anything you do is a bonus) and if it’s an ongoing thing make sure that you’re putting your energies where they are most needed – look at my previous post on time management with the kids at home and also on outsourcing. It’s easy to think that everything is essential but really look at what’s actually essential and time sensitive so that other stuff can be done when the kids are asleep or even at the weekend. Obviously the older your kids are, the more independent they get – toddlers and babies make a tricky mix to master!

photo credit: nate steiner

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Getting Medieval on…Getting Work Done With Kids at Home: Managing Your Time
2. Getting Medieval On…Getting Work Done With the Kids at Home: Offload & Outsource
3. See It, Do It. Think It, Do It – Time Management Epiphany…Mark Two…

I’ve just about had it up to here with Microsoft Office (if you’re not able to remote view I’m holding my hand up to my forehead). I got a new laptop about two months ago and since then I’ve been struggling. I followed the instructions and installed my previous software on my new machine but I’m having all sorts of problems. Registration problems, registry issues, Outlook having a hissy fit and crashing every time I try an open an email with embedded images, Word doing the same when I try to use the thesaurus, the list goes on.

I’ve always used Microsoft Office, mainly because it came pre-installed on my laptop and virtually everyone in the business world uses Word and Excel as standard so it’s convenient to have documents in that format.

But on the advice of a friend, John Baldwin of NETS Ltd, I’ve switched to OpenOffice.org. If you’ve never heard of OpenOffice.org, it’s time you did.

The programme has six full-blown applications: the Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentations program, Base database program, Math equation editor, and Draw graphics program.But best of all, it’s free!

I’ve been using it for about a month now and I’ve found it really easy to use. It has all the features you’d expect, but some very nice extras as well, the most useful being the wizards. I now use OpenOffice.org for all my personal stuff as well as writing blog posts and basic bookkeeping jobs such as cashflow forecasts and expense/purchase lists. It will also open other programmes so you can still open Word and Excel documents, and it will save as these formats as well.

What is OpenOffice?

“OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.” – OpenOffice.org website

Never heard of open-source software?

It’s software that has been developed in collaboration by programmers and end-users. They have access to the source code (hence the name) so they can modify and improve it. It’s free to download, use and distribute, by anyone for any purpose.

But what if I have a problem?

No problem, there’s a wealth of free advice and support out there. No hanging on the end of a telephone line whilst being charged exorbitant call rates!

If this sounds too good to be true, I promise you it’s not. Open-source software is probably more common than you think. If you use Wordpress for your blog, Mozilla Firefox for your internet browser or Joomla for your website then you’re already using open-source software.

So if you’re looking for an office programme that’s both free and easy to use, try OpenOffice.org. I’m a convert, are you?

P.S. I used OpenOffice.org to write this post!

Kassia is our new contributor here at SEM. She runs Bright Angels, a company that helps small and medium sized businesses with their bookkeeping, marketing, and admin services. She also blogs at Working Mum

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Collaborating with Google Docs
2. My Secret Weblife: Kassia Gardner of Bright Angels
3. Office Candy – Aromatherapy USB Burner

In typical fashion, we totally missed the first of the Business Mum’s Blog Carnival which we’ll be hosting in a couple of months – obviously we’ll remember. We blame the tax deadline and demanding little people…

Anyway, if you haven’t already, head over to Helen Lindlop’s blog Business Plus Baby to check out the carnival. The next one is being hosted by Family Friendly Working. Email your posts by 19th February to antonia [at] familyfriendlyworking.co.uk and the carnival will run on 25th Feb.

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Business Mums London Meet Up – 7 October
2. The Mumpreneur Guide by Antonia Chitty
3. Content ideas for your blog that add value to your business

Last week I wrote about how my childminder being on leave due to a recent op has really screwed up my month forced me to reassess my priorities and how I am working, because it’s clear that I’m not going to achieve as much out of my day as I normally do. After time management (I know, I know it’s tedious even thinking about time management), I’ve really had to look at my options for offloading and outsourcing.

