CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, are a wonderful tool in making a website efficient. It makes it simpler to make sitewide style changes without uploading the entire website over again. It makes it easier to test changes in the overall appearance of the site too.

But one of my favorite parts about using CSS is that I can use it to control the order in which elements of my pages load. I’d like to share why that’s important to me.

1. User Friendly

When people come to my site, the content is one of the first sections to pop up. If another element is taking time to load, such as an ad that is hosted offsite, they can still read what they came to see on my page. By the time they’re done, just about any unusually slow loading element will have loaded.

Most times this isn’t an issue. But when something loads slow, it’s nice to be able to give visitors something to look at so that maybe they won’t click away because the information they’re after isn’t showing up yet.

2. Potentially Search Engine Friendly

Some say that what a search engine sees early on in your page is a part of how they decide what the page is about. If you can get your content to be listed in your HTML before your navigation and other sections that are consistent from page to page, that could be a good thing for search engines.

It may also be helpful when the search engine grabs an excerpt from the page. It may increase the chances that the description shown will be text from the page, not the words from your navigation just because the relevant keyword was there too.

3. Load Potential Trouble Areas Late

I had an interesting problem here at the end of last week and over the weekend. My hosting company made some small change to their server, and that caused a script I use on many pages of my sites to fail, leading to incomplete loading of my pages.

Annoying, no?

Very much so, especially since I didn’t catch it right away. Those were rather busy family days and I wasn’t online much.

But aside from the error displaying, it didn’t make my site unusable.

That’s why I love using CSS to control the order in which parts of my website pages load. The script was one of the last things to load, and so my site could still be used, more or less. It was just some of my little extras, encouraging people to visit current forum topics and blog posts that were messed up.

I lost that function for a time, until the problem was figured out. I didn’t lose the entire function of my site, despite that visually those elements are above the content. They load at the very end instead, and my CSS code tells the browser to place those elements in the spaces at the top reserved for them.

I won’t say that having errors wasn’t frustrating since I still had most of my site working; it was! But the order in which my pages load made it an annoyance rather than a disaster.

I have to admit, I’m pretty much a workaholic when it comes to running my websites. I spend a lot of time on them. My husband is taking a week off his work this week, and I’ve been taking some advantage of it to get a little extra work time done. Not all day or anything, but a bit of extra.

But yesterday I took the day off for family time. We went to Big Bear Lake, which is only about an hour away.

It’s important to get family time when you run a home business. It’s really easy to get caught up in all the things you could be doing that maybe, just maybe, will help to increase your income. I’ve been having some relatively low income months lately, so the urge to work harder is strong right now.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take appropriate breaks.

A good break with the family is refreshing. It gets your mind away from all the stresses of working. You might even quit thinking about it for a time as you have fun.

Taking time for family is something you need to do a bit of every day, and then have some serious family time at least once a week. You work at home for a reason, after all, and if you neglect that reason, why are you at home anyhow?

You don’t have to do anything exciting for your family time. You don’t even have to leave the house. Just be together. Eat together. Do chores together. Turn off the television and back away from the computers. Cell phones too, especially if you have kids who really love to text.

Make some family time a regular priority. Not just because you need a break from working but because your family needs time as a unit.

For some people, marketing their home business is a pleasure. It’s something that comes naturally. For others, it’s just plain work.

But no matter how you feel about it, you need to market your business if you want it to get anywhere.

You need to market your business if you want it to get anywhere.

Don’t Stick to Just One Method Forever

There are many different ways to market your business. You can do article marketing. You can talk to people you meet about your business. You can post on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites about your business. You can do pay per click advertising. You can do blog commenting. You can add to this list.

Whatever method you use, make sure it’s not the only one you use for all time.

Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe you should master, or at least be comfortable with one marketing tactic before you start trying others. But don’t stay in that comfort zone. Move out and try something new.

How else are you going to know what will work for you?

Market Every Day

Well, perhaps not every, every day. If you need the occasional day off, do what you must. But until your business is really growing and thriving, market as often as possible.

Market as often
as possible.

There’s a balance here between marketing and otherwise running your home business that you have to strike.  Your marketing will only do so much good if you neglect the rest of your business. But running the rest of your business will only do so much good if you neglect marketing. They need each other.

Keep an Eye on the Competition

Knowing what your competition is doing can help you to think of things you should be doing to market your business. Don’t copy them outright, but if you see a great way to market try to find a way to adapt it to your own use.

Track Your Results

Keep track of where you’re getting the best results.

Do the best you can to keep track of where you’re getting the best results from. This will tell you which marketing efforts are paying off and which are a waste of your time. You need to know.

You can follow most referrers through a good website statistics program. Most hosts have Awstats already installed, and you can get some good information from there. You may also want to consider signing up for Google Analytics for a different source of statistics on your website traffic.

Keep working on your marketing and find out what is getting you the best results. It’s one of the best ways to find out what’s helping you to grow your business.

You’ve got an idea for an online business. You’re going to get started. You’re raring to go. It’s going to be amazing.

Or is it?

While there are no guarantees in any kind of business, the wrong moves have always been able to make it more likely that you’ll fail.

1. Starting up without research.

What do you know about your niche? Have you narrowed it down? Do you know anything about the people you hope to sell to? Do you even understand the products you’re going to be discussing? Do people look for information about it or do they buy the products online?

Most people who start a successful online business have researched their topic.

If you don’t do research, you’re making it much harder on yourself. You probably aren’t going to succeed. Most people who start a successful online business have researched their topic. They know enough about it to make a website that should interest people searching in that niche.

This holds true even if you buy a product or buy into a business opportunity that looks great. Research it first. Make sure that you really understand what it’s about before spending money on your business.

