I’m proud to announce the launch of our newest blog:

Mommy Blogger .me!

Fall is always a busy time for us, during which we roll out our new websites before holiday season starts up.  This year is no exception, as you may remember we launched a new site 2 weeks ago called And Freebies For All.

We get so many questions about blogging from readers and bloggers that we figured it was about time to start making blogging how to information available to the public. I’ll be writing at MommyBlogger.me, giving away tons of my secrets and helpful hints for how to get the edge in this growing new media world.

You may be familiar with the sites on blogging that are available now, and all the top ones are run by – you guessed it – men!  Now they are my blogging counterparts and some are even my friends, but I felt it was about time there was a blogging site specifically for women.  Hence, MommyBlogger.me was born!

What Qualifies Me to Write about How to be a Problogger?

I’ve been a problogger and new media publisher for several years, right since blogging was starting to catch on.  I’ve been involved with some pretty high-profile companies, such as Oscar Mayer, Walmart, Purex, Macy’s, and many more, and have built a moderate blogging empire which continues to grow.

I’m a modest person which is why I make our site statistics and analytics private.   While I won’t hand out specific numbers, I will tell you that our sites rank very well for our keywords in SERPS and they rank fast.  We have incredible reach in Twitter (recently surpassing Sarah Palin in Twitter rank for Alaskans), our SEO is up there with the best of the best, and our site launches show what we can do very quickly. 

For example, our freebies site, which is now only 14 days old, hit the 1st page of Google today for one of our keywords.  That’s pretty amazing to me, and I’m grateful for the success, but I also believe that anyone can do what I do if they know my helpful blogging tips.

Whether you’re a beginner at blogging or if you’d just like to take your blogging to a new level, you owe it to yourself to visit our new problogging site, MommyBlogger.me.  It offers help with social media, blogging best practices, how to monetize your blog, and more. 

I hope some of what I’ve learned the hard way, through good old trial and error, will come to you more easily by reading all the free information on our site!

You can subscribe to MommyBlogger.me now to get the articles daily:

get the RSS feed here or the email subscription here (both are free).

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The good news is that there are plenty of probloggers you can model as you learn to cultivate your thick skin, and plenty of support from bloggers who have been there and experienced the downside (myself included). Here’s a quick excerpt from the article The Responsibility of Being a Blogger:

• “As a blogger, you are now a public figure. 
• People will expect more from you than they do of themselves or their friends. 
• People will feel you owe them explanations for your actions, blog posts, even the choices you make in your personal life.
• People will say negative things sometimes.  Never believe what people say about you. YOU decide what you are, no one else has that right.”

Read the rest of The Responsibility of Being a Blogger here.

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Whether it’s to enjoy the warm weather and do outdoor activities, or to spend more time with your kids since school is out for summer vacation, it seems a lot of mommy bloggers are scaling back.

Blogging is a multi-faceted business and we’re always busy: reading, writing, networking, guest posting, commenting, Mr. Linky-ing, and more.  It’s time consuming and sometimes it seems that entire days pass by and we wonder where they went! 

Many of you who know me have heard me talk about opening my RSS feed reader to upwards of 7,000 unread posts a day.  I just don’t have time to read all the blogs I would like to, because my family does come first and I have to really streamline my days with a tight schedule to make time for both my business and my family.  We have a wonderful 3-part series of interviews we did with super blogger Crystal Paine of Money Saving Mom about cutting back computer time which I think you’ll enjoy.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on scaling back blogging for the summer.  Let us know in the comments!

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156 Free WordPress Templates for Mommy Bloggers

We’re constantly scouting for free and cheap tools to help mommy bloggers / probloggers.  This week we found a great site that has free WordPress themes for you to download and use, no strings attached.  You can view the previews of all the templates here: Web 2.0 Wordpress Themes (then click on “Free Wordpress Themes” to view ALL the free ones).  Most of the themes even have demos, so you can navigate around in the sample blog to see if you really like the design’s layout. 

One of the fun parts of blogging is changing your theme and layout so that it reflects your personality.  Finding a really great theme can sometimes even give you an idea for a new blog you’d like to start. Free templates make it easy to test out different looks for your blog without committing to (and paying for) a design that you may not end up liking.  Plus, some of these themes are so sophisticated that they look like premium, custom-designed themes.  Only you and I will know it was free!  The Wordpress Themes site also offers custom design work if that’s what you’re looking for.

There are so many cool designs in this collection that we’ll be using a few in our blog network (so don’t be surprised if later on some of our layouts look familiar)!

WordPress Pumpkin photo courtesy of Flickr’s Eric Martin.

Why I Redesigned This Site Myself for Free

Often times when blogs are redesigned, the owner sends out a message announcing the redesign.  The email tells which company redesigned their site, linking to the designers’ websites so you can check out their designs and prices.  I am not going to link you to my designer’s site, because it was ME!

