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| ShopDogDiaries |
| These are the daily chronicles of a "Work at Home" dog and his mom as they search for new and exciting ways to grow their home business via the internet, and at the same time find a healthy balance between work and everyday life. |
| Language: English |
| RSS Feeds for this Blog |
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| Unique Visitors: 0 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 198752 |
| Visitors Out: 570 |
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| THIS BLOG HAS MOVED! |
| 2008-02-13 04:14:00 |
I few days back I said I was movin'Well, my new URL is http://shopdogdiaries.comIf you happen to have me bookmarked, please update. Sorry to all you chaindropping Entrecarders if this screws you up!I'm still working on the layout of the new blog, I have a few things I have to fix that didn't transfer quite right when I moved the stuff from Blogger to WordPress. Plus I'm still playing with some things and have to get a few plug-ins yet.I will be leaving this post up for awhile and will start to disassemble this blog. Hopefully all goes well.Thanks for understanding.Heidi...
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| WooHoo! I won something! |
| 2008-02-12 10:34:00 |
I'd been spending a good amount of time reading through the Entrecard forums lately (but still don't participate much), and I decided to check out Promotions and Events. I found a contest by My Consoling Asylum who was giving away 250 credits to the first person to solve a logic problem. I normally wouldn't jump at 250cr, but it was the logic problem that caught my eye. I was the first person with the correct answer. Well as it turned out, not only did I win 250cr, but my 125x125 ShopDogDiaries ad will be shown on his blog for a week. How cool is that?The name of the contest is Mindcracking Monday Monster. Check out next week's puzzle for a chance to win credits and some ad space....
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| ShopDogDiaries is getting an Extreme Makeover! |
| 2008-02-02 23:48:00 |
I don't know about you, but I hate this template. But rather than going through the trouble of just changing over to a new Blogger template and retaining some of the limitations inherent in Blogger, I've gone ahead and downloaded a template in WordPress and am in the process of modifying it the old-fashioned trial-and-error way, since I'm not as geeky as some of you out there!I also got the domain name: ShopDogDiaries.com. If you go there now, you'll see a mess. I'm messing around with widths, text alignments, spacing, and NO, that is not the image that goes in my header... I just needed something quick to put in there so I could tinker with the template.Of course my last trick is going to be transferring the content from this blog to the new one. Supposedly it's a click of the mouse,...
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| Hello? |
| 2008-02-01 23:33:00 |
I'm still here, just haven't had time to post and drop my Entrecards lately. I've had a busy couple days with work, hockey, and taking care of some personal business - so something had to give. Unfortunately, that "something" happens to be the three blogs I've got going!Hopefully at some point over the weekend I can free up a little more time to take care of my blogging duties and get a little caught up in the community happenings.Thanks for stopping by!Heidi...
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| My SouthPark Avatar |
| 2008-01-30 08:34:00 |
In my Entrecard chain-dropping adventures this morning, I saw this post over at Geek Mom Mashup. She posted a link to a site where you can create your very own South Park avatar based on your personality. So I decided to create a couple reflecting me and my husband, Joe!If you want to make one for yourself, go to http://www.sp-studio.de...
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| My Screen Printing Evolution Pt. 2 |
| 2008-01-28 07:21:00 |
This is a continuation of a previous post, so in order to not be "lost", I suggest you read Part 1. Thanks!Where was I?OK, when I worked at Apple (Imprints, that is), I did both manual and automatic printing. When I was hired, the company (owned by brothers Jack and Kevin) had 2 manual presses - a 4-color table top Atlas and 6-color Atlas, and a cute little 2-color automatic. The owners kind of took a liking to me and made me "the production manager" of their shop. Which in a way is kind of funny since I was the only printer working there at first! But as their business grew and additional employees were hired, so did my responsibilities. Since I was the only one there who had real automatic experience (from when I worked with Jon Weiss), the company flew Jack and I to the annual ...
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| Blogging Update |
| 2008-01-26 14:44:00 |
I've been hard at work (or hardly working!) on my other internet fun stuff. I had bought a few domain names awhile back with the intent of creating websites or blogs using them. I also signed up for Hostgator a month ago with the intent of taking advantage of their unlimited add-on domains capability. They use cPanel which I was unfamiliar with, so once I opened it up and took a look - I wanted to burst into tears in total frustration! What the heck was I looking at?! You see, my previous web-hosting experience was through Yahoo Business Hosting which, as it turns out, is idiot proof web-hosting! Whereas cPanel has so many options that my head began to spin. Well, it's been a month now, and I've taken the time to figure out the basics. I now have three add-on domains, two of which ...
