A few months ago I came across a really cool slide show on a blog I was reading. It was absolutely beautiful with horse pictures and twinkling stars. I was thinking ‘how cool is this’ and something I could easily do with my photos too!

For those of you who have never created a slide show, this step by step tutorial of how to make a slide show using Slide.com can get you started! (I am not affiliated with or selling anything through Slide.com other than for creating my own slideshows).

I’ve made several slide shows and I’m really impressed with how professional they look. People comment on how great they are and want to know how to make their own.

Making your own slide show is easy; you just upload your own pictures from your computer!…a world of possibilities! People spend money to get slide shows for birthday parties, weddings, and other special events all the time. Why not make one yourself! Add your own personal music to the slide show and you’ll love the results.

If you are already familiar with making your own slide shows, you may want to skip over the video and just go to the Slide.com website and start creating. As with almost any new site or program, there’s a learning curve. It’s pretty simple really, but every site has its own way of setting things up.

You’ll be pleased at how professional your slide show will look.

..and now for the tutorial! Sorry the screen shots are small, but you'll get the idea...Oh..and please do leave comments!

According to Wikipedia, A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”

A "Blog" is like a website, but much easier to set up and maintain. It’s like a journal for people to write about their experiences; things taking place in their lives, or anything you’re passionate about. I’ve found it a great platform for pictures and a storyline…maybe from your childhood, a vacation, special event, or family. There are some really great Blogs out there, for business as well as socially.

Blogs are a fast and easy way to get the word out and reach a bigger audience. Blogs are more dynamic than websites as the content changes more often, giving search engines something new and unique to look at. The more unique content you publish, the higher your ranking will become on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Updating your Blog regularly increases your chances for visitors to find you.

A Blog can be the center of your business, especially if you are using other social networking sites. (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) These other sites can be linked to your blog where you are building your reputation and relationships, plus your blog can have links to your main website or websites.

A Blog creates a network of connections where you can share information. It’s a way of marketing yourself and establishes your presence on the Internet, establishing you as an expert in your field.

You can use affiliates such as Amazon and eBay, or find other affiliates to join and offer their products, books, etc. You could write an e-book yourself and sell it here, maybe offer a ‘free report’ or newsletter. You can place a few of your hand made items here with links to your main website. You could talk about your MLM business in your blog, with a link to a lead capture page, or use your blog as a lead capture page by allowing people to sign up or email you with comments and questions. The ideas are endless!

A Blog is a way to launch and build a new business by continuing a conversation with potential clients. Over time, it will do much more than any of your other internet marketing methods. Some blogs have a minimal cost, some are even free! Many website hosting sites offer Blogs right with the website.

I’m using Squarespace for my Blog and find it to be very user friendly and inexpensive.

Happy Blogging!

Cher Marie

Soon came the computer age. My first computerized cards were of a generic nature, and the computer graphics in those days were pretty bland. Considering that I had a dot matrix, black and white printer, I still managed to create some of the cutest cards, all spruced up with hand colored graphics and glitter. No card stock, just folded up paper. Cute, but definitely not ‘keepers’.

Eventually, I graduated into several upgrades in computers, software, and printers. Thinking this was pretty cool, I went on to create everything from greeting cards, to labels, boxes, and packaging for my skin care and soap.

I was even selling the cards; some with soap, some with jewelry, most had glitter, very cute! I love the technology of computer graphics; finding pictures, adding text, playing around with borders and text bubbles.

I spent hours and days on the computer, spending just as much time creating my cards and packaging, as I was on the actual 'products'.

What I soon discovered was this was becoming a printing business, and as much as I love creating these cards at home, my printers were wearing out time and time again. After awhile, I couldn’t print on card stock, so that pretty much stopped me in my tracks.

Often they wouldn’t go through the printer, getting stuck and jamming, and smearing all the ink. I’ve literally spent all day trying to fix a lost cause, only to resort to buying a new printer..once again.

A New Look

One day I received a card from a friend whom I had just visited. He had taken some pictures of my daughter and me when we went out for dinner one evening. When I came back home the following week, I found this really cool personalized card he had sent. It had our pictures on it and some really cute thought bubbles and captions. I was thrilled at the sentiment of a personalized card. This was something I hadn’t seen before, and I could do this at home on my computer! The quality was superb and the price to make each card was substantially cheaper (about 1/3 of the cost) of what they sell for in a retail store. Have you priced cards lately?

So I called him right away about this really cool card. He gave me the website and I discovered that this company was also an MLM. It seemed to me that this 'product' could be used as a 'tool' as well; sending cards to your main MLM downline could be of great value to your business. People love getting cards! Especially a high quality personalized card. What a great way to grow and maintain a relationship!

I could use it for personal use, sending greeting cards to friends and family.

I could use it for business to keep in touch with my customers and downline.

Or I could promote it as an opportunity, enrolling others who might be looking for a fresh idea in a new home-based business.

Sending a greeting card through the mail has about a 99% chance of being opened and read. People will also more than likely keep a personalized card.

Since you can edit these cards, you make them your own by adding your own fonts, colors, pictures, graphics, and even a gift or gift card. The company will print, stamp, and mail your card; all this from the comfort of your computer. How slick is that? My cards didn't come close to this quality, not that they weren't 'cute'.

