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What else can you do about comment spam?

I can quite honestly tell you I don’t know where all this comment spam is coming from. Quite honestly, it’s like trying to find the best acne treatment.

I’ve read that the best way to fight spam is to install a combination of Wordpress plugins - Akismet, Spam Karma, and Bad Behavior. If you want to have an additional filtering layer, put your comments on moderation.

Okay, I’m doing all of the above and yet.

Do you have a branding strategy?

Let’s face it, more and more people are taking the leap into the online business arena. What this means for us, the small home business, is that there’s more competition to contend with, and it’s only going to get fiercer.

Hence, the urgency to stay ahead if we want to be the first ones to reach the customer and grab their business before someone else does. So just how do we stand out in that jungle of competing businesses out there?

Obviously there’s a fair bit of work involved behind the scenes in making our businesses stick in people’s minds. We could save a few bucks and try to do it ourselves by trial and error.

Or we could hire a Marketing Company like Brand Identity Guru to help you work out an effective branding strategy. Well, at least they know what they’re doing, which is more than what some of us can claim. They’ve worked with other, bigger companies and helped them establish their branding strategies.

Brand Identity Guru gives you access to the right kinds of tools to work with and it really doesn’t cost that much considering you’re going to end up with a successful branding solution.

Getting around to the stuff on the backburner

The weather’s warming up for many of you and soon it’ll be time to go offline - for a bit, at least. Get out, spend some quality vacation time with your loved ones, …

It’s also a good time to finally get to the things you’ve been tossing to the backburner. Like putting a new business in place, focusing on parts of your business that you’ve been neglecting, or putting those weight loss pills on hold for a while and try exercising and watching your diet instead.

Being such busy bees, we’re all guilty of procrastinating on things like business networking which sounds so easy yet takes a conscious effort. So while you’re offline this summer, think about working some of these things into what you’re doing.

It’s Mother’s Day, I’ll rant if I want to

The weather’s been so hot and humid lately, it’s seriously beginning to affect my productivity. I get drowsy in the afternoons and I spend entirely too much time sipping iced tea.

Before you question if I’ve heard of air-conditioning, the answer is yes but in my humble efforts at cost-cutting, I will only resort to it when conditions become somewhat unbearable .

It would be nice if I owned a piece of Winter Park real estate where this would quickly become a non-issue. Then maybe I’ll be complaining that the cold makes it hard to drag myself out of bed in the mornings to get to work on my business.

Hey, it’s Mother’s Day, I’ll rant if I want to .

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mommies out there who work so hard at managing family, kids and home business! Cheers!

Convenience with an online savings account

One of the first things you must do if you’re just starting out in your home business is to open an online Savings Account.

I was a little hesitant myself at first but the more I thought about it, the less I relished the idea of running back and forth to the bank. I’m busy enough as it is.

The thing about an online account with Wamu.com, for instance, is that it’s free and you get free electronic statements as well. In fact, there’s no monthly service charge either if you link your online savings account with your checking account.

There’s also an online overdraft transfer service that you can use to transfer funds between your savings and checking accounts to avoid overdrafts and bounced checks, etc.

You can also easily transfer your funds for ATM withdrawal purposes. I think convenience is definitely a plus point here as some of these features are not offered by other banking facilities.

Many home business owners wear multiple hats, and quite often, we’ll need more than 24 hours a day to accomplish everything we have on our plates. So it’s wise to choose services that can help you save time, money and inconvenience.

Plan ahead for high volume sales days

Today is Mother’s Day and I notice that some stores at the mall seem unable to cope with the demand. There are long lines at checkout, gift-wrapping counters, restaurants and I’m pretty sure some gift items are out of stock.

Mother’s Day is an annual event like Valentine’s and Christmas. A great opportunity to rake in sales. If you want to maximize your sales, you have to plan ahead of time.

Don’t leave it till the sales come pouring in, only to discover you can’t cope with the volume, or worse still, you have to turn customers away. You’ll be losing sales and customers for nothing. Remember people have long memories about bad customer service, so planning is key.

Get some entertainment, learn something new

I confess I don’t spend enough time watching Reality TV Shows. Actually they’re not only a great form of entertainment to take your mind off business for a bit, they’re also a great source of ideas.

Yes, you can actually get new ideas for your business, generate new blogging ideas. I believe there’s always something you can learn something from looking outside your business, even from entertainment.

RealityBug.com has lots of reality shows you can choose from. I definitely need to get offline a little more and I wouldn’t mind it as much if I could it and still gain some useful insights I could possibly apply to business.

Why have your own domain?

If you’re running a business blog on a free blogging platform such as Blogger or Wordpress.com, it’s probably time to think about buying your own domain and getting your own hosting.

Why your own domain?

Because it shows you’re serious enough about your business. Besides, the cost of a domain is pretty affordable these days, and you can host several domains on one hosting account.

Save on international calls

If you’re someone who makes phone calls or travel frequently in your business, overseas calls can get pretty expensive.

But there are many ways you can save on your phone bills and one of them is by using international calling cards. They’re also very convenient to carry around and probably cost less than if you were to use your cell phone.

GetMeCallingCards.com has tons of phone cards, from prepaid cards to rechargeable pinless cards, that you can use to place calls from the US to 153 countries and counting.

Anything that says great quality at low rates with promotional discounts thrown in sounds good to me. Go check them out for yourself.

A great little powerhouse of tools

As many of you know, I use an iPAQ and although I didn’t start out very fond of it because I actually wanted a phone, not a pocket PC, it’s worked out surprisingly well for me.

First off, it’s multi-functional (unlike a regular cell phone) and it does a ton more stuff on the go. It’s a great place to quickly jot down blogging ideas that strike me at the strangest times and places, snap a few pictures, track my appointments, set up my alarms and go online which is something I don’t do very often though. Nice.