Wow, oh wow, when I agreed to be interviewed about working at home, I had no idea that the article would be on such big sites.

If you tried to come here yesterday, you may have noticed that I got royally slammed. We’re talking site completely down and out for the count kind of slammed. Pay for a dedicated server kind of slammed.

Painful, but in such a good way.

I spent much of yesterday going nuts, trying to figure out how on earth I could get my site back up. I cut out many of the php includes that I have long used to make updating my site simpler, in an attempt to reduce file calls. It wasn’t enough.

Moving over to a dedicated server may or may not have been the perfect move, but it’s one that will let me keep going today, even if it didn’t solve the problem for yesterday.

By 10 a.m. my time, I was at about 65,000 visits. That’s better than 15x my usual busy days.

I’m keeping this server for a month at least, even though it’s more expensive. Time to see if I can get some serious traffic slamming my site again while I have the resources, right?

Okay, so the odds of that are pretty slim. But I can look more heavily at press releases and such, and see what I can do.

Yeah, it was interesting doing this while still unpacking from the move. Naturally I paid no attention to unpacking yesterday, and probably won’t today.

Today I’ll be too busy emailing all the helpful folks who told me that my site was down. So kind of them, and I hope they will still be interested in seeing the site now that it’s back up.

This is going to take a while…

And if you’re here because of the article, welcome! I hope you find some useful information. Wander around, and be sure to ask questions, either by using the contact form or by joining the forum and asking your fellow work at home parents and job seekers.

We’re in the new house and settling in bit by bit at last. It’s been quite the long process, but I’m finally working my way toward being able to work regularly again.

With a wireless internet connection, no less! I’m loving it, if only because it means we don’t have to run cables all through the house. The only cable outlets are in the master bedroom and the family room, and a straight run of cable to my office from the family room would have taken at least 20 feet without doing nice things like running over doorways rather than across the carpet.

I’m still in heavy unpacking mode. Found my keyboard 3 days ago, which encouraged me to go shopping for the wireless router and wireless USB adapter my computer needed. Set those up the next day. It went well overall, considering that it was my first time setting up a wireless network.

And spent a lot of time going through all the emails, etc. I’d missed in the time I’d been offline.

Much of my time has been spent unpacking and dealing with the kids. The older two love this house! Two stories and nearly twice the size of the old one we were renting. What’s not to love?

I’ll just gloss over the notion that this house, built in 2006 (think prime housing boom) was built way too fast and sloppy. There are door frames warping already on the way to the back yard.

There’s just so much to do! Address changes. Unpacking. Getting the kids registered for school.

And lovely, lovely hiking. We’ve just walked around the neighborhood so far, but Yucaipa has mountains all around. Should be fun.

We’re trying to do nightly family walks. Lots of hills here, so it’s pretty good exercise. I may yet naturally drop the weight from this last pregnancy.

My focus is not yet entirely on business, or even partially on business in a lot of ways. I’m posting now because I had meant to get back to work sooner, but there’s so much that needs doing.

Including sleeping. That one’s a little rough at times with a 6 month old, but I do try to fit a little sleep in once in a while.

Moving is hard on children, especially when they’re leaving their friends. It’s been interesting with this move seeing how each of my kids reacts.

My oldest is the most upset. She has the most friends, after all. She finally broke down the other night, crying, and talked about her concerns.

Fortunately, she quickly got to the point where she realized that she might just love our new home. If my husband can get a transfer back to the San Diego area when he’s qualified in a year, we might just do that, and she realized that she would probably be sad to leave her new friends.

My son is insisting that he’s not sad about it, but is decidedly fussier right now. Pretty typical stressed out four year old kind of behaviors.

And of course the baby just knows that she wants Mommy’s attention. She’s too young to know more than that I’m busier than usual and don’t play as much as she’d like.

For the older two, we’ve been talking to them a lot about why we’re moving and what they can expect. It really helped my oldest when we told her about all the kids we saw in the neighborhood just driving around.  Definitely a nice young neighborhood, which will help.