2. Expecting instant results.

It’s wonderful when a website starts getting traffic. It’s even better when it starts earning money, better yet when it starts earning serious money.

That doesn’t usually happen quickly.

If you expect instant results, you’re likely to give up on your site too soon. That’s no way to bring up a successful business. You have to be willing to give it time.

3. Expecting your motivation to last.

You should be enthusiastic and motivated about your business at first. If not, why are you working on it in the first place?

But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be enthusiastic and motivated every day. Sometimes you’re going to be frustrated. Sometimes you’re going to be tired. Sometimes you’re going to wonder if you will ever reach even the most modest of your goals, never mind your dreams.

Sometimes you’re going to wonder
if you will ever reach even the most modest of your goals, never mind your
dreams.

Be ready for burnout. Be ready for frustration. Know that those don’t usually last either.

4. Fail to be passionate about your business.

Passion for your business isn’t quite the same thing as motivation, although they are related. Your passion for your business is a part of what provides your motivation.

If you don’t really love your business, it’s going to be harder to get past those times when you lack motivation. It’s going to be easier to give up.

5. Ignoring your website.

Some niches need more attention from you than others when you create a website. There are micro niches where only a little content is necessary, but most niches require more effort. You will probably want to add new content regularly and check for outdated content.

6. Neglecting website promotion.

You have to promote your website. No one will find it if you don’t. That’s just how the internet works. It doesn’t matter if you write fabulous content if you don’t leave a trail for both visitors and search engines to follow.

7. Failing to monetize.

A highly informational website is a wonderful thing. It can get a ton of traffic just for being useful.

That doesn’t mean it will bring in a lot of money. If you don’t monetize your site well, it’s not going to give you much of an income.

You have tons of choices. AdSense is an easy choice if you don’t want to do much research. Affiliate products can bring in wonderful amounts of money if you have a popular site. Selling ads can bring in good money if you have enough traffic.

You created your site and you have a right to earn something for your efforts.

Test different options. Find out what brings in the most in your situation. This will be different from site to site, so don’t expect what works on one site to work on all of them.

Don’t worry too much about people complaining about your ads. You don’t want to overdo it, but if someone is complaining about a small number of ads, remember that these are the people who aren’t going to help you earn money anyhow. You created your site and you have a right to earn something for your efforts.

8. Quitting.

Quitting is the one sure path to failure. Anything else can be corrected. If you quit trying to build an online business, you’re never going to have one succeed.

One of the things I enjoy doing with my kids is teaching them basic life skills. It seems like a lot of parents skip some of the basics with their kids these days, because it’s easier to do it yourself than to teach it.

Suckers. Teaching it is hard, but eventually the kids know how to do it for you. Then it starts paying off… aside from hearing the kids complain about having to do whatever chores you assign them.

My intent is to have both of my daughters and my son learn the basics of running a household. Not just cooking and cleaning, but basic repairs and dealing with technology too.

My intent is to have both of my daughters and my son learn the basics of running a household.

This incompetence in basic skills is something I remember seeing in my fellow students when I lived in the dorms in college. It was amazing how many had never done a single load of laundry.

You want to teach chores at appropriate ages. My oldest can cook a little bit on the stove, and will be learning more soon. She’s finally tall enough to deal with the controls on the washer and dryer, so more laundry is about to be added to her list.

My son does some basic food heating in the microwave. He’s also puzzling out how to make PB&J sandwiches – the thickness of the peanut butter still gives him trouble.

The oldest two both do chores that involve sweeping, mopping and scrubbing. It takes a lot of supervision still, to make sure they don’t do a sloppy job then give up. But they do them.

The youngest is still too young for chores.

Division of Labor

In some ways, my husband and I have a pretty traditional division in labor, mostly because I work at home so I’m there to get things done all day. But any chore I ask him to do he can do well enough, and I’ve learned to not criticize when he loads the dishwasher differently from how I would do it unless there’s a genuine problem that would keep the dishes from getting clean. We go nontraditional in other ways.

I want my kids to know that they can handle whatever jobs around the house need doing, whether it’s traditionally “men’s work” or “women’s work”.

I want my kids to know that they can handle whatever jobs around the house need doing, whether it’s traditionally “men’s work” or “women’s work”. They can all be competent.

That’s why I make sure that while I’m more likely to do some chores, sometimes my husband does them, and vice versa. Who does which has much to do with preferences and who can get a particular job done better or faster, rather than traditional gender roles. I handle just about all the technology stuff, for example.

Important Skills

There are a lot of skills I want my kids to have by their mid-teens at the latest, so they’re well practiced by adulthood. They include cooking a variety of foods, following a recipe, basic repair sewing, using a hammer, using a screwdriver, painting a wall, emptying the trash, sweeping, mopping, knowing when basic car maintenance needs to be done, mowing a lawn, doing the laundry, living on a budget, and more.

You can’t assume that kids will go from living with you to living with a spouse who has all of these skills, so I call them necessary. Just think about time spent living in college dorms or apartments where they’re going to have to handle many of these things on their own.

Don’t Let Them Feign Incompetence

Learning that you have to do your share even when you aren’t in the mood is a great lesson.

Kids are great at pretending that they can’t handle various chores. They’ll call them too hard when they really just aren’t in the mood to do the work, even on chores they do regularly. They’ll also try to claim a new chore is too difficult when they aren’t in the mood to learn a new skill.

Don’t let them get away with it. Learning that you have to do your share even when you aren’t in the mood is a great lesson.

Don’t let them get away with doing a sloppy job on a chore you know they’re usually better at. Wanting to head out to play with friends or to play on the computer isn’t an excuse for sloppy work. I usually remind my kids that I don’t have to let them do fun things until their work is done. They don’t like that, but it usually gets them moving.