Advertising Update

A little while back I was kicked off the Amazon Affiliate program for not making the required three sales in the first 180 days from my application.  I later found out I did make one sale, though, so I decided to make a plan and try again.

This has been on my to-do list and mentioned in my weekly accountability and progress posts, but I kept putting it off.  Yesterday as I was procrastinating on other things, I decided to do something about that affiliate program, so I reapplied and started updating links on my blogs.

I probably have some more links to update, but more importantly, I have a plan for staying in the program this time.

I've updated all my advertising notices on my websites to acknowledge that I'm now advertising with Amazon Affiliate links again, and replaced some of the links and notices in my blog posts.

I promise not to make any intrusive product posts, and please know that any recommendations are real.  I'm just hoping to make a little money on the recommendations I would share anyway!

Setbacks

As I mentioned in my last post, this website is under construction at the moment.  My site desperately needed to be updated, as it was more than a decade old at this point, and I was considering changing hosts (although I'm rethinking that plan).

There's still a lot to do on this and another of my websites.  I need to rewrite the content for a few sections of my website that hadn't been revamped in a very long time.  I was planning on working on it this past week, but unfortunately, my life had other plans.  My horse - whom you might remember has been sick - had another setback, this one pretty major, and we had to have the vet out two days in a row.  We spent both days almost entirely at the barn, and as a result, I ended up playing catch-up on what I could get done Thursday and Friday of this week.  The websites weren't a priority, so they got pushed back.

But my horse is doing better now (again) and I have a brand-new week ahead of me, so I'm hoping to do better this week.  I didn't really catch up to where I wanted to be at the end of last week, and I've had a bunch of new things pop up, so I have a lot on the docket for the next few days.  With any luck, I won't have any major interruptions this week, and I'll be able to get a little more done.

As I get through the website redesign and my life gets back to normal, I'm hoping to start updating my blogs a little more regularly.  It's been a minute since I updated this blog on a regular basis and I'd love to change that!

Site Under Construction

Please excuse my mess!

Over the next week or two, I'll be overhauling my website and changing hosts.  I expect my site will come and go during that time, and there are bound to be some confusing things popping up, such as remnants from my old site.

Feel free to browse my blog as I get my list of services, portfolio, resume, etc. back where it belongs.  Thanks for visiting!

Big Changes Coming

It's been a long time since I've blogged regularly, and an even longer time since I've updated my website.  I've been slowly letting some of my blogs go, and I have decided to migrate my websites (and my emails) to a new host.

Part of that requires a complete redesign of this website, blog and all.

I maintained this blog for many years, so there are a lot of things that are probably going to break when I overhaul everything.  Years ago, I moved the entire blog to a subdomain and made sure all the images and links went with it.  This time, I'm probably not going to be as thorough, especially since it'll be an entirely different sort of move, and I'll be restructuring the entire site.  I do intend to leave all of the old content on the blog, even though I know some of the images won't transfer with it.

Going forward, I'm expecting a period of construction while I rebuild my site entirely on Blogger, and an outage as I transfer to a new web host.  I expect both of those to happen soon, not this week but hopefully in the week or two after.

It'll be the first time I've transferred hosts in many years, and I'm a little nervous, so wish me luck that it all goes smoothly!

Busier and busier

I have been counting down until the end of summer, and was so glad to have a week off coming up just before summer ends, but it turns out that's not to be: It turns out the kids' schedules changed since they gave me my schedule, and they never thought to change it with me until I asked.

I'm a bit disappointed, but I guess the extra hours can't hurt.  And I can handle another week, especially since summer is almost over.  What's one more week?

End-of-summer countdown

We're well past the middle of summer now, around the point where I generally start counting down until the kids go back to school.  Summers are already busy for me, but this summer has been a whirlwind, with much of my time occupied with just trying to stay afloat.

Somehow, I'm managing to work full-time hours at my nanny job, maintain my side babysitting jobs, and maintain my part-time freelance workload.  And this month, I'm even keeping up on Camp NaNoWriMo goals (although admittedly, I'm only aiming for 10,000 words, and I'm using Camp to motivate me to blog, which is easier than motivating me to pick up a novel with a cold trail).

When you have to be snowed in to write

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had a crazy busy week.  Sometimes I should be better at telling people no, I think, but I'm not always very good at that, especially if it carries with it the promise of money.  This past week has been a prime example of how that can be both a good and a bad thing.

