When it comes to working at home, any parent knows that no matter how well you plan out the day something is bound to happen to disrupt your schedule. It may be something trivial like spilled milk, or something more important like a trip to the emergency room. No matter what it is, the point is that the small things can add up leaving you wondering at the end of the day where all the time went, and having to scramble to finish your work.

If you work at home and have kids, here are some tips that could hopefully help increase your productivity:

Set aside a work space for you – The work space may be an entire room, or just a small corner at the kitchen. The point is that you should have a place where you can put your laptop and the rest of your work stuff that the kids will know are off limits. Having a work station will also help you not just in having a place to dump all your things, but help put you in the zone once you start working.

Establish your kids’ bedtime – This is not only good for your kids, but will also give you a more predictable time of the day when you can catch up on work without any interruptions. The few minutes you spend putting them to bed might will earn you hours of “you time” and plus points in the bonding department.

Pre-post – Every time you have a chance to do work ahead of time, do so. Publish posts ahead of time so that the next time some emergency arises you won’t have to worry to much about unfinished work because you’ve already done them ahead of time!

Photo via Charlotte Fire Dept Credit Union

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Do you want to earn extra money without interfering with your day to day activities? Well then you can, with a little patience and creativity, you can earn money online and lots of them for that matter. By simple blogging your way to the internet market, you can earn a full time salary in three simple steps. A business MBA person can benefit a great deal from this. Click here to know about this.

Step 1 – Start a Controversial Blog

You may want to set up your blogging site first and then write a controversial topic that will make people raise their eyebrows. There are a lot of blogging platforms out there that offers their service for free. If you want you can register your own domain name and start from scratch but if you don’t have time for this, simply opt for the first option.

Step 2 – Monetize your blogs

You can sign up with Google Adsense as this offer the ability for people to display advertisements on your page. If anyone clicks on the ads posted on your blog, then Google will pay you for it. You can also try to join affiliate programs like the Chikita Mini or Amazon. There are a lot of other more marketing programs that allows you to monetize your blogs based on the click rates.

Step 3 – Regularly update your blogs

By keeping your blog updated and fresh, you followers will keep on visiting your site. These are the same people who would click on one of the ads posted on your site or purchase the service that you advertise.

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First and most importantly, value your time and think big – those small gigs that earn you a few extra dollars can be great in the beginning, but they can easily eat into your time too much and prevent you from getting any real work done. Limit those small projects as much as you can and fill up your time with as many large-scaled projects as you can.

Also, you should rely on your clients for references as much as possible – whenever you complete a deal and the client is happy with your work, throw them a line asking them to refer you to their partners who may need similar services – you’d be surprised how well that works and how much extra work it can score you!

Last but not least, don’t be afraid to try out something new – the job of a freelance web designer can be a very varied one if you let it!

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The corporate instant messaging platform was so we could turn off the rest, and be able to focus on work, but the reality is that all instant messaging needs to be turned off to really get a good amount of work done. Any interruption to your focus, or what I call my “groove”, will distract you from your goals, stop you from getting things done, and cost you time and energy that could have been put into work tasks.

Writing conversations, even just in short form instant messaging takes much more concentration than talking on the phone to someone, as it uses both your sense of sight and touch, where talking via an audio medium, through Skype or the phone, only uses your hearing.

The biggest productivity tip I can give you is to turn off your instant messaging programs during your blogging time. Schedule when you will be available to be accessed through such means, and let people know they can e-mail you, or if it is an emergency or very high priority, they can take the time to call you. I know calling can be a distraction as well, so make sure they realize that it is only in extreme situations that calling would be acceptable.

Instant messaging tools are productivity killers, and in this highly competitive world, the last thing you want is to be unproductive.

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Windows Live Writer – Never mind if you’re not a Microsoft fan. But Live Writer is definitely a very robust, useful and dependable blogging tool. It could be the best among the lot. Live Writer lets you set multiple blogs and directly publish post to them.

Microsoft Research ESL Assistant – A useful tool for non-English-as-a first-language bloggers.  This tool provides correction suggestions for typical ESL (English as a Second Language) errors including choice of determiners and propositions, as well as word choice suggestions.

Google Translate – If you’re like me who covers netbook news, I usually encounter news items in various languages including French, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, and others. And if a foreign-language site is your only source of information about a particular new gadget, you have no other recourse but to use Google’s Translation tool. It may not be the most accurate translation but it’s enough to give you the gist of what the news is all about. More than enough to you to compose  a decent news blog post.

Google’s Currency Converter – Again another useful online tool for tech bloggers. If you’re writing about new products and gadgets which you sourced out from foreign-language blogs, you simply type the price plus the currency’s name in Google’s search box,  hit enter and you’ll be given the U.S. Dollar equivalent.

Google Docs – Who doesn’t use Google Docs yet? Ever heard of cloud computing? Google Docs is a very good and useful example of a cloud storage service. I use it for drafting long posts which I need to edit from time to time even when I’m using different computers.

Honorable Mention:

Copyscape - If you’re not sure if you are plagiarizing other people’s content, especially true if you’re writing about original topics and not regurgitating news items, Copyscape is an invaluable tool.

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With everything that went on, my day was severely hampered in the blogging department, so much so that I really didn’t get much of anything done. Add to that, issues with Blogging Pro, and I was ready to drop everything, and go on a very long vacation. It was one of those days where I would have killed to be back in an office job environment. As a blogger, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to get back into a traditional workplace and even if I could find a job in the computer and networking field I used to be in. I am getting sidetracked though.

