1. Holding your own craft show- I had never thought about this before I read it! I am of course still working on doing something larger, but I have held a few little parties at my house since I read it and even sold some stuff! Score! I definitely suggest this, I am even planning on throwing a craft show in my field (which is of course fully manicured!) Not only a great way to sell your stuff, but also a great way to have another source of income!

2. Copywriting Class- I have taught and done sales for YEARS, but never thought to write just like I would pitch something over the phone. It seems so ingenious, but this post stuck out in my head, because it made me realize that I already had everything I needed!

3. Do you know your customers?- I love this because I really didn’t know who my customer is, I’m still narrowing it down, but this information made it seem like less of an enormous task!

4. Your Business: Are you in… Or are you out?- I was suffering burnout when I found this article. I was working my full 40 hours a week, doing all of my volunteering, and still trying to make product! This article by Crissy really helped me refocus and start taking it one day at a time and realizing, that if I don’t take at least one night off a week to do nothing, then I am going to start hating what I love. I also didn’t have clearly defined goals and the ones that I did have I wasn’t keeping updated!
5. How To Come Up With A Good Business Name- When I started up everything I couldn’t think of a good name for the life of me, anything that I thought was clever was already taken. It was ridiculous. Not to mention that I suck at names to begin with!!! It took me 3 weeks to name my goats! In short, I stole my business name from my little girl kitty. She was the runt of her litter and we weren’t even going to get her, but she was the only one that Panda (our boy) would play with on all the play dates we went on to find another cat for him (he was all claws in those days and I really just wanted to cuddle). So when we brought her home, she was dirty because of the poor care she got, and an entire pound smaller than Panda even though they were the same age! So in my randomness I made up song lyrics while I was giving her a bath (one of my many talents) and it made my husband roll laughing! Therefore her name is Itty. “Cause it’s all right to be itty bitty, little kitty in a big old city”. LOL Throw Chic on the end of it, and you have a named business!

Don’t forget to follow me!

To see my blog go to  http://ittychic.com/Blog

Follow me on twitter @ittychic

Follow me on facebook by clicking and liking  http://facebook.com/ittychic

I have a passion for doing things myself, including being self sufficient as you can see by my little homesteading effort. Like most of you I have a bad habit of looking at something and going “I think I can make that, and I bet I can sell it too!”. Many of the things I do make are simply because I was looking for something at a store and either didn’t like the quality or wanted a different design.

Since I was a small girl, I have had a passion for creating. Many people in my life have offered to teach me their craft and I have taken every opportunity to learn. This internship for me just like you is an opportunity to learn.  My dream for my life is to quit my day job and be a self-sufficient stay at home mom. This is probably for at least some of you why you are here too.

Crafting just like starting a business is about putting in the hard work and research so that you can get from creative process to product with as few hiccups as possible. Because of our need to do research, you just like me came to IndieBizChicks.com.

I am excited to offer my two cents to help you in your business growth. Like Crissy I take a blunt approach to everything in my life. No reason to waste time sugar coating everything. If you had time to be flowery, then you wouldn’t be searching for great sites like IndieBizChicks.com to tell you the straight up truth about what it takes to start a business! I look forward to getting to know you all! You can read my posts weekly on IndieBizChicks.com and Crissy’s other website CleverChicks.com. Want to know more about me? Leave a comment, and I will do my best to answer any questions you have.

In the meantime, start following me!

To see my blog go to http://ittychic.com/Blog

Follow me on twitter @ittychic

Follow me on facebook by clicking and liking http://facebook.com/ittychic

Anna says it’s Jelly Roll Madness month on the Crafty Girls Workshop blog and she is featuring patterns that include using the precut jelly rolls which are 2 ½” by 44” strips. She pointed out that they aren’t just for making quilts  - there are lots of other projects on her blog that feature them, so go check it out for some inspiration!

To do this, log in to your Paypal account. Click on “merchant services” on the top navigation bar. You will be taken to a new screen. The first option on the left side will be the “buy now” button. Click on that to be taken to a screen to create your button.

