“The RoseBouquet”

Last week, my dear friend Tess reminded me that not everyone can follow when I talk about installing operating systems on a laptop or computer. I should be sticking with my goal to finish my aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site since that will bring an income. Touche! I do need to be reminded sometimes that not every reader gets much out of my techie talk. Even if you didn’t understand all that, I hope you got the clear impression that it was a sweet victory for me to accomplish my goal.

I do have a regular work pace, and it would be boring to you if I repeated each week the hours I’ve spent on maintaining my sites, or those of my clients; or all the things I’m learning as I work on that new SBI site. I’m still doing all that too, but I have, in the last few weeks, given up about three mornings a week to go to my Azaleas Virtual Assistants office, and get those computers lined up so that I can earnestly recruit the students for my business. I’m hoping I can run a free workshop one Saturday - maybe in July - and use it to show people what they would learn if they sign up for the four month course.

Each week, I try to pick out one highlight for me, out of my varied work to share with you. It gives those friends who want to know what I’m up to, a sense of what is keeping me busy. I do realize that some weeks it will whiz past you like a bullet not meant for you. Don’t let it bother you. Just skim over it regularly, for the times when there will be something that does catch your fancy.

Hey, ideally, I’d love to brag here each week on how many copies of my book have sold, and how well my sites are doing, but then to translate one of my Gr’ma’s proverbs, “Self-glory stinks,” so that might not be very interesting either on a regular basis.

Guess you can be grateful that I’m a multi-faceted person and can give you variety, eh?

(Incidentally, I get to do some interesting things for clients sometimes, but I hesitate to share those items as they aren’t really mine to talk about).

I haven’t done this in quite a while, but I have friends who need and would love to have visitors to their sites, so let me give you a few to go check out. If you like them and want to encourage them, use the contact form to say “Hi!” to them.

April Boyer - a freelance writer, brings Inspiration Seeds for YOUR Writing, Christian Writer’s Encouragement, Helps, and Services. Newly renovated!

Children-of-the-Heart.net - Betty Baker Bradley, a poet and artist, makes baby blankets to give away to anyone who can be dissuaded from having an abortion as she stands before the infamous Tiller Abortuary in Kansas.

Generosity is Alive and Well - We want to draw more attention to the skill and art of being a wise and generous giver. This site profiles and draws attention to worthy causes, missions and ministries that deserve generosity.

HeavenlyDaze.biz - information on things “heavenly” (if you feel ‘Dazed’) pointing to God’s Word, the Bible for the ultimate answers.

Just Good Cooking - Offering “old” cookbooks as e-books; some are over 100 years old, and difficult to get any other way.

Last Thursday I ran out of cat food, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive to the shopping mall just for that, so I went on the internet to look for homemade cat food recipes. Found some too.

One lady vet said that cat are carnivores - meaning they are meant to eat raw meat. Her recipe called for two little chicken legs ground up raw, bones and all, add a few vitamins and make a slurry, which you freeze in small containers so you only have a small amount in the fridge for a few days at a time. I happened to have most of that stuff on hand, and a Vita Mixer as well as a Champion Juicer/grinder, so I decided to try it.

When I had the batch just about done, I put a fork full down in Snowflake’s food dish to see whether he would even eat it. He gobbled it up! Since then I’ve offered him one heaping fork-full whenever I come into the kitchen for my three meals a day, but oh the side effects!

I was told that the neutering surgery would make him a tamer, quieter cat. The reverse has happened. I’ve been pondering if his behaviour is as a result of the surgery or of this new diet. Today he is not getting any more of the raw chicken - no matter how much he whines and begs for it. When I’m finished this issue of the RoseBouquet I’m going out to buy him some regular cat food again.

What Snowflake been like? He’s been racing from one end of the house to the other and leaping up on his high window look-outs like his tail is on fire. Now that tail is constantly twitching in what I thought was a cute tickity-boo manner, but he can’t stand a hug for more than two seconds, and he’s off and running again, meowing like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum because it can’t have what it wants NOW. He’s been up on my desk (which I had trained him not to do), and the kitchen table, and on my bed, waking me up, leaping into the sink in the bathroom, drinking from the toilet, and just one crazy act after another.

I’m beginning to wonder if I can stand my roommate any more. So today I’m hardening my heart, and resolved to ignore all whining until I can go get regular cat food. This new diet just gives way too much energy for one cat.

Back about March or April I had an older laptop given to me. A CTX Ez-Book 800 Series. The giver explained that he had only taken it along on two trips, so it has had little wear and tear. However, he has bigger ones, so he was willing to give this one up. Turns out the CTX EzBooks are no longer made. Obsolete. The CPU is too old for most of the newer, better operating systems. It had only 32 MB of RAM memory, which meant that of the 11 or 13 Linux distributions I was trying to install, some of them came to a halt because of lack of memory, and some switched to bare text mode. Hmm…. well, I wasn’t about to give up just yet. I could just re-install Windows 98, but not until I was convinced there was NO linux system that would work.

So over various weekends I’ve spent some hours trying this and that. (Like Heinz’ varieties, there are over 300 flavours of Linux). I had read about Debian some years ago, but sort of avoided it, because it looked like I’d have to learn some command line to run it. I had downloaded one or two of them though, and that was one system that seemed to be comfortable installing on this laptop. Only something went wrong the first few times. Gradually, by checking online, I was able to understand what I had done wrong in each case, and the way around that.

Saturday afternoon and evening I tried another time. This time it worked, except that it complained of only 300-400 MB of space left over. That wouldn’t do, as I need space for all the emails and files I save. So on Sunday I researched and learned how to delete some. I tried to take out the games, and lo, the whole Gnome desktop system got washed away at the same time. (sigh). But in researching Debian sites some more I saw that I needed to do a very bare, basic installation, and then install the KDE system, the one I like much better because it has my favourite programs, with a few simple apt-get commands.

Since a full installation can take 3-6 or more hours I made that my main project yesterday. I got the right web pages up in various Firefox tabs on my desktop computer, and also downloaded the pdf manual, then I gave the internet cable to the laptop and got it set up to do the install. Meantime, I could do some work on this computer too, just not online. Hallelujah, at 3:14 pm it was done and I could see that I have a working system up and running!

This laptop will now be my own private computer at my Azaleas Virtual Assistants (AVA) office, and I will be able to use a USB stick to carry my files back and forth between home and the AVA office. The laptop Debian needs a bit of tweaking so it looks more like my setup here in Suse 10.3, and I need to copy some working files over, but I am positively thrilled at this success.

I’ve learned to know and appreciate Debian better. The commands are not that hard to learn - at least not for downloading and installing, and it works, even on oldie computers. Guess what I’m going to go put on the office computers that are too old for Suse?

Incidentally, I had some great feedback last week on the article about a book review website. I’m sure there is room for all of you to run with the idea. I’ll see if I can toss out more ideas from time to time. Right now I’m mulling over an idea for a site, or even a workshop on how to install new operating systems on your computer. What if I invited them to bring their own…?

Where can you get ideas for web business-sites?

Easy. From your own experiences and passions. If you get a SiteBuildIt! web business, the very first phase you go through will be a guided brainstorming session to see what you have the most interest and experience in. If you already know a lot about a certain topic, you can share your information, and that will create a solid info site. We all know how people are turning to the internet to research whatever they want to know. When I wanted to know about recipes for cat food, I did a Google search and read up on various sites until I found what I wanted to know. Another example; on my new aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site,I have already put a photo lesson on how to eat your aloe vera for your health.

If you know a lot about computers, find an angle there that you could share and teach on. If you know all about dealing with a child with autism, for instance, or are ready to research it in depth and share your findings, there is another topic for a site. Once you have prepared about 30-50 pages of information, you start adding links to related affiliate products, and AdSense ads. Presto, the commission checks are your new income stream!

Meet some other people who have followed their passion and turned it into a web business; Case Studies of Passion turned Business

I just came across some nifty advice for writing effectively on the internet. There are at least three kinds of readers you want to reach, by using this little rule you can reach all of them each time you write an article or a web page, or even your emails.