There’s also another word for this that makes a lot of mother’s shudder: delegate

Just like when you feel like you might explode because you’re trying to do everything at home and not delegating, many of us find that in being the boss, delegating has become unfamiliar territory, particularly if you’re a sole trader.

Delegating to another staff member/hiring someone, or outsourcing elements of your workload may not be an option if you are on a very tight budget or just starting out, but before you sack off the idea of getting some help, weigh up the cost of not doing it, or doing it in dribs and drabs over a longer period of time, versus paying someone else to do it. The great majority of the time, the numbers stack up.

A few months ago, I outsourced a re-edit of an ebook that I had been trying to re-edit for months. It took two days for the work to be done and I could get on with doing other stuff and promoting it. I saved myself time but also realised that sometimes in obstinately clinging to doing stuff myself and being a tight *rse (joking), I’m costing myself money and my sanity – it’s good to know the value of your time.

If your working circumstances have changed, this is a great time to learn how to let go.

Working for yourself, especially when you’re solo can make you precious and a bit of a control freak.

I’ve already realised that the sky won’t fall down if I’m not doing every last little itty bitty thing. In fact, I’ve acknowledged that I have no desire to do everything.

This is a really good time to assess where you are going.

If you have plans to grow your business and don’t want the business built totally around you (makes it difficult to sell in the future), you have to let go and build the business as a separate entity to you anyway.

Check out virtual assistants (VA’s), sites like People Per Hour and Elance- The latter types of site are great for specific tasks. Consider your options for bartering (check out our post on swapsies), or look at what budget you have and see if someone is willing to do work experience. Note that irrespective of how much you’re paying people, you need to allow some time to train them/explain the work, so it’s better to do this sooner rather than later. Also consider hiring someone local on a freelance basis. Obviously the advantage of using online services is that you can take advantage of remote working and even in some circumstances, a strong exchange rate if you’re getting someone from abroad.

What should you outsource? If there is stuff you’re doing that you’re not particularly good at that is costing you time that you could be applying elsewhere to increase your revenue, look at your options. It’s good to know your strengths and it’s better to outsource something and save time, get it up and running, and increase your revenue etc, than it is to not do it, or take double, triple, or ten or twenty times the amount of time to do it and cost yourself money to boot. Some of these things may never get done!

Also, don’t complicate things. One of the most simple things I ‘outsourced’ was the cleaning of my own home. I’ve saved hours of time off my week which I can spend doing stuff with the kids or working.

Some things to remember:

Get a clear idea of how you work and what needs to be done. You may find that you don’t need outside help…you just need to be more organised.

Make sure that you can clearly explain what needs to be done. If you can write out a procedures sheet and any other supporting material it helps. Yes it’s an initial pain in the bum, but it will save you time. If you can’t explain it, they can’t understand it.

Don’t assume; be clear about your expectations, the work that needs to be done etc. Nobody is a mind reader and things will get lost in translation.

Do a bit of research about market rates. This ensures that you don’t expect beyond your means but also ensures you don’t overpay.

Set up temp access to whatever files you need. Don’t give out your own username details and do limit access where necessary.

If needed, draft a confidentiality agreement or include it in a letter of engagement.

Don’t take the mick and cross boundaries by asking for more than was originally agreed. You wouldn’t like someone to treat you like that!

Agree about how and when you will be updated. There’s nothing more annoying than working with someone who doesn’t tell you what is going on. Obviously don’t be one of those annoying people that wants a blow by blow account once an hour, but do agree up front about how and when you’ll be updated so that you don’t spend your time panicking.

photo credit: The National Guard

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Getting Medieval on…Getting Work Done With Kids at Home: Managing Your Time
2. Getting Medieval On…Getting Work Done With the Kids at Home: Quick Tips for Survival
3. See It, Do It. Think It, Do It – Time Management Epiphany…Mark Two…

I’m getting the distinct feeling that flying by the seat of my pants is not good working practice, especially as I have a 9 month and 2.5 year old as ‘wing mates’ on the journey. A couple of months ago, I found out that my childminder has to take a month off due to an op. I talked about making plans…and then I made some plans but after almost a week of them both being home, it’s becoming apparent that I need to ride my own backside like Zorro if I actually want to get anything done over the next few weeks.

