theWAHMmagazine: From the Editor’s Desk

BIZKIDZ.com is an amazing Website, resource and tool for teaching kids aged 7 to 15 about entrepreneurship in a fun and creative way — and probably way more fun than helping their entrepreneurial work-at-home parent sort papers, file or run errands. In fact, the site looks like so much fun that I’m wishing that my little guy were a few years older and could beta test it. And even though he thinks he’s five (or wishes he were), he’s only almost three, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to give it a real test run. But that’s where you come in.

BIZKIDZ.com needs real, live beta testers to help them get a sense of how well it works, how much fun it is and any feedback that you (and your kids) can provide. The best things are that:

1) your kids will learn the value of entreprenuership and running a business (one that’s meaningful to them); and

2) they’ll get to earn their own money as well. (Yes…their own money.)

3) as a beta-tester/early adopter, you get to be involved in one wicked cool project.

Today, the first two points could not be more important, as we face a global economic downturn. Recently on Entrepremusings, Marie decried all of us (the nation, the markets, the lenders, consumers and parents) for dropping the ball on adequately teaching about money; and she had a great point. How many of us have whipped out the plastic (in the presence of our kids) or shopped online (to use very basic, mundane examples) without explaining where the money goes or for that matter, where it came from? For those of us who do work from home, how often have we explained that what we do is the very thing that puts food on the table, gas in the car, clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads, and eventually, may even be the thing that helps send them college or trade school outside of academic performance?  For that matter, how many of our parents/guardians explained in very real, concrete ways those things to us?

Don’t get me wrong folks, I’m not laying blame squarely on parents…but we are part of the teaching/learning process about money and finances. Which brings me right back to BIZKIDZ.com … a cool environment to teach kids about finances, business and entrepreneurship in a way that’s fun and meaningful to them.  And just so that you know that it wasn’t created in some board room by a bunch of corporate fat cats, its founding team are three parents — Linda and Ken Raasch and Marty Fahncke.  Linda, (the Chief of Biz), is a mom (maybe a lot like you) who wanted “to teach her four children about financial responsibility.  She wanted them to understand the value of a dollar and the hard work required to earn it.”¹  So, give BIZKIDZ.com a whirl … become a beta tester, and help the team not only make BIZKIDZ the next big thing that kids and parents are talking about, but make a world of difference for how our kids approach business and money. Start ‘em young!

Source:
1. Direct quote from the About page.

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With last week’s discussions of the Federal government providing a $700 billion bailout and Congress approving it just this weekend, many consumers are wondering “What about us?” It is a sign of difficult economic times, even if nobody is officially using the “R” word. There is also no doubt, that even if you work from home, you are feeling the burdon of the economy…at the market, when you fill up your vehicles, and even if you try to limit your spending, you find that prices are higher because things like the cost of oil are being passed on to the consumer.  You may have even found yourself hit by having to decide between a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas.

But what if there’s a really big emergency?

The question, is what is one to do, when confronted with one? There are companies that offer short-term, personal loans in amounts from $250 to $2,500 for such emergencies like when the bills have to be paid or to avoid a bounced check. Think Cash Loans is one such company that provides a matching service between lenders and borrowers with online loans. One of their benefits can be lower interest rates and often a shorter time-frame for approval than other lending options. These kinds of loans also offer a variety of repayment plans — by installment or at once, without penalties; a factor that many claim can be a better option than “payday loans,” which typically lend based on one’s salary and next anticipated paycheck(s). Short-term personal loan companies such as Think Cash Loans ask for some basic personal information and pass that information on to third-party lenders who will provide offers based on the amount requested and credit history. This should not deter people with lower or no credit histories, however, it does mean that their interest rates may be higher than those with higher credit histories. Also unlike payday loans, the interest rates are often as much as 75% lower than those from payday loan companies. Approval may also be faster, as quickly as the next business day, and the entire set of transactions can be done online and without having to fax or send a lot of additional paperwork.

While this option may seem for many, to be an appealing way to increase cash flow, especially in troubling economic times, one still must be careful and do their homework thoroughly before making any financial decisions.

