I’m looking for 3 more bloggers for this site for the following blogs:

1) Family and Parenting Blog

2) Money and Investing

3) Career and Growth

In each case I’m looking for someone to write short, simple posts with one idea each to share with women. Here is a good example of what I’m looking for: sample.

- each post, one ‘idea’ to share, relatively short, straight to the point. I figure we are all busy, so I want posts with a good piece of information that can be read quickly. If you can add a personal experience like in the example above that would be great but I realize that won’t be possible for every post.

- each post should be between 100 and 200 words long.

- 5 posts a week. M – F.

- eventually when I can pay more, maybe I’ll have you write one post a week that is a bit longer.

- each post must be unique. To define that better – it can’t be anything copied from someone else – I don’t want to run into any copyright issues from other web sites. But also, I don’t want duplicate content. Having said that it is perfectly ok if you have your own blog about the same or a similar topic and can rewrite some ideas you may have posted before, as long as it is written in a unique way.

- I reserve the right to edit posts – mostly for grammar or spelling, but I may add in a link to another related page of mine too. Or I may edit out something I think isn’t appropriate – but I will try to contact you first or right afterward if this happens.

- I reserve the right to re-use ideas you post on other parts of my site.

- Your name will always appear with your posts and I will make a profile page for you that each post you write will link to. Your profile page can include links to other blogs or sites of yours – but I will check and make sure they are appropriate.

- Although it is my site, I want to make the site less and less about me over time and more about the community that I want to form around it. So, please, feel free to add a personal touch to your posts and promote yourself and the blog you write.

- I would like for your to either include a picture of yourself that will appear on each post, or use a Yahoo or similar cartoon version of yourself. (See mine as an example)

- if you include other images with your posts – they must be images that you are legally allowed to use.

- Please avoid writing anything about religion. I think we will have enough posts about topics that may be controversial, I really don’t want to bring religion into the site. A brief mention of God is ok. Ask me if you aren’t sure.

- While I want the blog you are writing for (except for the fitness posts for the one blog) to be about you – I may still write an additional post for the blog from time to time.

- I would prefer people with some blogging experience.

- After choosing some people, I will go over some basic SEO topics and style guidelines.

- I will most likely write up a short contract

- Please do not include affiliate links in your posts or profile page

- you don’t have to use your real name, but please use something reasonable and consistent. We can discuss this if you don’t want to use your real name.

- You will have access to log into WordPress to write your posts.

- if I can’t find one person that can write everything for one blog, I may choose more than one person for each blog, each writing about different subtopics.

- below is more information about the type of posts I’m looking for for each blog.

To apply:

- email me at trisha at this domain using a subject that includes the blog you are interested in writing for.

- include links to any blogs or web sites you have, social media profiles or anything else you think might be relevant.

- if you don’t have a blog, please include a sample of your writing. But please understand that I will probably choose someone with blogging experience over someone without.

- include a brief explanation of why you want to write for IdeasForWomen.com

- include what hours you are available to contact. I understand some people will have day jobs or young children at home and may not be available all the time.

Detailed blog information:

1) Family and Parenting –
For this blog I’m looking for 4 sort of sub-topics each week – a) family or home safety; b) family activities or parenting issues c) something related to parenting and learning/teaching kids. The other days of the week is up to you. In fact, if you can think of some other subtopic you would like to write about, please let me know. Homeschooling topics would be great.

2) Money and Investing –
Again, I’m thinking of a few sort of sub-topics with one post about each, each week. a) investing – stocks, bonds, mutual funds; b) saving for retirement and college; c) insurance; d) saving, budgeting, getting out of debt, etc. The other day of the week is up to you. In fact, if you can think of some other subtopic you would like to write about, please let me know.

3) Career and Growth –
Career ideas: individual ideas for helping women improve or develop their careers and/or interviews with women in different careers to help other women decide if a particular career path is right for them.
Growth: – personal, profession growth, positive uplifting types of posts.
Again share your ideas for this blog if you have some.

