K.C. Lauer's Blog, page 16
September 27, 2011
Blogging and marketing progress – Bad Girl Gone Mom
September 25, 2011
Judgment – GBE2 Blogging
September 24, 2011
Big E – KC Lauer signs copies of Bad Girl Gone Mom
September 23, 2011
Learn To Learn Guitar Sheet Music
September 22, 2011
Contract Work – Setting your price
As a freelancer, you are commissioned to do a specific job, rather than hired as a captured employee.
How do you go about setting your pricing?
Ideally you will want to compare what you can offer for services and level of expertise, and compare that to the market to set your prices.
Naturally, there is a wide window between what you think you are worth vs. what a client is willing to pay. Happiness is negotiating a contract that is mutually beneficial for both parties.
When considering your pricing, examine the amount of time it will require you to provide your products and/or services.
Consultants often receive a per diem or per day rate as well as reimbursements for expenses. Keep in mind that if you have to shell out money on your personal credit card for travel expenses, you will be holding those costs and absorbing those interest fees into your profit.
If a customer has a 90 day payment arrangement with you, this could mean you are holding the costs of that travel expense for up to 4 months.
Cash flow is one consideration when setting your pricing. The other is market value. If you go out of business because no one is paying you, you have lost market value. The ideal position to be in is to have more work than you can handle, and having a way to offload that work to someone else in a way that you can make a profit on their efforts as well as your own.
Financial independence is a dream for many. If this is something that you dream about too, there are a few books I would recommend that you read to help you move further along in your journey.
Pick up the Cashflow Quadrant, Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Success. You may not like everything you read in this book, but it will open your eyes to new ways of looking at things. http://www.amazon.com/Cashflow-Quadra...
Another book that I have found extremely helpfulu is Napoleon Hill's Book called Think and Grow Rich. http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich...
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September 21, 2011
'It Gets Better Project' – Jamey Rodemeyer – a valuable life, a sad lesson
Digital Life – Teen contributor to 'It Gets Better Project' takes his own life.
NOOOO! I can't say it loud enough. This kind of stuff has to stop. We have to end it now. My husband showed me the clip, and once again, I felt the despair. The lost hope. The feeling like the only light at the end of the train is a locomotive hauling ass directly towards your heart and brains.
Tyler Clementi's suicide impacted me in a big way. Because of him, I decided to "come out" and share my life story, in honor of the It Get's Better Project. You can see my interview with Sylvia Massara on the Lit Chic Show. In it, I share that I consider myself intersexed (emotionally) and I am also a bi-sexual.
Unfortunately, during suicide prevention week, the same week I did the radio show, another suicide happened.
This time it was Jamey Rodemeyer.
"Last May, Jamey Rodemeyer added his video to the It Gets Better Project, the Internet video site where adults share hope with LGBT teens, a minority likely to be bullied by even the adults in their lives and suffer a disproportionately high suicide rate. On Monday, the 14-year-old teen from Buffalo, N.Y., was found dead outside his home, having apparently taken his own life." (Digital Life)
Digital Life also reports these warning signs:
Warning signs of suicide:
Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain
Talking about feeling hopeless or having no purpose
Talking about being a burden to others
Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs
Acting anxious, agitated or reckless
Sleeping too little or too much
Withdrawing or feeling isolated
Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge
Displaying extreme mood swings
Looking for a way to kill oneself
The more of these signs a person shows, the greater the risk. Warning signs are associated with suicide but may not be what causes a suicide.
There are times where I just want to scream, cry and hate people because they are mean. They have no idea – I truly believe most don't – until it is too late, how hateful their comments and actions can be.
Adults can be cruel too. I don't limit this to kids. We are all products of our environment. And before I go off on a tangent, I'm not politically correct. I make bad and off color jokes but that is what jokes are meant to do – be funny, laugh at our humanness, poke fun at our weaknesses and exaggerate our strengths.
What I am not ok with is when people deliberately set out to make someone else miserable. Acceptance and tolerance, that's I guess what I am asking for. Thankfully our military has overturned the Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy. Perhaps the recognition that GLBT's are people too, and that the only way they can be the best that they can be, is to be able to be free to be who and what they are.
Speaking up for those that cannot
I had an awareness of my own inability to speak up for gender bullying and I talk about it in Chapter 79 of Bad Girl Gone Mom. I'm not happy to admit it, but I couldn't stick up to a bully either. And I tried to ignore my inaction but that turned into rage.
Now I want to find a way to turn my anger from hate to understanding. I want to impact how people feel about gays, lesbians, bi-sexual's and transgender/transvestites.
Why is this so important to me?
I had a close friend commit suicide. One time I had to cut her down from a shower curtain bar. It broke me up to see her in such pain but I didn't know why she hurt so bad. I wanted to help her, but only she could do that for herself. Secrets can kill. Here is my story about Diane.
