Bubblews

If you're into the online writing scene, you may have heard about Bubblews. I'm certainly no expert on making gazillions of dollars, but what I have noticed about Bubblews is that it's certainly easy to write posts on there. If you have been posting all kinds of random thoughts on facebook, why not post on Bubblews instead and earn some cash? I have started doing that and with ten posts, have earned almost $5.00.

Clear Bubbles in Descending Size Risi...

Considering the posts must be only 400 characters (not words) each, it seems simple enough. And if you want your facebook friends to see your posts, you have only to post the link, and most will follow. You will get paid per view, and if they sign up to comment, you will get paid for comments, too!

As with every site, make sure to read and thoroughly understand the rules of the site, including how you get paid. Post only content (including images!) you have created yourself or have written permission to post. Bubblews has rules that are unique to that site, so read carefully, or you won't get paid, and you certainly won't get any sympathy from me!

Details, Details, Details

So, last month, I decided I needed some mobile apps. I then thought if I needed them, other people would, too, so I formed a company to develop and market them. I hired the best developer I could find, who has worked as a trainer for developers for Google, Apple and Intuit, among others, and put him to work. Little did I know how complex all this would be.

We started with development for iPhone and iPad, and Apple has this huge list of requirements, from a dozen icon app sizes to how you specify your legal entity and your banking information, to how your app is described in the App store, to which graphics you are allowed to use. This is in addition to the business plan, setting up a YouTube brand channel, a Google+ profile, and whatever else I have already done that I forgot about.

I also had a meeting with my business consultant, Sean Duncan, who confirmed that I was on the right track, and made sure I had addressed several possibilities that business owners often overlook. (Fortunately I attended one of his seminars years back, and remembered to write down almost every word.)

"And I'm sure no one will mind if we ... Kim Warp

I have been recruiting people who would actually use our apps to film commercials for our first product, and getting into the whole management mindset. Since my own management style is extremely hands-off, I have had to ask a ton of questions of my developer about what I need to do to keep him at his best, and it's been a real eye-opener.

And last but not least, I have been networking, networking, networking! I've been out there promoting my new company tirelessly. Fortunately, I have had a fantastic response from everyone I have talked with, so with a little luck and a whole lot more hard work, I hope to be actually selling my first app next month.

The takeaway: It's a whole heck of a lot harder and much more involved than you think it is going to be.

Look What Followed Me Home!

Okay, not really.

I flew halfway across the country just about a month ago to attend a seminar and bounce an idea off a friend of mine. I came home with a tech company as a souvenir. No kidding.

I had had ideas for software for a long time, and with the gift of an iPad from a longtime friend, I thought that these ideas would make great mobile applications, too. So I started my new company, Upstart Technology, with what amounted to the change in my couch cushions. That is, $16 for a DBA, $5 to open a business savings account at the Credit Union, and $10 each for a couple of domain names. $41 in total. I hired the same friend who gave me the iPad to write the programs for a share of the profits.

Unfortunately, starting a business isn't all like this . . .

Woman with champagne in her 'in' box,... Richard Cline

Starting up a business correctly is far more work than anyone realizes, except the people who have correctly started businesses before. Business plans, trademarks, patents, business structures, contracts, and many, many other decisions have to be made before you ever see your first dollar of return. I've been working on this about thirty hours per week, in addition to running my three part-time businesses, and so I've not had that much time (or news) to post until now.

One of the best decisions I've made so far is to split my company into divisions. I got this idea after watching many, many episodes of Shark Tank, which is a real business education in itself. (Entrepreneurs are too emotionally invested in their companies; they don't have business plans to allow for growth; they don't want to give up enough control to the investors--because, after all, you want the investors to have a large enough stake in the company that they care about the company's success; they don't have a clear idea of where their business is going; they can't clearly explain their product; and many more errors.)

The reason for splitting the company into divisions is clear. By having separate divisions, if someday I decide to divest that part of the company, it's easy to specify what is for sale. If I want investors for just one division, again, I can simply specify that division. I can keep our products separate so it doesn't just look like a disorganized mishmash of stuff, and we can have separate logos for each division, which means that our promotional products can be specialized easily and promote each division, rather than trying to find that one promotional product that somehow symbolizes a company with diverse products. And finally, it's easier to see which division is making the most profit, so that I can continue to invest my time, money, and energy most profitably.

Watch here for further updates!

Squidoo Redux

If there's one thing I hate, it's having to do work over and over again.

And in the case of Squidoo, I've just about reached my limit.



First, they locked lenses without warning, and donated all unpaid proceeds to charity (so they say, but we'll take them at their word). There was no indication of what was wrong, so I put the locked lens on the back burner until I heard what the problem was. Unfortunately, some time later, when I logged into my account, *poof* the lens was deleted, without warning.

