Check it out: Content Is Priceless

Here are a few sites with legal forms and other resources which I found while cruising the web that will help us with the overwhelm of legal stuff.

clipped from www.cogniview.com MyNewCompany: Get legal and tax protection for your freelance business by making things official. Use MyNewCompany to incorporate or form an LLC online. Help Me Work: Get the stability of corporate life while still working as an independent consultant. Help Me Work takes care of taxes, client billing, paychecks, benefits, retirement plans and more. Designers Toolbox: Get set up with all the legal forms your design business may need with Designers Toolbox. Creative Commons: Use Creative Commons to specify how much or how little legal restrictions you want your work to carry. AIGA: Protect your business with AIGA’s standard form of agreement for design services. Nolo: If you’ve got a legal question about your business, head to Nolo. Experts there offer legal advice for independent contractors and consultants. Creative Public: Head to Creative Public for forms, contracts, pricing guides and more for your design business.

Now I know that there are some marketers who feel that if they submit all their work to one main, dependable directory like ezinearticles (which I love by the way), that their work will be protected. But I am a little more paranoid than that. I think that I should have my own back up because what if that site decides to just retire. What would you do then?

Or how about those of us that like to spread our goodies around and not submit ALL our content to one place. We would have to track down our article all over the place. BLIP! That’s not going to work.

That’s why I finally decided to use one of the key features that comes with Mac’s relatively new Leopard operating system and that is the back-up feature called Time Machine. Pair it with a hard drive and you have a copy of everything on your computer, even what your desktop looked like, just like it looked last time you backed it up. I LOVE it. It makes me feel so safe.

So my point here is — if you haven’t done it yet — start backing up your articles and all of your other content. Don’t own a mac? While there are other free or  low-fee web-based storage solutions out there — I don’t trust ‘em. Nothing is more secure to me than buying a zip or hard drive of your own (you can find one over on Amazon) and manually downloading and saving all your content. That way YOU have it.

If you want to back up all the articles and posts on your wordpress blog, this is a good article to walk you through the process:
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/backup-your-blog-regularly/

*Last note: Are you a Mac lover like me? I’ve written about other mac resources that I use to build my internet marketing business over at squidoo. Enjoy!

While I am a firm believer in getting people out of their perfection traps, and promoting the saying that writer should just get it done instead of worrying about getting it done perfectly — let’s be reasonable here.

Marketers who charge me for their information and do not have the common decency to spell check and grammar check their work, leave me feeling cheated. I truly believe that this really successful “guru” speeds through writing this newsletter every month because it’s just one more thing to do on his plate.

Perhaps he isn’t outsourcing enough of his other tasks, because when I tell you that there is some obvious grammatical errors every month — that make me have to stop and re-read them so that I understand what he just wrote — I’m telling you the truth.

It’s just plain ole’ annoying, and I feel — unprofessional. Not when he has a huge staff working for him. Heck - even my nine year old daughter could do a basic spell and grammar check in Microsoft Word!

Listen everyone. It’s important. Don’t spend the entire day on it. Don’t even spend an hour on it. But take 10 minutes after you’ve written something - especially something that you are going to charge people for and do a spell and grammar check.

The quality of your work is a reflection of you as a person and as a business owner.

By the way, if there are any errors in this post - I’m sorry:-), but hey at least I didn’t charge you for it!

If you are interested in a few high spikes in traffic before the year ends — do it by writing articles which are specifically targeted to a particular holiday audience. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Hannukah. New Year’s.

Everyone in your niche is going to celebrate one of those holidays, or may even hate all of those holidays, whatever! Just find a way to connect your topic, or your next promotion, to the holiday season and you are sure to see a few more visits come your way!

Gobble! Gobble!

While there are companies that will do this for you, there are plenty of people who have the time and the gumption to manually submit their articles — and of course the biggest benefit is that it costs you nothing to do it yourself and you really get the feel of each article directory and which ones are the best fit for your content, when you submit yourself.

So without further ado, go over to social media genius Jack Humphrey’s site and take a look at his comprehensive list of article directories. Then go submit!

Go To: Article Directories

You have to buy stuff for the kids.

You forgot about the car note. Isn’t that thing paid off yet??

You want the yummy smelling “green” cleaning products, not the no frills toxic ones!

…And you are worried about holding onto your job or changing careers.

Well - I found this cool article written over at Get Rich Slowly, on several different “experts” who have created lists of what they feel are recession proof careers and/or industries. *Note that many are “geek” related. Statistics show that internet use is rising and so is computer ownership in this country. That’s good news for us!

Read the article here:

The Top Recession Proof Jobs

So then I move on to all the fun social marketing stuff I like to do for my sites. Submitting comments to my favorite blogs. Creating squidoo pages or hubpages. You know all that type of stuff. But then the next thing I know my kids are asking what’s for dinner.

So then I cook, clean, walk the dogs, bla bla bla — and next thing you know it’s time for the 11pm news!

Okay — there isn’t enough time in the day. We all know that. But sometimes if you are stressed with all the work in your business, on your business, plus life outside your business — you just have to ask yourself sometimes:

“What am I working for?”

When I do that — I realize that it’s so very clear what I’m working for…so I can continue writing everyday instead of working a 9 to 5 that keeps me away from my family. I work so that I CAN be home to cook for the kids, walk the dogs, heck — feed the dogs! I work so that my 3 girls can see that working for a living can be fun, passionate, and fulfilling.

I work at my business because I want to. Because I love it. And if I always remember that — I don’t mind writing the extra article, writing the extra blog post, writing a few more paragraphs for that new product. Especially –writing stuff that people will want to read and use. Not something to just say I wrote it.

So ask yourself today — what are your working for? And if it’s worth it to you — do something a little extra in your business today to celebrate that.

Instead of getting all crazy about when and how I was going to ever produce enough videos to make an impact in my business, due mainly to time constraints and honestly - motivation (I like my college sweatshirt!). I decided to get creative and find a way to combine both videos and articles to get the best of both worlds.

It’s so simple — you can do it after you finish reading this article.

1. Write your article.
2. Create a powerpoint presentation of your article. If you are a mac user you can use keynote as well.
3. Add pictures if you want to get creative, or you could simply just type chunks of the article on each slide.
4. Convert your powerpoint file to a flash or quicktime movie file.
5. Upload your video to YouTube and any other video sites you can find.
6. Watch the traffic roll in!

You can learn about my other strategies for creating video articles in the most comprehensive article marketing weekly training program available — Articology.