I have gotten everything moved over to The Mommy Chronicles

You can find my Blogging Basics Guide (here)

and my weekly Mom Blogger Basics Series (here)


Sorry for all the trouble but I will keep this Blogging Love alive!!!!

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We are Moving Back to The Mommy Chronicles

So with going to school full time and being a single mom I have had a hard time managing two blogs hosted on two different sites so what I will be doing is moving everything back over to The Mommy Chronicles and return to my original format of Mom Blogger Basics Post each and every Sunday.  I think that this will be easier on me and I can reach out to so many more of you.

Please know that nothing is going to change as far as me answering your questions.  Anyone that has emailed me knows that I try to be quick about answering all your emails and comments.  The last few weeks have been crazy with the move.  But like I said this move will allow me to help you all in a much easier fashion.

I will send out an email as well so that everyone will have a heads up.


 Danielle

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Setting Your Independent Ad Space Price

Image via WikipediaIf you have made the decision to set up and operate your independent advertising space then here are some things that you will want to consider when setting your prices. Like I said before you don’t want to set them to high or two low.

Lets take a look at your stats (see stats are important to look at many mom bloggers claim to never look at them but there is no way they are telling the truth if they are really making money at what they are doing because stats are very important to this aspect of blogging). What I will do is break it down with a few examples and you can find on that applies to you and work with that to set up your own pricing.

Example #1: New Blog on the Block

I define this category as having 100 or fewer followers to your blog with a still modest twitter and facebook following (you may not even have a facebook or twitter following not then you need to read this).

You are fairly new and still learning the ropes to this entire blogging thing. You believe that your blog has great potential and are implementing many good strategies to enter into Example #2 (New but Rapidly Growing Blog).

You are looking to start making a little extra cash on your site and thing that independent advertising is the way to go for you.

First I want you to take a look at your stats and think like and advertiser. Say to yourself would it be beneficial for advertisers to advertise on my site, if you are able to say the following then proceed on if not then this an area you need to work before continuing “I have a small following but they are very engaged and I have lots of repeat visitors” . So if you can say that then you are ready to start thinking about independent advertising.

Here is the pricing scale that I use for blogs in the category:

$.05 per 1000 pageviews a month

Here is the equation:

Avg # of pageviews per month x rate per thousand = answer/30days = weekly rate

Here is an example:

1000 x .05 = 50/30 = 1.66 (lets round up to $2) weekly rate

So using the example above if someone advertises on your site for a month then you would make $6.64 I would suggest just rounding things up to an even number so it would be about $7.00 a month for a new site.

Example #2: New but Rapidly Growing Blog

Now if you fall into this category I suspect that you have between 150-450 followers and have a pretty nice facebook and twitter following (there is no reason that a blog at this level should not have a facebook and twitter account for their blog)

So taking a look at your stats you need to assess them just like in example number one the same rules applies that you charge $.05 for every thousand pageviews that you get a month.

Here is the equation:

Avg # of pageviews per month x rate per thousand = answer/30days = weekly rate

Here is an example:

3500 x $.05 = 175/30 = $5.83 (lets round up to $6) weekly rate

So using this example you see that your weekly rate should be about $6 dollars and that your monthly rate should come to $24 dollars a month for a new but rapidly growing site.



Example #3: More Established Blog and Still Growing

Now if you are here then you have a large following chances are people are really listening to what you say. You are in the 450 and up range when it comes to followers. Your followers come to you for all the latest information no matter what it is. You tons of comments and you are truly engaged with your readers they follow and talk to you on Facebook and Twitter and everyday your getting bigger and bigger. You all are an advertisers dream and they will pay you to get to all of your readers.

Here is the equation:



Avg # of pageviews per month x rate per thousand = answer/30days = weekly rate


Here is an example:

15000 x $.05 = 750/30 = 25 weekly rate

Using this example you would charge around $25 dollars a week and that would but your monthly earning at $100 for the month


Keep in mind these are just examples and you may choose to do your own thing as far as pricing goes but I thought that I would give you a starting point. I have also included an easy read table to help you set your pricing guidelines based on my weekly rate equation

