First what is an aardvark anyway? Here is a quick dictionary definition:

aard·vark (ärd‘-värk´), n. A burrowing mammal, Orycteropus afer, of southern Africa, having a stocky, hairy body, large ears, a long tubular snout, and powerful digging claws. [Obsolete Afrikaans, "earth-pig" : aarde, earth, from Dutch, from Middle Dutch aerde + vark, pig, from Middle Dutch varken.]

Now to the point of this post. Aardvark is a search engine.  I suppose it was named after the animal because this search engine lets ask a question and it “diggs” for the answers. It was developed by former workers at Google. And believe it or not Google just brought it! You can read all about the site right here. But come right back I have a few more things to share.

Now, I joined the site. You can also connect with your Facebook or Google profile.  They request that you provide 3 areas of expertise. How cool. I also asked a question about the value of a Eisenhower Proof coin, since I love coins these days.

I am supposed to get  an answer right away. Now, that seems really amazing so I am going to switch over to my email to see if someone has actually answered. Hold on a minute….

There is a note saying that they are looking for someone to provide the answer. Meantime there is real time posting of answers to questions and the specific areas. Wow, this is pretty cool. So, hop on over. This site will also give you great blog food!

Now don’t go to Aardvark.com that is an interesting site in Africa but not the search engine.  This search engine is found on Vark.com

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A very good friend of mine , Toolie,is doing a  FREE webinar on Thursday night. the title is “

Will Using HTML Emails Help or Hurt My Business? Free Webinar Has Answers!

This is what she says:

HTML Emails (e-zines, newsletters, email broadcasts) can be a great way to showcase your business, especially for markets that care about a professional appearance in every aspect of the business. However, having an email template that doesn’t LOOK like YOUR business can be a drawback! With a little HTML and CSS knowledge, you can create an email template that delivers not only your message but also enhances your brand recognition.

She will cover:

On Thursday night February 25th at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern time, she will look at exactly how you “Brand Your Emails with Custom Templates.” She will take you behind the scenes of those pre-fab email templates and show you how you can attach your colors and images so your customer list recognizes YOUR message among all their emails

Sign up here for the FREE webinar

Also:

She will cover the details of her I Can Fix My Own Website, coaching, training and membership program.

Sign up now for the webinar, please tell her that Rosie sent you. Hope to hear you on the call. I promise, really promise you will learn a lot!

And yes, if you are a blogger, the cool stuff you learn will be invaluable!

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A very good boomer buddy asked me this question today, “Rosie, how do I delete my Wordpress.com blog.?” Actually, she stumbled on this site she started a very long time ago and had forgotten all about it. Of course, my desire is for her to try and develop it with the idea behind why she started it in the first place. It can have several good practice points.

But in case there is someone else reading this that has an old Wordpress.com blog hanging out there is cyberspace. This is what you do:

• Sign into your dashbroad
• Click on Settings in the Admin. Panel on the left
• Click on the Delete Blog Option

But just remember, if you keep it you can always make it a private blog shut off from the search engines. You can choose the option to invite folks to view your posts. PLUS this is a good option if you were writing a book or collection of poems not ready for prime time. Think about it.

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How much traffic has your mouse pad seen? The more you blog the more traffic your mouse pad should see. So here is a blog motivation tip. Get seven (7) mouse pads all with different messages and images. Rotate them and stimulate your blogging. So, what do you think?

The mouse pad below is from European photographer Kim Anderson set the world on fire with his timeless and nostalgic photographs of young children in oversized adult clothing. Can you imagine the great traffic you could provide on a mat like this? PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PAD IS STILL IN THE PLASTIC WITH THE COUPON INSIDE! I am posting it for sale on Ebay as soon as I finish this post.

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Have you ever thought about why you blog?

 I blog because I am happy?

I blog because it is fun? I blog to make money?

I blog to escape boredom?

I blog for therapy?

 I blog because I am a boomer and I want to exercise my brain?

