Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I am going to get right to the point. Have you heard of the WP Affiliate Guide? If so, you know its a fabulous must have product for all bloggers. If you have not, I suggest you get it as soon as you can. It’s only $34.95. The cost of a few Starbucks ;)

Why am I so fond of the WP Affiliate Guide? A few reasons. The creator, Teli Adlam, is brilliant. The guide itself is easy to read, easy to understand and lacks fluff. I happen to hate fluff. Tell me what I need to know and let me get down to business, this guide does just that.

And it is comes with many *awesome* and helpful bonuses. A rundown of the bonuses are below:

* WordPress Mini Site Report and Theme: This is a short report explaining how to build a lazy affiliate style mini site using WordPress and the included theme.

* Simplified Silos with WordPress: In this report, I focus on creating a silo site using WordPress’ pages feature.

* Super Social Directory: A directory of social networking, bookmarking, and video sharing websites including their PageRank and Alexa rankings.

* Affiliate Sandbox Theme: Bare bones theme which mimics the style of a
catalog style website–all that’s required is your own personal styling and graphics.

* Simple Link Manager Plugin Lite: A light version of the SLM plugin. It still has the basic functionality, however, it doesn’t include referrer tracking or data export which is available in the full commercial version of the plugin.

* WordPress Datafeed Import Lite: A light version of the WPDFI script. It allows you to import datafeed content; each product in the datafeed will be imported as a WordPress post. Post scheduling and content customization are not available in the light version.

The WP Mini Site Report and Theme is offered as a bonus, but I would have easily bought it without a moments hesitation. If you have always wanted to your affiliate blog to look more like a “website” but without all the hassles, this is the report/theme you need. If you are technology challenged such as myself, you will be super pleased to see how easy it is.

The SLM Plugin, how I love thee. And the WordPress Datafeed Script – while they are liter versions, still get the job done and they are tremendous help.

In case I am not being clear or you missed my message… GO BUY the WP Affiliate Guide right now, it will be the best thing you have done for your business in a long time. I promise. And with that, I am going to work on more mini-sites ;)

Niche Content Packages, my very favorite private label content site is celebrating its 3rd birthday today and offering a limited time 33% discount coupon code and doubling the credits of any credit purchase!! Use the coupon code ncp3years to receive the discount.

Note: the couponcode is valid for the next 3 days only. The double credit offer is valid for entire month. Hurry and order, this is an incredible offer, they have incredible article packs AND graphics.

Where does the time go, I last updated in March? Was it really that long ago? More than half the year is gone already.

A short recap of the past few months: the full time contract position I wrote about in my last post ended a few weeks ago now. While the steady checks were nice, it ended up a good thing for me. I now have one freelance gig, that has expanded considerably in pay and responsibility and my sites to work on, which is plenty to keep up with on top of life itself.

My husband is commuting to work again (we sold 95% of the lawn/landscaping business, yea!) making me a single parent a good majority of the time, but it’s okay because it’s what needed to be done. However, my three children just may succeed in driving me crazy by the end of summer…

I have been keeping busy redesigning sites, reading books and blogging. Lots and lots of blogging – more freelance than on my own, need to do more of the latter. Funny enough, a few of my oldie sites are the ones that are doing well and showing some promise.

I have put all new projects on hold as I work on all my existing sites to refocus and regroup. That is definitely the smarter move for me. The money is in the aged domains, I just need to figure out what I want and what I am doing with them. As I figure it out I will be updating more on here. No, really.

Outsourcing is still a great thing. While I haven’t been outsourcing as much as I would like at the moment, I am hoping to change that next month.

I have tons of book reviews to get online one of these days… and a nifty plugin I want to use – Now Reading – when I have some free time.

Follow me on Twitter if you want to know more about my crazy life ;) 

I have many big changes going on in my life at the moment – both professionally and on a personal level. Since this is my business blog, I will just stick to the professional changes ;)

Last week I accepted a full time contractor position. It was a big decision for me, but in the end it felt like the right one, for now. It’s more monthly income and you can never have enough money coming in. Most importantly, I am going to learn a lot and that was a bigger reason for my decision. So that makes two contractor positions and my business (33+ sites) to keep up with. Needless to say – I am working on my time management skills.

My business is doing well and it was time to finally accept that I can’t do everything, so… I hired my first freelance blogger to help on one of my blogs. This was another big decision for me, but it is working out quite nicely. I am happy with her work and she will be starting on another one of my blogs in April.

Also, (and this was great news for me!) a good friend of mine is now offering virtual assisting services. She will soon be working on a couple of projects with me as well. All in all – things are coming along and moving in the right direction.

Best of all, I have more book money ;) Seriously though, its out of control. I have stacks of brand new books sitting next to me and two new orders on the way from Amazon and Book Closeouts. I really should be smarter by now, I say ;)

I love affiliate marketing and blogging. I can’t imagine not doing this work. However, lately I have been thinking that going back to school might be a good back up plan. My Husband is going through a big career transition and I find myself carrying a *larger* chunk of the financial burden.

While I have been trying to come up with a solid back up plan, my most important factors are keeping my business going and working from home. These years with my kids (my youngest is 7) are most important to me. I narrowed it down to two options should I decide to go for it – a marketing degree or a paralegal career.

While doing some research I came across the Paralegal Career Guide and it is full of FREE information about starting a paralegal career. I found the guide very helpful as it explains everything from education to salary expectations, paralegal career options and much more.

I definitely have some big decisions to make. My heart is with affiliate marketing and blogging and my business is doing quite nicely and continues to grow. But, I find myself saying more can only help with three kids (two that are teenagers and cost a TON of money), medical bills and everything else that pops up. I am not making any rash decisions until I know exactly what is going on with my Husband, but for now, I have information…

Calling all Geeks & Google Lovers:

On the Google Adsense Blog they are offering free Adsense stickers for your laptop. While the stickers are intended for laptops, they will also work on other surfaces (i.e. coffee mugs etc.)

So how do you get one of these glue-backed masterpieces? Easy: send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope with enough postage to return 1 oz of sticker goodness to you from our office in California via standard U.S. mail. (Sorry, we can’t help you calculate the postage to your location). Send your envelope, along with a note if you’d like, to:

Google AdSense
c/o Arlene Lee
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Hurry, supplies are limited!

The day I discovered WordPress was one of the happiest days of my life. It’s easy to use for the technology challenged and the options are endless – from themes to plugins and everything in between.

I love finding new WordPress themes. It is far easier for me to modify an existing theme to my liking then for me to try and build one myself. The very thought gives me a headache to be honest.

One of my very favorite WordPress theme creators is Brian Gardner. I use his themes on several of my sites and I LOVE THEM. I was thrilled to stumple upon his blog today and find that he has re-released one of my favorite themes Vertigo (3-column). He also has plans to re-release more of his free themes!

If you own a forum, he recently released a FREE Revolution Forum Template that is definitely worth checking out. I wish I could use it on the one site I have forums, but the forum design matches the site design so it wouldn’t work out.

The Revolution Theme Series, while not free, is also quite smashing and worth every penny.

The point of this post? If you know of Brian Gardner already, chances are you are as thrilled as I am about all his new goodies. If you haven’t yet heard of Brian Gardner, you can thank me later ;)