Usually, I am able to shake the issues I am having, and just refocus, but yesterday, that wasn’t possible for some reason. It made me wonder if blogging, as a job, is more effected by emotion than other career choices. I think of blogging sometimes as more of a creative endeavor. Like painting a picture or writing a masterful book, and I know that art is definitely influenced by blogging. What is your take? Is blogging more effected by emotion like art, or is it just a bad day like with any other career?

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You might have noticed that posting has been a little slow here, and that is because I am really trying to throw myself into doing work for everyone else. I have since contacted everyone I do freelance work for, and let them know that I just can’t keep it up. I have to focus on the company that pays my bills, and gives me a full time income: Splashpress Media.

Moving away from working on other projects will mean increased quality of work on their sites, as well as this one. Hopefully, you haven’t all left to find someone better to read.

Check out Devlounge, Blog Herald, Blogging Pro, and Forever Geek to read more articles by me.

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There are so many things I still want to do in my life, and I feel like I haven’t done as many of them over the last year as I would have liked. It is easier to say this than do it, but we all need to work harder, longer, smarter and faster. I am guilty of being far too lazy in my life, and in doing so, I am doing myself a great disservice, as I am not accomplishing all that I could, and I have a feeling many of you might be realizing the same thing.

If you want to make it “big” in the business of blogging, you need to give 1000% for as long as possible. I am not sure how to make this change in my life, but I am going to try to not wait for some inspiration or magical answer to fall from the sky, and instead, I am going to push harder, build faster, and work smarter.

We all have a finite amount of time in our day, and many of us spend too much of it on the wrong things. The only caveat I will hand out in this though is to make sure you love what you are doing because working at a super human level will drain you to a husk of a person if you don’t love what you are doing.

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Have you ever sat down at the keyboard needing to write a post only to draw a total blank? The longer you sit there and try to force the content to flow, the harder it becomes to concentrate? It’s kind of like trying to go to the bathroom when you know someone is listening, no matter how hard you try…well, you get the idea.

Don’t fret, you are definitely not alone if you occasionally struggle to generate unique content. It is not difficult to find examples of daily as posts get recycled into new content and bloggers try to make something out of used up older posts.

Recognizing the problem is the easy part, what to do about it is the what most bloggers struggle to figure out. If your creative juice has slowed to a trickle then keep on reading because we’ve got the fix to get your content flowing again.

Here’s 7 different suggestions for posts that you can resort to when your creativity needs a recharge.

Caution: Use Only In Emergency

• Product Review – Granted these sometimes are not the most exciting posts to write or read but if you give an in depth review of something you feel strongly about then you are sure to add value to the content. It could be something from your favorite plugin to the last book you read but whatever you do, make it entertaining to read.

• List Posts – List posts are some of the most popular and widely read posts that you can find on the Internet. People absolutely LOVE them. I would challenge you that if you are going to resort to a list post that you make sure you put a spin on it that will entertain and be unique.

• Round Up – Round Up posts are typically a summary of some of the favorite posts you’ve read this week either from your own blog, other blogs or a combination of the two. I recently wrote a White Trash Round Up post about some recent controversy in the MMO niche. It’s not your typical roundup post but, duh, that’s what makes it unique.

• Rant Post – Everyone loves some good drama. They might pretend they are above it but no question, a rant or a slam post will create traffic. Reality TV is popular because people love the drama it provides. If you check out some of the posts I linked to in the White Trash Round Up post then you can tell by the comments that people LOVE these. Crank on someone today.

• Post a Poll – Ask for input. Problogger constantly posts polls on his site and asks his readers for input. He then is able to generate a number of posts based off the results of the poll. This can be a built in content generating machine. Genius.

• Link Love – Bloggers LOVE being linked to, so make someone’s day and link out to some of your favorite bloggers. You can introduce your readers to some great content make someone’s day all at the same time. If you believe in paying it forward, then this is an easy way to do it.

• Don’t Post a Damn Thing Post – Yep, sometimes you are just better off not to post anything than to try and force it. A favorite saying of mine comes to mind….“It is better to be thought of a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

If you can’t find something to write about after reading this list then don’t fret, it won’t hurt to take a day or two off from posting and recharge your batteries. You will be better off for it as long as you don’t let the day or two slide into a week or more.

The lure of taking a day or two off can be attractive so as long as you don’t let it become a habit then your traffic and subscribers shouldn’t suffer too much. Whatever you do, don’t be like John Cow, and take a vacation only to come back and decide to sell your blog.

I came up with 7 ideas…..who can come up with another one?

If you enjoyed this post then will find me back here every Friday until the boss kicks me out. In the meantime you can check me out on my own blog at The Blog Entrepreneur if you just can’t wait until then. You can read my latest post “Buying a Blog is Like Buying a Mail Order Bride.”

Enjoy.

Co-working space would allow me a small room, usually shared by others to get away from the distractions at home and get some work done. This space is dedicated to getting work done, and as such is better than sitting at a local Starbucks (of which there are none here), or the food court of the mall (where I am writing this now without WiFi).

Has anyone else tried co-working? I would love to find someone with some reviews of the idea before I continue moving forward on it.

I have a feeling that if I want to use a co-working space, I will have to be the person to set it up, find other freelancers and manage the whole endeavour, but sitting at home, despite currently having a bed room as an office, just isn’t enough separation between work and home life.