Why do you blog?

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This is the final installment of the Top Ten Reasons to Manage Your Own Website and Blog Sites!

Reason 1 – Saving Money on Your Monthly Online Budget

By Toolie

Now we’re down to the number 1 reason to manage your websites and
blogs: money. It’s simply less expensive to learn how to handle most
website and blog tasks than it is to pay someone to do them for you.

The most obvious cost to your business is any ongoing website or blog
maintenance you’re paying to a web designer. I’ve heard from clients
that they’ve spent anywhere from $75 to $600 a month on maintenance.
The difference in pricing is related to the amount of work done in
those contracts.

•  A $75 a month charge included 1 major update a month, in this case,
my speakers association chapter adding their monthly meeting to the
site.
•  The $600/month charge was for website hosting, maintenance, and
keyword optimization; that’s what my dentist pays to maintain his page
1 Google status in his geographic area.
I hope your webmaster costs are either zero or somewhere between those
two numbers!

What other costs might there be? Well, you remember the true story of
my client whose website was shut down by a disgruntled team member,
yes? She directly lost revenue because her website wasn’t available.
It would have been difficult on short notice for her to replace the
site she had planned, but if she’d had control of her domain, she
could have pointed it to an alternate site until things were resolved.

What about creating opportunities BECAUSE you have HTML and CSS
skills? The Internet likes speed! Being able to come up with a custom
page on your website or blog that specifically addresses a new
opportunity provides a huge advantage over your competitors who can’t
or don’t provide such targeted information.

In fact, imagine being able to send to a prospect in email the URL of
a specially created web page on your website. Wouldn’t you sit up and
take notice if I said I have a message just for you at  such-and-such
a page? With a simple tool, I created custom pages with individual
names on them  for the folks on my mailing list, using a simple HTML
page and a tool that merges names into those web pages. Like so many
other highly-targeted messages, custom web pages have a big impact.
And this technique is easy and inexpensive to do.

So with basic HTML and CSS skills, you can not only save maintenance
costs, you can create opportunities for new business in targeted,
memorable ways. I hope by now that you’re all out of excuses now for
putting off  earning something that can make you money.

It’s time! The product is now available for purchase. There’s no time
like the beginning of a new year to make a difference in your business
by learning HTML and CSS. Head on over to
http://www.ICanFixMyWebsite.com and get all the details of this
program. I look forward to working with you in our coaching sessions,
and getting 2010 off to a great start.

You can choose to have $10 of the product price donated to the Red
Cross for Disaster Relief to Haiti. Just choose Yes on the Order Form
(near the bottom), and I’ll take care of the rest. — Toolie

The “I Can Fix My Website” program is up and running! Get your copy
right now at http://www.ICanFixMyWebsite.com.

Toolie®

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Reason 3 of Top Ten Reasons to Manage Your Own Websites and Blogs

Here is Reason 3 of my Top Ten Reasons to Manage Your Own Websites and
Blogs. by Toolie

Reason 3 – Controlling and Protecting Your Business Sites

"The story we're about to tell you is true. The names were changed to
protect the innocent."
(from the TV show "Dragnet")

I wish I were kidding about that. What I'm going to tell you IS true;
I'm just glad it doesn't happen very often.

I got a call last week from a client; I worked on her website last
fall. She is an author whose book wasn't yet available at that time,
but she was doing a number of things to prepare for the book launch.
My client had a social media site created by one of her team members.
After we handled a few updates to the site I had worked on previously,
she shared with me the debacle that accompanied the release of her
book.

After weeks of work on the social media site, the site was launched. A
few weeks later, my client and her team member had a misunderstanding.
This woman did not take the situation well, and in retaliation, shut
down the site for 8 days right at the time the book arrived in stores.
My client did not have the username and password to the site because
it was hosted with other sites owned by other people, and controlled
by the team member. She had no way of replacing the site in time for
her book launch.