Be Routine & Have a Schedule

You’d think this would be obvious but really, it’s the type of thing you talk about and then wonder why it’s not happening. The best days are fun but with routine. The worst are when I lose my grip on the day and best laid plans come down like a house of cards.

If you want some uninterrupted time (aside from naps), it may be an idea to consider getting up an hour earlier. But if you’re getting up early don’t work/go to bed late, as you’ll be knackered all day and/or you’ll struggle to be effective when you are working. I’ve learned the hard way for ‘nightworking’ – get both of them in bed by 7 and cook dinner beforehand so that you can get straight down to work and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Be rigorous with time and tempting as it may be to hang on Facebook, Twitter etc, limit yourself and make it productive, otherwise you’re throwing away the very time you’re saying you don’t have.

I’m using Let’s Freckle to time myself (see my recent post on it) – very effective for seeing how much time you waste…

Trying to work for the entire day whilst trying to entertain and take care of the kids, whilst also doing chores…will probably bring you to your knees. You are not superwoman!

Print out a day planner – you can print one from Google Calendar for instance. I’ve known that there are only 24 hours in a day since I was a child, and yet as a mother, I try to feed the five thousand with my time. Work out what your day is likely to be like – when the kids sleep, key things that you have to do (such as go to the Post Office for instance, publish articles, respond to clients) and work out when you can do these things and what can be automated, scheduled ahead etc – I’ve realised a lot of things aren’t as time sensitive as I’d led myself to believe….

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Getting Medieval On…Getting Work Done With the Kids at Home: Offload & Outsource
2. Getting Medieval On…Getting Work Done With the Kids at Home: Quick Tips for Survival
3. The 4-Hour Work Week

Some of you may have caught some of my tweets on Saturday (from @selfemployedmum and @alisonrothwell) and been a bit mystified as to why I was promoting a product for you to buy, as I don’t normally do this.

On Saturday I was a guest speaker at an Internet Marketing seminar, organised by Nick James. Nick is a mentor of mine and an information product guru. For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase “information product” these are literally the products you see for sale on the net solving a problem someone has with the aid of books, audio CDs, software, DVDs etc, on all kinds of subjects from puppy training to crochet. I’ve bought quite a few information products and have always been interested in how they are put together.

On Saturday, in front of a live audience, Nick showed how easy it was to create your own quality information product, and, just like Jack Bauer, did it in “real time.” The product research was done in advance – Nick put together a package for people to learn how to make their own information products (!) The 24 hour Product Formula for a very reasonable price of £15.00. On Saturday he put together the webpage, blog and ran live direct marketing campaigns. The tweets you saw from me, were part of this.

The webpage went up, with minutes to spare, at the planned time of 11.00 a.m. (just as in real life there were a couple of technical glitches!). At 11.17, the first order came through. Every hour after that, the sales were announced and the Paypal account figure shown on the screen. I have to say it was amazing to see that whenever some action was taken (like launching the blog), you were able to see the effect on the sales figures.

My presentation focused on using SEO to promote your product, and I shared some SEO tips for quick returns. Other speakers explained how the graphics were put together for the product, how to use video marketing, set up a blog etc.

And the best thing?

Not only did Nick show how easy it was to create and market a quality information product (to an audience of Newbies), every penny of the money raised from each sale of the 24 Hour Product Formula is being donated to Oxfam, for their Haiti appeal.

By 5pm, Nick had reached his target of 100 online sales. By 2300, just 12 hours after launch, this had doubled to just over 200  orders. Yesterday, the total was 260 online sales and he’s hoping to make $10,000 within 48 hours of the product launch.

