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   Seth Godin posted this amazing little post, “Ads are the new online tip jar“. In it he talks about how clicking on an ad is like tipping the person who wrote the content that you’re reading. I’ve tried to be very conscious of tipping the websites that I’ve visited over the years but the question is, have you?

   You know many times we get so caught up in our own struggle to succeed in our own ventures that we forget about the people who are in the same boat as us. Think of all of the moms (and dads) out there, who are really hoping to be able to make an income by blogging or providing some seriously useful content because they want to stay at home with their kids. Then there are millions of visitors who hit these sites everyday taking every ounce they can get in the way of information, resources, tips, etc.. and they never even bother to click on a single ad or leave even the tiniest little comment.

   The point is, let’s all try to do some conscious surfing today. Support the smaller blogs and sites that you visit. Leave a comment. Click on an ad. It’s a super easy way to say, “thank you for spending hours thinking, researching, writing, and editing that. It really enhanced my life today.” Pay it forward mamas. To give is to recieve.

P.S.  I don’t currently have a single paid ad running on this site. His post just really struck me. Your comments, however, are always sincerely welcomed and appreciated. Blog on!

   This list has enough on it that it could take weeks just to read every link and page that goes from here. There are literally hundreds of different applications that can help you with your applications. The problem is you got a business to run, a blog /website to maintain and the kids to feed. Who’s got time to hunt it all down?! Well, I did a bit of leg work (or finger work as it may be) and compiled this list of amazing resources for blogs and websites. If you are in need of a tool, widget, or gadget chances are it may be listed here.

   Just passing on a little time love in the mom Internet universe. Enjoy those extra minutes you’ve just saved. Lord knows, you’ve earned them. Surf on!

For Bloggers:

List of 150+ Things Related to Blogs and Blogging – One of the most extensive lists that I’ve seen in one place for blogging resources.

Food Blog S’Cool – Lots of great info over here. You can observe even if you don’t have a food blog.

WordPress Podcast – Listen for awhile when your working on your site. Multi-tasking at it’s best!

How Do You Judge A Blog Post As A Success? - By Lorelle  See how lots of other bloggers guage their posts

Power Blogging Tips: Comment On Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader – Ok, so commenting and visiting your Internet neighbors is part of being, well, neighborly. Leave more comments in less time so you can visit more of your friends and leave more comments. Let’s call it “speed commenting”.

Free blogging calendar template – Get yourself on track with an editorial calendar to help you plan what you are going to write about and when

Slumber Parties Go Digital - From the NYTimes  Hmm… the info here somehow suggests that perhaps women aren’t supposed to have their real lives online (you know – othering, shopping for everything because there’s noone else to do it, taking care of the kids, cooking, etc.,etc..) or perhaps they’ve lost/misinterpreted the message on the female demographic altogether.

Blog Writing & Other Blogging Resources - A page with various resources and ideas for bloggers.

Social Networking:

50 Ways To Use Twitter for Business – Lots of info about Twitter ettiquette in general

50 Easy Ways To Improve Your Twitter Experience – Lots of 3rd party Twitter applications and tools listed as well as a nice list of blog posts about Twitter and how to use it.

TwitBuzz -  Content filtering service that tracks and follows the latest popular links, conversations and people on Twitter

50 Successful Social Media Sites You’ve Never Heard Of - Find a new place to hang out or to get yourself noticed

Online Communities:

BloggingZoom

Large Blog Rolls:

Top 50 PR Blogs – Learn more about how to get the word out from some of the best in the business

Misc. Tools & Resources:

Google Insights – See what the world is searching for

Big List Of Squidoo Tools & Resources

30+ Mind Mapping Tools – Get your thoughts in order and make that plan to make your business (and bottom line) grow with a little hlep from this list.

Top 10 Printable Paper Productivity Tools List – Neat list of printables from LifeHacker. The Printable CEO is particularly cool. Which led me to the following link..

Printable CEO Series – If you need to get your productivity in gear because you spend more time chasing your tail than getting thigs done when you do have a spare moment, check this page out for some tools.

Maine SEO Blog – Great blog with some super targeted info on search engines and getting good rankings

Top 7 Disposable Email Services – If you go around signing up for freebies and the like, you may need one of these.

Inspiration:

These links are for those days when you could really use some motivation to keep you going and get you focused.

Beating Back Discouragement

Digital Inspiration – How Much Money Do I Make From Adsense & Blogging – A fella with a blog in India shares some info about his hits and income

Blogging Experiment – May 2008 income report

A Small Empire Built On Cuddly & Fuzzy Branches Out From The Web - If this lady can do it, why not you!

What are your absolute favorite blogging resources, posts, or pages? What did I miss? Leave a comment for this blog post and share what you know.

