JAN’S IDEAS

Jan’s Group Home Support has a new blog design. It is a little darker than I would like, but after all the work to get it as far as I did, I’m going to leave it. I picked the design for the way it was set up, more than the color.

It will be awhile before I change this blog. It was very difficult. It included accidentally deleting the new design. The last save had enough I could fix it. I didn’t save it through FTP, so I only had some files copied. Bob Schmuck fixed the navigation bar and somehow I lost it. He finally figured out the part of the code giving us headaches by going through one line of code at a time! The problem was that the page links would pull up my recent posts instead of the page content. Bob said it was one of the hardest things he’s had to figure out. He’s not real familiar with Wordpress code.

I was SO happy when it was done. I kept clicking on the links just to see them work! It was time consuming and tiring as I tried my best to do it myself. It was way beyond my expertise! I’m so glad I have Bob.

I put some effort into regular posting on my group home support blog, and I’m back on page one for my keyword search! It has made a difference in traffic already.

I have a temporary design up because it looked like someone got into the old one and there was a list of spam like sites in the header and footer of the WP theme. None of my ads were targeted and the little income I was receiving went to zero. I took down all my ads for a few days, updated my WP version, changed my theme, and my login. There hasn’t been any trouble since. It still isn’t making money, but I know that will return now that I’m back on page one.

I’m working on changing the design of the blog. Bob Schmuck is helping, but it is hard for us to get together even on the phone to work on it with our schedules the way they are. I’m looking forward to when I can make the blog theme change for it. I’ve got one picked out for this blog also, but will work on it after I finish with the group home blog.

Jan’s Group Home Support (JGHS) is the reason I broke into double digits on earnings for the first time and it is still getting the most clicks (income) of the 7 (4 just got ads this month) active sites/blogs.

I learned that sometimes just taking a few steps towards a goal, things start coming together. I have focused on JGHS and the following have occured:

• I have a co-worker that gave me ideas for goal setting and expansion re: the blog.
• I started a new job and the training has given me lots of material for the blog.
• My current job’s reoccurring training requirements gave me material for the blog.
• Bob submitted a few posts from JGHS to show me that Digg can help with traffic even if no one Diggs the post.
• My girls will be gone a lot the first couple weeks of June which will give me more time to write.

The best part of it all, is that I really enjoy that blog and writing for it!