Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Category: stay at home dad (Page 4 of 11)

Stay at home dad stuff, domestic tasks

4 year olds fishing for 8 month olds

May 27, 2014 / / 2 Comments

I had somewhat of a horror movie moment the other day.  I took my 4 year old and the baby to the Wal Mart to get the essentials, you know diapers, milk, screws etc.  I am, if you haven’t read about it by now, somewhat of a fishing nut.  I always want to go fishing, even if I don’t get the chance.  So when at Wal Mart, I cant help but walk through the sporting goods section.

It was there that trouble shocked my brain.  Now, Amelia, my 4 year old decided to break her foot last weekend so she had to ride in the cart while Tristan, the baby rode in his car seat in the upper deck of the cart.  Amelia started talking about how she wanted to go fishing with her pink fishing pole and how she was going to catch a big fish with Daddy.  I was so proud.  Up until now we give her a bit of line tied to a butterfly plug that she could thrash around with.

I started thinking, her birthday is in 2 months, she will be 5 and she could go fishing for real….hmmm.  Let’s get her a tackle box and some hooks and we can go to town.  It was at that point she piped up and said how much fun it would be if she could fish with Tristan.  I said OK, and then she said she wanted to teach him how to cast.  All I could think of then was her tossing back a real live hook and catching the baby.  More than once.  My daydream vision had multiple hooks in his body and Amelia tossing him into the lake, car seat and all.

Maybe she isn’t ready for a set of real hooks all to herself.  I think we can wait another year to jump off of that bridge.  I still bought her a pink tackle box and some pink power bait to go in it.  We are still going fishing.

Thoughts?  Questions? Criticism? Misguided attempts at humor?  The comment section is waiting for your fingers to fill it with wisdom.

Have a great weekend.

Justin

PS- any ideas for podcasts let me know!  I want to talk about what you want to talk about!

Can MY blog make money too?

May 27, 2014 / / 17 Comments

I have been thinking a lot about money lately. How to monetize my blog so I can stay home and have enough cash to finish my degree. I am still trying to figure out exactly what to do to make this happen. There are so many different opinions about it. Where do we start?

Of course there are affiliate programs and Google AdSense. I have a few of these but I don’t think they do much good right now. I need more traffic to make them a viable source of income. I also have Kontera and Chitika on my site. I have used sponsored tweets as well. As of today, I have earned a grand total of $.85. I should be excited that I have made any money at all online but it is not enough to be successful.

The good news: I don’t care right now. My blog is still in its infancy and just getting started. I had the most visitors to date yesterday and I am very excited. I have topped 1300 visitors and can count on a few visits every day even before I get something posted. Thanks for that. I amnot keeping hard and fast to the three month mark that seems to be when people give up. I started mid December of 2009 but didn’t start pushing it until January. I consider my blog to be a month and a half old right now. I figure by april I should be cruising along quite well. My exposure has been more than I ever expected to this point. My Alexa raking is rising, and while I am not fixated on this number I do want it to go up and not down.

I know some other bloggers who are working on the monetizing thing too. James over at TheInfoPreneur has a ton of great stuff and is now working on compiling some of it for sale.  His experience has got me thinking about my site as well.  James is a wealth of information on how to blog and how to be a better person.  He posts tons of content and his site has skyrocketed since he started it.  He has been a major inspiration for me (no he is NOT paying me to say this.  Yet. 😉 ) and getting my blog going.

Now, I am basically a cheapskate.  I don’t have money to throw around at the latest make money online scheme.  Kidney transplants and dialysis is expensive, even with insurance.  So, being a cheapskate, I am extremely picky with what I buy.  Like with James, is there stuff I would buy from him?  Yes.  Will I actually buy stuff from him?  At this point I honestly don’t know.  If I was making money myself would I? Yes, most definitely.

This brings up another question.  How do I go about monetizing without driving people away.  I know this is the same struggle that many bloggers get to.  I know that it takes selling your own products to make a bunch of cash.  I have seen several places that will give you exclusive resell rights to certain products.  Can I sell other people’s stuff like this and keep the cash?  Sure.  Do I want to?  I am very lukewarm on the idea.  I don’t want to be another one of “those” type blogs.  Many of these give you “300 products you can resell” for like $15.  How do they make any money for these products?  Sure they get the $15 but why are their products so cheap?  Are they outdated? Are they just rehashes from other sites?  Are they plagiarized from other sites?  Too many questions.  I may put some ebooks up for sale in the future and some affiliate programs but not right now.

The next thing I am trying to figure out is what do I have to offer that would be either of use, or entertaining enough to entice fellow cheapskates to part with their money.  My wife and I have a business that we have been working on selling handmade quilts, table runners and some other crafts at Brenda’s Quilt Shop.com.  It has been doing ok in the real world, selling several to friends, neighbors and associates.  We have even sold several things on eBay, but we barely broke even with eBay and PayPal fees and postage.  I am still going to use eBay over the holidays to sell our stuff but I want to sell with the website as well.  On this website I want to focus on selling my writing.

Now, what can I sell of my writing?  I am not an authority on WordPress like Dave Doolin, or on blogging or on content production.  Anything I wrote on the “how to” front would be rehashes from other places.  Is there a market for fiction?  I am going to make an ebook of my Saturday fiction serials when they are finished.  They will be free for a while at least but would anyone want to spend money on them later?  Maybe send them out for free to email subscribers and beg for reviews before selling it.  I have other short stories that I am going to run on Saturday’s as well.  I am looking at revising some of my old stories that I just love so maybe they can stand on their own as an ebook.

I can write ebooks on simple car repair and maintenence, but that is not something I talk about in more than passing on this site.  I can write about kidney failure and taking a 1 year old through 2 years of dialysis and a kidney transplant.  I have written tons of blog posts on that as we were going through it while not calling it an actual blog.  www.carepages.com page: ameliarosematthews.  Would that sell?  Maybe.  I have seen several things about self publishing on Amazon for both Kindle and .pdf ebooks.  That is always in the back of my head.

I just wonder if anyone would buy anything that I can put out like that.  Or is my ego just not big enough yet to say screw it and just do it.  I figure I have until April and the 3 month wannabe blog hurdle crossed before I have to actually decide and just do it.

For now, I will just write and write and hope like hell people come to read!  Don’t forget to check out my Pre-Writing Challenge page that will start on Friday the 19th!  That will be more writing!  I am also going to work on some guest posts for other sites.  All of these things have to be good somewhere right?

Until tomorrow, I have some thinking to do.

Thanks for being here with me.

Justin

Should I sleep or Write more?!?!

May 27, 2014 / / 6 Comments

The time for bed approaches and I am trying to decide if I should give up and go to bed or keep writing posts! My body says tired, my mind says tired, the energy drink I had a while ago says Write you lazy bastard!  So I write.

Lately I have been working on organizing my day to get everything done that I need to.  I have discovered that I can’t just go all out and hope to get my blog maintained, posts written, house cleaned, family taken care of, and the “other” stuff done.

I found myself glued to the computer, reading blogs, trying to figure out where I am going to be able to open my rss reader, and all of a sudden it was time to get the kids from school and get dinner started.  Oh crap the laundry hasn’t made it downstairs yet.  Oh crappier, the dishes still have to be done…so that was the smell…did we eat lunch?

Yea, it was getting to be a mess.  I am working through some sort of “getting to writing procrastination” garbage that is not helping.  I am still getting my stuff done, just not how I want to.  I started to divide up the day and use the timer method that many others use.

I even got a special timer to help with this, I will have a review of that later this week.  It’s called the Gymboss, it’s beauty.  Anyway, it seems that the timer method is very much going to help get me organized.  I am splitting time into 2 hour blocks and devoting 30 minutes to each task.  At the end of the 30 mins, I have been just stopping and going to the next task.  It has been great to actually get some things done around the house.