A third party intervened in the situation and got the site back up,
but by then the damage was done. Fortunately my client has a loyal
following, and she didn't lose much revenue, but it was emotionally
devastating. After all her diligence and hard work, losing control of
her site when she needed it most was a situation she resolved to never
allow again.

In the "I Can Fix My Website" product, one of the first things we talk
about is the importance of having the domain registered in your name,
with your contact information, and for you to have control of the
domain account's username and password. The same is true of the
hosting account; it needs to be YOUR credit card and contact
information on file so that you can change it if (God forbid) your web
designer turns on you. (Some of my students have told me that I become
somewhat animated when discussing this, but it is for good reason.)

In the Action Guide that accompanies the product, I have space for you
to write down your usernames and passwords for all of your domain
registrations and web hosting accounts. You can also note whether your
domains are privately registered (where your personal details are
omitted so that you're less of a target for spammers) and which email
address you used with the registration. I have had to help reclaim
domain registrations for some clients because the domain renewal email
went to an account that no longer existed.

I understand the importance of keeping good records for your domain
registrations so that you don't lose them! With these simple
precautions (and some other advice I have for you), there's no reason
why you can't take control of your sites and protect your valuable
online business assets.

I want to see YOU confidently switching to the Code view in your web
editor and saying "Bring it on! I know how to use HTML...!" I look
forward to working with you on these and other important items during
our coaching sessions together in the "I Can Fix My Website" program.

Tomorrow: Reason 2 - Saving Time on Quick and Easy Updates to Your
Sites

Toolie®

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Hi, I sure hope you are enjoying this series by guest blogger Toolie. I also hope you are getting the message about posting different types of blog food. The series is a feast that can last a long time. Rosie

Reason 4 of Top Ten Reasons to Manage Your Own Websites and Blogs

Reason 4 – Making Changes to Your Site on YOUR Schedule

I’ll tell you a secret about web designers: they like to design, not to maintain.

Design is fun. It’s creative. It’s self-expressive.

Maintenance is detail-oriented. It’s dull. It’s repetitive. But it’s also necessary.

If a web designer enjoys managing details, then carrying maintenance contracts is a good source of ongoing revenue and most web designers will offer to maintain your site for you. Regardless of what you spend on a webmaster though, the rub comes when you need something changed NOW. Right now. Not 2 days from now, not tomorrow, NOW. Scheduling, turnaround times, and your webmaster’s workload all come into play. Once the initial design is done, webma sters are usually not very interested in doing updates to their already-perfect creation.

You must think I hate web designers — I don’t, not at all! After all, technically, I AM a web designer. I do a limited number of site projects for clients who are in a hurry and who are happy to pay for me to do the work. But I don’t do maintenance for them. Any project I take on involves training package for them so that my clients do the maintenance.

It’s not that I don’t like maintenance; I too could make money as a webmaster. But I have a business of my own to run, just like you do. And I have found that my clients are happiest when they really own and run their own sites. (That’s also why my product includes 3 hours of one-on-one coaching time to get you up and running.)

In a previous installment of this series, we talked about making your website or blog a cash-producing machine. How are you going to do that if you can’t make updates quickly? With a site designed for easy maintenance, you can be in charge of those updates yourself and take care of them any time of the day or night. In the “I Can Fix My Website” course, I teach you what is “a site designed for easy maintenance,” so that you can create or refurbish yours with that goal in mind.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a night-person, but I get my greatest ideas in the evening. The phones settle down, we’ve had dinner, I kick off my shoes, and suddenly in the evening, my head is buzzing with ideas. I do most of my writing then, and I want to be able to set up new pages as soon as the writing is finished. If I had to wait until the next day for a web designer to install my updates, I’d go crazy. Being able to create and install new pages, new features, new opt-ins when I need them is the best of possible worlds for me, as business owner of cash-producing websi tes.

