Little Steps

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

I AM Back! Yes, I Am!

Fall in the forest!

I am back! Yes, I am going to start working on this blog again. It seems a waste to just let it go. My life hasn't changed much since my last post on here that was way back in 2013. That is sad to say, I suppose. It has changed in some ways though. One thing that is different is that I do not have the Amazon Pro Store anymore. I still sell strings on Amazon, but for the time being, we are focusing on my eBay store, katlupe's Shop and String Baby of course. String Baby is being worked on at the moment so I won't share the link till it is up and running again.

Vintage photo I have listed on eBay!

Some things that have changed too is that now photos are larger. The ones on this blog look so tiny to me now. That is the size that everyone was using back then. I remember how sites would say, "oh no, your pictures too big!" Now they are saying just the opposite. In fact, eBay wants them to be at least 1600 pixels on one side and encourage you to put up 12 photos for every item you list. Now really, how many pictures of a book or a vintage photograph I can do? The front, the back, the sides, on a book maybe the inside pages and table of contents. But a picture??? Front and back and that is about it.

The road in front of my house!

Now that the weather is getting colder again, I will be inside and able to do a lot more writing as well as working on eBay. Much computer work to do and catch up on. I will keep you informed and I have some ideas to share on here of how you can generate a living at home on your homestead too. So be sure to check back with me.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Knowledge Should Be Shared Through Teaching And Writing

After a busy summer and fall, I am ready to get back into writing again. Writing my blogs takes time if I want to write meaningful posts. I have too many, I know, but there isn't one of them that I would choose to delete. So how do I keep up with them? As you can see, I don't. I haven't posted on this one since April, though I did keep the others current as much as possible.

Not only the blog writing, but I am working on eBooks as well. So writing is what I do, whenever I can squeeze it in. The problem for me is the computer time. I am not able to use my computer whenever I choose. The power is the thing. It is the one thing I don't like about living off the grid. Now if I could find a way to use my battery on my laptop to write, I definitely would. But it won't last longer than an hour, if that.

Writing quality meaningful posts is what gives me pleasure. I like to know I am helping someone, even if it is only one person who comes to my blog or reads one of my books. I try to share my knowledge the best way I can. I don't proclaim to know it all, but I have lived a long life so far, and I have learned many things. I hope I can share it all with my readers.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Make Money Working At Home From Amazon!

Life was good in the 80s!

Yesterday I wrote about my many streams of income. That is what makes life brighter for me now. Our economy is bad and life as I knew it in the 70s & 80s, is a far distance memory. But I am not one to sit still and whine about it. It makes me work on my streams of income and try to make them more productive. I also research and study new projects to add to the ones I already have. When one is producing, add another one or do something else.

I sell many brands of guitar strings!

Waking up every morning to sales in my Amazon ProStore makes me eager to get my computer booted up and check my email. I sell guitar strings on my own websites and business has been slow. Even on eBay, I marked the strings way down, and still no sales. Ever since I put them all on Amazon...........I have been selling out of my inventory! Must be the reason I don't get sales anywhere else, is because all the guitar players are shopping on Amazon. Hey, that is fine with me! I like to shop there myself, so I understand.

eBooks are my favorite money stream!

For me, Amazon is awesome! It offers me many different streams of income. It takes a lot of work and researching whatever it is that you are selling. I always think, "Hey, I am working for myself! Nobody to answer to." Normally, I wouldn't be putting all my eggs in one basket. But they offer so many ways to make money through their site, that it would be stupid not to take advantage of that. Being an Amazon Associate gives me a small deposit from all of my blogs monthly. Not much so far, but it adds up over time. My biggest money maker has been my eBooks in the Kindle store. I am improving all my eBooks right now, and will be adding more. That is by far, my favorite stream of income, because I love to write!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

What Does Many Streams Of Income Mean?

Binghamton, NY

As all my readers of this blog know, I LOVE many streams of income! In fact, that is what motivated me to start this blog in the first place. It has evolved a bit from when I first started it. Not the way I planned it from the beginning, but I like it better this way. My streams of income are doing much better now and I thought I should come back to this blog and let you know how to increase those streams.

1. Open an Amazon ProStore - Sell a product on Amazon. They get the traffic. All you have to do is list.

2. Use Fulfillment By Amazon - Send bulk amounts of products you sell to Amazon and they will send the products out for you. All you have to do is list them and send them to the warehouse. No customer service at all. No contact with the buyers. It is great if you have fast moving product!

