Archives for 2011

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Homeschool

February 9, 2011 by Amy 9 Comments

No, we don’t homeschool but sometimes we play homeschool. The kids set up desks in their room and I sit in the rocking chair. We do morning work, math, writing, reading, show and tell and even recess and lunch if the time is right. The other day Mr. Bennett got roped into being the principal. He has a comfy office, as you can see.

We use print-outs from an old set of preschool worksheets Scott’s cousin gave us a long time ago (thanks, Carla!). I gave them each award cards and told them to pick someone out of the “class” to make it for. I had hoped it would foster some sisterly love and encouragement. They both surprised me by giving them to us.

That “mome” melts my heart.

I’m a lucky girl.

Top Ten Tuesday: Monetize Your Blog

February 8, 2011 by Amy 6 Comments

OK, I’m sharing some blogging SECRETS on the post today. Some people pay good money for this information but I’m sharing for free today!

So I’m going to be forthright here and say I made good money blogging for One Tree Hill Blog (which I sold last year). Like, a good 5 digit income. I had NO CLUE I would make that much money blogging. My intent with the site was to blog about something I was already blogging about and get a little money for it. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. I always say I struck gold. The fans of OTH are historically young and was voted the MOST involved fans online out of any TV viewers. When I set up consistent, timely and in some cases, unique content, the fan base was already there to read it.

Because I set up the ad streams from the get-go, they simply scaled with the site. I want to be clear that I was very passionate about the show and I would have done it whether it was 3 digit or 5 digit income. I don’t want any fans of the site to feel like I was just out to make money off them. Ads are nothing new to the commercial and blogging world but kinda new to the fan site world, especially when I first started in 2008. The bottom line though is the site was A LOT of work and I was doing it on my own 95% of the time. The income we used for things like a trip to Disney and finishing our emergency fund definitely made the time away from my family for the site more worth it. But I always say, blog only what you are PASSIONATE about.

Blogging for money is not for everyone. It can bog some people down and care more about the numbers than the content. It is so easy to sell out for the content when you see dollar signs. However, if you can handle it, why not supplement your family’s income or even replace your family’s income with something you’re doing anyway?

So what I want to share today is the top 10 income streams that I used on OTHBlog as well as other sites, including this one.

1- BlogHerAds – BlogHerAds pays per impression and was by far the largest source of income. I’ve seen up to $3 for every 1,000 impressions (although more like $1). If you’re getting tens of thousands of hits a day, that adds up FAST. Here’s the thing though. You need to have enough hits on your blog to make it worth the valuable sidebar space and other rules it requires. Here’s my logic. A simple self-hosted WordPress site costs $7/month. In order for the ad to pay for your hosting costs plus taxes, you’d need to have 500 hits a day. 500 hits a day isn’t much on a niche blog probably but for small-time mommy bloggers, it’s a lot. The other thing is BlogHerAds is swamped with requests so it’s hard to get in. There are other pay per impression ad networks like Tribal Fusion or Casale Media, Inc. but I’ve found they also are tough to get in.

2 – Google Adsense – Adsense are those little blocks of links, or graphic ads, you see on sidebars, in posts and in between posts. They pay you, say, .01-.25, for each click from the user. I never had the success that other people I know did as I understand this is actually some people’s bread and butter with ads. It was enough though to add to the mix.

3 – Kontera – These are the links that are within posts and a pop-up box comes up with an ad when it’s hovered over. You’re paid per click. This is a small stream and I’d only recommend for those with very high traffic.

4 – The Today Show – This is a sidebar ad that pays you per view of their video. It used to be pretty decent at .50/1,000 but has gone down as little as .11/1000. Once again, probably only desired with higher traffic.

5- Jambo Video Network – This is a video/graphic ad that plays on each impression. You can make pretty good money but it can be super annoying to your users.

6 – Linkshare/iTunes affiliate – You get a cut of each song/video/show purchases from your link. This was great for links to music from OTH, although still, very small slice of the pie.

7 – eBay affiliate – You get a cut of anything purchased from your link. This was fantastic money when it first came out but I think they’ve changed the rules and you get much less these days. However, I think this is great if you really pointing to relevant items your readers need and it doesn’t require a lot of traffic.

8 – Amazon affiliate – Another affiliate – you get a cut of anything purchased from your link. This worked great for the show’s DVD sales each year. Also good for books/music for mommy bloggers. Just a few each month and you could earn your hosting fees back.

9 – TextLinkAds – I love this one. People purchase a link from old posts for, say $12/month and you get half that. Just get a few of those and you have a nice chunk per month.

