Friday, August 26, 2011

Deciding on My Focus Here

It's been hard to decide exactly what I want this site to be about. When I first started it, I wanted to help people avoid some of the financial pitfalls that we've learned about the hard way. I also wanted to help people become more thrifty and save money. It seems though, that there are plenty of sites out there that can tell you about all of the good deals a lot better than I can (mainly because they're a lot more dedicated to the task of looking for all these deals). I have no idea how I could find that kind of time with five kids to raise--at least not if I wanted to have time to enjoy my family!

I've thought long and hard about what I wanted to do here. Do I want to earn money? Sure I do! Who doesn't? Do I want to help others avoid some of the mistakes I've made? You betcha! Do I want to share some helpful tip I've learned to get through hard times? I'd love to!

But I also don't want writing to feel like a chore. It's always been a sort of release for me. It's something I love to do. I think that burying myself in coupon, saving and freebie deals (and other such things) and then focusing my writing on mainly that would suck out any excitement I get when I sit down to blog. Does that sound terrible? I'm sorry if it does, but that's how I feel.

I want to enjoy the time I spend here. I figure that if I'm enjoying writing what I do here, then it's more likely that people will enjoy reading what I've written (at least I hope that's the case). I like talking about my family. I like talking about what we're doing in our lives to survive in this tough economy. But I don't really like talking about each and every coupon, freebie or other such deal. Haha! Go figure!

So I think I'll leave most of the couponing know-how to the professionals like The Thrifty Couple, Freebies4Mom, Freebies2Deals, CouponMom and the many others out there who are so much better at it than I am. Though if I find out about something that's too good to keep to myself, I'll be sure to share it. But that isn't going to be my main focus here. My focus here is about family life, trials, successes and failures. They say to write about what you know best and my family and our lives together are what I know best.



I hope that works for my readers (few they may be right now), because that's what I do best. So there is my new focus! God Bless :)

My eHow Divorce...

As some of you know, I started writing for eHow a few years ago. At first it didn't pay anything, since it all has to do with ad-generated revenue, and you have to have traffic to make anything off of that. Anyway, eventually I started making a little money off of the articles there, and even mentioned that I wished I'd written more before the changeover to Demand Studio's new program of only on-staff writers and flat pay rates for articles.

The way they first handled the changeover was that you were still paid off of ad revenue for your initial articles, but had to become a staff writer and accept the new payment terms to have any other articles published on the site. I believe that they made this change to improve the quality of articles published on their site.

They did initially accept me as a staff writer, but I hesitated to accept these new terms and so I never did become a part of their staff. I still received payments for my original six articles though, until early this year when they discontinued even that part of their terms. They offered me a dismal amount of money for the rights to my articles (it wasn't even an amount I'd have accepted for one article, let alone six) and said if I didn't accept the purchase terms, then I would retain the rights, but my articles would be removed from their site. Well, I refused the terms and kept the rights. So, I'm no longer an eHow contributor. Ah, well, life goes on.

I'll be moving those articles I wrote over to HubPages soon. My earnings there have started to increase over the last month or so, and so I have the motivation to get back to work! Now that the kids are back in school, I'm hoping to have more time to write. We shall see.

I'm loving these chicken eggs!

I've been meaning to update you all on how our adventures in chicken raising are going. We did get the coop and yard all finished and it looks great. I would say it's more of a chicken palace than a coop. Tony has really done a fantastic job.




Also, I'm so happy to tell you that it's going great! I love my hens. All 14 have grown up healthy and are laying eggs for us regularly. We average about a dozen a day now, and have even had 14 twice this week so far (a first!). They're about six months old now and so funny to watch.






We let them out of their yard daily for a while so they can scavenge around for bugs and what not (this adds to the nutritional value of their eggs and also lessens the amount of feed they go through (we still keep their feeders full though, just in case). We bring them out scraps now and then, and so whenever they see us step outside, they assume we've got a treat for them and all come running. It's funny how important you feel when you see 14 hens excitedly running towards you with their wings partially extended whenever you step out on the porch. Yes, we really do love all our girls.




We have a few hens that will lay double yolk eggs a few days a week. And can I tell you how good these eggs are? There's nothing like fresh eggs from healthy and happy hens! They are yummy! We're producing more than we thought we would, so we've been selling the extra eggs to friends and neighbors (making it so that it's virtually free to maintain these chickens! Yay!)

So I guess you can tell that we have no regrets. This is one learning adventure that's been a pleasure to go on thus far :)