3. Become an associate of Amazon by signing up as an affiliate. Include links to the products you think your blog readers will like or interest them. If they buy anything on Amazon after clicking that link, you will get a little bit of money. Maybe it is not much, but it adds up.

4. Be an affiliate of other networks, such as ClickBank, Shareasale and others. Or find sites that interest in that are not in those networks. Like VistaPrint or Netrition. Make sure it is something your readers are interested in.

5. Write an eBook. Yes, it is my favorite stream of income! Do you have an old book you put away because nobody would publish it? Or have a half finished novel or other book on your computer? Get to work on it and publish it in Amazon's Kindle Direct program. Money in your account while you sleep! Just keep writing more books, passive income keeps coming in.

6. Sell on eBay. Everyone does this one time or other. I like eBay and have no complaints there except I wish I could sell everything I list as soon as I list it! LOL

7. Sell a product on your website. I do this. But this is the hardest nut to crack. Pick a product to sell and sell it on your website.

8. Write blog posts for payments. Some companies are looking for bloggers to write about their products. On one of my other blogs, I write a post for a local grocery store and get paid for it. They contacted me after seeing a link to their store coming from my blog from a post I had written about shopping there. I found a wonderful eBook that tells you exactly how to do this and even gives you examples of letters to write to companies. The name of this eBook is Review Bloggers: Get Flooded with Review & Giveaway Sponsor Products written by Bethany Cousins.

So there you have it. These are my streams of income. What are your streams? Do you have some you'd like to share? If so, let me know and I will write about it or have you write a guest post for this blog.

FTC Blogging Disclosure

Friday, March 22, 2013

Moving On

This year we are making some big changes here at our homestead. I expect we will be relocating sometime this year. Finishing up some remodeling projects on this house so we can sell it and move on. We need to make these changes to be able to progress forward in our life. I know I never thought I'd be considering moving from our Peaceful Forest Homestead in the future. But we have had things happen in our life in recent years that have made this the only choice possible. So on we go, with new plans and new ideas.

I don't mean to make it sound like I am not excited about this idea. I honestly am! I want to make these changes and can't wait to implement them. First though, we must finish up our house so we can sell it. I don't want to sell it to hunters if I can help it. They run these houses in the forest down and leave a lot of trash in the forest. Not all of them, but most of the ones around us do. So I'd really like to see true homesteaders buying our off-the-grid home in the future.

One of the plans we have is to take our business of selling guitar strings to the next level. The only way we can do that is to move to an area that has a better internet connection. The other thing is that we want to be "grid-tied" instead of "off-the-grid." Generating our own power has been fine. Now though, we would like to make our life a bit easier and that means less hard physical chores. To be honest, if my husband was not here, I'd be in a lot of trouble. So I want to get us all set up in a different situation so either one of us will not be working so hard every day, all the time.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

New Kindle Fires For Christmas Gifts!

My Kindle Fire!

Kindle Fire 7", LCD Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB

I have a Kindle Fire and have enjoyed owning one for the past year. I use it daily and would be lost without it. It is as important to me as my laptop and my digital camera. Reading is always something I loved to do, but now I read more than ever due to my Kindle Fire and Amazon. The Kindle Fire though, is more than a reader! It offers you over 20 million movies, tv shows, magazines, songs and books! What a great Christmas gift this would be!

Kindle Fire HD 7", Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, 16 GB

This is a newer model of the Kindle that I have not used. They are becoming more and more in demand. This particular one has even more special options and features. I am really interested in it after reading the details on Amazon's page for it.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9", Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, 16 GB

Another model, upgrade from the previous one. I believe they just keep making these Kindle Fires better and better. They have a built in camera and free Skype too. So much to do with one of these tablets now. It is the perfect Christmas present for anyone and everyone on your list this year!

Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G LTE Wireless, Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, 32 GB

This Kindle Fire offers LTE Wireless from AT&T available for $49.99 for the whole year. No searching for Wi-Fi spots! These Kindle Fires seem to have just about everything you could want. Whichever Kindle Fire you choose, I am sure you will be very happy with it. Which one do you like? And why?

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Homestead Income Coming From Your Blog

Make A Living From Wherever You Live!

