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Family Bed: How to Make It Stop

A young girl kisses a <a href=baby on the cheek.” width=”300″ height=”199″ />
Image via Wikipedia

For years, my kids shared my bed.

When my oldest was a baby, I was working a graveyard shift, so my wife was alone with the baby at night.    It was easy to keep a couple of bottles in a cooler by the bed and not have to get out of bed to take care of him when he woke up once an hour to drink a full bottle.

Then he got older.  And bigger.  And bigger.

We tried to move him to his own bed a few times, but it never worked well.    He’d scream if we put him in a crib, so we got him a bed at 9 months old.  That just meant he was free to join us whenever he woke up.  Brat.

We finally got him to voluntarily move to his own bed after his sister was born.    Shortly after she was born, I woke up to see him using her as a pillow.   To paint the proper picture, this kid is 5’9″ and wears size 12 shoes.  At 11.  When I woke him up to tell him what he was doing, he decided to sleep in his own bed.

Method #1 to get your kids in their own bed:  Have kid 1 try to crush kid 2 and feel bad about it.

Method #1 isn’t a great solution.

Soon, baby #3 showed up and we had 2 monsters in bed with us again.    Once they started getting bigger, it became difficult for the 4 of us to sleep.   We tried to get them into their own beds.   Unfortunately, even as toddlers, my kids had a stubborn streak almost as big as my own.   Nothing worked.

Eventually, they got big enough that I was crowded right out of the bed.  At least we had a comfortable couch.

Sleeping on a couch gets old.

When the girls got old enough to reason with, we had a choice:  We either had to find a way to convince them they wanted to sleep in their own room, or we had to have a fourth brat for them to attempt to crush at night.

We went with bribery.  Outright, blatant bribery.

We put a chart on the wall with each of their names and 7 boxes.  Every night they slept in their own beds, they got to check a box.   When all of the boxes were checked, they got $5 and a trip to the toy store.

It took 10 days to empty our bed and it’s been peaceful sleeping since.  That’s $5 well-spent.

Have you done a family bed?  How did it work?  How long did it last?

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Sunday Roundup

Eye of horse.
Image via Wikipedia

My girls have been riding in horse shows lately.  Sometimes, it seems like that’s all we’ve been doing on the weekends, but they love it.  My wife’s favorite hobby now matches my daughters’ favorite pastime.   As a bonus, we’ll never have to paint their room again, with the way they are accumulating ribbons.

Best Posts

It is possible to be entirely too connected.

My life is now complete.  It’s possible to buy 95 pounds of cereal marshmallows for just $399.   Breakfast at my house just got perfect.

I wholeheartedly agree with Tam, “You don’t need to make any excuses for crashing things into each other at the speed of light in an underground tunnel longer than Manhattan that’s had the air pumped out and been chilled to a couple degrees above absolute zero. That doesn’t need a reason. “

Carnivals I’ve Rocked 

Credit Cards: My Failed Experiment was included in the Best of Money Carnival, the  Carnival of Wealth, and the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

My niche site article on how to Make Extra Money with Keyword Research was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

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Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to pick a domain and a host.

If you remember from the last installment, I’ve decided to promote The Master Wedding Planning Guide.   Since then, I have bought the product and read enough to decide that’s it worth promoting.    That is the secret to ethical internet product.  Never promote a crap product.  Now, when I bought the Guide, I used my own affiliate link, so the $37 product will have cost me about $13,  once the commission check comes through.  You can’t do that just to get a discount because Clickbank has measures in place to ensure that you are actually selling products.

Domain Name

The first thing we need is a domain name.

You can skip this if you want to host on blogger, but I wouldn’t do that, unless $10 is a major financial hardship.  I dislike the idea of leaving everything in Google’s hands.  Even if you use blogger for hosting(discussed later), pop for the domain name.   That way, if you change your mind about hosting, you can move without losing everything.

Where should you go for your domain name?   I use NameCheap and GoDaddy.  I try to divide my domain names across each of the providers so all of my sites don’t look identical to Google.   I may be paranoid, but it works for me.