Follow the on screen instructions – it’s all pretty simple. You’ll be asked to enter in the name of the product you are creating, the price, etc. Once you do that, Paypal will generate some code for you to place on your sales page / blog post. This code will create the “buy now” button.

When someone clicks on your button, they will be taken to a page where they can purchase your product or service. They do not have to have a Paypal account to complete the purchase.

The guides are already being advertised on CleverChicks.com, and will also be promoted on IndieBizChicks.com, as well as through Twitter, Facebook, and other partner sites. The guides will be available through all of 2010.

Your ad will include a 125×125 graphic, a 50 word description, and your URL. These ads will be very similar to the Holiday Guide ads. You can find an example here: http://www.indiebizchicks.com/hgg2009.pdf

Each guide will be limited to a maximum of 20 ads, spaced throughout the guide. All ads will be due March 5 and the guides will be available online March 20. You will be emailed further instructions as to where to send your ad once payment is made.

To purchase your ad, click here
Remember — space is limited. Reserve your spot today!

• Green Idea: Clothing Swap
• Surviving The Decade
• Happy Foods
• What Can I Get For Under $70 From Target? Well… A lot!
• Too Sick for School?

First of all, the ladies (Kelly McCausey and Lynette Chandler) who wrote the lessons are amazing. I joined their forum Mom Masterminds back in 2006 and I learned how to work with and do basic customizations to WordPress through the how-to videos that Lynette posted there.

Blog Evangelists goes several steps further than those videos, though. With these lessons, you will learn how to completely customize a WordPress blog. There’s a lesson on each part of the blog – from footer.php to sidebar.php to header.php.

Kelly writes the lessons on the business building part of things, and for good reason. She started her own blog design business and she used her real-life experience to put together the Blog Evangelists lessons.

I was not new to blogging, WordPress, or building a business when I purchased this program. But I still learned a lot of new stuff. And like I said – it’s 100 lessons. You’d be hard-pressed to NOT learn something new!

Unfortunately, the business portion and the design portion are going to be split up soon. This is your last chance to get both of them – all in one piece.

This is priced at $197, so I know it is not cheap. But if you want to learn WordPress, it’s worth it. Hiring someone to customize your blog – once – will be about the same price. If you want more customizations done down the road, you just spent more money on that than you would if you had purchased this program.

And with this program, you’ll have the skills you need to customize blogs as a business. If you simply get one job, you’ll have paid for this program!

Click here to read more about Blog Evangelists and to purchase the program

* Have questions? Lynette and Kelly are offering a free webinar tonight at 9pm. Click here to register

If you want to learn more about creating passive income through info products right away, you’ll want to join The Indie Biz Chicks Members Center, as that is this month’s topic. For only $7 you will receive a 20 page workbook & audio – plus you will have access to the upcoming class on January 11. All for only $7.

You will be able to access the guide and audio immediately – as well as dial into the conference call class on January 11th at 12pm EST and ask as many questions as you’d like! (If you can’t make the live call, an Mp3 Recording will be emailed to you.)

Each month, a new topic will be added, again with a workbook, class, and other learning tools. You will only pay $7 each month for all of this – and you cancel at any time.

To sign up, click here

Common mistake #1: Operating without a plan

Planning and having a business plan are your primary roles as an entrepreneur. In fact, business experts recommend you spend at least 25% of your time as a business owner planning. To begin a business without a plan, and to continue without analyzing and changing your plan as you grow, is a sure way to struggle to succeed. It’s like heading out for a drive and not knowing how to get where you’re going.

So what’s the cure? Plan! Start with a business plan that outlines your audience, competition, vision and mission, product or service and marketing strategy. Once you have a plan, schedule time into each and every week to plan your business. Analyze what’s working, what isn’t and where you’re going to go from here.

Common mistake #2: Managing your business instead of leading it

As a small business owner just getting started, it makes sense that you may be the one person who does everything. However, as you grow that practice isn’t going to continue to make sense; you’re going to run out of hours or end up eliminating tasks that are necessary to grow your business.