Here's the interview I did with Bax & Obrien: Click the link, then the arrow to hear it free: KC Lauer on WAQY.
Afterwards, Bax thanked me for sharing my story and said he thought it was interesting. O'Brien's probably visualizing me as a Barbie Doll, and in reality, that I guess is what it was like. Whatever. That's my story, read the book if you want more of that. Anway, the interview was a life changing moment.
I took a chance and put my heart on the line and I made out better than okay. But it doesn't always happen that way. I have more secrets about all this but I will only share them in my members area. You have to join my membership to get "Under the Covers with Kay" – LOL.
So here is what is interesting to me:
The percentage of men and women who think of themselves as bisexual or homosexual is roughly equal at 4.1%. This represents 2.27 million men and 2.29 million women in the United States.(About: Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCFHS) Prevalence of Bisexuality)
There are help links to the right side of my blog wall for GLBT, Suicide, Gender and Addiction issues. If you or someone you know is struggling with these problems, please know that there really are people who want to legitimately help.
If you suffer with depression, check out my suggestions in a Yahoo article – Women How do you Cope with Depression. Quick answer: Help someone else.
It only takes 1% to flip the balance on a scale. Sometimes when we are going through things, particularly in our teen and young adult years, it is very difficult to see how we will come through things. The reality is we don't have to see. We only have to believe that tomorrow can be better than today. We must choose to put that 1% on the scale and take a risk, and tip it towards living rather than dying. Please, if you stopped by and are looking for a reason to live. You have found it. I believe in you and you can do this. Don't give up. Take a chance and reach out to someone on the right side of the screen through my "sensitive" topics links.
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Using Google Alerts to Stay Alert to the Web
Google Alert Management
One of the things I learned as a newbie writer from my Associated Content/Yahoo mentors group was to set google alerts. You can do this by going to to the google alert link and signing up if you haven't already.
Why would you want to set up a Google Alert?
Google indexes new articles all day long. Ho
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Book cover
wever sometimes articles don't get indexed for several days if the author/publisher has low ranking with Google. You can set up a google alert on your pen name, and this will help you gauge how quickly your work is being indexed. If the article is a timely one, rather than an evergreen one, the quicker the google alert, the better chance you have of having multiple readers looking at your work.
What to set a google alert on?
I have several google alerts set up. One is on my real name, another on my pen name, and another on my book name, Bad Girl Gone Bad. I also have a few keywords or special topics that I like to read up on and enjoy being notified every time there is an article on the web that is published with these key words in it.
On google's page, they suggest you might set an alert for these reasons too:
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
getting the latest on a celebrity or event
keeping tabs on your favorite sports team
Google will send you an email once a day, or immediately upon the indexing of your special topics, depending upon how you set up the alert. It's easy and provides an easy way to query the web for the topics that concern you the most.
Do you use google alerts, and if so, how do you use them?
One of the things I track is reviews for my memoir. I do this by setting the google alert to "Bad Girl Gone Mom Reviews". Just to let you know, I'll know right away, so please if you haven't yet done it, but you've read the book, please leave a review: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Girl-Gone-K..., good bad, or indifferent.
Thanks!
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September 20, 2011
Loyalty- #GBE2 Blog Writers
This week's topic in my GBE#2 Blog group is Loyalty.
That is a hard one for me. Loyalty.
What does it mean? Coupons and cash back
Every time I go to CVS, they want to know if I have my loyalty card. It is on my key chain so about 90% of the time I've got it. I hand it to the cashier and she scans it, and the stores computer immediately tracks everything that I have just bought in this order, compares it against all my other purchases, files the information away somewhere, and then gives me coupons for things that I buy or that I hope that I will buy.
Business loyalty & branding
I grew up in the grocery industry and there is such a thing as private label. These are the store brands that often are a hair lesser quality than the brand names. For some products, I can deal with it, like cereals, salad dressings, canned vegetables and ice cream. For other things, I simply won't give up my brands unless a bunch of people tell me I am missing out on something new. Those that I am really fond of are my Dish Detergent, Skin So Soft and Hefty Garbage bags. Nothing else will do.
In terms of working for companies, I am also a loyal employee
I work hard for the companies I work with. I try to work with integrity, and make the right decisions, not for me, but for the overall good of the corporation. Sometimes my decisions aren't popular. If I was working towards befriending my peers and gaining their loyalty, perhaps that would be upsetting to me, but I normally sleep well and that is because focus on results and data rather than emotion.
Loyalty to my family
I would do anything for a select, core group of people. If that meant answering a call in the middle of the night, or just about anything short of moving a body, I'm there. I have a high tolerance for diversity and because of my crazy life, I get the fact that we are not all wired the same. Despite that, or in honor of that, I value mastermind, and group thinks. For many years I held onto my own problems, feeling like no one else would or could understand. I was wrong. Once I started sharing my problems, I realized there were answers all around me. I just had to be open to them.