Avg. Monthly Page Views		Suggested Weekly Rate		Suggested Monthly Rate
1000	$	2	$	8
2000	$	3	$	12
3000	$	5	$	20
4000	$	7	$	28
5000	$	8	$	32
6000	$	10	$	40
7000	$	12	$	48
8000	$	13	$	52
9000	$	15	$	60
10000	$	17	$	68
11000	$	18	$	72
12000	$	20	$	80
13000	$	22	$	88
14000	$	23	$	92
15000	$	25	$	100
16000	$	27	$	108
17000	$	28	$	112
18000	$	30	$	120
19000	$	32	$	128
20000	$	33	$	132

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Pro’s and Con’s to Independent Ad Space to Monetize Your Blog

Image via WikipediaIf you have been thinking about creating ad space for your blog to monetize it then this is the post for you. I am going to talk about using independent advertising to monetize your blog. I call it independent advertising because you will run it yourself minus and ad company like Project Wonderful, Adsense, AdBrite, CMF ads and Adgitize (keep in mind I love all of these but this is just another option).

If you scope out the side of my page you will see what I am talking about I have dedicated ad space incorporated into my site so that companies or blogs that are related to this one can advertise in those dedicated spaces. I wanna go over some of the pros and the cons of setting up independent advertising as well as how to price your independent ad space.


Pro’s of doing Independent Ad Space:

• The biggest pro about this is that you are in full and complete control.

• The other great thing about independent adspace is that you get to keep all of the profits you don’t just get a cut of it like you would if you went with a company that set the ads up for you. So it is safe to say that is more money in your pocket and we all would like to have a little more cash in our pockets.

• You also get to control who you allow to purchase your adspace most companies don’t allow you this option you basically open up yourself for all kinds of ads and sometimes ads that are completely unrelated.

• Since you are the owner and operator of the blog and the ad space you can also determine the sizes of the space that you will offer and where you would like them placed

Con’s of doing Independent Ad Space:

• Although this is also a pro it can be a con as well your complete control over the space can be tiring and time consuming.

• Since you are offering independent ad space this also means that you may have to go out and get your own advertisers so there can be a ton of leg work involved in this process.

• You will also have to have a great deal of patience because it could be months before someone buys space on your blog so patience is definitely a virtue that you will want to have if you are looking to operate your own independent advertising space. Operating this space is not going to be anything like putting an adsense code on your site and the ad just start automatically populating.

• Another obstacle that people face when operating their own ad space is that fact that you do have to set your own price but at the same time you may not know where to start if you go to high you may scare people off and if you go to low you may be losing out on the money that you could have earned. So pricing because a bit of a trial and error.

Related articles

• Top 5 Reasons Why No-One Is Advertising On Your Blog (wassupblog.com)
• 5 Different Ways to Monetize Your Blog (shoutmeloud.com)
• WAHM Wednesday: Sell Advertising on Your Blog (csahm.com)

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How To’s: Adding Facebook “Like” Button to all Post

Image via CrunchBase

Today I want to show you how to add the Facebook  “Like” button to all of your blog post.  It only takes a simple html code and viola you have a Facebook “Like” button installed on each and every post on your page.

This tutorial is going to be done in screenshots because I think that it will make it easier for you all to follow along and of course if you have any questions please feel free to comment and let me know.   I am going to show you is Blogger .

Step One:

Login to Blogger and then go to Design  > Edit HTML and click the box that says Expand Widget Template

Step Two:

Do a search for <data:post.body/> (you can find this easily by doing CTRL F) and immediately before that code you will place the following code:

<divstyle='float:left;margin:4px;'><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

Step Three:

Save the template and the go to View Blog and you should see the “Like” button on each of your post.

The code above will appear on the top left corner of each and every blog post if you want it to appear in other place use the codes below per your specifications:

Right Justified at Top of Post

<divstyle='float:right;margin:4px;'><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

Right Justified at Bottom of Post

<divstyle='float:right;margin:4px;'><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

Left Justified at Bottom of Post

<divstyle='float:left;margin:4px;'><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

No Justification at Top of Post

<div><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

No Justification at Bottom of Post

<div><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/></div>

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Integrating Social Networking into Your Post and Blog

Image via WikipediaWe all know and understand the power of social networking and how it can take your blog to new heights by increasing your blogs exposure and increasing your traffic. Social networking is the new form of self promotion and as bloggers you should all have a Facebook “Like” page and a twitter account for your blog just to name the top two.