Many times I have people email me asking how they can make money on their homestead. Besides selling food products, selling soap, honey or a million other things from the production of livestock, there are many other ways too. As you know, if you read my blogs regularly, I sell online, write eBooks and make money from affiliate ads on my blogs. For me, this is the best way. I can't do the hard physical work entailed with raising the animals or harvesting a big crop. There are other ways of course. I will touch on them in some future posts. This post I'd like to recommend some ways I know for sure.

The number one best way is to write posts for a store or a particular product. You can contact some of the stores in your area to get started. I write for a local restaurant supply store in our area. I like doing it and really enjoy that type of work. These posts are not all about the store, but more about what you can do with the products you buy in their store. I learned a lot when I started writing these posts. It helped me to increase my affiliate income as an Amazon associate affiliate. I now earn more money every month from Amazon!

First sign up as an affiliate of a site that sells products you use and like. Then you can share with your readers the reasons why you like the products and how you use it. Put some photos up of how you use it or at least something that is related to it. If you are a homesteader, you can write a blog about homesteading and include affiliate links to homesteading products. It is not hard once you just start doing it.

When you write your blog posts though, don't make it sound like an advertisement. I write some posts for Blogsvertise and some of the companies want you to sound that way when they ask you to write about their company. Others are quite content with your own content that includes a link to their site. Those posts are always the best ones and get the most traffic. Your readers are not stupid! They know when you are trying to sell them.

Which brings me to some of the blogs I read that are like an advertisement all the way through. They say they are making money that way. Maybe they are. I never read their whole post because I don't care to read an ad. Do you? Would that turn you off to their blog? It does me. If one or two post is written that way, that is one thing. But not every single post! That is overkill and you can lose your readers, as well as their respect.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The Right Camera For Your Blog

When people ask me what was the one thing that turned my blogs around, I have to answer it was the purchase of my digital camera. What a difference it has made! I had been quoted in the magazine Hobby Farm Home and the editor had requested a photo of my wood cook stove to go with the article. I did not have a digital photo and she seemed to be perturbed with me that I did not own a digital camera. They had to get a photo from another source for their article. Right after that my husband bought me the digital camera of my choice.

The Homesteading Housewife, Dana Clover, told on Facebook about an awesome camera that she bought and she sold me on it. That was the camera I wanted. I had put it on my wish list at Amazon. It is the Canon EOS Rebel T1i Digital SLR Camera. And I love it just as much as when I bought it in 2009. This camera has always been dependable and never has let me down.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Cafe Press Is Another Income Stream!

As everyone knows I sell online. I sell whatever I can find to sell. A few months back, I discovered on one of my blogging friends' blog a link to "My Shop" on her blog. I clicked it and found that she had a Cafe Press store with her blog name on all types of merchandise. What a fantastic idea! Her blog is The Redhead Riter and if you look at the index at the top of her blog, you will see My Shop. She also has a community on The Blogfrog and her merchandise would be of great interest in the members of The Redhead Riter Community. They may not know she has this little shop. Check out her great coffee mugs!

So I created my own cafe press store! It is another income stream. I am adding its link to all my blogs and on some of my forum signatures. It is not done yet and I will be adding more and more items to it over time. Using photos of my own to create some unique items is my goal.

If you have a Cafe Press store, please leave your link in the comments. I will add to this blog so others may check your store out too. Tell me what you sell in it. That way we can help each other.

Check out My Homesteading On The Internet Store on Cafe Press!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Craigslist Is Disappointing

College building in Binghamton, NY

As everyone knows who comes to this blog, I am always working on my "multiple streams of income." It seems every time I start getting that extra bit of money to come in, it has to be used for some kind of major repair or problem. I had plans to start saving that money or paying down my loan or credit card. Nope. Every single time I get a payment from one of my income streams, I don't see that money in my account or on my debt.

Selling this bike trailer on craigslist!