What I learnt:

• That putting together an information product is so much easier than you think
• You have to “take action”, make things happen and not dither about
• That creating an information product could work really well for lots of businesses e.g. PR, accountancy, VA services, for both marketing and making money. For example, one delegate at the seminar had created products to help the self employed put together a SA tax return quickly.
• If you create a quality product, for an audience which has a reason to buy, and market it properly, then you will make money.

Could you create an information product to help your customers?

You can check out the sales page here and also the blog.

photo credit: John Griffiths

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Calculating your ad rates – cost per thousand or tenancy?
2. Sign Up for the Blogging for Profit – The Quick Guide to Online Advertising Web Seminar
3. Should you publish an ebook? – Part 1

OK, I’m waiting for Godot, sorry Google, and Man is it getting tedious…

I built a site on Sunday – nothing fancy – just a self-hosted wordpress blog skinned with a magazine theme. It’s a test site for me to do some experimenting on, in particular, some marketing stuff.

I set it all up, wrote ten pages of content, and then sat back smugly expecting Mr Google Bot to come calling and pay his respects.

Except he hasn’t.

Last night I logged back into Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmastertools/) to find that Google hasn’t been able to access my site map beacuse of an error with a plug-in. So I’ve removed that and submitted a rss feed instead.

Woke up this morning. Nada.

I’ll let you know when I finally get indexed, but in the meantime, here’s some ideas about how you get google to notice your new site:

• Bookmark it using a social bookmarking site such as Delicious
• Write an article for the site and submit it to an article directory, remembering to add a link back to your new site
• Leave your new URL in any forum sigs you have
• Add the new site to online directories (but make sure they’re ones with a good rep, not spammy)

And not forgetting, a manual submission here: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/

photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Getting the lowdown on what mighty Google knows about you
2. Reader Question: Does social networking work for your sites?
3. Collaborating with Google Docs

I’ve driven myself batty over the past year in particular being annoyed with myself about time slipping through my fingers. I’ve realised:

1) I have no concept of time anymore – that’s the passing of it, how long things take etc

2) I sometimes fanny away too much time social networking for work hanging out with my virtual buddies

3) I don’t always apportion the right energy in the right places – see an old post of mine about the 80:20 principle.

I was reading something recently about how we should spend a week itemising what we do to get a sense of how we are using our time. I did a mini version of this when my two and a half year old daughter insisted on staying up past her bedtime. I explained the minutiae of my day and she was practically begging for her bed!

As I pretty much work solo, I realise I have to be accountable to myself and give myself a boot up the bum and you may have found yourself in the same position and wonder where to start.

I’m currently trying out Freckle, which is basically a web based software that helps you manage your time, letting you drill down in the nitty gritty to in essence let you know not only where you’re p*ssing your time away, but also where your energies are needed. Put in a project, add some tags to it, put in the amount of time spent, or even time yourself. I gave myself 40 minutes to do something – it actually took me an hour and fifteen. I also got to see that post editing and writing took up a significant portion of my day. Over time, you’ll not only be able to see the immediacy of your time, but also what your work looks like over a period of time. You may discover that you spend a third of your time on Twitter or something (I don’t just for clarification!).

Mark things as billable and unbillable, plus you can invite clients/co-workers to collaborate and contribute their parts to the project. Pull reports, analyse to your hearts content, and of course use it to make changes and get the most of your work and time. You’ll also be able to tell if you’re overgiving in your time with clients.

It’s really simple to use so you’re not going to get brainache wondering how to use convuluted features that you probably don’t need anyway. Its default setting for time increments is 15 minutes but you can change it to whatever suits. It’s aesthetically pleasing with graphs (I’m amazed how many of us love a graph), and I’m already enjoying it.

There’s a 30 day trial (don’t sign up for personal, sign up for anything from the solo account ($12 a month) upwards. I’m going to go the extra mile and make a note of how much time I’m spending on ‘things that are a pain in the bum’, like housework, so I can really harness my time, and I’ll also be budgeting myself timewise to force me to work smarter and not be distracted. Give it a go! On that note, I must go as my time is up!