As my lenses get locked, which I am sure they will be, I am moving them elsewhere. Squidoo was fun, and I liked the platform, but I am not willing to lose work if I happen to go on vacation or have a crisis to deal with. Some of those posts will be moved here, some elsewhere . . . but I can no longer recommend Squidoo as a place to write.

If you have a locked lens, be sure to edit it and post it elsewhere immediately, before your lens disappears!

Xomba Redux

Xomba has once again reinvented itself, this time following the lead of HubPages and moving everything over to subdomains. Good news, you can once again backlink to your own work. In addition, Xomba has new formats, including lists, which may be useful for a lot of internet writers.

While I haven't had a chance to check out all of Xomba's features (to be honest, I'm still reposting old eHow articles!), I expect that the new freedom in subdomains will allow writers to be able to earn even more from their work. I'll be back with more after all the old eHow articles are reposted!

Creating Time

We've all heard it: "You have only twenty-four hours in a day." And that's true--up to a point. However, that's not the last of it. The decisions you make about how you use your time affect how much free time you have.

For example, I usually spend about a half-hour a day cleaning my apartment, and that doesn't really keep up with it. I made two decisions about my cleaning that I am completely happy with. First, I invested in a Roomba. It takes me four minutes a day to clean my Roomba, and my floors are sparkling clean and vacuumed daily. For an investment of about $179 (plus tax, minus the 20% off coupon I had), I can eliminate 20 minutes per week of vacuuming and part of the dusting, and get a much better job on my floors (if you're wondering, the Roomba really does a great job, and really picks up that much stuff every day!). In fact, I am spending about 8 minutes more a week to go from a once-weekly vacuuming to a daily vacuuming, thus saving myself about 120 minutes a week in the transition. That's two hours a week to do something I like better than vacuuming, and I still get all the benefits of daily vacuuming!

The second decision I made was to hire someone to clean. Many people, including my parents, see this as an extravagance. I see it as time created. It takes me about 4 hours a week to clean, and I'm not spectacular at it. But in half an hour, I can make enough to hire someone to come in once a week to clean for four hours. Even if I spend half an hour supervising her, that gives me 3 hours a week to invest in writing more articles, or creating more backlinks, or designing more Zazzle products. And rather than interrupting my schedule with random cleaning bursts here and there, I start each Monday afternoon with a sparkling clean house!



In the same vein, I pulled out my slow cooker to cook, rather than cook on the stove for each meal. Four minutes' worth of attention, and in three to four hours, lunch or dinner is ready, and I have leftovers for when I'm pressed for time. (As a matter of fact, I have to drive about an hour and a half a week, and I'm considering a 12-volt accessory to use in my car to put that time to better use . . . but which one?)

So if you need more time for writing, or anything else, the best way to find that time is to isolate the least productive thing you do. In my case, it was cleaning. A year ago, the way my furniture was arranged, it was unproductive. An interior designer put it right in about three hours, and ever since then, I've been much more organized, and there's no telling how much time I've saved in the past year!) Then figure out an efficient way to outsource that task; barter for it if you can't afford upfront payments (even a three- or four-way barter, or some sort of time bank). By eliminating the most unproductive parts of your routine in outsourcing them to someone who either does it better and faster, so that you save money in the long run, or to someone whose time is less valuable than yours, you can get what amounts to more than twenty-four hours in a day!

Whew! Scrubbing the Internet is Hard Work!

I have just started republishing my deleted eHow articles, only to find that some of my best earners were copied all over the internet, by places that should have known better. It took me several rounds of emails to get the duplicated content deleted from Yahoo!, but iVillage and others responded quite quickly. What I want to do is compliment HubPages on their site, as to how I learned from this experience. I copied my article from its cache on the Internet Wayback Machine and published the article (along with some great photos from art.com). Almost immediately it was marked as a duplicate. I sent an email showing them the cached page and that I was the original author, and they responded by immediately overriding the duplicate flag within minutes.

So I am impressed with the HubPages team for, first, alerting me that my content had been duplicated, and sending me at least one link to the duplicated content; and second, for reinstating my hub within minutes of the proof that I was the original author. And thank you to the sites that took down my duplicated content (including a lot of sites that should have known better). And boo to the sites that refuse to take it down, or have no way to contact them to ask that they take it down.

The fact is, it's almost impossible to enforce copyright on the Internet. But by posting it on a highly-trafficked site like HubPages, Squidoo, InfoBarrel, or another article site, it's quite possible that you will eventually outrank your duplicated content with your republished original content.

I'm off next to Google to ask them to de-index the offending sites until the duplicate content is removed.

Update: I'm lazy, so here's my way to combat the thieves.