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| My Screen Printing Evolution |
| 2008-01-25 07:19:00 |
In my last post I was hemmin' & hawin' about what direction to go in with my blog here. I've been so caught up in a few of my projects (blogging and otherwise) that I failed to realize that 4 days have passed since I made that post. Sorry!I've decided that the best direction to go is to concentrate on blogging on what I know. Duh! Of course I will blog on other techie and blogging type stuff from a "discovery" perspective, because that's what it is for me at this point as I'm not an expert in the field. And I will throw in the gratuitous doggie posts because, well, this IS ShopDogDiaries!But what I know is this: Screen Printing.OK, let's set the record straight. It is NOT silk-screen printing. It used to be silk-screen printing, but not anymore - and...
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| Re-thinking ShopDogDiaries |
| 2008-01-21 08:48:00 |
Can someone please tell me what this blog is about?In my blog-surfing adventures, I've noticed that one of the most popular topics for bloggers is: "kinds of blogs I hate" - or something along those lines. Usually the types of blogs which top those lists are the "make money" blogs. Another is the "random - this blog is about nothing in particular" blog.I guess I'm guilty of both! Oh well.I will admit though that some of the best blogs out there are the ones which stick to a theme and make the most of it. Whether you call it niche blogging or whatever term you choose to use, I personally don't mind the "make money" blogs so long as they provide some useful information.I just think that there are a lot of people out there who took the same advice I took. Some internet marketing guru said...
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| My Power Mall - A Road To Financial Freedom OR Just More Wishful Thinking? |
| 2008-01-21 03:01:00 |
You may or may not have noticed that blue flash ad I placed in my right sidebar that states, "Dreaming of Financial Freedom? Wake up with MyPowerMall: Making your dream a reality! Always 100% free!"In my internet adventures a few weeks back, I stumbled upon an ad similar to this which led me to the MyPowerMall (MPM) site. On the site is a 30-minute video presentation explaining what MPM is all about. But what really got my attention was the fact that it was FREE. Free is good.Basically, when you sign up for MPM you get 2 URL's. One is the URL that you do your own shopping through, the other is the one which you use to promote MPM - for instance - the ...
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| My Local Yellow Pages Scammed Me! |
| 2008-01-18 02:36:00 |
It's funny how memories just pop in your head sometimes, isn't it? With all this networking going on, I began to think back of all the advertising techniques I'd used to promote my business. Then there is was... that one sore spot, that bad memory of being scammed by my local yellow pages.I advertised in the Yellow Pages for several years before this had happened. You know, standard procedure, small business takes out ad in local book. One year I had gotten behind in my monthly payments and had accrued a debt of a little over $400 by the end of the yearly billing cycle. Needless to say, when they called me to advertise in the coming year's book, I declined because I didn't even have the money to pay my past due balance - never mind adding more debt on top of it! So, as is typical, th...
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| Networking Updates |
| 2008-01-16 23:38:00 |
1) eBay - I am pleased to say that I managed to sell 5 t-shirts, a dvd, and a dvd movie lot in the past 2 days on eBay with little or no effort. I haven't really been actively promoting myself on the eBay site these past few weeks, so I can only guess that my recent activity on a few social networking sites has helped.2) Entrecard - I've devised a card dropping system to suit my needs. To the best of my ability and time, I've been bookmarking the Entrecarders who've taken the time to drop on me, advertise on my blog, allowed me to advertise on theirs, or who've commented on my blog or have messaged me through the Entrecard system. At one point, I was going to attempt to make my way through the whole site (see my post here), but I have so much else o...
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| Something Close To My Heart |
| 2008-01-16 19:44:00 |
I am pleased to have discovered a few blogs dedicated to pet rescue. They are HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer, Save A Shelter Pet, and Paws Awhile. I must confess that I have the potential to be one of those weird "cat ladies" as I have been known to take in strays. I think the most I've had in my house at any given time was 3 dogs and 8 cats! I DO have my limits. First off, the City of Buffalo only allows 3 dogs on your property, unless you have a kennel permit - which I've been very tempted to look into. There are no limit on cats, but cats being the way they are, I look to maintain a level of peace in the house. Some cats get a little buggy and leave poopies in places they're not supposed to, so I choose not to fill my house with cats. I need to maintain a certain ...