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For start-ups, small-, and home-based business professionals. marketing your business, products or services can become time consuming and an expensive part of the cost of doing business. There is no way around effective marketing because, you have to get the message out there to potential clients and customers about who you are and what you do.  There are a myriad of ways to market your small business, from having a great Web site, to submitting free press releases, writing articles, and using social media and blogging about your business. But there are still some old, tried and true methods for promoting and markeing your small business that prevail and are still effective—business cards and brochures.

There are three ways to acquire these: do-it-yourself and risk not looking as serious about business as you could, using an expensive print shop, or using some of the more affordable on-line print shops available. When it comes to having a profesisnoal edge and getting a good return on your investment for your small business printing PSPrint is among the best options available. PSPrint is a full-service print-shop with an on-line interface. The company offers the usual suspetcts of marketing and promotional materials: business cards, brochures, postcards, calendars, stickers and vinyl stickers, and as you make your selection, you get a direct quote before you reach the shopping cart. One of my favorite features is that you can choose standard paper stock or for a slightly higher cost, the more eco-friendly recycled paper stock, which is perfect for start-ups and SOHOs that are going green. There are many other products and features available for any sized budget and perfect for the entrepreneurs out there with start-ups, small-and home-based businesses.

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As large as the work-at-home industry is as a whole, groups of WAHMs, locally or across the Internet, form tight-knit groups. With so many diverse professions falling under the WAHM umbrella, this results in great networking opportunities.

Even more important, it creates great social bonds. I could say this about many industries I’ve worked in, but rarely have I witnessed so many people step up to help a friend and business associate in need than during the fundraising efforts for Support a Miracle.

Simon Gabriel was born July 28, 2008 at 24 weeks in gestation. His weight at birth was 1 pound 7 ounces and he was 12 inches long. He is a tiny, living miracle.

He is fortunate to be in one of the top NICU facilities in the country, located in Denver. Unfortunately, the hospital is approximately 4 hour round-trip from his family’s Wyoming home.

His mother, Mysti, a talented freelance writer, graphic designer, Web designer and, most recently, seamstress, wants desperately to temporarily relocate herself and her family, including Simon’s brother, four-year-old Jaden, and his father Rob to Denver for the rest of Simon’s stay in the hospital.

The cost of temporarily relocating Simon’s family totals $6,000. To date, more than $1,000 has been raised toward that goal. To help these efforts, a group of freelance writers and other WAHMs and WAHDs have launched an auction.

theWAHMmagazine is proud and honored to be a contributor to this cause. A package of theWAHMmagazine merchandise, along with an autographed, advance copy of the hard cover book The Right Words for Any Occasion by TWM Editor-in-Chief Erika-Marie Geiss, is up for auction now.
The package includes a mousepad with the distinctive TWM logo, reminding WAHMs of the importance of Work, Home, Family, an 11 oz. TWM mug, and the book. The auction winner will also receive a free one-year subscription to theWAHMmagazine.

This package is the perfect gift for the WAHM on your holiday list, or a great reward to give yourself after you’ve finished that large project!

There are also many other great gifts, products and services for freelance writers and other professionals available now, and the auction staff will be adding more prizes in the future, so check back to Simon’s Auctions: Support a Miracle frequently throughout the month of September.

The auction is located at: http://simonsauctions.wordpress.com/

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Editor’s Confessional

Usually, the “what do you do?” question sends waves of anxiety through me — especially when I’m around businesspeople who work traditional jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do as a writer and editor. In fact, in most cases, the conversational exchange often goes well until the follow-up question: “oh, who do you write/edit for?” The responses and reactions to  the follow-up answer, “I work from home,” vary widely, and more often than not, interest wanes with it. But yesterday, at an event that I attended with my husband with some incredibly important people, I was asked by a large company’s CEO, “do you work out of the home? I nearly fainted. Okay, not really, but the question put me at ease, off guard, and I was delighted. The assumption with the question posed was that working out of the home or working from home are equally viable options—a major coropration’s CEO getting and embracing the changing nature of work and the work place. In the nutshell, it was kind of cool…and more people (others in his position) and everyone else, should follow his lead.

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We all get inundated with spam…daily, if not several times a day. Usually, our spam filters catch them, sending those offers to enlarge your member (hello, I’m a woman), the executor of the estate from your long-lost deceased Nigerian uncle (who knew?) offering you a small fortune, and indicators that you have one the lottery among other bogus offers and rediculous claims straight to the spam/bulk mail box. With a simple “click,” you can make them disappear. But let’s face it, you have to look, because sometimes e-mail that you actually want gets in there, and sometimes the spam makes it past the automatic anti spam e-mail filters and end up in your inbox anyway. It’s annoying to say the least. So wouldn’t it be nice if there were a company, a service—something—to put the brakes on spam even further?