Now I have to get time figured out to add in outdoor stuff.  Spring is coming to Utah and my yard needs some help.  If you know how to get rid of freaking grape hyacinth, let me know.

I think I am getting a good balance figured out.  Writing, emails, reading, commenting, maintenance, housework, outdoor work, writing, and blog posts.  A good way to fill a day.  I also realized that I have got to crank out some more fiction for my Saturday Series.  I have used the only 2 complete short stories that make any sense already.  Time to get writing some new stuff!

So now you all must be asking yourselves, how can I help.  Ok most of you are probably not asking yourself anything but when this post is going to end.  Soon I promise.  Here is how you can help.  Keep reading my humble blog, recommend it to your friends, your enemies, and that guy down the street who may have a use for it.

I am going to be running a poll this week about future posts that you may like to see.  I hope to get some great feedback from that.  I have decided to place the mailing list on pause for a bit, I will still make myself put out the newsletter every month but that will be about it.  Please sign up if you are so inclined, I will start putting up exclusive to the newsletter stuff starting in May.

Now for the big one, Please leave comments with how you organize your time so that you can get everything done that you need to do.  What things do you slack off on?  What do you give up on altogether?  I hope to get some great comments and be able to do a followup with lots of backlinks and credits.  Maybe a prize for the 17th commenter…

Of course if you feel so inclined as to write a ton of stuff and want it included, I am open for guest posts!  All you have to do is email me.

If you are reading this, you are fabulous!

-Justin

PS.  If you are reading this, you are incredibly patient.

PPS. If you are reading this, you are finally at the end!  Go comment and get on with your life!

Running Out of Either Steam or Caffeine

May 27, 2014 / / 8 Comments

Hello and welcome to Thursday!  I have to apologize for yesterday, domestic tasks needed to be taken care of  and the computer was few and far between.  Yet another reason for the pre-writing challenge and having a queue of posts built up.

An update on the challenge:  it has been nearly 1 week since the challenge started and so many of the participants are  producing fantastic blog posts and ideas.  I don’t have any posts written yet but the titles are in my drafts queue and waiting for fabulousness!  I have to let life catch up without losing focus and blowing off the challenge with procrastination.

So I am at the point in my blog where I can see many people giving up.  The novelty of the blog is gone and the work is really beginning.  Posts are still not hard to write, it is harder to get to the writing.  I can produce better content but is it fulfilling a need somewhere or just belching out crap from my brain that no one cares about?

I really feel like my posts are better with some facts and research in them.  I like to brag some about my blog and how it is doing.  Yesterday I did zero promotion on my blog.  Zero and my stat press recorded 48 visitors.  Today as I write this there have already been 12 visitors.  That tells me I have been doing something right.  My Alexa rank has gone from 12,850,206 on Feb1 to 1,149,880 today.  I am not obsessing with Alexa but many places look at it and it is a good universally compared to ranking.  People are looking from all over the world.  Alexa lists the UK, Philippines, and Australia on it’s list.  That is so freaking cool I can hardly contain myself.  I love the internet.  With all of this in mind, I really need to keep up with my posts and comments.

I haven’t been reading and commenting as much as I need to to bring more traffic in.  Like I said the “work” part of this online journey is really beginning.  I have to take a page from my buddy James at the infopreneur, (I talk about him a lot.  He is going to get a big head) and get my stuff in a pile.  That and write and comment!  I am approaching 2000 visitors to my site so I can’t give up now.  I am only 1 month away from the magical 3 and not being one of the statistics.

Yesterday was an interesting introspection for me.  I was catching up on housework and helping the kids with homework when I realized that all of the organization, prioritization, and time management stuff I have been reading and talking about is barely getting incorporated.  I have been doing the stay at home dad thing for quite a while now and I still try to figure out how my Mom always had it together and kept everything clean and running.

I don’t think I am running out of steam on my business, I just need to stoke the fire and get it flowing again!  Therefore, I need more caffeine and less excuses.

If you are reading this, you are awesome.  Pat yourself on the back and then go enjoy the day.

Justin

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