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| Featured on Saphrym.com Today |
| 2008-01-16 00:31:00 |
Cool beans! My blog was featured on Saphrym.com's January 15th Daily Read.For those of you who have never heard of Saphrym, he is blogging about his weight loss experience. So far he's lost 70 pounds since July! He also holds top spot on the 30 most popular sites in the Entrecard community. Pay him a visit when you get a chance....
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| The Reality of Self-employment and Small Business |
| 2008-01-15 17:34:00 |
When there's no work....You don't get paid.One of the difficult things about being in screen printing is that it is a seasonal business. My household suffers a double whammy because my husband, Joe, is in the same line of work. He works for two other local screen printers, one of which I do artwork for as shown in my post on Friday. Unfortunately, both of Joe's employers have been slow for the past few weeks and I haven't had much printing work in myself, so money is extremely tight. Of course it figures that this is my busiest time of year with hockey, having gone on a road trip this past weekend and will be going on another to Toronto this coming weekend.Joe managed to get a day's work yesterday, but keep in mind... this is Buffalo, NY where a good...
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| Who IS Peter Foti??? |
| 2008-01-14 19:07:00 |
I just bid on the most bizarre auction on eBay!I paid a visit to the Entrecard forum where I stumbled upon this post by Sam at Sam Freedom's Internet Marketing Controversy Blog. And in a momentary lapse of reason, I bid on this auction. Thank God my husband doesn't know half the crazy stuff I do while I'm online!H....
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| Entrecard Update |
| 2008-01-14 13:29:00 |
I realize not all Entrecarders are not as neurotic as I am. I'm one of those OCD people who makes lists and goes over the same thing over and over again in fear of overlooking something! I'm poking fun at myself here and I'm hoping that others like myself who've found Entrecard to be, um, addictive will find at least a little bit of humor in this.Shortly after I joined Entrecard, I went to the main Campaign page and did a print out of all the categories. My original intention was to systematically go through every category and drop a card on each and every blog. But as it's turning out, Entrecard is growing much faster than I can keep up. I did the print out on 1/9. At the time there were 40 categories with a total of 1840 blogs.I visited the same page today and found Entrecard membe...
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| goin' on a roadtrip! |
| 2008-01-12 00:52:00 |
I'm goin' on the road with my hockey team this weekend for a two game road trip. Yes you heard me right... I play ice hockey... on a women's team... yep.Buddy will be staying home with daddy while mommy hits the road with her unruly bunch of female hockey playing friends! First stop is Syracuse where we will play the Rome Grizzlies, Saturday 7:15pm, Cicero Arena, then on the way home we will play the Rochester Susan B's, Sunday 12:45pm, Valley Park Arena. We need fans. So if anybody happens to be in upstate NY this weekend, check us out. We play women's Senior C, so don't expect much!Needless to say, I will be away from my computer for awhile, so don't be too offended if I don't return comments and emails and such until Monday!...
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| Don't Quit Your Day Job! |
| 2008-01-11 23:03:00 |
As much as I aspire to be an internet marketing mogul, truth be known... I won't be quitting my day job any time soon! In a little over a week's time I've made a whopping $.91, yes that's ninety one cents, from Google Adsense. Of course my husband and I jumped up and down and high-fived each other! We're trying to think positive; you gotta start somewhere right?In the event you're all wondering (I know you're not, but I'll tell you anyway) how my day job is going, below are the pics of the artwork and final product of that job I pulled the all-nighter to finish a couple days back.IMAGE 1: to the left is the chicken scratch concept the customer gave along with a partially ripped sticker (right) that was pulled off an adult beverage bottle. I don't know why it is, but this is typically w...
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| Don't You Hate When People Use "Click Here" For Their Links? |
| 2008-01-11 00:08:00 |
Yeah, it's annoying and amateurish, but you know what? Believe it or don't, there are still people out there that wouldn't know where to click if there wasn't a flashing neon sign with a big fat underline that said, "click here."I'm one of those semi-literate web people who chooses to use click here or read more when linking to things. Granted, the average fifth grader is more tech savvy than the average over 50-something, but to be fair to the old-timers, I like to spell things out a bit. When I'm laying out a web page or site I say to myself, "ok, can my husband figure this out!" So if an occasional click here is needed to get the reader to follow the link, then I have no problem with using it.I've come across this topic of discussion more than once ...