We’re also driving her nuts by giving her just about any detail about the house except whether it’s one or two story. She badly wants a two story home, so we’re keeping that as a surprise for her. It makes her mad, but should make her first sight of the new home very exciting.

We’re lucky to have local, retired grandparents to take the kids. I’m trying to have them gone most of this week, as we have a lot of stuff packed up. They really hate being told “sorry, that toy has been packed already.” Much better for them to be having fun with grandparents than to be underfoot all day.

They have helped with some of the packing, plus some toy sorting for things that they’re willing to get rid of. It’s a great time for getting rid of at least some of the excess toys!

Letting the kids be involved can slow things down tremendously, but it also helps them. It’s not just something that Mommy and Daddy are doing. It’s something the family is doing together.

I’ve posted a bit about the Google Money and similar scams. Today I saw that Google has also posted their take on these scams.

It’s some good tips, although as usual the people who most need to read it will probably never see it. But they do go over the legitimate ways you can earn money from Google (AdSense and the Google Affiliate Network), plus some of the symptoms of these and other scams people try using Google’s name.

I particularly liked this section:

Some sales pitches use the word “Google” or other trademarks right in their name with targeted phrases like “cash,” “pay day,” “money,” “secrets,” “home business,” etc. If you can’t find it on our list of Google products or on the business solutions page, don’t trust it.

A great point for anyone facing any product making big claims while using some other company’s name.

Working at home can be chaotic. Working at home while trying to move, even more so.

That’s what I’ve been working on lately. There’s absolutely no doubt that it has cut massively into my “working on my home business” schedule. Drives me nuts.

It’s not just the time loss. It’s being extra tired. Trying to figure out some way to have fun with the kids, who are of course concerned about the move and really want more time.

We’re moving because my husband got a job in San Bernardino. We’re quite delighted about that, even though we had really hoped for the San Diego office so we could stay where we are. It’s not easy to leave a house you’ve lived in for 4 years, raising your children and having another baby.

Much of the move has fallen on my shoulders. My husband has to be at work all week, so he can’t handle a lot of the stuff that needs doing during the week. He’s simply not available. Thank goodness for willing grandparents and a very helpful older sister who lives closer than we do to my husband’s new job. She and her husband have been so patient with having my husband there every weeknight, plus my kids playing with her daughter when I need to do stuff up that way.

I’m lucky that way.

Like everything else in home business and much of life, it comes down to planning.

1. Figure out the times that you’ll be working versus house/apartment hunting, packing, etc.

The balance here depends on how fast the move needs to go. We decided to be optimists about finding a place to rent, and gave notice to our current landlord pretty quickly. We even made it work. We’ll be out in plenty of time.

The faster you want to move, the more you need to tilt the balance toward finding a place to live and packing to get there.

Expect to lose some working days entirely. There have been plenty of days where I just have not had the energy to deal with anything beyond what it took to find a new place to live.

If you have clients, make sure they know you’re moving, and work with their needs as much as possible, even hiring someone else if need be to do the work you can’t get done due to your move. A virtual assistant for yourself may be a good idea too.

2. Pay attention to what you can live without for a while, versus what should be packed last.

You don’t want to pack away anything to do with your home business until you’re ready to have no access to it. For me, that means my computer stays out as long as possible.

Pack as neatly as possible, with all boxes labeled so that you can get organized again as soon as possible in your new home. If you aren’t in a big rush, this can also be a great time to declutter and get rid of all those papers that build up over time.

Now is a very good time to back up your computer. You hope nothing will happen to it on the move, but stuff happens. Better to be prepared.

I do this regularly anyhow. I have an external hard drive that backs up my files at night. Big, big help. They’re really quite affordable these days, especially when you consider the cost of losing all your files.

3. Check the rules for home business at your new home.

Don’t commit to anything until you’re sure that your home business won’t be a problem. If you’re entirely online, it really shouldn’t be a problem. However, if you ever have clients come to your home, there may be issues. You need to be sure that you can still run your business wherever you go.

Sometimes you’ll need a business license, sometimes a home occupation permit, sometimes a Fictitious Business Name or a DBA. Requirements vary quite a bit. Know what you need so you can keep your business legit.

4. Get your utilities and internet service hooked up in plenty of time at the new place.

How much in advance you need to take care of this depends on where you’re moving to and what kind of internet service you need. When my sister moved she got FIOS, which had a two week lead time on it. Other services can be turned on more or less same day.

5. Plan the layout of your new home.

This isn’t just for your home business. It’s for entire family. With luck, you’ll be able to dedicate a room as a home office. Maybe it will even have a door!

My home office at our new home will be pretty much like what I have now, that is to say a room that is still a part of the main body of the house, no door. We’re planning on having it be my office as well as the play area for the baby (she still needs to be near me, after all), plus have my husband’s computer in it and a homework place for my daughter. It’s a bigger room than we have for all of that right now, though, which will be nice.

Planning things a little in advance of the actual move helps when you’re moving. It’s nice to be able to put the boxes in the room they belong in, rather than in a big stack as you debate when you get there.

6. Keep planning your unpacking around your home business.

The move doesn’t stop when all the boxes and furniture are in your new home. It doesn’t even stop when you have the everyday basics set up.

Unpacking can be quite the process, and it too will interfere with your home business. You don’t want to be living out of boxes forever. At the same time, you may be quite eager to get your business running again. When you love what you do, it’s hard to ignore it once you’re sufficiently comfortable in your new situation.

But you do need to get the unpacking done too. It can be quite frustrating dealing with the little issues caused by having this and that packed away.

Work on the unpacking at a rate you and your family can tolerate. How fast that needs to be is a pretty personal decision. But I don’t recommend taking months and months to get the job done.

The idea, after all, is to get settled so that the move is no longer interfering with your ability to work your home business and enjoy your family. Once it’s all out of the way you’ll be glad it’s done.

I posted a while back about the Google Money scams. They’ve been all over the place, heavily advertised through AdWords, presenting itself as fake blogs and fake newspaper stories. Google finally did something about it, at least the parts that go through their site.

They terminated the AdWords accounts of those advertising them.

Not just suspended or deleted the ad campaigns. According to Search Engine Watch, they deleted the accounts and informed the account holders that they cannot open new ones. Period.

They mean business this time!

But don’t you worry! If you need big money promises, similar programs claiming you can make big bucks through Twitter are now out there, according to the L.A. Times.

Usual routine, you too can earn hundreds of dollars with little effort. Tons of Twitter followers! Big money! Easy!

Just pay a little money for shipping and handling. Oh, and even more per month, but that’s deep in the terms and conditions. You might not even notice until it shows up on your credit card.

These kinds of programs walk a very fine line on legitimacy. While they technically do list all charges, they’re often hard to find. In addition, the claims are pretty hard to believe for the simple reason that they aren’t likely.

Sure, some people do make good money with Google or with Twitter. Most people, even with instructions on what the other guy is doing… won’t. That’s business for you.

These companies can be deceptive about where they’re located and/or make it very difficult to cancel your subscription and get your money back when you find out what you’re being charged. They aren’t always on the wrong side of the law, but they’re often not far from the edge.

If you want to make money advertising on Google, study pay per click advertising. Perry Marshall is a reputable source.

Making money on Twitter can be more difficult, in part because it’s newer territory and there are fewer guides with a proven history. There are plenty of tricks to building a big following, but pick the wrong one and your account gets banned. Or just appear too spammy and see what happens.

Building a loyal following that cares enough about what you have to say in a tweet and will buy from links you post is an entirely different challenge.

It comes down to the simple truth that there is no easy solution to make big money for most of us. Sometimes someone will hit it lucky, but the next person to do what appears to be the same thing may not succeed. If it were that easy we’d all be earning the big bucks.

My mother saw this activity when she was at the Maker Faire earlier this year. She was impressed by how simple it is.

First you need some plain white t-shirts. I suppose you could use other colors, but then it’s harder for kids to figure out how their colors are going to turn out.

You can also use old pillow cases if you like. Mom used one for practice so she’s be ready to help the kids the first time she did this with them. Kind of a neat look and not a bad idea for kids making a present for grandparents or something.

Aside from the t-shirts, you will also need colored Sharpie markers, rubbing alcohol, a plastic cup, a dropper and I recommend having rubber bands to hold the shirt to the cup. A hair dryer can be useful too, for speeding up the evaporation of the alcohol so the kids can do more sections of their shirts quickly. Plastic grocery bags stuffed into the shirts can also help to keep colors from bleeding to the other side of the shirt while the ink dries.

I strongly recommend having windows open during this project, or do it outside. After a while, rubbing alcohol really stinks!

Put a plastic cup inside the t-shirt, wherever you want to begin this project. Wrap a rubber band over the t-shirt on the cup to hold it tight.

Draw dots or a simple design with the Sharpies. It looks great with no more than 2-3 colors. Too many colors will lead to the colors turning kind of muddy. Be firm enough with the markers to leave a fair bit of ink, or your results won’t be too impressive. Light dots don’t have enough ink to spread out very much.

Don’t get too fancy or detailed in your design. You’ll be blurring it most of the way away in a moment.

A design closer to the center works for a more classic tie dye look, but my kids liked dotting or drawing all over the area they were working with, and it turned out fine.

My kids did fireworks patterns, drew hearts, just whatever pleased them. Make sure there’s still some white areas left so that the colors have places to go other than just into each other.

Once the design is drawn, it’s time to get the rubbing alcohol out. Bring some up into the dropper, and wet the area of the drawing. The alcohol will soak into the shirt and bring the colors along with it.

Give it some time to spread, and you’ll come up with something like this:

Don’t give up on the spreading too quickly. There’s the immediate spreading you’ll see as soon as the alcohol soaks in, then more as it goes.

If you want to do more than one section without a lot of waiting, plug in that hair dryer and blow it dry once you’re satisfied with where you’re at. Rubbing alcohol evaporates pretty quickly. That’s why I said earlier to open the windows or do this outside. If you didn’t, by now you may know why I said that. It may help to take something for the headache after you get those windows open!

If you haven’t already, stuff the shirt with a plastic bag so that colors don’t bleed onto the back while they dry. You can still do more work with the bag in there.

Once you’re done you can set the colors either by throwing in the dryer for a while or by soaking in a white vinegar and water mix. I think I did about a 50/50 mix. You’ll get a bit more color out, and help keep the colors from bleeding into the rest of your laundry later.

I’ve had new red shirts bleed far more into the vinegar and water mix than these did, so I don’t know how bad it is if you skip setting the colors. But I did see some definite color coming out. Hopefully no one will tell me how bad it was when they failed to set the colors. Just take the time and get those colors set.

Not me, sigh.

Just not up to dealing with what it would take to have someone else care for the baby during that time. She doesn’t take a bottle well still, and while by the time BlogWorld actually starts I expect her to be eating some solids, this just isn’t a year I feel will work for me.

Pity, because last year was a blast. Very much worth my time and money.

The cheapest passes are gone already, making me wish I had noticed this sooner. But you can still get passes at a good price, as full price doesn’t hit until September 14, 2009.

I had a blast going to sessions and meeting other bloggers in person that I had only known online before. Admittedly it was a pretty tiring experience for me, since I was pregnant with Selene at the time. But fun, very, very fun and educational.

Now is a great time to register if you know you can make it, so you can also get your rooms reserved, maybe find a roommate if you want to save money, and get travel plans made. Best to do that early most of the time!

So… anyone going? I promise I’ll be jealous.