Pay:

Currently I will pay $25 a week. Which amounts to $5 per post – remember these are relatively short posts. As I make more from the site I will pay more.

Other:

- Politically, and otherwise, I’m pretty liberal and that will be reflected in one of the other blogs I will write for the site. If that offends you, blogging for this site probably isn’t for you.

- I don’t do pink or princesses, in fact I’m pretty anti pink and princess. I will be writing some posts along those lines, and if that offends you, well, blogging for this site probably isn’t for you.

- I’m also not a big fan of makeup, fashion, etc., if that offends you, well, you know.

- My background is in science, so anti-science posts are not welcome.

And lastly, I will eventually delete this post, or modify it – so if you don’t plan to contact me right away, you may want to save a copy of it.

Thanks!

I will be looking for people to write in the categories of ‘Home and Family’, ‘Money and Finance’ and ‘Career and Growth’ and ‘Travel and Leisure’. I will be writing the health and fitness one for a long time myself. Unless I can find someone with a science background who is interested. I might also add a blog with guest posters from various charities, particularly those that help women and girls. Or people could write about ways that women can get involved with creating change in the world that help people in general, but especially women.

How will I pick people? Haven’t decided yet. Will probably look at any existing blogs, want information about why you think you can write about the particular subject, etc.

I might also get guest posters for the career and travel sections – people with advice and information about a particular career path they have experience with and people who have traveled or lived in certain areas. I don’t know yet about paying guest posters. That usually isn’t done as for as I know.

This blog will be a sort of meta blog for the site.

The puppy is forcing me to be healthier though. I have to make sure I get to bed by a certain time – because she will wake me up every morning at the same time regardless of when I went to bed or how much sleep I got.

And since I’ve been taking her for long walks – which I need to do to help wear her out so I can get some work done – I’ve been easily getting 10,000 steps a day.

And as I’ve been learning about dog nutrition to make sure I feed her healthy food, I’ve been eating a little better too.

Now, if I just had a few more hours each day I could get some more work done too! Maybe even work on this blog and site!

Puppies are cute as hell, but I’ve found that it is not easy to get a lot of work done with one around!

Between the frequent peepee and poopy breaks and keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get into anything she shouldn’t it can be hard to concentrate. Not to mention the lack of sleep and overseeing her interactions with her big kitty-cat brothers.

There must be some other work at home puppy moms out there with some advice to share! Work at home people mommies should have some of the same problems too – except maybe not the chewing on the shoes thing.

Please help! Any advice would be welcome! I want my web sites to be successful – but its hard with a little 8 week cute poopy monster around!

Here’s the little monster:

Here she is again in my office by her crate and a bunch of her toys:

So what have I been doing? Well, nothing exciting for New Year’s, I was still recovering from being sick. On the 20th of course I watched the inauguration. Not much to say about it though. It was great that there wasn’t any sort of problems, no arrests or anything like that. As much as it might have been cool to be there, I just don’t do cold weather like that, I would have been miserable.

So I stayed home and watched it on TV like most people.

I was hoping to be able to buy an Obama cake or something, but I didn’t see anything like that being sold near where I live. So I had to make my own. I’m not much of a cook so I wanted to avoid baking anything. Luckily Hostess, I think it was, makes little carrot cakes that are round with white icing on top. I bought some and decorated them with that decorating gel in a tube that you can buy:

It was hard to do the date one, that gel stuff doesn’t do small curves too well.

Blagojevich: I’m so glad that guy is gone! He’s sure got some issues doesn’t he? Near where my family lives some somebody had the following sign in their yard – I had to take a picture, great isn’t it?:

Hopefully we can put all the past behind us now, get working on solving the economic crisis and move forward with how we can make the planet a better place for all us to live on.

It was some type of virus that just doesn’t go away, whatever it was it lingered around for weeks. And then there were the holidays, etc. Just now getting myself back together really.

I’m really terrible at being a consistent blogger aren’t I? I don’t know what to do about that. But I don’t want to stop blogging either. I guess I will have to be satisfied with myself as being a somewhat sporadic blogger.

