Testing out twitter cards on blogspot

I have an article on technology solved about implementing twitter cards on wordpress. A friend left a comment asking if it was possible to do it on blogger, so I thought I'd have a go.

I will be needing a thumbnail image of course, to test it fully, so here's a nice sand angel for you.

(no it's not a stolen image, liveotherwise is my usual blog, but obviously I'm testing this on blogger rather than on wordpress!)

Making plans

So I kicked this off on my birthday, and haven't been back since. Well, that's not completely true. I did visit the stats, and was quite amazed at how many ppl have viewed the first post, and humbled to discover there's already a follower.

Thank you for your comments and confidence. I'll try to live up to the interest ;)

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this and other projects. I've come to the conclusion that one of my biggest problems is setting myself realistic goals. So while I've got project ideas coming out of my ears as it were, what I really need to do is prioritise which ones I think are most worthwhile, and work out how to fit them into my week.

My personal blog continues of course, and I probably spend 30 mins to an hour a day on there, more depending on the number of reviews that I've talked myself into. I will be getting those under control though, in order to focus on other projects. I think I've narrowed them down to three, not including this one, which will be more of an overview and place to reflect on what is working and what isn't.

The biggest is to work with an existing (large) site and try to build a community blog on it. I've put a lot of effort into working out how that will work, and I think I've worked out two themed posts that I can do a week, which are also slots I can invite guest bloggers into. With one or two other bloggers, hopefully at least one regular, it shouldn't be too much more than 5 hours work a week - though it will be around that, and it will require more or less daily attention, as there will be associated social networking/ media, building PR contacts, dealing with emails and arranging guest bloggers. 5 hours may be a little low as an estimate, but it will do as a start point.

The second and third projects I'm planning on building at around 2-3 posts a week, so they should be around 3-5 hours a week each too. So at the top end, discounting my blog, this one, and any other regular commitments I have, I'm already looking at 15 hours a week.

I'd prefer to keep weekends fairly clear, so that means around 3 hours a day during the week. Not so much you'd think, but I also need to factor in the three children I currently look after and home educate, the running a household bit of life, and the impending arrival of no 4. So this is only going to work if I can get organised, and get into some sort of routine.

With that in mind, I've been practising a new way to get my housework out of the way in the morning before the children need much input. Then I focus on them and education until lunch, and then writing, emails etc happen in the afternoon. Sometimes I fit the whole 3 hours in then, other times a bit will get left over until the evening, depending on when activities are during the day. But it should give all of us a shape to the week too, which is not a bad thing at all.

It feels good to have a bit of a plan in motion, and I'm already starting to stockpile post ideas and put out feelers for contacts. I'm going to keep on doing that over the next couple of weeks, and then I'm looking forward to getting everything going in the new year.

Not from tomorrow

Today is my birthday. (I'm 21 and a little bit more, thank you for asking!) It seems an auspicious day to launch a new project, one I've been procrastinating over for a little while now. Which is ironic, as a large part of it is about giving up on procrastinating...

Some background. I'm a home educating mother of three, 1 secondary age, 1 primary age, a toddler, and pregnant with our fourth child, due in March. (And yes, if you think that sounds exhausting, it does to me too when I write it down like that!) All of this means that my previous career of computer programmer/ team leader or even that the brief interlude of Montessori teacher doesn't really work any more, and so for the past couple of years I've been mainly concentrating on home and education.

There is a little problem with that. I'm used to working out of the home. I'm used to my own income stream, and a certain sense of self worth that comes from being employed. That may in some ways be society's problem rather than mine, but I've decided that it's time I did something about it. So today, right now, not tomorrow, I'm starting to work towards having a home business, based around blogs, business and the internet.

I have a personal blog already, I'll share more about that later, but it's been running 8 years, has a reasonable sized readership, and ranks reasonably well in a number of different metrics. But it doesn't earn me a lot, mainly as I prefer to keep it as a personal blog. So what I'm planning on doing is launching a couple of other projects, and this blog is going to be my record of what works, what doesn't, what earns money, what costs money, how it works around the family and hopefully some guest posts from other ppl that could be useful to someone else considering this sort of thing. I want to share this journey, I know there are lots of other ppl out there in similar situations, and I want to make this something we can do together. I hope you'll find it interesting and stick around for the ride.