Diane Stafford On Focus

Pajama Day Breakdown

What a funny old day!

The kids had a pajama day today.

Not the snuggle up warm and cosy kind of pajama day though. Nope.

They all went to school in their pajamas to help school raise money for Charity, it's an annual 'tradition' to coincide with the last day of school before half term holiday break.  It seems like only two minutes since they started back in September!

Anyway, it was amusing to see all the children walking to school in their bright pajamas and the kids reported that it was a really fun day, for a good cause.

Whilst they were having fun I was....

hmmm.. how to put this, well no other way to write it really:

I was busy selecting a suitable 'man with a van' to give me a jump in the middle of the supermarket car park!

Thankfully, I wasn't having a pajama day!

Anyway, I nabbed a chappy as he was waiting dutifully for his Mrs to exit the shop and with my jump leads at the ready, he kindly obliged me.  We got everything hooked up and in a few seconds, everything was ticking over nicely. 

A Big Thank You to my 'knight in white van' today!

After much ado (that's a different story) a new battery is now in place and car is happily starting on demand.

Did your kids have a last day at school pajama day?

Holiday time...

enjoy

SEO Link Dominator Creates Authority One Way Back Links

A friend of mine, officially Stephen, has recently released his new tool that helps you create authority one way back links.

Seo Link dominator works on windows (pc), unfortunately not on my mac!

Informally, Steve spent hours and hours building this tool, he's a real live geek coder/ programmer, and he's spent countless hours trialing, testing and tweaking it to perfection, along with a great bunch of guys in our online group mastermind team, they have pc's!

Anyway, the results reported are:

"I didn't realise the explosive power of creating backlinks until I tried using SEO dominator. Up until then I'd been spending hours and hours grinding out articles and churning out blog after blog to promote my clients websites.

Now with Steve's cool software, I'm replacing a lot of these chores with a daily 20 minute session to get a dozen high page ranking links to my clients site. Google loves this as in every instance the website is rocketing up the rankings for the keyword targeted (that's for broad match too!)

My clients are so pleased with their front page rankings that they're recommending me to their business friends. Good job I've now got this extremely powerful tool to work for me as business has doubled!"

Justin King UK Website Promoter and SEO professional

"I’m not proud of the fact that I’m lazy but I am, and now I have tried your software and can get all these links coming to my site from highly ranked websites, I can still be lazy, Its great it’s simple to use and I found I got faster and faster results each time I used it.

You’re a god send to us lazy webmasters, I have already seen a massive climb towards the top of Google for my site and I will now be applying this to rest of my website’s, I’ve been waiting for this for so long and didn’t even know it."

John Wilson (The Lazy Webmaster)

"After my site dropped out of results I have been using SEO Link Dominator to get them back.  I am building slow and steady but they have started returning and each day seem to be rising"

Neal Hendes Nintendos 4 U

Steve's hours of painstaking coding effort are already paying off, not just for him in respect of the numbers flying off the virtual shelves, but also for his customers who are already benefiting from increased authority one way back links.

Time to get myself a pc perhaps?

NO!  I'll have to insist that Steve creates a version for mac (are you listening Steve)?

Click the link below to Steve's site for more details on how:

SEO Link Dominator Creates Authority One Way Back Links

Well done Steve, it's been great watching from 'behind the scenes' as you've developed this package.

Creative Website Branding and Logo Design

Creative branding and logo design can be a bit challenging especially if you're not a specialist graphic designer.

Branding and logo design is, in my opinion, a specialist area and should be left to the experts especially if a small business owner takes the decision to create what they wish to become a well recognized brand.

For standard blog websites though, branding is probably not either an option for new start ups, or a necessity from a visual concept point of view.  Yes, there's lots more to branding than the website graphics or the name, but I'm thinking out loud on a 'general' level.

This article covers some branding points:

The Shocking Truths about Branding and Logo Design

Having been a little preoccupied with color recently, after a few forum debates and a pink marketing to women article.

I'd decided to change the color theme of a site to a pleasing, yet still bright'ish' green.  I gave it a go today, but, well... it just didn't work!

Despite being a colorist at heart, as a painter of colorful abstract art I can't be accused of being dull, on the color front at least, I've gone monochrome and I've decided to keep it that way...  until I change my mind, as women do!

Looking forward to working on a clients new color theme, she's changing from red and black to a lovely orange... thank goodness it's not pink!

What's your favorite or worst nightmare branding or logo story?

Small Business Development Award

The Small Business Development Award 2009 is now open for entrants who are members of the ethical network,  Pledging for Change

If you're not yet a member, you can join for free. 

The network is open to any ethical business, whether you are an individual working from home or a larger SME.  As long as you are operating an 'ethical', Green or environmentally friendly business, you can submit your entry and have your chance to win this valuable award.

Entries are open until December 11th.

Good Luck.

Diane

How To Keep Fit Without Taking a Work Break

Yes, Now You Can Keep Fit WITHOUT taking a break from work. 

Surely this is the answer to the prayers of every work at home mum, entrepreneur or e-marketer out there who's working on the internet.

Can you imagine how many individuals are busily working on their computer at home as they work on their business.  How many of them, or even you, are avoiding daily exercise routines.

If you don't have enough time to squash at least a short walk into your daily life to help you keep fit, then you will already be seeing the unhealthy spread when you look in your mirror.

If you've been struggling with the how to keep fit without taking a work break question...

Is this really the answer?

Well, it looks good, interesting and may be a time saver.  You don't have to actually leave the house at all to get your daily walk in! 

You can walk AND work at the same time!

But is it really a healthy alternative? 

Probably yes:

if you have a healthy bank balance and it could make you more inclined to actually take some keep fit action during your working day, and you have sufficient space in your home office, or should that be home gym?

If it came with an oxygen cylinder and mask to replicate the fresh air you'd inhale on a walk with nature, then maybe, just maybe, it could have an edge over taking a real live walk outside in the fresh air?

If you could carry on working whilst the kids walk beside you, they could take turns.  Quality time given new meaning.  And anyway it's better than them slouching on the sofa watching telly, isn't it?

Probably no:

if you want it because it looks good (it does look good) and will add to your extensive 'gadget' collection, but you wouldn't actually use it! Your imac or macbook pro would look good on there though wouldn't it!

Now I've got visions of every supermarket check out person or every bank teller ambling along as they go about their 'usually seated' duties.

I have no idea whether this good looking 'walking workstation' idea will take off in the future, but there's something very appealing about it.  I like it!

What do you think? 

Will it catch on?

Would YOU Have one?

Image sources & walking workstation info: