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The January Issue of Wahm Business Magazine is online now. Our newest edition is full of terrific Wahm resources!

Goals Setting For 2008
Every person in the world devotes countless hours to thinking of their future and their present situation in life. Almost everyone wishes that there was something that they could change in their life. Whether it is their family life; their friendships; relationships or finances, everyone wants to change something. The first step to doing that is to set goals.

Dealing with Wahm Stereotypes
One of the hardest issues to contend with as a Wahm is the perception of others that you aren’t working. Many people think that working at home isn’t working at all, and that you have all of the free time in the world. Those who have spent any time working at home know that there is a lot of time and energy that goes into effectively working at home. Friends who call in the middle of the day, spouses who expect you to be doing more while home or family members who m…

Tax Deductions for Home-Based Business Owners
Running a home-based business entitles you to a number of income tax deductions. In this article, writer Amy Derby offers some exellent income tax advice for home businesses. If you run a home-based business, there are many tax deductions available to you.

Analyzing Website Traffic
Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Let Them Play
The purpose of a craft show or home party is to attract customers. You are also giving them the chance to touch, play, or try on the products. Telling them not to touch is going to have them moving on as quickly as possible.

Run a Home Business with Incentive Vacation Certificates
It is possible to run a very lucrative home business using inventive vacation certificates as its basis. Vacation certificates are becoming very popular and are appearing in more and more online marketing campaigns and they are being increasingly used in the marketing strategies of many offline businesses.

Casual Casserole
You may serve this meal-in-one from the roaster as is, or if you would like to fancy it up, set roaster on large piece of colored foil (from a florist) and gather sides upward. Tie foil in place with a wide ribbon. Do all the vegetable preparation in the morning as there is a lot to do.

If You Don’t Test It Now…
I Every Coder in Codeville liked objects a lot.
“Tested,” “reusable,” that’s what was hot.
But the Grinch of reality sulked in his cave
Saying, “Hear them all talk of the time that they’ll save!”

We are looking for Expert Authors who would be willing to submit a minimum of one article per month on a topic of interest to Work At Home Moms. Please contact dianne@wahmsunited.com for information.

Well, that was definitely not the way I anticipated spending New Years.. nope, not at all.

It was 11:30 pm and I was at the OnlineNewYearsEve.com party when there was a knock at the door. Ok cool, a couple of our neighbors dropped in for a drink. So I put myself on away at the party, and went to have a drink with our friends. About 15 minutes later, I sat down at my puter again so I could get the January issue of the Wahm Business Magazine published when horror struck.

First I got XML errors, which was then replaced by a generic cPanel page congratulating me on having Apache installed and running (oh joy lol) and then the real nightmare - the dreaded Error 500 page.

Yep, my functioning website took a nosedive in less time than it takes to .. well .. (insert your imagination here).

Before total panic set in, I watched the ball drop with my hubby and son - yes, during all of this my 4 year old son was still bouncing all over the place. Then I hit the live chat support that my host offers, the same live chat that I’ve never had a problem with in the past… which last night became the live chat from hell. I tell you, the world was out to get me and the New Year was just minutes old!

*** ggggrrrr… I had this post all written out, then my browser crashed before it automatically saved any further than this point, so now I’m attempting to re-write it hahaha.. oh geez, let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come! ***

I’m experienced enough with website hosting to know that if I didn’t change any of my own settings that might cause the miserable Error 500 page, then something must have changed on the server. So there I was, just after the New Year began, waiting impatiently for the live chat operator for more time than I care to admit, even though I was #1 in the cue and it said my wait time should be 30 seconds (HA!). During my wait, I started checking into a few other areas and discovered that I could get into my cPanel ok, so I made a bee-line for the backups just in case I was going to be spending the rest of the night (aka morning) restoring my site. Then I discovered that my site’s admin area was totally messed up too, though at least it wasn’t giving me an Error 500.