Please understand that my most recent coding experience was in 1997 (yes, 11 years ago in the days of HTML 4), when style sheets (CSS) had just barely come out and few people were using them!  Needless to say, my knowledge was pretty outdated.  Never having used Wordpress before, I was COMPLETELY afraid of messing up everything, and seriously contemplated paying someone to migrate my blog (prices range from $30-$300) and redesign the site for me (ranging $150-$1500, depending on how customized the design is).

BUT…

Then I overcame my fear!  I used the incredible FREE resources in the blogworld to learn how to migrate my site from Blogger to Wordpress and set it up on my custom domain, HomemakerBarbi.com.  I had a lot of help from Court’s Internet Marketing School (Court’s a genius). 

I designed the entire site myself (for FREE) with only the help of my husband a few times when I really got stuck on something.  He didn’t know CSS or XHTML either, and we Googled for our answers and problem-solved together! 

There is nothing wrong with paying a company to migrate or redesign your site for you, so please don’t misunderstand me.  The point for me was that I was letting fear get in the way of doing something I knew I could learn if I just tried. 

Creating this new site was not easy, and it took a lot of hard work and learning. However, it was NOT as hard as I had made it in my mind.  My fear was my biggest obstacle to overcome, not my lack of knowledge.  Now, when I look at this site, I feel proud of what I created!  And I learned a valuable lesson:

Don’t let fear hold you back from doing what you really want.

This delayed website redesign was my fear of the unknown.  In that way, it was no different from being afraid to switch careers, or transition to the new role of parent, or quit your job to start your own business.  Whatever your fear is that is holding you back from accomplishing your dreams, push it aside.  You run your life, don’t let it run you!

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It can be hard for people to understand that working from home is real work.  Jennifer at Network Blogging Tips inspired this article when she wrote Typical Conversations I Have. Her article is about friends and family not understanding that as a full-time blogger and WAHM, she does have a real job. Writing online is just as important as writing for paper print (e.g. magazines, newspapers, etc.), and a writing job has just as many responsibilities as any other job.

It is a difficult and delicate issue for WAHMs to set boundaries with their space, their time and their priorities. If you are currently a work at home parent (this includes dads), you can understand Jennifer’s frustration when people say, “You’re lucky you don’t have a real job”! Just because you don’t commute doesn’t mean you don’t work hard in your own home office. The work is even harder for parents who don’t use childcare, because the interruptions from kids are constant and unavoidable.  This brief guide should help both those of us who are WAHMs (and dads) and those friends / family members who love us but just don’t understand yet!

Establishing Understanding and Boundaries For Working at Home

For Bloggers / Freelancers / WAHMs (and Dads)

1. Be patient. With time, either they’ll understand or they won’t. Don’t spend time worrying about it though – use that time productively!

2. Set clear boundaries for outsiders (people outside your house). Let people know very clearly the days/hours you work and that when you are working, you can’t be doing other things. If you don’t call your friends while they’re at work and expect them to drop everything and chat, why should they expect that of you? Drop in visits, phone calls, outings, play dates, IM chats: all these activities are distractions which mean work doesn’t get done. Nicely but firmly remind people that you have deadlines, which aren’t met if you can’t do your work in the allotted time.

3. Set clear boundaries for INSIDERS (this means your children and spouse). Just because you can see mommy (or daddy) doesn’t mean she’s available to play! Be clear about designated work times. For younger children, a helpful tool is a kitchen timer. Turn it to set an hour, or whatever time you’re setting aside, and let your child know that while the timer is going mommy has work to do. When it goes off, you can take a break together to do something fun before the next work segment. As with all new routines, this may take a while to get comfortable. For your spouse, you may need to gently remind that when you are in a certain location (in your office, at your desk) or during designated times, you’re working and are unavailable. Of course, uninterrupted mommy time means more of a happier mommy to go around later (who is not worrying about missing a deadline!).

4. Refer people to your finished product. Send them to your site so they can see and experience what your time goes towards building. It may help them to link something tangible to the intangible concept of you “working at home doing writing.”

For Friends and Family of Bloggers / Freelancers / WAHMs (and Dads)

1. Publishing online is equivalent to publishing in paper print (magazines or newspapers). It is just as important and takes as much (or more) time and effort.

2. Never say that working at home is not a real job! If your loved one spends their precious time and energy doing it, then it’s a job to them, whether or not it’s financially successful yet! They need your support and understanding to succeed.

3. Respect boundaries. Since working at home is a real job, your loved one has certain days and hours they designate as work times. Find out what they are and respect them. That means don’t drop in unannounced, call for chats, pop up an IM window, or ask them to babysit during those work times! I’m guessing they don’t ask you to use your vacation time at work to do those kinds of things, so practice the golden rule.

4. Understand deadlines. Deadlines are deadlines, whether you set them for yourself or someone else sets them for you. Respect your loved one’s need to get things done when they say they will, and don’t ask them to rearrange deadlines for you just because you think they should be able to.

4. Check it out for yourself. If you don’t understand what your loved one does, ask if you can see the finished product. Visit their website and read some of their articles.

Homemaker Barbi Says: Working at home is a different kind of arrangement which can take some getting used to by all parties involved. With clear boundaries, patience, and willingness to understand, everyone can be happier with the situation!

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