10 –Sell Your Blog – If you have a stable, income-generating (probably niche) blog and you get to the point where you’re ready to let go, sell it! Put it out to friends you trust or there are sites you can use to put it on the market. Don’t take for granted what you’ve spent your time on. It’s worth it!

There are DOZENS of other ways to monetize your blog. For each of these listed there are 10 other sites to do it through. I found this list of 101 ways to monetize your blog that is great. I didn’t even touch private ads, ebooks, donation buttons, etc!

For you savvy bloggers out there, I’ve shared my secrets, what sites work for you?

This post was linked to ohAmanda’s Top Ten Tuesday.

The Dave Ramsey Envelope System – 4 Month Review

February 7, 2011 by Amy 4 Comments

So it’s been 4, almost 5, months since we started budgeting utilizing Dave Ramsey’s envelope system and 3 months since my last update. How’s it going?

Well, the envelopes are dead.

But not by choice. AND the budget is still alive and kicking.

About two months into using the cash/envelopes, which I LOVED, we had $100 disappear. I’m not going to speculate how it happened but the bottom line is the money never showed back up and I just couldn’t make myself risk it again. So for the past 2 months I’ve heavily relied on the Excel version of my budget as well as Mint.com to track all of our expenses but especially our envelope money. I log on nearly every day and, yes, manually enter how much we’ve spent. And I have to say, I like it. Yes, cash holds you much more accountable but doing it this way relieves all the headache of shuffling money around when you’re caught without your envelopes.

What I love is that budgeting has nearly curbed our frivolous spending. I mean, really. Sometimes I go all week without spending my blow money and now that I think of it, Scott hasn’t even asked about his in a few weeks. I didn’t buy ANY clothes for anyone in January. We had money left in our entertainment budget even though we went to the circus. We’re eating in much more and while I know I could save more money grocery shopping with coupons, we’re staying within our budgeted amount. By saving in these categories, we’re able to use the extra for things like unexpected doctor bills, pharmacy bills and guitars that aren’t in the budget without ever having to touch our emergency fund. I guess what I’m saying is I LOVE our budget and I really don’t know if I could or would ever live without one again.

In closing, I know I’ve plugged this book before but if you still haven’t checked out Jon Acuff’s new book Gazelles, Baby Steps and 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me About Debt you should. If you are a Dave Ramsey-er it’s a must read.

A Little Hardwoods Miracle

February 7, 2011 by Amy 8 Comments

Do you ever just feel like God is on your side? Sort of a heavy/prideful thing to say but I feel like God is on our side with this whole addition thing. He’s just GOOD. I don’t know if it will always be smooth sailing but this morning it was.

Where to start?

Well, the plan for our currently carpeted hallway and the new hallway is to replace all that with the hardwood that is in the living room, kitchen, etc. That way, we can put carpet in the new bedroom and not have to re-carpet the existing bedrooms. I like carpets in bedrooms, what can I say?

Scott and I went to Home Depot last weekend to cross our fingers and hope that they still had our floors. Well, only 2 lone boxes sat there, one of which had been opened and was poorly re-packaged. We needed 5. We talked to customer service and apparently it was a discontinued item and no one in our surrounding area had anymore. Collective sigh.

I didn’t want mismatched hardwoods so we were going to go the carpet route but then we’d have to carpet all the bedrooms too so we didn’t have mis-matched carpet between the hall and the rooms. Yeah, I know we could, but I’d rather do it right while we have the money.

So this morning we decided to do a nationwide hunt for this hardwood. I did a nationwide Craigslist search and two came up! There were 30 boxes of 3/8” in Atlanta! Ours was 5/8” but we could supplement with wood and make it work. Things were looking up!

I called Home Depot to see if they could widen their search. It was out of stock online. I called locally they showed nothing in their system. I mentioned that we just saw it last weekend and sure enough after taking a look, those 2 boxes were there. I started asking him how else we could find it as we were pretty desperate. He seemed helpful and put me on hold to make some calls. Well. Turns out there was some confusion and he was looking at their 3/8”. He DID have SEVEN boxes of the 5/8” although we were sure we only saw 2 boxes last weekend. I sent Scott right over and sure enough, he said, the seven boxes were stacked right where we had looked. Plus, they were in fact discontinued so the sales lady let us have the seventh box we really didn’t need for half price. Not to mention they were ALREADY 40% off from being discontinued.

In short, we got MORE than what we needed locally for 43% off the original price. Can I get an amen??

Also, this is our first official purchase for the addition! Yay!

Change is Gonna Come

February 3, 2011 by Amy 6 Comments

Ya’ll today was kinda a big deal. In so many ways. Wanna know why?