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Time is of the essence when you’re a mom. So, I thought I’d save you some time and share some of the best places I’ve been on the Internet this week. It’s truly amazing the journey that you can go through while surfing. Hopping from site to site, from bits to bytes, from peak to peak on the informational wave. May my little journey this week keep you away from too many valleys. Enjoy the ride.

Back To School Shopping…

You are either shopping for back to school, thanking God that it’s over or taking notes for next year when your little one will start Kindergarten. Any way you go, you should check out this post on The Truth About Wal-mart Back To School Lists by Kelby Carr. If you’ve got school shopping to do, don’t miss it.

Poetry for your monitor…

It’s not often that one gets to enjoy the eloquence of a well-thought-out bit of writing these days. I used to write quite a bit of poetry in my pre-children days. This post has inspired me to perhaps find a quiet nook after the children get back to preschool / school next week to let my thoughts start twirling on the page again. I’m telling you ladies, if words can dance then this guy’s words are doing a sultry cha-cha. Nice.

The Eighth Wonder of the World by Writer Dad – A one page poetic fictional journey about parents, a child named Promise, and the power of compound interest. It makes me really glad that I’ve made the committment to get our family debt free by cutting up cards, hefting up the old emergency fund, reducing monthly bills, and starting savings and college funds for the kids. If you’re listening, parenthood can be a really wonderful financial wakeup call. Too bad childless people will never have this same personal growth experience.

Leap & The Spots Will Appear – This was a great blog post that I read about change and being ready for it or not. It has to do with the death of a pet but boy can I relate to those references to change in relation to my motherhood journey.

Thinking of Christmas already…

Alas, it won’t be long and Santa will be wanting to fill his red sack with all sorts of goodies. I’ve been on the hunt lately for some cool, unique, and interesting toys and stocking stuffers. I can’t believe I’m even considering it this early in the year. Maybe I’ll be done by Thanksgiving… or not.

Q-Ba-Maze main site – Created by an architect, an amazing marble run for mechanical kids. You can also check out their YouTube video channel here to see it in action.

Topsy-turvey dolls – An “old timey’ toy remembered for little ones that have a love of playing pretend. Two dolls in one, you just flip it over to expose the second one. You can make your own or buy them. Some of them even have 3 dolls in 1! See them here: Fancy Prancy dolls from North American Bear Co.;

Designer USB Flash Drives – A cool little gift for the tech geek in your life.

Fraggle Rock videos – Does anyone remember this show that used to be on HBO in the 80’s? I loved that show. I’d love to share it with my kids. A search reveals that you can get the complete seasons 1 – 5 on DVD. Make sure you also check out their other complete season cartoon DVDs (like Woody Woodpecker).

Dancing Ballerina Music Box – I had one of these as a kid. I can remember being mesmerized by it. What a great thing to share with my baby girl. There is a page of different ones here by the San Francisco Music Box Company (you can even hear a music sample online!), a version from Lenox that you can have personalized with your child’s first name or the same one here much cheaper ($29.99) without personalization at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, or a very simple one ($12.98) you are not going to lose sleep over if you give to your 3 year old, like I plan on doing.

Learning all about blogging…

Nofollow debate

There seems to be this whole debate about dofollow blogs and nofollow blogs. I don’t have all of the facts yet but I’ve started doing some research about it. This blog makes a great point…

Blog Commenting for Traffic – “Man this no follow crap really has people making serious mistakes in their marketing.  Despite the fact that “no follow” means absolutely SQUAT to anyone trying to market their website, people are not dropping comments and engaging in conversations the way they should.”

What about you? Are you a dofollow or a nofollow blog? Do you follow me?

Cool web gadgets, software, and time savers…

Google web accelerator download link – I downloaded this little application. It speeds up your web surfing by pre-fetching pages it thinks you might visit. It also shows you how many seconds/minutes it’s saved you. I’ve already saved 9 whole minutes surfing the web this week. That would really add up over the course of a year. Let’s take a quick look at the time savings. (9 minutes X 52 weeks = 468 minutes divided by 60 minutes = 7.8 hours saved in a year) Wow, literally a whole work day. Boy, could I put that time somewhere else! Couldn’t you? You can also read the Wikipedia page about it if you want more info.

OpenOffice.org – When you are starting a new small business, money is super scarce. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still need certain pieces of software to run your new business, it just means that you’re gonna have to decide if you’re going to go in debt to get them! This open source suite of office software (think Microsoft Office replacement) is free. The suite includes word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, database, and basic drawing components. It would also make a good alternative for kids’ computers or your second computer (laptop, etc.). Considering the Standard Office 2007 will set you back about $400.00 and the small business version is $300.00. (You can compare MS Office editions here.) Why buy it if you don’t have to? Save that dough and put it somewhere else mama!

Our Favorite Cheat Sheets from WhatIs.com – If you have your own website or blog, chances are you are dealing with CSS, HTML, photoshop, flash, WordPress, PHP, or any unbelievable number of tech items on a daily basis. Check out this compendium of cheat sheets to help you get your work done faster. They even have a Twitter cheat sheet with all of the Twiter commands! Very cool. Minutes saved? Check.

Weird and totally unrelated…

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything but I found this page (somehow) and got really interested in the section titled “Connecting After Death” in this long blog post. If you have ever felt like someone visited you after they died, you should read this. I’ve had this happen to me and couldn’t believe how similar the experience was. Eerie. Check it out.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this weekly roundup. It took me all week to find these gems. Hopefully it’s saved you some time. Surf on!

   So, perhaps you’ve been wondering if you should bother to create or invest in a website for your business. If you hire someone to design and create it for you, the expense can be enough for a really good week long vacation. If you do it yourself, it may take awhile and there’s a lot to learn. But how do you know for sure that you should take the leap and just do it? Will it pay for itself? Well, if you’ve been on the fence, let me help you decide.

   I’ve had a small brick and mortar business of my own for over nine years in the same industry. In that time I’ve done quite a few types of advertising and marketing - print, flyers, business cards, bulletin boards at other local businesses, mailers, coupons, public events, ads in the local paper, ads in the yellow pages of the phonebook, and ads in the local about town magazines, etc.. I’ve done give-aways, donated coupons to local charities, etc.. I can’t think of any type of marketing that I haven’t done except for perhaps a TV ad or local billboard. So here’s the comparison. Are you sitting down?

   My small online website business website brings me in as many customers (or more, way more) than 90% of all of the other advertising… COMBINED. Oh yeah, you read that right. The only exceptions are the yellow pages (which the internet has been starting to pull ahead of for awhile now) and a small local magazine (who’s reach has shrunk due to people surging onto the internet to hunt down local businesses during the past 5 years).

   The takeaways from this post are this:

You can’t afford NOT to have a website for your business. Even if you’re just a plumber.

It needs to be more of an encyclopedic brochure for your business than a business card, or it won’t pull customers as well as it could. (Imagine having your target customer locked in a room and you could tell them anything about your business for the next hour! Take some time to think of what to put on your site and stop just regurgitating your business card at them!) People want info! Yes, even about your little business! Give it to them for goodness sakes.

Everyone goes to the web – even if you don’t.If your print / local advertising hasn’t been getting customers for you as well as it did 5 or more years ago, now you kow why.

Spend some time listing your website on every search engine that anyone you know uses. Do it by hand. Find the right category for your town and state. Make sure that you put your city / state in your site description. You want people from your town (not China!) to find you if you are a local business. Write local but put it out there global!

Get free advertising for your website by becoming an online authority / expert on another website. Spend a little time online in forums, message boards, etc.. conversing with people. The key here is to make sure that your profile has a signature line with a link to your business website in it. Don’t know where to start? Go to Yahoo Answers and look for questions relevant to your business.

Become an authority on your own website. Use blog software (or an online free blog service, linking to your page from your site) and create posts, like this one. Answers questions that people always have about the business that you’re in. For instance:

• Do you run a daycare? Tell parents how they should decide to bring their kids to you or stay home that day. Tell them about your upcoming field trip and include a link to that place’s website.
• Have a bookstore? Tell people about your upcoming events or discuss your staff’s favorite books.
•  Do you have a restaurant? Showcase photos of your place online so people will know how to dress when they come. Tell them about your latest menu additions, or special touches (vegetarian meals, gluten free dishes, etc..) and why you’ve decided to include them.
• Auto repair shop? Tell them about when they should get their car serviced (50,000 – 80,000 – 100,000 mile service) and what kinds of things you do for that service. Don’t forget to include a little coupon (only available from the internet) as a little incentive
• Flower shop? Showcase what kinds of events you’ve been doing lately. Make sure to have lots of photos of your work!
• Esthetician? Tell people in small articles how to care for their skin at home. (Acne, dry skin, oily skin, shaving bumps, etc.) At the bottom of each post remind them of when to make an appointment and link to your contact page. This works even if you take your appointments at a spa or salon! This technique works great for hairstylists as well.
• Scrapbook parties? Blog about how people can do simple layouts and get their scrapbooks done without stress or complication. Show plenty of photos of your examples online. Link to a page that has the dates for your next party.

   So, save some of that advertising dough you’ve been spending and put it into online methods of promotion – such as getting a great website. You’ll be glad you did and so will your pocketbook. It will literally save you thousands in the long run. I’m living proof of that!

What kind of business do you have? Do you currently have a website? Do you needs some ideas for what to put on it? Are you facing some real challenges? Post a comment and tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.