Archive for July, 2008
Jul
17
A WP Plug-in for Flickr!
OK, so most of you already know about Flickr, but I discovered it when I found this great plugin for photos. It’s called PhotoDrop, and it will just drop in any photo off of Flickr….at least any photo that is open for viewing. I couldn’t even begin to think about putting in all our photos onto Flickr, but it looks like it is a great place to start organizing all our photos, at least.
In fact, this could be the start of a great home business idea that anyone that’s picture and computer savvy could do. See “Picture Organizing Business” in our ‘Home Business Ideas’ page on our website for more details on how to get started.
Jul
15
Monkey See, Monkey Do…or Why Start a Home Business
Other than I thought it was really cute, I chose a monkey for our logo because it really symbolizes the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” situation homeschool parents are faced with 24/7. I have always loved monkeys, (chimps, actually) and when I was in college, I really, really wanted one for a pet. Then I got married, and ended up having kids (4 to be exact) and, well, our budget just never developed a ‘monkey’ allotment.
Children proved to be challenging enough.
If you’ve ever watched or read much about monkeys (ie chimps), then you know how smart they are, and how quickly they imitate everything they see. As a parent, I’m sure you’ve figured out that kids are the same way. So, starting a home business, regardless of how small, can be an excellent way to teach your children a multitude of skills – if only to bring them by your side as you work.
The actual business skills they might learn, of course, could be gleaned from any good business book, but the skills you can teach them on a day to day basis won’t show up in any of the business books I’ve come across. Skills like integrity, time management, prioritizing, when to bend the rules (grey area ones…) and when NOT to. They will see how you approach deciding the best business for y
our family, how you handle stress, and how you treat others, customers and ‘helpers’ alike. Most of all, teaching them integrity based on your beliefs rather than the commonly held beliefs of the world.
Having a home business brings up such a variety of real world situations that you and your children can solve together, it really is the greatest ‘curriculum’ there is. I have a good entrepreneurial-minded friend whose son was able to step into a management position with another small business shortly after (homeschool) high school graduation. It was just a small (at the time) business run by another homeschool family, but they knew this young man had business experience with his family and decided to give him a try. Long story short, he is now the general manager of up to 20 employees, and making an exceptional income for a young man his age and no ‘formal’ training.
If you don’t think you have it in you to do all it takes to start and run a home business, then maybe you know of another homeschool family that would consider some sort of apprenticeship for your son or daughter. While this is a viable option, one of our missions here at Homeschool Entrepreneur is to help all families make Entrepreneurship a part of their home school. Anyone can do it, and any vocation, interest or hobby can be utilized. While you may not get rich, your child will learn skills that will serve them the rest of the their lives. In our economy,it’s impossible to predict what’s next, but having the basics of how to work for yourself can be the most valuable subject you can teach.
Jul
13
All WordPress Apps Are NOT Created Equal!
Here we go again, moving from one place to another….it would be really frustrating were it not for the hope of helping others learn from ALL my many mistakes. I may not know what to tell you what to do, but i sure have some things to tell you NOT to do!
For those of you that haven’t followed us from the beginning, we started this blog with WordPress that was hosted on another webhost. That webhost had WordPress available in their Fantastico, and being somewhat new with WordPress, thought I had arrived!
What I didn’t realize, was that different webhosts put WordPress on their server differently. I found I couldn’t add any plugins or html of any kind, which may seem outrageous, but that is what their tech support confirmed for me, so I wasn’t sure where to go from there. Having had more experience with WordPress, I question that, but at the time, what tech support says is all I knew.
So I ventured over to WordPress.com, and found it incredibly easy to set up. Once again, I thought I had arrived (whatever THAT means!) . That is, until I got a friendly email from the WordPress staff that I had too many ads on my site. I emailed them back and asked them if they were sure (I really didn’t have that many, surely not as many as SOME WP blogs…) and asked them “isn’t making money the main reason most people blog??”
Their response was kindly, and told me, yes indeed, most people did want to make money blogging, which is why they offer their program free to anyone who wants to host their own site. I guess if they are paying for the blog, they don’t want to pay for it. Makes sense, I just wish I had figured this out to begin with! I had read enormous amounts on blogging for profit before I started, but didn’t really read much written on who, how or what to blog ON.
This is the purpose of this post …..to let you know that it DOES matter where you set up your blog. There are way too many choices, but that’s free enterprise for you. So people like me waste hours and hours of time to look at every option only to arrive at what over 75% of bloggers decide-self-hosted WordPress!
I love ProBlogger…purely platonic, I promise….but he has a chart posted with all the options you can look at, and tons of other tips and helps. Yaro Starek in his Entrepreneur’s Journey also has videos that are lifesavers that I have mentioned before. But WordPress gets the prize for selfless offerings in blogging software. It’s completely free, and there’s a directory of all the plugins you can add and a bottomless pit of online support. If you are somewhat new at all this like I was, plan on spending a little time learning it all, but it feels sooooo good when you finally get it right!
I definitely can’t say I have ‘arrived’ yet, but I can share what NOT to do if you are trying to make a living blogging. It’s definitely one of the best homeschool projects there is!
Welcome to Homeschool Entrepreneur!
Equip your children with a life skill that will stay and grow in them forever. Business training in the home not only creates a natural learning environment for any age. The "Family Business" draws families together and provides opportunity for discussions you won't find in any book . . and the extra money comes in handy, too!
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