Finally, I gave up on the 30 second wait time and logged into my hosting account to submit a critical ticket. Sure enough I was told that an announcement had been made that my host was upgrading to PHP5. Now, with every other service provider that I use, they have the courtesy of sending out an email to inform their customers of planned outages, upgrades etc. Apparently that’s not the case with these guys as I was ‘told’ the announcement was made in their forums. I guess I need to leave their forums open in my web browser 24/7 from now on just to make sure I don’t miss anything - geeez!

For the next 3 hours (yes.. until 4:00 am!), I was busy fixing the errors that my cPanel error log was showing, and finally I was able to get the both the site and the admin area back online. There were still a few quirks that I knew had to be fixed asap, but as my head was about to hit the keyboard, I decided those could wait until a little later in the morning. So I headed off to hit my couch - yes, couch, not bed.

The reason for that? At 3:00 am, my son decided he was done sleeping in his bed, and he curled up on his couch (the loveseat). Instead of shuffling him back into his room with a fight, I just wanted to close my peepers, so I let him be while I grabbed a pillow and blanket and made my bed on the couch. And I slept great too, until 5:00, when little monster decided that his Daddy should be the one on the couch and not me. It was only a few minutes later that he forgot the argument and fell asleep again… until 5:30 am, when he very politely asked for a drink and even used please and thank you. With manners like that, how could I refuse? Uuughhh. I know there was one more wake up call, but honestly I can’t remember what it was about now lol. Then at 10:30, hubby woke me up and sent me off to the bedroom, where I lied my head down on my favorite pillow, and realized my head was pounding.

It was about then that I finally gave up on sleep. So, I got up, popped a few tylenol, had a cup of peppermint tea and sat back down at my puter to finish the fixes. I got them done too! And so, WahmsUnited.com is now back online and the January issue of the Wahm Business Magazine has also been published for your viewing pleasure

Right now I’m sitting here chewing on a straw (better that then chocolate) because of the fact that as soon as my head hit my pillow at 4:00 am, I quit smoking. No, I didn’t throw out my cigarettes at the stroke of midnight, but I did dump my ashtray and chuck the rest of the pack in the garbage at 4. I feel almost certain that someone decided I needed an extra challenge right at the start of a brand New Year - and I think I survived the challenge however I’m really not happy about it LOL. April Fools Day is in April, not December/January

Today is the very last day of 2007.. never to be seen or heard from again, and I’m totally excited about it! You see, this year is our Year For Success! I’m hitting 2008 hard, and I won’t stop until I’ve hit all of my goals, including my personal missions.

I just spend the weekend putting together the January edition of the Wahm Business Magazine that will be available for viewing tomorrow on www.WahmsUnited.com .. but if you want a sneak peak, click here

I’m also about to issue a 2008 Success Challenge to the Wahm Business Club where we’ll be holding each other accountable for our goals this year, but more importantly, we’ll be supporting each other and helping to blow those goals right out of the water. Want to be part of it? Join the Wahm Business Club for just $10!

2007 didn’t work out quite like I had hoped, though it was much better than 2006 lol. Onward and Upward as they say, right?

I do have to warn you though, in case you notice a change in my mood that starting tomorrow I’m on a personal quest to quit smoking. I think I started 2007 off the same way, but this year my Mother In Law loaded both me and my husband up with 8 weeks worth of patches, and if we stick to the program, she’ll buy us the remaining weeks. It’s way past time to quit. Before I head to bed tonight, all the ashtrays in the house will be washed and put away and any other reminders of smoking will be outlawed from the house. Our 4 year old son was so excited when we told him that we had smoking medicine. He’s been telling us to stop smoking for months now, and it’s hurting everyone. I know we’re not the only ones out there with this quest, so if you’d like to talk about it, give me a shout.

In other news, the remainder of this week we’ll be talking more about website design, so watch out for those posts and let me know if you have questions!

Until Next Year,
Your Partner In Success,