Even if you are not the one who creates your site, it still belongs to you. It’s your business at stake, so it pays to know how to operate it inside and out, even if you ultimately delegate some of the work to others. When it’s 7 pm on a Sunday night and you want to add something to your site before Monday morning, I can almost guarantee that neither your virtual assistant nor your web designer will be picking up the phone when you call them for help.

The Internet loves speed. Those are customers whizzing past your site. Get them to stop by and view your latest creations: products, writing, services, all described and made available on YOUR schedule, because you know how to wrangle your site yourself. My website training product plus coaching program will teach you how.
Tomorrow: Reason 3 – Controlling and Protecting Your Business Sites
Toolie®

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Top Ten Reasons to Manage Your Own Websites and Blogs

Reason 5 – HTML/CSS Skills for More Than Just Web Pages and Blog Posts

By Toolie
When I showed the first draft of my website training product to my mentor 2 years ago, he sent it back saying, “where’s the Internet Marketing information?” He was absolutely right. There’s no point in putting a business website or blog on the Internet unless you plan to do the necessary homework and preparations to turn your website or blog into an Internet cash-producing machine. The days of “having a website to have a website” and “if you build it they will come” are long past. You must be attentive to and proactive with your sites to attract the customers you want. You want to make it easy for them to contact you, and if applicable, enable them to buy online.

In my “I Can Fix My Website” training program, we start with HTML and CSS skills to learn how to build a website (the skills also apply to blogs). Before we even begin, though, we start with keyword research. When someone types a search into Google, Yahoo, or MSN (the big 3), they’re typing the words and phrases that are meaningful to them.

You’d better know what those phrases are before you build your site. You don’t need to subscribe to a keyword research service like Wordtracker (though I’d recommend it for at least one month while you’re planning), but you must know what words your customers think of when they go looking for you. They don’t always use the right vocabulary for your product, service, or profession, so you must include the words and phrases THEY use, as well as the correct keywords and phrases.

But there’s more to Internet Marketing than just keywords. And there’s more to having a website or blog that markets for you than just the site itself. The initial “currency” of your site is your emai l list. How are you going to collect your emails and build your list without the opt-in box AND the sequence of pages that ensure that they complete the opt-in loop? What if you decide to give away a free report or downloadable product? Do you know how to create a squeeze page, and its accompanying thank-you page and autoresponder?

These are specialized pages that you could create using your existing web page template. However, one of the keys to a successful opt-in sequence is not allowing for other choices on the page (with certain exceptions). You will have a better opt-in rate if, when they arrive at the “squeeze” page, you limit or eliminate other things they could do on the page. If they see your website or blog navigation and can go elsewhere on your site, you miss out on capturing their email while their curiosity is highest. Do you know how to create a custom page for this purpose? You can learn how. It is NOT dif ficult: my course will teach you how.

HTML email templates are another item that many marketers use online. They’re an attractive way to deliver your message, but those templates are also fraught with layout problems. I learned recently in working with one of my clients that some of the online web-based email programs almost shred the layout of a typical HTML email if you don’t know how to set up the template to keep it together. Because of my skills, I was able to research the issues and set up an HTML Email template for my client (and one for myself) that still look good in programs like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Windows Live Mail. (Those of you who read my emails using those programs have probably already noticed how much better my HTML emails look now!)

The “I Can Fix My Website” training product comes with a free 3-month membership to my support forum. If you have quest ions or problems with your email templates, your site, your squeeze pages, your autoresponders, your graphics, or anything else related to building your site, you’re going to be able to post your issue online and get answers right away. You can also research solutions that I’ve provided to other members, not to mention having access to my virtual “Rolodex®” of website and blog tools, links to good scripts, and lists of recommended utility websites to support you as you build and customize your sites.

It just makes sense to learn HTML and CSS: they’re your ticket to building and maintaining the websites and blogs that work to bring you paying customers. My course will teach you those skills quickly and easily.
Tomorrow: Reason 4 – Making Changes to Your Site on YOUR Schedule
Toolie®

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