You don’t, for example, spend all your time invoicing and bookkeeping if your time could be better spent coaching clients and bringing in profits. Leading your business means knowing that it’s better to focus on your specialized skills and hire or outsource to others for their specialized skills. Leading means building a team of people to help you grow your business rather than trying to do it all yourself.

Common mistake #3: Not having a system

The most successful entrepreneurs have a system that keeps them productive. It may be something as simple as using Outlook to prioritize your tasks and then not closing the door to your office until they’re all completed. It may be something more complicated. The point isn’t what system you use – that’s going to be personal to you – the point is to have a system that helps you stay organized and productive.

Common mistake #4: Overextending yourself

It’s so easy to have your fingers in too many cookie jars. When you start experiencing business success, you want more – it’s only natural. So you start other businesses, you launch new products or services and you partner with others. Unfortunately, all this activity pulls your focus in many directions. The result is that you’re only able to devote a small part of your attention to each project rather than your full attention to a single project, and that affects your success.

The cure? Make sure, before you take anything new on, that you can devote your full attention to the project and give it the focus it deserves.

Common mistake #5: Trusting the wrong people

Trusting the wrong people doesn’t mean you’re susceptible to scammers, it means that you’re putting your faith and commitment into people who are not going to help you grow your business. This includes partners, employees, contractors and even services.

Before you take any steps to forge a relationship with anyone, assess whether it’s going to help you grow your business, set goals for the relationship and establish measures to track and evaluate your success.

If you’ve already made one of these mistakes, not to worry. They’re survivable and may even lead to bigger and better opportunities. Don’t be hard on yourself. Mistakes means you’re actually pushing yourself and striving to achieve your goals, and that in and of itself is a wonderful thing.

What does an SEO company do?

Before you can decide whether to outsource your SEO tasks, it’s important to know what most SEO companies do. Most search engine optimization companies, whether they’re a one-person show or have several employees, offer the following services:

1. Website audit. The first thing most SEO companies will do is analyze your site as it stands today. Is it being indexed?  What is working and what isn’t?

2. Keyword research. The next step many companies will take is to conduct keyword research. That means researching the keywords your customers are using to find you.

3. Recommendations. The third step is typically for a SEO company to provide you with a strategy. They may include manual submission to search engines for indexing as part of the services they provide, or they may not. They will most definitely have outlined a content and link building strategy for you. What happens next is where firms begin to differ.

They’ll almost always provide HTML coding service to tweak your site optimally for the search engines. Then they’ll either provide all of the services to you, including content writing, or they may simply offer to make sure the links are properly inserted and you’ll have someone else write the content. They may tell you how they suggest you build incoming links, or they may offer to handle the process for you. They may also offer tracking and maintenance to ensure the SEO efforts are working.

So one of the ways to evaluate if a service is worth hiring is to compare the services they offer with your needs. Here are a few other factors to compare them by:

* Their reputation in the industry. It’s important to make sure the SEO company has a good reputation, not only for knowing what they’re doing and getting results but also for using legitimate and respected techniques.

* The policies and procedures. When and how will they communicate with you?  How long will the processes take?  How often do they evaluate their results? These are just some of the questions to consider when evaluating a potential provider.

* Finally, what does it cost to hire them?  Remember, you get what you pay for so hiring a dollar store SEO expert will likely not get you the results you’re looking for. The most expensive SEO jobs — costing up to $10,000 to $20,000 a month – are only required if you have hundreds of product pages. Many experts charge by the page and prices average around $100/page but can certainly be higher or lower.

Analyzing ROI

One of the questions you’ll want to ask yourself before outsourcing your SEO is how much it’s worth to you. In this calculation, you’ll want to consider your hourly value. If it takes you four hours to accomplish what an SEO expert can accomplish in an hour and you’re losing $50/hour trying to code your site when it would have cost you $100 to use an SEO expert, then yes – it might be worthwhile to outsource this task.

That being said, SEO is something you can most certainly accomplish yourself. If you do a bit of research and are willing to experiment with the results then it can be quite satisfying, and profitable, to watch your website grow in the page rankings.  So, does it pay to outsource your SEO?  It depends on where you value your time and money and the SEO expert you hire.