I still like the home made cards, once in awhile, but it takes time, as do most art projects. It wasn’t practical for me to make a couple dozen cards for Christmas. I just didn’t have the time. So I created my Christmas cards, using my graphics and photos, as well as the standard graphics offered by the company. Each card took only a few minutes to personalize, save, and click ‘send’.

I’m definitely more of a ‘card sender’ these days and everyone I send to really love them.

This is a fun way to market any business or stay connected with your family and friends, and with all of the Social Networking sites available today for marketing, the possibilities are endless!

Find out more about starting your own Greeting Card Business.

When I first heard of Twitter, my thoughts were ‘not another thing to waste time with.’ I already had MySpace, Facebook, Hubpages, and Squidoo.  

 I signed up, read the basics, created a short Bio, and started posting what I was doing at that time. I didn’t really know what to expect and kept thinking this was kind of stupid. But after seeing what others were posting; not only their urls to their blogs and websites, but they were posting thoughts and events of everyday life…like a journal.  

But with Twitter, it’s just a few lines (140 characters) and this way it keeps it short and sweet. Or should I say, ‘Tweet’. Once I started twittering, I saw my same post up there until I ‘twittered’ again. Pretty soon people were following me. At first it seemed like they were just promoting their websites and I didn't see how this could really help me. But I realized that this is a social networking site and that you could post whatever you were interested in, whether it was business, hobbies, meeting friends or dating, posting to your family and close friends, or finding information.

Once I learned how to easily add my links and urls in my Bio, I realized that this could be a way to get my articles read or bring people to my Blog and website. I also could just make friends in here, telling them a little about what I was doing that day, without having to bombard people with advertisements and overloaded pages of information.

To me, it’s a bridge to other places; a very necessary tool to have today.

On Twitter there aren't many features or options, except on the Bio page where you tell a little about yourself with a picture and a link to a website, blog, or any article. There are no banner or google ads here. It's only a place to update your post about what you are doing currently.

I Get It

 You can link people to your favorite websites and articles, so Twitter can bring traffic to your friends. Over time you will have hundreds of friends and can keep in touch via their posts. At this point I’m following 26 people and have 46 people following me. It’s really a great tool for networking.

You can set it up to track just your friends, by making it private. You can then ‘approve’ them before they can become your friend. There is a setting on your page to make it ‘private’ or for ‘everybody’.

You can also put your Twitter Updates on your other sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, your Blog, or a website.

 It's a good time to be a Twit now...I can really see how this is becoming a great tool for networking, finding other successful business people, and ‘following’ them.

Twitter is one of the most popular micro-blogging sites online and thousands of people use Twitter to connect and communicate with others.

Even Barack Obama has a Twitter site. Follow him at: http://twitter.com/BarackObama

So I decided to follow him, and in a few hours I noticed that he is following me!

Click here to follow me on Twitter  http://twitter.com/herbcowgirl

I've watched many of Mike Klingler's tutorials and recently have read a few articles and blogs related to attraction marketing. I finished the tutorial Blogging I and had just started Blogging II. I had previously written a couple articles on attraction marketing and thought it would be a good place to start. 

I was really moving forward, step by step, click by click. I'm just starting to grasp this stuff.

I started creating my account at Squarespace and got my user name and password all set up. I went to log back in, and the website would not work. Here I was, all ready to go and had the time to do it, and zilch. This isn't the first time my computer stopped me in my tracks. 

I immediately contacted technical support and the email did go through, but as you can imagine I was extremely frustrated. Is it their website, or is it my computer? Those are always tricky to figure out. I tried rebooting, refreshing, going from one browser to the other. Nothing was working. I tried again later, still wasn't working.

I emailed my guide and asked him to see if his Blog worked. He said he had no problem. In the meantime tech support emailed me back with some possible solutions, which I tried, but it still wouldn't work. They suggested trying to access it from another computer.

So I pulled my old computer out that had been giving me problems in the past. I hooked up to the Internet, logged in, held my breath and crossed my fingers. Yes! I'm logged in and the site is working.

So the next few hours I continued with my Blogging education.

Now that the website was working properly, I started naming and editing, and adding content. This could be fun!

The three most important things to keep in mind:

• The buttons in the top right allow you to interact with your site in different ways.  For instance, the 'A' icon represents content mode, which lets you edit journal entries and other content.  The 'Cube' Icon represents structure mode, which lets you add and organize pages.  Each mode is explained if you hover on the icon.
  
  
• You can drag and drop anything on your site.  Want to move a page?  Enter structure mode and drag the page to a new location.  You can even drag pages between columns or from a column on to your top navigation bar.  Need to edit a journal entry?  Enter content mode and click 'Modify' on the entry you'd like to edit.
  
  
• Our styles are presets that you can make your own.  Entering style mode on the upper right will let you edit any color, width, column arrangement, or banner and more.  Most editing is done from the Fonts & Colors tab of the style edtior menu.

Want to remove this entry?  Enter content mode by pressing the 'A' on the upper right, then press 'remove' next to the title of this entry.