Jing Project
Video is the newest must have for website owners. While its easy to capture live action on a camera or webcam, taking video of your computer activities hasn’t been so easy or affordable. I had tried CamStudio, but couldn’t get it to work right. And Camtasia just isn’t in the budget right now. Fortunately there’s a new screen capture software in town called Jing.

Jing is free and incredibily easy to use. Once its install, you have a little yellow ball that sits at the top of your screen waiting for you to request a picture or video. When opened, its easy to pick the area you want to capture and then you simply poke the picture or video. You can hook up your mic to add audio. Jing will even tell you when the video is starting if if the mic is on.

The free version saves file in flash and you can easily send to Screencast or Flikr. For a $14.95 per year subscription, you can get a more advanced version that lets you save in MPEG-4 and can automatically upload to Youtube. You can even use your favorit movie editor to edit it.

Both versions have a limit of 5 minutes of video, but experts say that for basic website needs, 3 minutes is all you need anyway.

Visit Jing Project to learn more or download Jing.

Self-employment particularly among women, many of whom are mothers, is growing at a fast rate, faster even than men owned business. While many begin their work-at-home search hoping to find a job, starting a business is probably the fastest and easies way to start making money at home. But once the product or service is created, the real work is getting the word out. A new website helps self-employed parents by offering a directory that consumers can use to find products and services.

Our Milk Money was started by two work-at-home moms Ally Loprete and Kelli Shand who wanted to help parents find ways to achieve the financial means to stay home or provide more for their children, and to educate consumers about the products and services found through self-employed parents. They provide a searchable directory of businesses through Canada and the United States from which consumers can find local or Internet based businesses from which to shop or find work-at-home opportunities.

To learn more or find a self-employed parent near you, visit Our Milk Money.

While there are a variety of resources to help you download video content, KeepTube offers a wider array of video sites including YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, Mega Video and more. Plus it will grab the highest quality of video including HD.

KeepTube is a free web-based tool, that also offers a Firefox extension. Visit KeepTube.com to learn more.

In the past, to set up a free website you had to allow the host to place ads on your site. In some cases the sites were loaded with pop-ups and flashing banners that made it difficult to find and enjoy the content. But Weebly offers web hosting services full of bells and whistles but without the ads.

Features of the free Weebly accounts include

• 5 MB of storage,
• Easy drag and drop editors (no tech knowledge required)
• Over 70 different designs
• Blogging options
• And more.

The non-professional URL’s of the sites have Weebly in them, however, you can use your own domain. If you already own a domain, you can set it up to work with your Weebly page free of charge or you can buy a domain through Weebly.

Further Weebly provides help in integrating Google Adsense on your account, so you can run your own ads if you like. Or use Paypal to build in shopping cart and payment processing to sell you’re own products or services.

The free service does have limitations in that it has a low storage amount (5MB) which limits other options such as video. But you can upgrade to a pro-account for about $4.99 per month (paid yearly) that includes:

• Password protected pages,
• Audio and video players,
• Embedded document features,
• Ability to host 10 sites,
• An increase to 100 MB storage
• Customized footer (you don’t have to have the Weebly ad at the bottom)
• Premium support.

For the new person just starting out, Weebly provides a full-featured web hosting option for free that can create professional a site without being cluttered with ads. There are some limits and Weebly may not provide you with all the hosting features you need over the long run. But if technical or financial aspects are preventing you from setting up a site to make money online, Weebly may be the answer to get you up and running ASAP. To learn more, or set up your free account, visit Weebly.


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If you’re using video to promote your business, don’t limit yourself by posting it to just one site. At TubeMogul you can upload your video and have it sent to a host of video and social networking sites for free. Plus it offers tons of great features such as analytics on who and how your video is being viewed.

To learn more or sign up, visit TubeMogul.com

I really like Web 2.0. As a work-at-home mom, sitting in a quiet house can be great for productivity but lonely too. Web 2.0 gives me the camraderie as well as support, encouragement and even recognition I need. But Web 2.0 applications can do much more. They offer ways to market your business, network with others, get advice, find resources and much more.

The problem of course is that its too easy to get swept up in Web 2.0 overload and end up wasting time. Part of the problem is that so many applications are “recommended”,  others are just cool, some are designed to support others … and so on and so on until you belong to more programs than you can effectively use.

To be honest, I’m still trying to find Web 2.0 balance. Right now I belong to MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, WorkItMom, and Self Growth (I also have a Ryze acccount but I don’t use it and can’t seem to get it cancelled). I visit MySpace every week day to post the blog there. I don’t visit Facebook daily, but much of what I do online (blog, Twit, etc) shows up there through its feed service and FriendFeed. The other three, I don’t visit very much at all and end up feeling guilty about it. I also use Twitter to which my blog and Squidoo lens send updates. I use Del.icio.us to save sites I want to view later, but I also have ClipMarks and LaterThis accounts both of which allow me to share information that I save, but I don’t use them for that. I use them for productivity not socializing.