One of my income streams (I was hoping!), was going to be craigslist. I see many people saying they bought or sold something on there. It made me think I could do it too! How silly of me! Instead I have been receiving porn pictures in my inbox from young pretty women. They all start the same: "Are you Kathleen G. Lupole? I know you are selling an item (or she names what it is) but I see you are in my area and thought we could get together and be friends." Now what is that all about? What does my selling of a child's trailer that hooks onto a bicycle have to do with these women? What makes them think I'd be interested in them? For heavens sake, I am a married women, and not into that kinky stuff at my age! So much for craigslist!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Handling Stress

I have been feeling quite discouraged lately. That is the reason I have not been keeping up as well with my blogs. There are so things going on in my life at the moment and they are not good things. So it causes me to pull back, so to speak. I don't know if that is bad or good, but I have always done that in my life. It is my way of handling stress.

One thing I have been doing is to try to do something my mother taught me. She would tell me to make a list of all the things I could do to change the situation. Then you have an idea of where you are at. When things are tough, we have to do what we can do. If it was just me, I think I could handle it better. But having others involved makes it a bit harder for me. Worrying about others, makes choices different.

What do you do when you get stressed out? Do you have a way to handle it? Some people like stress and thrive on it. Are you one of those people? I wish I was! But I am not. Sometimes I head outside and do some garden work or hang out with my horses to try to concentrate on something else. It doesn't take the problems away, but maybe gives me a few hours of peace.

Hope to get this worked out soon and have my life back to normal.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Creating Products That Are Needed

I recently read on a forum how someone felt it was a scam that the manufacturing companies started marketing that women need to shave their arm pits in order to sell women's razors and shaving lotion, creating a whole industry. I can think of a huge number of products that came about due to that very thing. Creating the idea that a certain niche market needed this product or it would make their life easier in some way.

In fact, some of us, who grew up in the fifties and before, can remember when not every home had a telephone, a television, a clothes dryer or especially.........two cars! On a post sometime ago, on my Homesteading on the Internet blog, I wrote this:

"When the electric grid was in the early years everyone just wanted it for lights. General Electric manufactured appliances that were hardly selling. Light bulbs were their hottest sellers. Everyone wanted electric lights and that is how they initially got into our homes! I know my mother-in-law used to say that her father loved his electric lights. I am sure he did. So GE kept trying to figure out how to reach the housewives to get them to want the refrigerators, electric stoves and washing machines. They campaigned long and hard figuring out how to make her not only WANT these appliances but how to NEED them. They did it too."

If you come up with a product that people not only want, but need, then you would do well. To make it even better you need to come up with a product that you can make and nobody else has. I think you need to really think about it, study and talk about to others who have an interest in creating products too. That is how all the big companies got started to begin with.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Country Superstore on Wordless Wednesday

Monday, April 9, 2012

Writing Articles Adds To My Many Streams Of Income

As my thoughts turn to gardening, I have to make time for writing my blogs, articles, eBooks and social networking. In the summer when the sun is out almost daily, it is easier. I can get up during the early morning hours and work on my computer. We don't get enough sun to power up our system that runs on solar, that early in the morning at this time of the year. So trying to balance both is difficult.

Last week I found some new sites to submit written articles to. The idea behind these sites is that my Adsense account ads are on my article pages and that will generate some Adsense money. I hope so. For the most part though, I am not counting on that. I am just trying to get better at writing and making comments on other writer's articles. It is like an online school for writers. Studying what others write about, the comments they receive, and learn how to make my own articles and blogs better.

The first site I joined is called InfoBarrel and once you join, you just write your articles, and submit them. It was an easy process. This is the first article I have written there, Using A Pressure Canner To Can Your Food. If you go there, I'd appreciate a comment and some "likes" and shares.If you'd like to join and make some money writing articles too, join InfoBarrel now!

The second site I got interested in is called Best Reviewer. This site is very easy to write for. My first top review there is called Top 5 Items For Preparedness. I enjoyed doing that one a lot and have thought of a several topics to write about. Each site has their own individual twist, so they are not all the same. You can also link your articles, blogs and sites back to the various articles and reviews you post. With Adsense ads on all the articles with your publisher number means you will be earning a passive income from the articles without doing anything more with each one. Just keep writing! Sign up for Best Reviewer and write some top reviews to earn money like I am!

I am an affiliate marketer, as well, as a blogger. This means that I receive payments or gifts from a company for writing about a product or service on this blog. Or for having a banner or button displayed along the side, such as the Amazon ones for my eBooks. If you go to those links, I receive a commission for anything you buy on Amazon by using my link. I will not endorse anything I do not think is a good product or service. Many of my affilate links are to products I use myself. My readers will always come first.

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