The thing about social networking is that it allows you to connect with people that you may have otherwise missed using conventional methods such as posting on forums and joining different niche related blogging networks. Social Networking has truly taking advertising and marketing by storm and now it is your turn to turn social networking into your own personal PR team.


You all have probably read my post on TweetDeck and how to manage all of your social networking but now it is time talk about incorporating social networking into your blogs for each and every post that you do. The thing about blogs is that each and every time you post you are putting new and fresh information out there that people may be interested in but if they never find you then what good does it really do especially you and your blog.


If you have a blog then each and everyone of your post should have some type of way to share it with the world and not just the search engines. SEO is important for this but social networking can garner you even more traffic. If you’re like me you have visited many a blog that had social networking icons right in the post so that you as the reader have the ability to like the post on facebook and tweet about the post on twitter basically your spreading the word about what you have found and aiding in the spread of information. The thing is you should want the same thing for your blog you should want to get your information out to the world.
There are so many social networking sites to choose from and of course you don’t want your post to be flooded by little social networking icons but you do want to focus on some of the bigger ones like Facebook and Twitter. It is very simple to add these to your post so that when your visitors come they can share your post and your blog with all of their extended networks.


In order to add these icons to your page you have a number of options such as entering in a specific html code into your blogs html editor so that it automatically populates these icons on every single post or you can add a widget like Wibya which will have a little bar at the bottom of your screen that will populate at the end of every single page loaded on your site this way visitors can share your information with the world.


I personally use both options on my blog The Mommy Chronicles. If you go there you will see that the Wibya tool bar populates at the bottom and if you look at each post you will see at the end of the post there is a small button that says “like” this on Facebook.


So my advice you is to jump in all the way with the social networking and start increasing your traffic and your earning potential.

I will go into more detail on how to add these icons to your site in my next post. I will also share with you how the benefits of Wibya and how to implement it into your blog. Check back tomorrow for more detailed information on the codes to use to add these to your post and to your overall blog.

Related articles

• How Many Social Networks Are You Actively Involved? [Poll] (maketecheasier.com)
• This Blogger's Dirty Little Secret and What You Can Learn from It (bruceclay.com)
• Avoid Overloading Social Media Networks with Useless Noise (blogs.constantcontact.com)

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How to Use TweetDeck

Image by Tojosan via FlickrI recently wrote to you all about using TweetDeck and today I want to give you all a quick tutorial on how to use TweetDeck to manage all of your social networking accounts.  TweetDeck can be overwhelming at first but once you get the hang of it you will want to use TweetDeck to manage all of your social networking accounts.

The other nice thing about TweetDeck is that you can download it for free.  Check out this site to download your own copy of TweetDeck (here).

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• How to tidy up Twitter with Filters and Columns (thenextweb.com)
• TweetDeck App For Chrome Is Awesome (techie-buzz.com)

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The Bloggers Business Card EntreCard: The Tool Bar

Image via CrunchBaseIf you are a regular here then you know that I have talked about EntreCard before but it is such a great service that it deserves a post all it’s own so that I can really explore all of the great features offered by Entrecard referred to as the bloggers business card.

EntreCard is a tool that all bloggers can use to discover new blogs in their particular niche and to increase the traffic to their site with targeted credit based advertising. You may be asking what I mean by credit based advertising. Credit based advertising works like this you accumulate credits for dropping your entrecard on fellow bloggers sites that have the Entrecard widget, you also get credits for referring people to EntreCard.

You can drop on 300 blogs a day for a total of 300 credits and you can gain 800 credit per person that you refer that places the EntreCard widget on their site and stays with EntreCard for a period of 14 days.
Once you start acquiring credits you can use those credits to purchase ads on other blogs. Every blog requires a different amount of credits based on how popular the blog. In short this is free advertising it doesn’t require you to purchase any ads it is strictly credit based.

But for those of you that don’t have the time to drop on other blogs or don’t want to actively promote EntreCard you can purchase credits but many EntreCarders enjoy the camaraderie of going to their fellow bloggers blogs and checking out what they have going on and dropping their EntreCard on them.

The other great thing about EntreCard is the fact that when you drop your card on the blog the blog owner will know that your have been there and much like comments they will return the favor and come and check out your blog and even stick around and leave a comment or two and become a follower. I personally have met many of my blogger friends through EntreCard and they are usually very dedicated to visiting your blog every single day.

