The virus writers certainly are active right now. I’ve been getting lots in my inbox.

They’re getting sneaky too. Most of them have a fake notice from Symantec saying the attachment does not have a virus, and uses the Symantec logo. Of course, I see this after my antivirus has already deleted said file for having a virus.

It’s one of those things you have to be careful about online. Know what a message from your antivirus system looks like. Mine doesn’t say a thing about files unless there is a virus.

Bit by bit it’s looking good. My jewelry website is getting some sales. It feels nice having something start to work.

I don’t expect to make a fortune off that site this Christmas. But I have many marketing ideas for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Days and other times when people tend to buy jewelry. It’s hard using the biggest shopping season of the year for learning, but hopefully that means next year I’ll be ready to go.

Let me tell you, for those thinking about getting into affiliate marketing, selling products through a store strikes me at this moment as far easier than selling through pure content. I do still strongly recommend content to keep your site unique and help customers find you, but if you can think of an idea where you can affiliate with a store, it’s amazing the difference that can be made.

Are you ready for Christmas?

I don’t mean your business – if you sell products, you’d better be ready by now and enjoying the rush. But what about personally?

One thing a lot of people do this time of year, whether the work at home or outside the home, is procrastinate and get stressed about getting their shopping done. In my family we’ve managed to do a lot to avoid that.

The number one thing we do is draw names. This cuts down on the number of people you need to shop for, which is always a help. We also agreed on price ranges so no one feels like they overspent or underspent.

Now, this won’t work for all families. Obviously small children can’t do name drawings, and others prefer to get a pile of gifts, even if the individual gifts are smaller that way. But for us it is wonderful.

Another thing we do is not worry about when exactly we celebrate. With marriages and inlaws to deal with, it’s nice to have people you can exchange gifts with any day, even after New Year’s if it comes down to that. Besides, then you can get those great after-Christmas deals so many stores have.

The other problem many home businesspeople have is knowing when to slow down at this time of year. Your ability to do this will depend on your business, of course; if you’re shipping gifts to your customers there is no way to slow down until the job is done. But when the time comes that you can slow down and enjoy the season with your family, do so!

Now, we’ll see how well I can take my own advice. It’s so hard to not check my email many, many times a day, look for fresh advice on the discussion boards or get to work on some project. This stuff can be addicting, after all. But I just have to look at my daughter asking me to play to remember that there are more important things out there.

Breakfast anyone?

This one’s kind of a neat idea – get local internet marketers together for breakfast. I’ve signed up, although with a toddler I have no idea how often I’d actually be able to attend. Still looks like an interesting and fun idea. It’s free to sign up, and your only cost is the cost of your meal when you go. Just one more way to network locally.

Offline networking is definitely my weakness. I don’t belong to any social groups. I do, however, mention my sites given half a chance when talking with people I meet. This site in particular is easy that way; lots of moms want to be at home with their kids, so the topic can be brought up very naturally.

How do you get good search engine rankings? What about visitors in general – especially buying visitors?

There are many opinions on that one. My personal preference is content. Ideally, I’d love to add a page or more a day to my sites. But in reality, I don’t have that kind of time since I have a work at home job too. Medical transcription takes up a couple hours a day, and while over time I probably would earn more from my sites, I have to be practical about TODAY.

Writing in this blog is one way for me to add content. I’ve added it to a few feed sites and it does get visitors and come up in searches. But I’d really like to learn more about RSS. I’m looking at an ebook, RSS Exposed, as one option. From what I’ve read about it, it sounds like a great option.

Why RSS? Because there’s no worry about spam complaints, people can find out that I’ve added content as soon as I’ve added it and it’s fairly easy to implement. Plenty enough reasons for me.

Now, Blogger isn’t necessarily the best solution for RSS feeds – in fact, WordPress, a free program, is extremely well rated in that regard. Highly adaptable, modifiable, hosted on your own domain, it just sounds very good. I may yet change this blog over to that, despite the challenge such a change would present.

But a blog is not the only way to use RSS. I’m thinking about syndicating my articles in RSS, including instructions for how to present the feed so search engines will see it as content rather than as JavaScript. It’s a good use of content I’ve already written, and I could do a few varieties so that it would be well matched to each site running my syndicated articles. Say, a parenting articles channel, home business, money tips, etc. There’s plenty to be done to encourage people to add my content to their sites, not just to their RSS readers.

But enough. I really have to try and get some transcription done. I did quite well yesterday and would like to get at least a little done today. With Survivor and Apprentice being on tonight, I don’t know how much I’ll be doing in the evening.