The job

I applied for my job today. Not A job, but MY job. I’ve been a contractor for the bank for 10 years now but because of new rules, I can’t stay a contractor. So we’re looking to pull me into a full-time position. I will be upping my hours from 30 to 40 and some other minor changes but I’ll be doing the same thing with the same group. But as you might not expect, there is a lot of red tape to get MY job even though I’ve had it ten years. I even have to interview. So yeah, I applied for a job today.

The call

It’s official. I made the call to DSS today to schedule our orientation meeting. I actually said to someone official “we’d like one child, a 3-5 year old male”. Part of it felt a little icky, like I had just called a catalog order in but ya’ll, when I think about the fact that I just made the first phone call to find my son that is not under my roof, well, it’s a beautiful, big deal.

The house

The bids for the houses should be coming in today. So excited to get that ball rolling. And by the way, I think we settled on that last floor plan. It feels good after staking it out outside and staring at it for a few days.

The car

Somewhat less major, today we also had some car issues. We took the van in for a recall and asked them to figure out why our engine light kept coming on randomly and Honda wanted to do $2700 worth of work on it. Unfortunately $1500 of that is probably legit work that needs done.

Today feels like 2011 is going to be quite the ride.

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Also before I go, you just have to see this video about the Blood:Water Belt. Sarah, Amanda and Mandi had it at Blissdom and it put me in tears to think of all God has done with just an ounce of obedience. All the ladies that have it mean a lot but this is the first I’ve seen anyone talk about it with as much passion as Dani and I have about it. Three more ladies and we have over $2,000 raised! Consider joining?

Taylor Junior

February 1, 2011 by Amy 8 Comments

For a long time I’ve been wanting Emma to take piano but have been waiting for her to want to do it. Practicing piano is hard enough when you WANT to do it. Well, Emma has been BEGGING for guitar lessons the past few weeks. So we signed her up. She’s ECSTATIC. And I have to say, she looks mighty good with a guitar.

Daily Floorplan

January 31, 2011 by Amy 2 Comments

Did you really think that that would be the last floor plan? I mean really. I’ve posted 52 different versions and we haven’t even selected a builder yet. COME ON.

OK, yeah, I sort of thought we were set. But then Mom came to visit and pointed out a few issues. And then New Old Homes sent over SEVEN new floor plans to consider last night. So, this might be a new feature for a while… Daily Floorplan. So here’s today’s:

This one changed up the bathroom entrance and the linen closet which I LOVE . Makes that entrance much less awkward and it’s a better use of space I think (thanks, Mom). Also, this one we added a fireplace in the bedroom (!). This is wishful thinking and only if it’s in budget. But we have the room and if you know me, you know how cold I get in the winter and would LOVE a fireplace surrounded in stone. I think it would tie in the stone from the exterior really well. I checked out a few Architectural Digests at the library this weekend and it looked so yummy. Here are a few ideas I took snapshots of.

The fireplace/TV idea with the chairs. We’re thinking stone around it but I like the wood too.

Another fireplace idea

I love the idea of having curtains around the bed.

And I love this lighting thing going on in the living room. It has absolutely nothing to do with the addition 🙂

I’m so anxious to get the floor plan settled and get goin’!

Baked Potato Soup Recipe

January 31, 2011 by Amy 1 Comment

I totally missed the Soup Swap over at Southern Fairytale. I thought it was Saturday yet I was a week late! But no fear, it’s never too late to share a good recipe. When we went a few weeks ago to talk to a couple from our church about adoption, she served baked potato soup and it was SO GOOD. If you ever had Rafferty’s soup, the taste of this is so close, albeit a little thicker. I made a bowl of this last week and it’s so easy and everyone, including the girls, loved it. I have to thank our host for providing the recipe to me and hopefully she wouldn’t mind that I share it (she mentioned she got it from a magazine so I’m not sharing a personal recipe!).

This is not the pic, but this is the closest thing I could find in a quick Google search. Credit goes to this blog.

4 large baked potatoes, baked, skinned and smashed – leaving chunks
2/3c butter
2/3 c flour
6c milk
3/4tsalt
1/2t pepper
4 green onions (I left these out so the girls wouldn’t complain)
12 slices bacon, fried and crumbled (I use "real bacon pieces")
2c shredded cheddar
1c sour cream
1/2 lb Velveeta

Melt butter in stock pot, add flour and mix well, gradually add mil stir continuously until thickened and bubbly
stir in potato pulp, Velveeta, salt, pepper and 3/4 of the onions cheese and bacon. Cook until heated and add sour cream.
can put in crock-pot to keep warm and serve, top with remaining onions, cheese and bacon.

This gave us about 6 adult and 2 kid servings.

Heat up a loaf of French bread, slice on the diagonal and enjoy!