Before you order, hit Google for a coupon code.   Search for “namecheap coupon” or “godaddy coupon” and save some money.     GoDaddy is offering $7.49 domains.

How do you pick a domain name?

I try to pick something that matches the product name, or the product’s site.   In this case, the product’s site is http://www.masterweddingplanning.com and http://www.masterweddingplanning.net was available, so I grabbed it.    I would have been happy with .com, .net, or .org.   I won’t touch a .info domain.  They are generally cheap, but they cost more to renew and people assume they are spam sites.

If the exact match domain isn’t available, I look for exact matches for the product.   If that’s not available, I stick other words at the end that would be attractive to people looking to buy a product.

Acceptable domains would include:

  • http://www.masterweddingplanning.org
  • http://www.masterweddingplanningreview.com
  • http://www.masterweddingplanningguide.net
  • http://www.masterweddingplanningreviewed.org

Or nearly anything along those lines.   Other good words to attach would be “revealed”, “exposed”, or something similar.  Just put yourself in the shoes of a buyer.   Would the domain name look like something that could help you decide whether or not to buy a product?

Hosting

Your host is where your website lives.   Without a host, you can’t have a website.

When it comes to picking a host, you have some choices to make.

First, do you want to go free or paid?  Free sounds great, and if money is tight, it’s not a bad choice, but it does limit your options.

If you’re going free, you’re going with Google’s Blogger.   WordPress.com’s hosting eliminates your advertising options, as does almost every other free host.  I do know of a couple of free WordPress hosts that will let you run ads and advertising campaigns, but the performance is horrible.

Another problem with using Google is that they can decide your site violates their Terms of Service and shut it down.   It shouldn’t happen, but it’s not unheard of with affiliate marketing sites.   If you go this route, plan to move to paid hosting when you start making money.

That leaves us with paid hosting.

There are a ton of hosts out there, but only three I have personal experience with.

I won’t use GoDaddy for hosting.  I’ve never been happy with their technical support.

I have most of my domains on HostGator (c0upon code: HOSTINGBUDDY).  I’m happy with them.  Performance is good and the customer service is excellent.  Their hosting packages start at $3.96 per month.

I also have a hosting account at HostTheName.  I got that because, using coupon code “STARTUPWARRIOR”, hosting prices get down to $1 per month.   At $36 for 3 years, I couldn’t turn it down.   Initially performance was rocky, but they’ve upgraded and it’s good, now.

Once you’ve created your hosting account, you’ll need to go back to your domain name registrar and set the name servers.    At NameCheap, after you log in, you’ll go to Domains > Manage Domains and click on the domain name.   From there, click on “Domain Name Server Setup” on the left of the screen and enter the custom name server information listed on your hosting account.

When that’s done, go to your hosting account and add the domain.  If you’re creating a new hosting account, this will be your main domain and the hosting company will ask you for the information during setup.   If you’re adding this to an existing hosting account, log in, look for “Addon Domains” and follow the prompts.

At this point, you’ve chosen a product to promote and keywords/search terms to go with it.  You’ve chosen and registered a domain name and you’ve set up a hosting account to hold your website.    Next time, I’ll walk through setting up a WordPress site to make some money.

Any questions?

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Make Extra Money: A Niche Site Walkthrough

Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction

Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites.  When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%.  Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete.   I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

These three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich.   Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition?   Those are called “sub-niches”.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it. Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

Make Extra Money Part 4: Keyword Research

If you aren’t targeting search terms that people use, you are wasting your time.  If you are targeting terms that everybody else is targeting, it will take forever to get to the top of the search results.  Spend the extra time now to do proper keyword research.   It will save you a ton of time and hassle later.  This is time well-spent.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting 

In this installment, I show you how to pick a domain name and a website host.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

A niche site doesn’t amount to much without, well, a site.   In this installment, I show you how I configure a site, from start to finish.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use.  This explains the “Why” behind Part 6.

More to come….