Even though I’m overwhelmed with Web 2.0, I’m easily enticed to check out more applications. I visit Biznik today and although I decided to pass on it for now, it does look like an interesting site. Then there is YouTube, Flickr and many more.

Here are some tips and tricks that I’m using that do seem to help in managing my Web 2.0 life:

1) Don’t overdo the social networks. Most people recommend the main three (Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn), but if none of them fit your goals, then its a waste of time. Choose social networks that are in your niche, focus on your goals (ie networking, finding a job, etc), and have the audience you want to reach or get to know.

2) Automate what you can. FriendFeed will gather all the posts and feeds from your Web 2.0 efforts into one place. I use it on Facebook. My Facebook is updated several times a day even though I don’t go to Facebook hardly at all. (Of course, by not visiting my page I miss on what others are doing…sort of the point to social networking). I use a Twitter plug-in on my blog and Squidoo page that automatically sends a Tweet to my Twitter account. I even make it easy for people to Tweet about my blog posts with a plug-in called “Twit This”. Anytime you can make multiple posts with a single entry can save you time and keep your Web 2.0 projects fresh and current.

3) Make sure your settings are set to send you an email whenever someone does something on your network sites. If someone wants to be a friend, sent you a private message, or posted a comment, you want to know about it so you can respond to it in a timely manner.

4) Set up time each day or week to focus on your Web 2.0. Most people who blog have a schedule for posting, but not usually for when they visit their social networks to make friends and network. Its easy to forget to do it AND its easy to waste too much time doing it. So schedule it in. That way it will get done, but you’ll have a time limit.

I’ve been slow to move to an online calendar system because they didn’t offer all the features that I had loved about Agendus. In particular, I like to have my to-do list on the daily calendar as opposed to being off to the side. Since moving towards a web-based management system, I was on the hunt for a calendar/planner system that worked the way I did. The answer came from adding Remember The Milk to Google Calendar.

Remember the Milk is a to-list management system that lets you list and prioritize your to-dos. You can send your self reminders via email, text or instant message. It also offers plug ins for iGoogle, Google Calendar, Netvibes, and a host of other services including mobile access, Jott, and more. Signing up is free and easy.

You can add Remember the Milk to iGoogle and/or Google Calendar here or you can add and learn about other ways to use Remember the Milk in the Service section.

What I like about Remember the Milk versus other to-do plug-in options is that it can be listed on my daily calendar. At the top of each day that you have a Remember The Milk task you’ll find a check mark. Click on the check mark and drop down box shows you your list of to-dos. If you add your calender to your iGoogle start page, you can see your to-dos as well.

My book, The Work At Home Success Bible is on Amazon and available for pre-sale. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see the book actually coming to life.

I originally pitched a book about telecommuting because there were no books in print that focused on how and where to find legitimate work-at-home jobs. Adams Media wanted a “Bible” for working at home instead. Before taking the project on, I talked to the editor and indicated that if I did a “Bible” it would have to include everything (regardless of book length) that I felt people needed to know. I wanted to write the book that I wish I’d had when I started out. The editor agreed.

The book covers everything from determining the best work-at-home option for you, convincing your boss to let you work at home, conducting a work-at-home job search, starting a business, eBay, affiliate programs, marketing, managing life and work under one roof and more. Plus it has tons of resources for finding jobs, and starting and running a business.

The book is due out December 1, 2008 but you can check it out and pre-order it now.

When I first started my business, I paid a fortune in tools and services to get it up and running. MS Office Suite cost hundreds of dollars. Then there were the planners, form templates and a host of other tools and services each with a fairly hefty fee.

Today the Internet offers many of these tools and services at an affordable price. Entrepreneur offers most of them for free. Entrepreneur Assist is a one-stop virtual officer where you can:

• Create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Customize and use business form templates.
• Hold live online meetings with customers and colleagues.
• Schedule events and reminders.
• Build your business plan.

You can even read and save articles from Entrepreneur.com as well as read free business related books.

The templates menu is vast including samples of accounting forms, starting a business checklists, sales receipts, business plans and more. The book selection is small but offers resources in retirement planning, project planning, marketing and more.

The appeal of Entrepreneur Assist is the ability to have a variety of office tools and service all in one spot. In a single sitting you can print out an invoice, write a letter, read and save an article, create your schedule and host an online meeting all from one site.

To learn more or sign up, visit Entrepreneur Assist.