I love blogging and I love working for my amazing clients but right now my health comes first. I’ll try to post on Twitter now and again so feel free to follow me if you’d like to catch up.

Until then, take care!

I’ve been meaning to get a BlackBerry for a long time so I have better access to my clients and websites while I’m away from my computer. If I wasn’t in Canada I’d be swooping this puppy up instantly. Instead, I thought I’d let you know about it. But it’s only for today, Nov. 28, 2009, so act fast!

And that’s it for today.

I found a mousepad and a chart that I’d love to try, although I don’t think the mousepad would work with my optical mouse. It would be really handy to have a chart on my desk when designing websites, so if you also dabble in design, this chart may be something that could come in handy for you.

(I’m not an affiliate for them. Just pointing out a cool resource.)

I’ve seen a lot of people promoting programs and services that are either extremely outdated or are completely inactive, and it’s hard to know when they become outdated or inactive unless you’re keeping tabs on them.

This is why it’s important to keep track of everything you promote. Keep this information in a database somewhere. Use OpenOffice Calc for a quick and easy solution for that.

Any time I promote a new product or service, I add it to my Calc file and I’ll periodically go through the rest of the list to make sure everything is still up to date.

There have been many times when programs were discontinued so I had to change the links. (This is where using a redirect for your affiliate links comes in super duper handy.)

So if you haven’t already started an affiliate list, it’s time to do it now. The list can get quite long so you’ll definitely want all that information in one, easy to find spot.

If you have a virtual assistant, this would be a good task for them. Get them to go through the list every few months and make sure all the programs you’re promoting are still active or that coupons you’ve been promoting haven’t expired. Not only that, make sure the programs are still worth promoting.

Promoting something that is outdated or inactive doesn’t reflect well on you. Maintain your reputation by maintaining an affiliate list.

Another advantage of keeping an affiliate list is that you can go through and easily find new products to promote. Many of the companies you promote for have other products to sell that are related to your niche. If one of their products converts well for you, chances are the others will convert well also. Going through their list of products can also generate lots of new ideas for fresh content for your website.

Something else you should do with your affiliate list is analyze your sales statistics so you can decide which products you should continue promoting and which ones you should not. If you’re promoting an ebook about how to set up a Wordpress blog but it’s not converting well, try finding another ebook that explains it better (or with a better sales page) and change your affiliate link to that one instead.

So you see there are multiple benefits of keeping an affiliate list. More than what I’ve listed above. Try it out and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Month end reports used to give me ulcers when I worked at an office, but now that I work from home, I really look forward to them. I mean REALLY.

Looking back over all the numbers helps me decide what’s working and what isn’t. It lets me see what parts of my sites need improving, what parts are working really well, and what parts need to be scrapped completely.

It doesn’t take long once everything is set up, and the information gained from it is well worth the time investment.

All you need is OpenOffice or MS Word. I do all my reports in OpenOffice Calc. If you want to get all organize-y, you’ll need a printer, binder and a 3-hole punch as well.

I take all the info from Clickbank, Adsense, Google Analytics, etc. and pile it all into readable reports that I then print out each month.

I keep these reports neatly organized in my super cool binder. I bought myself a cutesy girly binder from Walmart and some funky dividers just to add some fun. As if month end reports aren’t fun enough right?!?

Now I can go through these reports and map out a plan to increase my numbers for next month. Since I’ve started doing these reports, my numbers have steadily increased. It makes such a big difference when you have a really good understanding of everything that goes on with your online business.

Now I’m off to the cabin to roast some wieners and drink beer!

I took the list of posts I published in June and these are the 5 most popular:

1. Creative Ideas for a New Blog Header
   Some ideas that will hopefully inspire you should you happen to be designing a new header for your blog. Changing your header once in awhile is a great way to freshen up the look of your blog.
2. Clickbank Tip – Turning On Instant Notification
   Being emailed each time you make a sale in Clickbank is a nice feature instead of having to log in to your account each time you want to check.
3. Ergonomically correct monitor height
   Working at home, for most of us, means spending long hours sitting at the computer. This can wreak havoc on your body so it’s important to set your desk area up to be as ergonomically correct as you can, including your monitor.
4. Can You Write? Make Money In 5 Days!
   A ridiculously simple idea to write and profit from a short report. Create multiple reports and start earning a nice passive income.
5. Dig my new background?
   I added a background to my blog to spice it up a bit. I’m pretty pleased with the results. You can see the before shot and scoff at how boring it was.

~~~

This isn’t really fair to the poor June posts that were published closer to the end of the month since they didn’t have as much time to generate traffic before I checked the stats – but oh well. Suck it up end-of-june posts. Maybe next month you should think about formulating in my head earlier rather than later.

Working from home usually means some pretty long hours in front of the computer so if your desk isn’t set up to be as ergonomically correct as possible, your neck and back might pay the price like mine are at the moment.

I’ve talked about making your desk ergonomically correct before, but since my only problem is my monitor height, this post will list some of the ways to correct it without using some scrap pieces of wood (or even a saucepan like an ex boyfriend did) to adjust the height.

Your monitor should be at a height where you don’t have to tilt you head up or down to look at it. When looking at the screen, your eyes should be level with the top half of the monitor.

You should never have to lean forward to see your monitor. My monitor used to sit so far back on my desk that I was leaning forward the entire time I sat at the computer. I didn’t realize it until my daughter took a picture of me while I was working. It looked awful. I looked like Igor’s girlfriend. Moving the monitor closer to the front of my desk fixed that up in a jiffy.

If you can’t move your monitor closer, change the resolution of your screen to something smaller so it’s easier to see and read.

You could also adjust the height of your chair so you’re viewing your monitor at the right height, but you may have to adjust the height of your keyboard and mouse to stay all ergonomic-like. Your feet should be able to sit flat on the floor. If not, raising your chair might not be the solution.

I sniffed around on Amazon for some ergonomic monitor stands and found a few that I’d like to try but in the end, the Ergotron LX Desk Mount Arm won me over.

Not only can you adjust the height, but you can turn that puppy any which way you want. This is especially nice if you watch movies or TV on your computer. Plus it just looks cool.

Setting up your desk so it’s at the maximum comfy level will make sure you’re working more efficiently. Interrupting that masterpiece blog post you’re writing by rubbing your neck and back every 2 minutes isn’t all that productive.

If you do a bit of digging around though, you’ll find that you CAN set up a notification system – but only if you want to get your hands a tad dirty.

It took me a few tries to get it right, and I had to splice a bit of code together from a few different websites to come up with what seemed to be the right stuff – so I’m just going to post it for you here along with a step-by-step guide to turning on Clickbank notifications.

(Note: You’ll need access to your server to do this, otherwise you would have to contact your web host to upload the file for you.)

1. Log in to your Clickbank account. That’s kind of a “duh” one, but you never know.

2. Click the “Account Settings” tab and go to “My Site“.

3. At the bottom of the My Site page is an “Advanced Tools” bar with an empty field beside “Secret Key” and “Instant Notification URL“. Click “Edit“.

4. You’ll need to request access to Instant Notification, so click that URL.

5. Read over the terms and agree to them. Submit the form.

6. Enter a Secret Key in the Secret Key field. The secret key can be up to 16 letters or digits and must be ALL CAPS.

7. Copy this code into a plain text file, (I use Notepad) and save it to your desktop as a php file. For example, I saved mine as cb.php so it was easy to remember. Make sure to change your email address in the code to your own before saving it as well as the secret key you came up with in the previous step.

<?php

?>

Or you can download the file here. Make sure to change the file extension from .txt to .php before uploading it.

8. Put that file on your server using an FTP program. I chose to upload the file right to my root directly so the URL ends up being:

http://www.mydomain.com/cb.php

(Hopefully you already have one and know how to use it. If not, leave a comment and I’ll help you out.)

9. Back in the Clickbank site, enter that URL (http://www.mydomain.com/cb.php) – after replacing “mydomain” with your own of course – into the Instant Notification URL 1: field. I left the second field blank.

10. Before saving changes, click on “Test” to make sure everything is hunky dory. You should receive a test email to the email address you put in the php file.

11. A window should pop up to notify you that the test was a success. Hooray! Now you can save changes.

Now you’ll receive an email each time you make a Clickbank sale. Sweet, hey?

Time Sensitive Note: I’ve got another Clickbank tip coming up in Monday’s MamasOnTheWeb Newsletter (June 15th, 2009) – one that I just implemented and increased my sales – so make sure you sign up! It’s the form to the right –>>

1. You can’t use Skype and WampServer at the same time.

I like to use WampServer when customizing Wordpress themes. It allows me to create a “server” on my computer so I can make changes without anybody seeing. I also like to use Skype to connect with clients.

Sometimes I need to use Skype at the same time I’m running WampServer. Unfortunately, WampServer won’t connect if Skype is open. Bummer.

2. Google Gears makes Firefox crash when uploading images in Wordpress

For a week straight, my browser would crash every time I tried to upload an image in my blog. Since I do this multiple times a day for multiple blogs, you can imagine how freaking frustrated I was getting! After doing a Google search, I found out that the Google Gears add-on for Firefox was the culprit. After disabling it, everything worked fine.

So if you’re having either of these issues, you know how to fix them now!