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Trying Out: Rescuetime
2. Manage your invoicing online with Freshbooks
3. Reducing Your Stress On Getting Your Invoices Paid

A few days ago over on my relationship blog, I wrote about something I call The Outrageous Principle, when people do stuff totally out of leftfield so that they work out whether you have any boundaries and what they’re able to get away with. Of course these life lessons are applicable in other areas of our lives and The Outrageous Principle is alive and well in business.

From a business context, this is probably a fine line between someone taking risks and being a great negotiator…and then someone being a complete pain in the arse and constantly pushing your boundaries to extract as much as they can get from you. The latter can be very exhausting.

Whichever way you look at The Outrageous Principle, it’s all about perceived value.

The economy’s not great, we want to build our businesses, and we don’t like to look a gifthorse in the mouth, but 1) sometimes it’s not a gifthorse, it’s just a beat up donkey that will give you more pain than good, 2) not all opportunities have to be taken, and 3) if people don’t know or appreciate the value of what they’re getting from you, they won’t value it enough to actually cough up the proper money the next time round.

As someone who worked in media sales for years, I’ve had people try to get totally bonkers rates out of me, often on the basis that they were able to get them elsewhere. A lot of the time, they’re chancing their arm, others desperately wanted what was on offer but couldn’t afford to cough up top whack, and others were trying to screw maximum coverage for as little as possible.

Unless you’re very explicit about the terms and do a great job at creating value and reiterating it throughout your dealings with people like this, the only way is down.

If I have something worth £5K and I sell it to you for £2.5K, you’re unlikely to still believe it’s worth £5K and even if you did, now that you know you can get it for £2.5K, are you really going to cough up double to buy the same thing again? Unlikely unless you have what they want and they don’t feel they can get it elsewhere.

In real life, this is like being DFS, or Moben, or one of those places that’s having a permanent sale – I don’t value what they sell at the RRP they quote because they never sell it at that.

For those of you who have an online store or similar, life is easier for you. You put your prices up and either people buy or they don’t. For those of you with rates where it’s not always cut and dried, you’ll always have people trying to get more out of you, unless you become so in demand that they know that there’s no room to negotiate. Here are a few quick tips:

Know your boundaries – Impose limits on yourself and others. This will save you the pain of doing jobs at cost when you desperately need to be making money.

Buffer yourself – Margin plus a little extra buffer means you have room to negotiate.

Negotiate – If you have a client trying to squeeze your rate down, remove some of the things out of the job so they realise they can’t have it all and you get to maintain value. You can ‘upsell’ them at a later date…

Do a breakdown – Not an emotional one, a financial one. Tell ‘em what individual aspects are billed at so they realise you’re not just plucking a figure out of your bum!

Say No – If you keep engaging in a dialogue, the person still thinks there’s a deal to be done. In knowing your limits, it means it is time to say ‘no’ when the limit is reached. Tell them your offer is final and there’s no more wheeling and dealing!

Also look at whether there’s an option for ‘swapsies‘, i.e. bartering.

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Set boundaries for a better working life so that people don’t take the mick!
2. Reducing Your Stress On Getting Your Invoices Paid
3. Content ideas for your blog that add value to your business

Many moons ago, I worked part time as a credit control manager to help put myself through uni. I dealt with the top 1000 brands at the time and when I started, there was a lot of bad debt (around 15%) but by the time I finished opening up a can of whupass, it was less than 2%. From the taxi firm owner, to various friends running consultancy’s and blogs, money and getting what you’re rightfully owed is a pain in the bum. Why? Because people take liberties and so where you give an inch, some will take a mile, and others will take ten miles.

Be careful of bending your own rules – Boundaries!

I think that lack of boundaries or letting them be crossed is at the root of many of the issues that small business owners face. An added facet to this is if you’re quite ‘well in’ in the mum community, you may find that some of your clients make assumptions that you’ll be lenient in a ‘You’re a mum too’ or ‘We’re girls in business together’ fashion. I’m all for adapting a little to suit situations but you will find that if you have different sets of rules for all your clients, you’ll become very tangled, very quickly and realise that your money isn’t coming in on time.