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| My 15 Minutes of Fame as an eBay PowerSeller |
| 2008-01-09 21:29:00 |
Yes, here's some shameless self-promotion! I had a short-lived stint as an eBay PowerSeller last spring... um, before they made it easy to become a PowerSeller!The standard used to be that you had to show $1000 a month in sales for 3 months to qualify for PowerSeller status, then of course you had to maintain it to keep it. They have since made it easier for vendors to get PS status by allowing then to qualify by volume rather than dollar amount. So now the standard is $1000/mo. or 100 units sold regardless of dollar amount which in a way is a joke. A guy who sells 100 99-cent ebooks gets the much coveted PS logo next to his eBay ID, while the person who sells 90 $10 t-shirts falls short!Yeah, I'm whining! Well, at least I can boast that I got my PS cer...
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| So Much For Time Management! |
| 2008-01-09 08:13:00 |
Uh oh! I was a baaad mom today.... it's 9:20am and I'm just getting 'round to going to bed! Poor Buddy. Of course he napped lightly all night on the couch, but still... the boy needs his beauty rest!What happened is I putzed around with all my fun stuff (internet) and neglected to get my real work done. I had a couple of art projects that had to be done for another printer this morning. So there I was... just getting around to doing them at 3am! I finished at 8:30am and sent my husband to deliver the artwork on his way to work.Gotta go. Later.H....
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| Get Backlinks and Make Money at Qassia |
| 2008-01-08 10:49:00 |
I was checking out Turnip's blog when I stumbled upon a link to Qassia, a new information database similar (but not the same as) Wikipedia.At Qassia, you contribute by providing "intel" on any topic you choose. But unlike Wikipedia, each bit of intel you provide is linked directly back to you. It's not set up where there are multiple authors to the articles. You control and edit your own content similar to what you do on your own blog. The neat thing is, any intel you provide to Qassia gets a link back to your site.Not only can you generate traffic to your site, but you also make money thru Google Adsense. Each page of intel you provide will have Adsense on it.The best part is that it's FREE! Qassia is currently in private beta, so you can only join b...
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| Time Management |
| 2008-01-07 12:28:00 |
I almost feel silly saying this....I've decided to crack down on my lack of Management">time management. Yeah, right! How many times before have I resolved to do this??? Let's face it, procrastination is my middle name. I'm 41 years old, and for as long as I can remember, I've lived a pretty unstructured, or at the very best, a loosely structured life. I like to tell people it all began when I was assigned to afternoon kindergarten! For you youngsters, we only had a half day of school back then.I hate using labels, but two of them fit me so well: A.D.D. and O.C.D.!I have a tendency to start a million projects and never finish them. I'll be all gung-ho and obsess over something, then when the next new thing comes al...
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| Everybody - Meet Buddy! |
| 2008-01-07 01:38:00 |
I've been talking about myself so much lately that I've neglected to introduce you all to the "star" of my blog...This is Buddy:Buddy is a beagle/pit bull mix who is tickled pink to have a work-at-home mom! You see, Bud's life didn't start off so rosie. He was a stray pup rescued from the streets of the East Side of Buffalo. But his rescuers, a couple of teenage kids from a not-so-affluent family, were in no position to properly care for a dog. Buddy was often neglected, locked up in the house or chained up in the yard for extended periods of time, was not fed regularly or properly, and often had accidents in the house. He developed some bad doggie habits and the kids were going to dump him at the pound... that's when I entered the picture. You see, Buddy lived two doors down from me...
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| Definition of Terms |
| 2008-01-06 19:57:00 |
Whew, talk about confused!I guess I must be what you call "old school!" I throw around terms like "networking" "marketing" "network marketing" and "internet marketing" as though they mean what they used to mean back when I first got into business 14+ years ago. Well, I've since been corrected. I stumbled across this video recently and downloaded the free ebook, and have since decided to change my terminology! Only When Video Is Done, click hereAs it turns out: Networking isn't going to the local business fair and handing out business cards, Marketing isn't discovering who your customers are and figuring out how to advertise your product to them, Network Marketing isn't "networking" + "marketing" as defined above, and Internet Marketing isn't sel...