Now that you understand the basics of what EntreCard is all about it’s now time to learn about how to make dropping about 100 times easier with the EntreCard Tool Bar for your browser. The EntreCard Tool bar opens multiple blogs at once making it possible to drop on 300 blogs in about an hour. I do this often and I just move the ones that I want to return to into a new window so that I can take my time and look them over once I finish all of my dropping. If you want to see how the EntreCard Toolbar works just check out the Tips/Tricks and How To’s Section tomorrow.

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Using Tweet Deck to Network and Increase Traffic

Image by Kevglobal via FlickrIf you are new to twitter or an old pro as a blogger you should understand the true value of twitter when it comes to increasing your blogs traffic, networking with other bloggers and interacting with your readers.

I know the first time that I went to twitter I wondered how will I ever keep up with all the tweets of the people that I am following and my own tweets and @mentions. Well this is where Tweet Deck comes into play.

Tweet Deck is a free downloadable application for your desktop or iPhone that makes things 10 times easier for you. With Tweet Deck you can see just what you want to see on twitter. I personally only want to be able to see my @mentions and direct messages so that I can be sure to respond back to people in a timely manner. I also want to be able to see what is trending currently in my area as well as the tweets that I have schedule for the day.

I can do all of this with Tweet Deck and they show me all of those things one single page so I don’t have to jump from link to link or page to page. It is nicely arranged and easy to read. You are also sent an alert every time someone tweets directly to you so you don’t have to just sit on twitter you can multi task and respond when necessary.

The greatest benefit of Tweet Deck is the ability to schedule your tweets. I use this feature almost every single day. I sit the night before and I prepare scheduled tweets that deal with whatever topic I will be writing about on my blog for the next day. So lets say I am writing about how to lose weight on my blog the next day then I will schedule tweets about that topic such as “Who else is trying to lose weight for the New Year? #weighloss”, “I am having a tough time staying motivated in the gym. Any advice?” . You see where I am going with this I try to engage people in whatever topic it is that I am writing about and this will spark some back and forth conversation and will also spark interest in your profile which should have a link back you your blog on it so that people can check it out.

By scheduling my tweets in advance I don’t have to sit on twitter tweeting all day I usually respond to my @mentions using my cell phone while I am at work so one ever knows that I am not even on my computer or twitter, until now of course.

My word of advice on this is to schedule tweets every hour to two hours this way you won’t flood people with a ton of tweets because this could have a negative effect. The goal is to tweet in moderation and prepare to engage in little conversations with other tweeters.

You can download Tweet Deck Here!!! And if you check back tomorrow there will be a video tutorial under the Tip/Tricks and How To’s category to walk you through using tweet deck for the first time.

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Networking: Give Comments to Get Comments

Image by Parvin ♣( OFF for a while ) via FlickrHave you ever heard the saying you get what you give well the same rings true about giving comments. Comments show people that you are interested in their post and actively engaged in reading and responding to the content that you have found on their site.

We are all bloggers here so we all know the importance of comments and the feeling that people are really connecting with the content on our sites and not to mention us. Commenting is the number one way to network with others especially your readers which are probably bloggers themselves.

You can never have enough blogger friends because the more blogger friends you have the more free advertising and promotions that you get because blogging friends usually exchange buttons and place them on each other’s sites.

Commenting isn’t only used to gain you much needed backlinks to your site and increased traffic but they also help you to form bonds with other bloggers. The bond that we form with other bloggers can play a crucial role in our online socialization and networking. Knowing that there is someone else out there in the blogosphere that can relate to what you are doing or that you can talk to from time to time is a really nice feeling.

In order for your blog to survive you need support and the support of your fellow bloggers is crucial in having a well established blog versus a glorified personal diary. Now if you want to just have a personal diary then you don’t really need to do any of the following and there is nothing wrong with that.

Now when it comes to commenting you need to really show that you are interested in the post. You can’t leave comments like “great post” or “that’s interesting” because these will not accomplish anything. A good comment is usually at least 3-5 sentences long because that shows that you put some thought into it and that you actually care about what the blogger is talking about.

Most bloggers will read your comment and come to your blog and leave a comment on one of your post. I would suggest picking at least 3-5 blogs at first to regularly engage an leave comments once you get a real feel for the regular back and forth exchange of comments increase the number of blogs that you exchange comments on.

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