My love
And this is the hardest one for me to talk about. Loyalty to a single lover is something that has challenged me since I've been a kid. I value honesty, openness and variety more than I value loyalty. Knowing this and accepting my own value system instead of somebody elses' has helped me turn my weakness into a strength. Where once I was a liar and a cheat, now I am open minded and liberal. Semantics I know, but its the details behind the chapters in a life that make the story.
What does loyalty mean to you? Do you find you value loyalty differently in the various areas of your life?
Here are some of my other GBE2 writer's blogs:
Shilo (Eccenectricity)
If you are a GBE2 or other blogger, feel free to leave your blog link in the comments if I missed you.
By the way, feel free to become a kbalbify.com member and read my kay "under the covers" section. All about my marketing journey with my blog, book, article writing, speaking and consulting activities.
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September 18, 2011
Business Plan – A Valuation Method Using Discounted Cash Flows
Business Plan – A Valuation Method Using Discounted Cash Flows.
So how do you value your small business?
I have been spending a lot of time blogging and building up a following for my website. My hope is that I not only generate revenue through book sales and article views, but also through ad money, and the only way to get ad money is to have a following.
I've been doing pretty well getting traffic but making money off ad money is still something I have to learn. What was interesting to me to see though, is how other sites analyze my site.
There are many ways to figure out site worthiness but each one has given me a figure that is different. For example this site: http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
Reports this:
kbalbify.com has 285558 traffic rank in world by alexa.
kbalbify.com is getting 3852 pageviews per day and making USD 11.56 daily.
kbalbify.com has 0 backlinks according to yahoo and currently not listed in Dmoz directory.
kbalbify.com is hosted in United States at GoDaddy.com data center.
kbalbify.com is most populer in UNITED STATES.
Estimeted worth of kbalbify.com is USD 8438.8 according to websiteoutlook
So, based upon the above article using discounted cash flows, and the fact that it thinks I'm making about 11.50 a day, multiplied by 365 days multiplied by three years, my site is worth around $12,000. Now just like anything in life, it would have to have someone wanting to buy it, to make it really worth that. However, it is nice to know that in some way, even those days when people don't comment on my articles, at least I am building up equity, even if it is just my own sweat and education.
Have you ever tried to evaluate your site's worth? How are you doing?
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How to Make a Frequency Distribution Table – Paredo Charts
How to Make a Frequency Distribution Table
Paredo Charts and Analyzing Data
A paredo chart shows the number of items or occurrences of instances within a category. A chart typically lists between 5 and 10 categories but I've seen them listing up to 30.
Normal graphing rules suggest that as you enter the data into a spreadsheet to chart you will list the data in highest to lowest sequence, so that your chart will list of the far left the biggest frequency item. The reason you would do this is so that you get a sense for your biggest opportunities.
In the linked article above, I show you how I analyzed my own articles to see where the biggest number of hits came from by category. The objective would be for me to write more articles of the same types that I am frequenting hits.
Analyzing income from article writing could be handled the same way. Create categories such as: $.01c -$5, $5-10, $11-15, $16-20, $21-35, $36-49, $50-100, $101-249, $250-500. Put these column headings in row 1, starting in column B.
Next list all the article titles you have written in an excel spreadsheet. Put them in column A, starting in row two.
After listing all the articles, go back through, row by row and put a '1′ in the column, to act as a check mark for the income you received for that particular article. As you go through your list, you may have some articles that had two different ways to receive payments. One might be an upfront of $5.24, and you might have received revenue from pay per clicks, and that might equal .25C. Put a '1′ in each column. What you are after is not the total revenues that you received in this excrcise, but the areas where you are having the most frequent activity.
When you are done marking the occurrences, total them up. Go to column A and underneath your last article title, type in "Total". Then put your cursor in column A, directly to the right, in the same row, and type in "=Sum". This will bring up a formula. Here you can highlight all the data in column B (rows 2 through whatever row number your last title is in) and choose enter. The excel sheet will total column B. Now click on the box and drag it to the right, and this should auto sum the rest of the columns for you.
Now you should be able to see what column has your biggest hitter in it. On another excel sheet in the same workbook, copy over your total sum, by right clicking that row, choosing copy, and then in the new work book, choose right click to paste. You will want to put this data in the second row. Then carefully assign your data headings to align with your sums. From here, you can easily make a Paredo chart to give you the data in a graph.
To take this to the next level, you might also want to do a graph that is similar but instead of using a "1″ to "check" the category, insert your actual total, or amount of revenue. Then you can see where you are generating the most kinds of revenues. Typically blog posts might earn you $1 – $20.00, articles can earn anywhere from $1-$100. Analyzing this data will help you see where you have been spending your efforts and it might also help you see where you should be spending your time if you want to increase your reveneue.
Sigma XL is a good source for more info.
For other article writing advice, please explore my site Bad Girl Gone Mom, author site and check out the new feed, Sabah's writing tips that I have included.
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