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| Networking Update |
| 2008-01-06 14:00:00 |
I signed up for a few more services which I hope will create traffic to my blog.One is called Blog Engage. It's a place where you submit articles (blogposts) from your blog for others to rate. I submitted my post Signing up for SPAM!, hopefully it's relavent enough to get a few readers.Another is Blog Catalog which is almost identical to MyBlogLog. Although I don't like it as much - it just seems harder to get around. Maybe I'm just imagining things, but as of now my preference is leaning towards MyBlogLog.The next is Entrecard which has turned out to be pretty cool. Basically you get traffic to your site by buying and selling ad spots to and from your site. The currency used is a point system, so it's free. And the general idea is to add value to your site by visiting other people'...
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| Signing Up For SPAM! |
| 2008-01-04 16:06:00 |
I checked my email this morning and found it filled with this and that offer from the gurus and wannabes. I'm one of those silly people who put herself on every mailing list out there. You know what I'm talkin' about, right? When you land on one of those squeeze pages and you scroll to the bottom and there's a place for you to put your first name and email address and they'll send you some freebee.I highly suggest not using your "real" email address, or if you do, set up filters for each of these senders so that your in box doesn't get inundated. What I mean by real email address is the one that you get emails from your friends and family. I use Yahoo! for my email. I ended up upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus which gave me the the ability to set up 50 filters AND create disposable email...
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| My Real World Job |
| 2008-01-02 13:50:00 |
Today's a real world job day. As much as I'd like to sit on the computer and work on Squidoo, MyBlogLog, and search for more places to promote my internet marketing experiment... the cold hard truth is, I have a real job. Well, maybe my job isn't as real as what you're working. I am self-employed and work at home, so my schedule is a lot more flexible than your typical 9 to 5.But I have a couple projects to take care of. I sold a couple things on eBay that I have to get packaged and ready to ship. It's going on 3 o'clock here and I have until 6pm to get it to the post office, but knowing me, I'll be running in at 5 minutes to. That's the downside of working at home: time management. I find a million other things to do. Let's face it, no boss, no co-workers... just me and the dog! ...
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| More Marketing |
| 2008-01-01 23:19:00 |
I know I'm probably overextending myself here, but I signed up for FaceBook and Squidoo. Both of these need a lot of work - hence my saying that I've overextended myself! But at least I got signed up. Now i just gotta figure out how to add the content to them.....Yeah, right! Like I didn't already have enough on my plate. I still have to finish my affiliate marketing site, DawgSolutions.com. If you click on it now, you'll get an "under construction" page. So besides this blog, I have the Facebook and Squidoo projects to keep me busy.In case you're wondering, I just want to get as much free advertising as possible. So I figure that these sites which are already well-trafficked and search engine friendy will help me out. Of course as time goes by,...
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| Clueless As Usual |
| 2008-01-01 18:09:00 |
I just signed up for this thing called MyBlogLog. I haven't got a clue what it is or what it's for, but I signed up anyhow.I'm really hoping to touch base with other people like me who really haven't got a clue. I'm just so awed by these people who seem to have figured out the internet. I'll be honest with you - I don't know if it can be figured out. By the time you get something down, the next big thing comes along, and everything you just learned is yesterday's news.Well, like I mentioned before... my big goal here is to drive traffic to my website. Someone said start a blog, so I started a blog. Now I ran across someone who said join MyBlogLog, so I joined it.... haven't got a clue why, but I did it anyway.Whatever!Oh, in the event someone actually stumbles upon this post....I have...
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| A New Year |
| 2008-01-01 11:01:00 |
ya know what they say... another day, another dollar, right? how 'bout another year, another chance? whatever!can't believe it's 2008! holy cow!I guess the best intro to this blog would be to describe it as my attempt to "make it" in my latest business venture. I'll be quite blunt here, blogs are a great way to get traffic to your site, so why not use them.what's with the title? well, I'm a work at home "mom" of a beagle/pit bull mix named Buddy. So I thought I'd create an online diary of our experiences as I attempt to develop an internet business.I know, I don't sound very convincing, do I? I don't exactly have those BS copywriting skills in which I try to convince you that I'm this 6 or 7 figure internet marketing genius! And I don't buy into all the mind-over-matter voodoo hype ...
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