Be careful of being ‘too’ chummy to the point where you’re now afraid to ask for money you’re rightfully owed for fear of upsetting the friendship.

If you’ve got to the point of being cautious of asking them why an invoice hasn’t been paid, you know that a line has been crossed.

Also remember that some of your concerns about asking them for the money may not be ‘real’ fears.

They might actually be totally fine about it (and so they freakin’ should be!) but you might over blow the situation in your own mind.

Negotiate – Business is business and actually, your business counterparts respect you for being savvy. When people haggle you down, or want favours, always make sure that offset it with your payment terms. Having long credit terms and getting hefty discounts will have you being stressed out chasing less money than you should be.

If they keep paying really late, change the terms. This is especially the case for consultancy work – No money love, no more work.

Understand how your clients purchasing departments/habits work

One of the things you’ll quickly discover is that there are your credit terms and their payment terms. You may say immediate or 30 days, but for a lot of companies, this doesn’t matter because they tangle you up in their terms, sometimes getting you to sign a supplier form for your ‘details’ where you unwittingly agree to ridiculously long terms. They may use phrases like ‘30 days, end of month’. This means that you could be waiting up to 60 days to get paid. You might find yourself timing your dealings and invoicing with them to reduce the stress of waiting for paying up – ie, don’t invoice a client like this at the beginning of the month!

Always check if a company uses ‘purchases orders’ because if you don’t, and they do, the likelihood is that the first you’ll hear about it, is when the invoice isn’t paid.
If they accept invoices by email, I highly recommend that route. You don’t have to hear any of that ‘lost in the post’ BS. However, do make sure that it’s not in their terms that they need a copy in the post.
Be persistent. If you have had to wait for your money, don’t be afraid to call a week before the payment date they’ve promised to ensure that you’re on the list.

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Easier form building with Wufoo
2. Manage your invoicing online with Freshbooks
3. Calculating your ad rates – cost per thousand or tenancy?

I’ve known about this for a couple of months but it’s creeping closer and I’ve got the flutters as I’m going to be on the panel at PR & The Media, a one-day conference produced by Haymarket’s PR Week, the industry B2B magazine for public relations professionals. Billed as an opportunity to learn how to ‘adapt and survive in today’s flooded and changing media landscape’, there’ll be delegates from major brands like Nintendo, Barclaycard, and Cadbury as well as senior representatives from the likes of The Guardian, Sky News, The Sun, The Mirror, ITV, and er…little ‘ole me who’ll be there as an ‘Independent Blogger’.

Judging by the amount of tension in the blogosphere about how bloggers are approached and handled by PR, conferences like this are very much needed. Whilst much like Rome wasn’t built in a day, so the problem is not going to be solved in one day either, many of the subjects discussed, particularly regarding getting stories and clients in front of new media, are in recognition that there is an issue, it’s pretty big, and it’s not just going to go away.

The big question of the day is: What makes different media professionals tick?

I’ll be talking about how bloggers want to be pitched, to including trying to explain how I’d ideally like to be worked with. From painting a picture of what a day looks like for a blogger and what some of our challenges may be, to stuff that they can do to make our lives easier, how to grab our attention with relevant stories and why some pitches don’t cut it, I’ll be one of the representatives for blogging as a ‘media channel’ and other reps from other channels will also deal with these issues and there’ll be a spot of comparison.

Even though I’m nervous (I feel very hot just typing this), I’m also very excited and will be talking to as many people as possible in the run up to it to gather opinions on the PR issue. If you have your own thoughts to share on it or would even like to find out how you can attend, post a comment or drop me a line on natalie [at] selfemployedmum.co.uk – Naturally you need to add the @ sign

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Text 100 Global Blogger Survey Report: Helping ‘tense’ relationships between PR & bloggers
2. How to approach bloggers for coverage – Part Two
3. Tomayto, Tomato: Understanding why PR people get confused about how to approach you

On Tuesday 12 January, I’ll be kicking off a new FREE webinar – the Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

A webinar covering everything you want to know about search engine optimization (SEO) but were afraid to ask.