More changes

My life is in a period of upheaval right now, and it seems it's not over yet.  I found out yesterday that the family I nanny for will be reducing my hours, starting in mid-October.  In addition, they are eliminating their daughter's (V.'s) riding lessons, although they are going to continue the partial lease on Rondo for the time being.

And life returns to normal (mostly)

After a busy summer taking care of the kids I nanny for, they are back in school and I am (finally) back to my pre-summer schedule.  Granted, I didn't always manage to keep up on my blogs even when the kids were in school, but during the summer, when I was working twice (sometimes more) the hours, it was totally impossible.  What little time I had left, I split between my novel, my horses, and my home life, and as a result freelancing and blogging both fell by the wayside.

Now that the kids are back in school, I feel like I've been gifted with several more hours every day (not to mention more sleep, since I can now sleep in again -- finally!).  Some of that time has already gone to the horses, and some to freelancing, which is why I'm writing this post after the kids have already been back in school for several weeks.

Just to get everyone up to speed, over the summer I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo, NaNo's summer edition.  In June I didn't actually write, just worked on revising last year's novel, the last 50k of which I wrote for NaNo.  I finished the majority of revisions a couple days into August (all I have left is the major rewriting, i.e., a couple of scenes that need to be overhauled and several that need to be written from scratch and added in), so in August I started the second novel of the series.  I got to 50k -- albeit just barely -- and emerged a winner, despite my slow start.

I've been meaning to continue working on the novel, with the intention of finishing it before November so that I can start a new one for the regular session of NaNoWriMo, but I only worked on it for the first few days after Camp NaNo ended.  Part of the problem is that I'm not entirely sure where to go next -- I know what has to happen, but I haven't figured out yet how to get there.  So I'm thinking I need to spend this time between sessions with planning and finishing revisions to the first novel, and then finish book 2 in November.

And freelancing.  I'm picking up some more freelancing work, which I had completely abandoned over the summer, and it feels good to earn at least part of my living from my keyboard again.

How was everyone else's summers?

Nine-fingered typing

Do you ever have those idiot moments that you would give anything to take back?  I had one last night.  I had my finger in the wrong place as I was setting my horse's hoof down, and before I had an opportunity to move it, he put his weight down.  OWWWWW.

You can read more about how it happened on my horse blog.  For the purposes of this blog, though, fast forward to this morning, when I started learning how to type with only 9 fingers.  It turns out the most common finger used in typing is your left-hand middle finger... the one I hurt, obviously.  (Not that I'm complaining -- I'm actually quite glad it was not my right hand, since I am right handed.)

Trying to blog on Percocet is also very interesting, by the way.  I wrote that post on my horse blog while feeling the lovely effects of that drug, and am doing so again now.

Of course, I have a due date looming, so my editor will have to be informed.  I wanted to wait, though, until I had an idea of how well I'd be able to type.  The verdict: I should be able to, just rather more slowly than usual.

I took today off from the nanny job, though I am going to try to go back to work tomorrow.  Next week, I have some plans for my blogs.  I've started slowly switching my blogs over to the new Blogger template designer, and I'm thinking of totally redoing this blog, as well.  I had planned to redo my website to expand on the services and portfolio sections a little, but since I've backed off that a little in order to focus on fiction a little more, that doesn't make sense anymore.  I think therefore that a new website might better reflect my new focuses in my freelancing.

I do plan on taking advantage of having a little extra time to work on my blogs, but I also want to make sure that I don't make any important decisions under the influence of Percocet, so I will probably wait until I'm not so dependent on it to make any major decisions!

Reclaiming my blogs

It's been a long time since I've blogged regularly.  Even a couple of my other blogs that were more regularly updated than this one have suffered.  One reason is that for the last few months, I've been writing a considerable number of blog posts for a client — mostly book-themed blogs, but a few others as well, and that has cut into my time and desire to work on my own blogs (especially once you figure in my part-time nanny job, which monopolizes my afternoons).

The client recently cut back on assignments, however, and while I am a bit disappointed about the lost income, on the whole I think this will be a good thing — even as ignored as they've been, the ad revenue from my blogs has picked up a bit recently, and I think with a little more nurturing it might really take off.  And, truthfully, which is more satisfying — getting paid for blog posts for someone else's websites, or seeing my own blogs turn a profit?