The man who was trying to describe this used the analogy of three train tracks, but I think a three-strand braid works better for me to visualize this truth. Let me use that imagery for when you braid together three strands of anything, whether it be yarn, ropes, (I’ve even made a cat leash with braided pantyhose) - or in this case, three writing styles, you always end up with something strong and useful.

Have you ever braided hair or anything else? You keep over-lapping the left and then the right strand over the center one. This constantly changes their position, so that each strand gets to be in all three positions in a rhythmic pattern. Neatness makes for a strong, attractive braid.

In our writing on the internet we want to reach two kinds of people. There’s the right-brained people who are creative and respond best to stories and illustrations to discover a point (they are often left-handed). Then there are the left-brained people who look for facts, and statistics, and they want proofs, and quotes from reliable sources to assure them that this fact is well-grounded.

The third reader category you need to please for your writing to catch some public attention, is the search engines’ robots. Okay, so that’s just software invented by smart left-brained people, but the robots are trained to count the number of times your keyword appears in your article or web page. Each robot is tuned to watch for a certain ratio or percentage of occurrence. If your keyword shows up often enough, the search engine serves up your URL more readily to people who are doing a search for that keyword. If your meta tags contain a keyword that doesn’t even show up on your page, they will click away without a backward glance. They have no sympathy.

When you do any of your net-writing try to include some picture language and illustrative stories to make your point, but be sure to include some factual evidence too. (Here’s my weak spot). At the same time, braid in the use of your keyword or phrase into every paragraph, or where ever possible.

In the end you will see positive feedback and the search engines will deliver more and more readers to you! Just what you wanted!

Yes, by 4:30 pm last Tuesday, my new water heater was in place, and I was presented with the bill. Whew! I had just a few weeks earlier, received the last installment of my inheritance (the portion divided five ways after the governments and all the professionals had their last piece of Dad). I’d put it away in a savings account for emergencies. Well this emergency took it all, plus what was in my checking account. Except for $4.17. Another miracle to praise God for!

Yesterday I heard from the inspector about my RRAP reno projects. It appears I may have to give up on the windows, but he thinks all the rest can be done for me. I should be hearing from him again soon. I’m pleased that things are moving along so quickly now.

Sunday was a special day for me. June 1 last year, I got possession of my house here. I became a real home owner for the first time! One realtor has suggested that after a year I should serve cinnamons and they’d come to see how much I had changed or improved this place. Well, he and his wife were taking a cruise this weekend, but I called the man who sold me this house and invited him and his wife to come see the changes. They didn’t come, but I had also invited some friends and they did drop by on Sunday afternoon. It was a very pleasant time for me.

A couple of weeks ago I had a small Saturday yard sale and through that met a neighbour up the street. Bev wanted to learn how to make cinnamon buns, so when she heard me mention this plan for a wee celebration she asked if I’d teach her. So Saturday I invited her to come over and help me make these buns. The batch of dough turned out bigger than I’d thought, so I let her take one pan full home to bake at her house. Bev is definitely a new friend in my Bouquet of Roses/friends!

This is a fairly small house and my living room consists mostly of a circle of three or 4 comfortable chairs. However, it worked out just fine, because the friends that came and went were always just enough for the number of sit-upons I could rustle up. I’d spread out the food buffet style on the small table for two, and my friend Anna saw to it that the platters got passed around often enough.

We also made several visits out to the backyard to see my garden, most of which seems to have popped up out of the earth in just the last week. This kind of socializing strikes me as great fun. I enjoyed all my guests heartily!

More struggling to get in as much as possible on all fronts and ventures. The extra mornings spent at the office means I’m making progress in preparing the donated computers, some to be used in my office and some I will turn into sets to give away or sell at give-away prices.

I’ve started renovating my novel’s site, Ruthes-SecretRoses.com from the beginning again, as I had discovered new improvements to make before I finished the previous go-round, and now I want to make sure all the pages have the same advantages. Hopefully this go-through will not take as long.

I seem to be reading and thinking more again about marketing my novel. Oh how good it would be to have some interns or virtual assistants to help me with this. There’s even new books out that explain how to use Amazon and social networking sites in self-marketing one’s book.