In theory, there is. In practice, I’m not so sure. Perimetic is a new company that seems to be using Barracuda Technologies to bring super anti spam protection to the small business owner and individual client. Barracuda has already made strides in offering anti spam hardware to large companies with big budgets, so the idea of being able to have a similar level of protection available to us little guys and gals is promissing. After all, why should we be relegated to all of the muck that can come from anyone with an e-mail address just because we don’t have super huge budgets? Unfortunately, Perimetec’s site is down, so I cannot give an entirely objective opinion about them or their anti spam filtering, web security services or e-mail protection. You can rest assured though, that once their site’s back up and running, I’ll be updating this post. My fingers are crossed and breath is baited.

UPDATE:

Perimetec’s site is back up and running, and as promised, I’ve checked them out. Their offerings for anti spam filtering, web security services and e-mail protection do indeed seem promising. Several well-recognized, trusted and highly respected companies and institutions are listed among their clients, which should give potential new clients a sense of confidence in their capabilities. Their anti spam filtering, web security services and e-mail protection services seem to be cost effective for any budget. According to the information on their very clear and well organized site, information transmitted is handled through their servers, catching and filtering spam before it reaches your mailbox. There are three levels of messages: spam (which is not sent to you); suspect messages (which are quarrantined for your approval); and legitmate messages (which are sent to you). Users can access the messages marked as suspect and decide on their actual status. One of my favorite features of the site is their spam-cost calculator, which based upon the number of mailboxes you or your company uses, average number of daily spam messages received, and average earnings of each person receiving spam, calucates the lost productivity in terms of dollars and cents. I also like the 30-day free trial option that is offered. Perimetec also provides white papers and spec sheets on their products and services to help potential customers make an informed decision. This Canadian company may indeed be the breakthrough needed to nip spam in the bud, declutter our inboxes and help keep us from wasting valuable time.

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When the New York Times placed its piece on the 1,000+ attendees at this year’s BlogHer conference in San Francisco, in the Style section, it got some attention. Amber Naslund, who writes the The Brand Box, thought that the Times’ “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling” article was misplaced. So did many others, as evidenced by the comments that followed Amber’s original post, New York Times Creates a Fashion Faux Pas about BlogHer, which included the letter to the editor sent to Times.

In most cases, a letter to the editor would either get published or not by a paper. Those that do are often edited for length, or content that would be hateful or demeaning to others or uses profanity. Amber’s letter, however received a different kind of response — a call from the Times. “Oh cool!” You’re thinking. “That’s big.” It would be if it weren’t for the fact that the call consisted of asking Amber to, in no other terms, revise and resubmit the letter to the editor. For those reading this who are freelance writers, you probably have received the old “revise and resubmit” from an editor or two. I’ve even handed them out myself, but only in the case when a writer is pitching a piece that has legs, but needs … something … more. Amber wasn’t pitching an article for consideration. She was sounding off as a reader in the traditional way that readers have been allowed to give their input on stories in printed media.

For an editor at the Times (or anywhere else for that matter) to request a revision to a letter to the editor (not an Op Ed, mind you), is overstepping. This is a cautionary tale for current and aspiring writers, because, there are many people, who, upon being contacted by a representative of the Ivory Tower, would have been so excited that they perhaps might have altered the letter to the editor to appease the great machine.

Sadly, the Times’ placement of the story and focusing on fashion, restrooms and lactation areas is yet another example of mainstream media not being willing to fully embrace the stronghold that women bloggers have. I’ve discussed this before here, in my condemnation of the Today Show’s  commentary about mom bloggers.  There too, placent was an issue, because the segment on the power of mom bloggers was during the “softer” segment with Hoda Kotbe and Kathy Lee Gifford. I am not alone in my thinking, as noted women bloggers Connie Reece, B.L. Ochman and others have asserted that this kind of mindset is an unfortunate (and misguided) trend that serves to undermine any real work that these women bloggers may be doing, whether it’s the creation of a strong and powerful network (as BlogHer has) or having something to say more relevant than about cute kiddie moments, poopy diapers and ersasatz husbands. (Not that blogging about those things can’t be therapeutic or don’t have power in their ability to offer a sense of “thank God I’m not alone” for others.)

What does this have to do with being a WAHM? First, let’s face it, many of us WAHMs are bloggers (whether professionally or for our own personal journaling satisfaction). Many of the women at Blogher ‘08 are WAHMs. Many of us (WAHMs) are also writers, and most of us, have at some point considered penning a letter to the editor. So the editor’s response to Amber’s letter is one that any of us could have received, and been duped by the power of the establishment to bend to their whim.  Second, Mack Collier also makes an interesting point that while the Times may have reached out to Amber, they missed the point and showed how they (and other mainstream media outlets) are out of touch with bloggers. I offer that they are also out of touch with their female audience. Blogging women are still being considered stylish, fashionable, soft — almost a novelty, and one that like fashion, mainstream media seems to believe is a fleeting phenomenon. (Newsflash…it’s not.) Perhaps the Times figured that more women readers would see the article by placing it in the Style section. But if that’s the case, what does that say about how the Times views its female readership? Are we not reading the Technology or Business sections and only reading page six and the Style and Arts sections? This kind of thinking is inherently disrespectful of our intelligence and abilities as women to play equally in the tech/communications game or have interests beyond the mommy-war-du-jour and the latest handbags, shoes and what’s hot for fall.

I wonder what the women at Blogher and noted feminist publications such as Bitch Magazine, WOW-Women on Writing and Ms. magazine would think, espeically since both the editor and the author of the piece are also women.

Sorry, New York Times, you have a misconnection. Please check the number and redial.

What are your thoughts?

Erika-Marie S. Geiss
Editor-in-Chief
theWAHMmagazine

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Thinking outside the box

In many ways, the WAHM (and WAHD) acronyms have us boxed in — pigeonholed as being involved in sales, home parties, crafts and MLM.  Still, even worse, when they see the term “WAHD,” thoughts are often of a guy who has feminized, rather than is a feminist, and is interested in capturing a different and more-balanced work-life/family-life experienece than his own father had or created. Even with the multitude of writers, designers, Web professionals and Virtual Assistants out there it is still rare for people to think of the vast array of professions represented by the work-at-home community. But the work-at-home world is much larger than any of the positions already mentioned (and way more than what the scammers try to offer). Whether or not one subscribes to the acronyms that describe the various states of being a working parent (WAHMs, WAHDs, SAHMs, WOHMs and so on), there is an underlying question of: “Who is a work-at-home parent?” Continue Reading »

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I’m kicking off this week with a little modified version of link love, to thank those who’ve mentioned theWAHMmagazine or linked to us this past week.

In full disclosure, in some cases, we asked to be included, in others, the writers were kind enough to mention theWAHMmagazine without any prompting from us. In either case, I can’t thank them enough.

The goal is to make this a regular feature here at From the Editor’s Desk, the companion blog to theWAHMmagazine. So if you’re reading this and have mentioned theWAHMmagzine, and Google alerts or pingbacks/trackbacks didn’t catch it, don’t hesitate to let us know (by commenting) so that we can return the love. And hey, even if you’ve given us something less than love, don’t hesitate to let us know too (by commenting) so that we can respond and still give you your props for opining live and direct on the Web. And if I missed anyone, please let me know so that I can add you.  If you’re wondering what to do if you’ve blogged about us before this new series, still let us know, so that I can do a pre-series recap “down the Pike a bit” as we say back in Boston. (Don’t want to leave anyone out, because, well…that just wouldn’t be fair now would it?) Continue Reading »

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If you are already a business-owning WAHM, we might be preaching to the choir, but if you’re considering becoming a homebased business owner this information may be just what you need to validate your decisions, encourage your project, educate you about some of the pros and empower you to  get started. If you’re a hombased business-owning WAHM and are having one of those “moments” when you wonder if you’ve lost your mind, then it just might also help reaffirm all of the reasons why you have chosen the lifestyle that you have chosen. (Sometimes we all need a little reminder of the goals that we set or maybe its time to readjust those goals because you’re in a growth period or are ready for one.) Whatever the reason, or stage in your homebased business, we hope that you enjoy  “Why more women are choosing to start