This has been, by far, one of the hardest pursuits I have ever attempted. I have been a lawyer, a legal writing instructor, and a teacher in my careers. I love teaching -- it inspires me beyond end, and it keeps me young and up to date. I'm also privileged that I am good at it: so I feel rewarded and wonderful and proud of the work I do. But, learning to be a good teacher while having two growing children and a husband, a home, and a dog, left me burnt out when it came to keeping organized and maintaining our house and our bills. My husband never wanted to be the bill payer -- he does not want to work all day and try to deal with all the issues that finances raise. So, for several years, we've buried our head in the sand and watched all the debt and all that paperwork and all that clutter pile up.
I'm never through learning how to be a better teacher. But, I do have certain aspects of that job down, and, this summer, I have concentrated on learning how to be a better financial manager -- most women know just what I mean, our jobs in running our homes and our families' lives force us to develop new and better skills every day. But, I never expected that the path to financial health would really excite my curiosity so much that I would do the type of research I have done. And, then, I ended up here -- writing about my family's actual financial situation and how painful it can be, and, hopefully, helping us and you from the lessons I've learned. And, believe me, there are some people who are young who could benefit from those lessons -- this could become a "how to" on what people starting out in their adult lives should NEVER do.
And then came the website. I read this article that I referred you to earlier, and off I went -- learning about web site creation and design and making choices I had no business making probably, but I did it anyway -- because I just felt that I have learned so much lately, I should try to make it useable. Well, I tried four different types of web software before I settled on Sandvox, and figured out I needed the "Pro" software because it allows you to paste in your own "code." And, I've learned about linking and trackbacks (something that tells you how people got to your site or where else your site is linked, I'm not sure which), although my research has left me a bit hazy about how I use them exactly and I still don't know how to work them in my site, and I have about 20 websites in my "how to make a website" favorites folder in my Safari browser. (That was 2 days ago -- now, I think it's up to 50).
Today, I got ads from ad-sense, a Google program, and affiliated with companies whose products I've used and who I can link to once I get into the affiliate program. So, the increasing revenue portion of this website, which is fairly short, is the part I may end up blogging most about because it is a whole entirely new thing. I have no idea how any person is going to find this website -- which is just a shame because I think lots of people would feel better if they knew that they were not alone in making some financial messes, and those same people could save tons of time and energy if they follow some of my advice. At the least, I hope that I help to motivate people to start working on their financial situation now, rather than letting it just go. So, today, I researched a lot about getting the website out there -- I've submitted it to Google, but, so far, it doesn't appear in any index because you need people to link you to their sites and stuff that requires me to look into a whole slew of other steps to take to get the website out. But, I feel good -- I found software to make the site and learned how to use it, I found a web-hosting service, www.itsamac.com and I started finding a bunch of sites to tell me how to get my site out there.
Today I affiliated with Amazon and Quicken -- because I use their products and mention them elsewhere in my site. I still need to understand how to make "trackbacks" work for me, and how to get on an index -- I've done what I can for that other than go blog at every site in the world. Should I be proud yet? I've learned so much in a short time -- that's worth being proud of.
I've definitely worked too much in the last few days on this site considering that the rest of the family probably, no, definitely, wants my attention. So, that's all for now. Also, I'm going to post this into the carnival I mention in the sidebar. Go check it out. Modified on: