I have been working from home now for about a year and a half.  In that time, there have certainly been ups and downs. My family and I have been making it as God provides. There is much that I have learned and continue to learn that I want to share in the hope that I can help other families get established with their own business. With that being said, I’m back writing for this blog.  I will bring you information, ideas, and offers that will help you build your business.  I look forward to interaction in the comments section as we discuss things and help each other.

God bless, Mike

My goal to work at home has been realized. There is much work to make it a success, but I am at home and working! This is likely the last post on DW@H. While I would like to continue this blog as a way to help other fathers work at home to be with their family, I can’t see it happening just now.

I am in focus mode.  I need to focus on making my new business a success.  I need to focus on my farm.  Most of all, I need to keep focused on my family and God. As part of this, I am getting rid of some of my websites and online distractions so I can better focus.

God bless, Mike

This past week, I purchased a new book called Digging into WordPress. This book really takes you from the basics to extensive customization of WordPress – all in a very easy-to-understand format. There are two purchase options – (1) PDF only, or (2) Print and PDF.  I purchased the second option. The print book has one feature that really sold me and that is the spiral binding. It allows you to open the book to the page you want and it won’t flop back closed.

While I am waiting for the printed version to arrive,  I was able to immediately get my hands on the content with the PDF download.  Once the download was completed, I took some time to page through the PDF, reading segments as I went along.  I have a lot of WordPress sites and I can’t wait to start applying the information in this book. I found the book’s presentation to be easy and entertaining to follow.  This is not a boring technical manual.  It is organized so you can go to a specific subject and use it right away.  While you will benefit by reading it from cover to cover, this is not required if you already have a basic understanding of how WordPress works.

The authors give you lifetime access to updates of the PDF ebook.  They also have an active blog with even more useful information. Both the beginner or experienced WordPress user will find this book a fantastic resource.

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links that will provide compensation to our company if a purchase is made.

About a month and a half ago, I posted about roadblocks keeping me from starting a project.  As with things of this nature, it took longer than I anticipated to get past the roadblocks.  Once I cleared the major roadblock, a couple of other detours ensued.  Now that I am past those, I am ready to get going.

One other thing that has changed is the project I wanted to start.  I am putting that on hold to focus on something that will generate some quicker cash flow.  I still want to do that project, but my online business has bills to pay, now!

As an exercise in accountability, I am posting here my plans for the upcoming weeks and months.

1. This website needs a facelift.  I am going to update the look and better integrate with social media.
2. I am launching my first affiliate marketing site.
3. Create more affiliate marketing sites.
4. More consistent posting on all of my blogs.
5. Profit!!

As this is a blog about my journey to work from home, I will keep updating you on my progress and what I learn along the way.

I am amazed at the amount of instant traffic you can get to your blog by tweeting your posts. Twitter is quite the phenomenon on the Internet today. If you’re not on Twitter, I suggest that you sign up and start tweeting.  Once you are on Twitter, you can follow me at twitter.com/mikesmind.

This morning, I wrote a post for one of my blogs.  This blog has about three to five views per day.  It is a WordPress blog, so I added a plugin to automatically tweet a link when I publish a new post.  Within a couple hours, I had 30 views.  Now, that is pretty powerful and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a plugin like this can really get you new readers for your blog.

Here are two plugins that I have tried that automatically tweet your blog posts when published.

1. Twitter Tools – This is what I am using on the blog mentioned above.  It is written by Alex King, who is well known in the WordPress plugin world.  It is configurable and I have included a screen shot of the options page.  As you can see, it is pretty straight-forward to configure.

   

   I found this plugin easy to use and it works like it is supposed to.

2. Another plugin that I am using to automatically tweet my blog posts is a commercial offering called TweetMyBlog.  This is an affiliate-based plugin that gives you the opportunity to make some money.  I have it installed on this blog, but have not made anything from it, yet.  It is free for you to install, but it does have a commercial intent as well as look and feel.  I found the extra graphics too much for many of my blogs, but if your blog is about making money, then this plugin should help you do that.  As you can see below, it doesn’t have as many configuration options as Twitter Tools.

   

   This blog has a few hoops to jump through as you get set up to receive affiliate commissions.  If you are looking to add another income source and increase traffic by automatically tweeting your blog posts, TweetMyBlog is a good option.

Either option I listed above will help you build traffic to your WordPress blog by harnessing the power of Twitter.