If anyone is still reading – how are you doing? Everything ok? How are you managing in this economic situation? Its getting a bit scary isn’t it?

I haven’t had a chance to catch up with any feeds either – but I’ll promise to write a post again next week.

Although I didn’t see as many butterflies as I had hoped to see while staying at Bolongo Bay, we did see lots of other wildlife. I am blogging about that at my butterfly gardening blog, if you are interested: Butterflies in the Virgin Islands!

Everyone else – Darren Rowse just published a guest post from me at Problogger! It is called ‘What I learned about Blogging from the U.S. Presidential Election‘.

Thank you very much Darren for giving me the opportunity to guest post at Problogger!

At any rate, I’m a little better now. I was sick, my husband was sick, I had computer problems, my husband still has computer problems, I was out of town, I had an Obama sign stolen twice, among many other time consuming things.

We even had an owl and a hawk fighting in a tree in a neighbor’s yard – in daylight! That was kind of cool – but still distracting from getting stuff done. (The picture is kind of grainy, I don’t have a good zoom on my camera and you probably need to click on it to see it very well.)

In the free time I have had on weekends I’ve still been canvassing for Obama. That has been going well, but tiring also. You can read more about that here.

I had planned to write a lot about cancer this month, being that is breast cancer awareness month but that obviously hasn’t happened. I wanted to blog on the 15th about poverty too, but didn’t have the time. Tons of comment spam to delete.

And unfortunately my blogging will still be somewhat sporadic for the next couple of weeks and maybe even the rest of this year. Although not as bad. I have a lot of topics lined up to write about – I just need to find the time to do it.

And I have to ask – those of you with blogs – how are you able to write so consistently? How do you get through these periods when everything seems to go wrong without missing a few days of blogging?

Robert Fazio

Robert Fazio and I grew up in South Hempstead, Long Island and were classmates and attended the same elementary, junior high and high school. Robert was a kind young man. As a child, I often was ridiculed for not being able to play sports and for having a family with siblings that were troubled.

Robert never seemed to have any malice in his heart and I can’t remember a single time when he joined in on the taunts made by the other kids in our class. When we were younger, we often played with the other kids our age. The kids from our town had a special understanding amongst us. We were not welcome into the Junior and Senior high school we attended. The schools were located in a much more affluent town and often we were referred to as “Hempers” due to our being from S. Hempstead. We were often looked down upon by the rich kids and they considered us to be of a lower class. Because of this, many of us from our town shared a certain level of respect and protectionism for our fellow town members. This feeling carried on in many of us long after we graduated and went our separate ways.

Robert worked out of the 13th precinct of Manhattan South at the time of the attacks. Robert was killed in Tower 2 of the WTC along with his brave partner Moira Smith. They lead hundreds of people to safety, calmly and without any regard for their own safety. They sacrificed their lives to save so many people they didn’t know. This came as no surprise to me. Robert had always shown compassion and kindness when we were kids and this character remained a hallmark of who he was all through out his life.

When I return to our hometown, I am only slightly comforted by the memorial that was built in his honor in front of the South Hempstead fire department. They lost one of their own on that day as well. Those of us who had friends and families who perished on that day or those of us who knew others who had friends and family perish on that day, will be forever changed. I was a teenager when the twin towers were built. To many of us on Long Island, the twin towers symbolized world peace through international cooperation in commerce. For many of us, this dream was crushed temporarily by the collapse of the towers and the loss of so many good people.

I had the honor of meeting a police officer who stood guard while they removed Roberts remains. He was identified by his badge, not pulverized by the enormous weight of the tower. I will never forget the handshake she offered me while I showed her his picture and cried looking over the rubble. It was the middle of winter at that time. The officer removed her glove and offered her hand to console me. I walked around the city, close to the giant hole where the towers I could see majestically stand, viewed from our island and tried to comprehend the hatred that caused such loss. It is the spirit of Robert and his partner Moira and their selfless sacrifice that sustains me on this dreadful day and I will never forget them.