Anyway, the end result is that I should have some more time in the future to update my blogs regularly again, which I am really looking forward to!

Roll call

Since I had to move my blog to a new address, I've noticed my traffic has taken a nose dive. I'm guessing that might be because a lot of readers were following my blog through Blogger's reader, and now that my feed address has changed, they aren't getting updates. I did set up the old address to forward to the new one, but that won't do anything for the feed.

Have you figured out my blog's new address? If so, please change the links on your own blog and, if you don't mind, post a small announcement so that others can find me again. Thanks so much!

...accomplished!

I've finished switching my blogs over to Custom Domain publishing — all except for DollStringing.com. (That one will be more complicated, because of the way I integrated it with the website. I could have done it too tonight, but I'm afraid I just ran out of steam.)

I foresee two problems. One, as I already mentioned, the URL for the site feed is going to change. Be sure to update your reader or re-follow me.

Two — and this one is more serious — I was unable to forward visitors to my old pages to the new blog. Most likely my only choice here — if I want to fix the problem, of course — will be to write the html myself and create forwarding pages for every. single. blog. post. I've. ever. written.

Yeah, I'm not thinking that's very likely. Anyone remember how to Google to see who is linking to me out there? It would be nice if I could just create forwarding pages for the URLs people are actually linking to.

Anyway, let me know if you find anything else that is problematic. It was a big job, one I spent most of my afternoon on, so I won't be surprised at all if I missed something!

Changes...

It seems that Blogger is soon to stop offering publishing via FTP. This is frustrating to me, since that's how I've published my blogs since I started this one in late 2005. I can switch to their Custom Domains and still publish to the same domain names I've always used, which will mean some tinkering to make my pictures show up, but no changes from the reader's point of view.

The one exception is this blog. Because I've been publishing to a folder rather than a subdomain, my blog URL is going to have to change — instead of www.katharineswan.com/blog.html, it will be http://blog.katharineswan.com. I'll be sure to set up forwarding so that you still get here, but I think it will change where the RSS and XML file is located. That means that if you "follow" my blog or use a reader to get my posts, you'll need to update it so your reader is looking for new posts in the right place.

The only other issue is that my blog will be down for a few hours as I get the DNS path changed over, and images may be down a bit longer (depending on how savvy I am at figuring out how to get them back). I should be doing this either today or tomorrow. I'll post again and let you know once everything is put to rights!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As part of my admin day yesterday, I made some long-needed changes to all of my blog templates.

On Swan's Blog, you'll find that I've ditched the Blogger profile, written a new bio, replaced my bio picture, and eliminated some of the clutter in my sidebar. I've also provided a link to the site feed (atom.xml), and made my copyright notice a little more prominent.

Finally, I fixed something that has puzzled me for more than a year. My footer looked wacky on my computer screen for some reason, but I finally figured out that was due to an unnecessary bit of code that hadn't gotten deleted for some reason when I last worked on my template. It all looks right now! Hooray!

Hiatus

Sorry for the long break in posts. Michael and I just got back late Saturday night from a 10-day trip to Europe. Over the next few days, I'll be catching up on my "real" life again, so stay tuned for some posts about my trip and related topics!

Holiday book giveaway on Pony Tales Blog

I'm doing two holiday drawings for horse books on one of my other blogs, Pony Tales Blog. If you are interested, or know of someone who might be, click here to read the full details about my holiday book giveaway.

Post-deadline crunch

Sorry for the lack of posting action going on lately. Over the last week or so, I was working toward an end-of-month deadline for one of my biggest clients, and I put in some especially long hours Monday and Tuesday in order to get everything finished. On top of that, my mom and I sold at our first doll show on Sunday, and getting ready for it took a lot of time.

After finally finishing the project yesterday evening, I am taking today rather slowly: I finished a book I was reading, took the time to get somewhat caught up on email, and will be using the rest of the time to catch up on blogging and visit with my horse (who has been shamefully neglected lately). Stay tuned for some fresh blogging brilliance from Yours Truly!

Busyness

A friend teased me for not having updated my main blog in several days — all of my updates have been horse-related, rather than literary in nature. (Although to tell the truth, even the horsey blog posts have been a little less frequent of late.)

I've had several different forces in my life right now conspiring to keep me away from my blogs — and, sometimes, my work — but I'm going to try to catch up in the next week or so, so stay tuned!