I need to sit down for a good planning session to work out how to go about that, but for now I’m just letting ideas percolate in the back of my mind so I can get a clear sense of the efforts that will be required. The ideas may have to wait until I have recruited students to take my four month course, starting in September. Then when I am multiplying myself through others, it will be easier to take such book promo steps.

As I’ve said before, I often have more ideas than I can shake a promising finger at and say, “I’ll get to you yet!”

What do you do when ideas just rain on you?

As you’ll see in a minute in my article below, I’m sharing one idea with you, that could become a solo web business for you, doing something you already love to do - read. What’s more - this is the kind of thing I plan to train my students/interns in my Azaleas Virtual Assistants course. Yep, how to start and run a solo web business just like that idea.

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The RoseBouquet is a weekly blog. (You’ll need to register as a user to make comments at the blog. Registering helps me screen out riff-raff who fill the comments section with garbage).

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Peter Bowerman stumbled into business writing, and discovered that he could live quite well off his services to businesses, which need someone to write their brochures, sales letters, web content, advertising and so forth. He has written some books, and set up a web site to show that anyone who can do the work, should be able to make a very decent living at writing. He recommends that you don’t charge less than $50/hour for your services. Those that take his advice are finding it true. They can get clients with his suggestions, and before long are able to work just where and when they want to work.

You really don’t have to be a starving writing! Question is, can you do the work?

The Well-Fed Writer

Here’s an idea for a web business you could run from home; read books, write reviews and put them on a web site.

Do you like to read books? Are you able to articulate your reaction to each book, and indicate what it is about? (If we are talking fiction, we need to add that the review must not give away the surprise ending).

If you have written a book of your own, you will already know that one of the best ways to boost sales is to get good reviews of your book. However, I was reading yesterday that the big name reviewers cannot keep up with the desperate need for reviews, AND that those who keep their hand on the pulse of these things, are finding the informal, peer reviews from readers, such as you find at Amazon, are the MOST effective in marketing a book of any kind.

So if you have an author friend, you can do that friend a huge favour, by reading that book and then going to find it on Amazon, and writing up your own review of it. Five such reviews knocks that book up to a favoured position and suddenly Amazon starts recommending it to others buyers of similar books on their site.

Therefore, if you want to try that out, go do an Amazon search for my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses (assuming you’ve read it, otherwise you do more harm than good), and write your honest impression of the book, and whether or not you liked it. Apparently, mentioning something you see as a flaw about a book, works in its favour too, so you don’t have to keep the review all honey and syrup.

Then I got to thinking, if writers are so desperate for good reviews, a website which presents book reviews on a consistent and growing basis and which gets good traffic (ah-ha, just what an SBI site is great at!) - it should go over very well. Naturally, a book review site would lend itself perfectly to be also an info and affiliate site for online bookstores!

I already do this with the book reviews in my Sharing Library on my novel’s site. On each review page I add links to where people could go purchase that book. Naturally, those are my affiliate links, so that if they do end up buying that book, I will get a small commission. I’m afraid I’ve been busy in so many directions that I haven’t developed that section of my site as much as I could have.

My more recent experience with building a new site using the SiteBuildIt software convinces me that a book review site on that hosting service would soon have hundreds, likely thousands of visitors a day. It is quite possible that the site owner would be able to recruit other friends to read books and write the reviews just to keep up. She would likely be able to pay those reviewers for their services!

How would authors find such a site? Easily enough if you used the right keywords and got some good quality reviews up to show what you do. These authors who want to promote their books are constantly searching the internet for book reviewers. Many of them set aside bundles of books to give away to any reviewer in the hopes of getting a review. They would gladly mail them to you, or send you the e-book version to read on your computer, and of course, you get to keep those copies if you want.

I used be a book reviewer for Provident Bookfinder, a special quarterly newsletter with nothing but book reviews in it. One of the fringe benefits was that I could keep the books once I’d read and written my review. Any that I wasn’t feeling terribly possessive about, I would set aside to give as gifts to friends and relatives. I didn’t get any financial return but the books were my reward.

Now, as I look over this idea, I see that with a well-trafficked site that has Google AdSense ads and affiliate-coded links to amazon and half a dozen other online bookstores, it would be quite possible to make a handsome income from doing something I, and any book lover, does as easily as breathing.