Join me as I explain

• What meta tags are and why they are important
• How to build the best backlinks and avoid the ones that are worthless
• What Web 2.0 is and how it can benefit your business

And much, much more…

The webinar dates are below. If you can’t make next week’s then do sign up for the February or March dates.

Tue, Jan 12, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/127695905

Tue, Feb 9, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/327353297

Tue, Mar 9, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/675296305

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. What’s all the Buzz About Google Caffeine? FREE Webinar
2. Blogging for Profit Web Seminar – Join us for a Webinar Tonight!
3. Reader question: Er, what’s all this long tail stuff in search about?

I have one of the most untidy desks around – but I’m sure it would be a different story if I had one of these cool Campervan Desk Tidies.

Some self assembly is needed but the neat trick is that it is fully customisable with a range of fun stickers.

£5.99 from Gadgets.co.uk.

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Office Candy: Sharpener desk tidy by Suck UK
2. Office Candy: Morris the Mule Memo Holder
3. Office Candy: “Hard Drive” Clock from PixelThis

Launching this new bizz has been a different kettle of fish to my other businesses.

For a start, I’ve had to get to grips with a whole new type of website software to help me deliver the customer experience I wanted. One of the biggest changes though has been on the testing side.

When you launch a new site it’s best practice to test out various areas before you unleash it onto the interweb e.g. payment processing…

However, my new business, the SEO Training Club, is a membership site. Customers pay a subscription to receive training and information available exclusively through my website. And having members means more opportunities for kinks and creases and people not using the site quite in the way I expected them to…

So, to make the launch process as smooth as possible, I decided to take a two tier approach to testing:

1. I invited a small group of mixed ability internet users to join the site as “beta-testers.” The advance party were people I knew and trusted to give an honest opinion (although kindly spoken!) Their advice was key when I formed my branding – one beta-tester, for example, not only disliked the original color scheme, but gave me such compelling reasons to change it based on his professional expertise, that I did have a turn around – even though it set me back about 3 weeks. This kind of feedback is gold dust for a new business.

2. I decided to do a “soft-launch” with a charter membership. A soft-launch is a way to gently unleash your business to potential customers giving you time to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work before you roll out the red carpet and blow up the balloons. By now, the beta-testers have uncovered any major issues – charter members are more about learning how members interact with the site. In return for being early-adopters, the charter members pay a much lower membership subscription.

If you’re putting together a new website then pre-testing is a helpful way to make the launch process easier. Here are a few tips:

• Test out any branding, logos etc preferably with people unconnected with your business – business forums are a good place to recruit a helping hand.
• Recruit some testers to navigate your site – in particular ensure the payment processing side works correctly.
• Use analytics software such as “google analytics” to keep an eye on visitor browsing patterns. Are there any weak areas?

So now, the testing period is almost complete, and the next step is to think carefully about launching the new business to the rest of the interweb… Watch this space…

photo credit: ATKR

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. From Business Idea to Launch : Part 2
2. From Business Idea To Launch – Part 3 – Branding
3. 5 Hot Tips for Publishing Your Ebook (Part 3 of Should you publish your ebook?)

Word has it that there’s soon to be a new search engine in town…

The mighty behemoth Google has been undergoing a face-lift since the Summer, code-named “caffeine”.

Google is rumoured to be rolling out this new search engine in the New Year. There has been some research so far into the suspected changes to the algorithm and how this may affect websites and I will be sharing this with you in this special FREE webinar:

“All the News on Google Caffeine and What it Means for Your Website.”

Read all the latest working mums news from Self Employed Mum

Related posts on self employed mum:

1. Free Webinar – Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
2. Getting the lowdown on what mighty Google knows about you
3. Blogging for Profit Web Seminar – Join us for a Webinar Tonight!