One of the most precious things a person has is his or her identity.  It should be fiercely protected.  Identity theft occurs so often that the Federal Bureau of Investigation states it is "America's fastest growing crime problem."  Thieves steal and illegally use social security numbers, credit card numbers and other personal information.  This crime affects about 10million people each year.

There are many ways a thief can get your personal information.  It can be as simple as digging through your garbage or looking over your shoulder at an ATM machine.  Thieves can steal or divert your mail.  Phishing emails are also used to try to obtain your personal and financial information.  No one wants to go through the expensive and distressing process of trying to recover their identity once it has been stolen.  The best thing to do is to try to keep your information safe:  the best defense is a good offense!

When working to protect your identity, why do it alone?  Most people don't have the time or equipment necessary to monitor everything that needs to be monitored to protect their identity.  One of the very best things a person can do is to acquire Identity Theft Protection.  There are companies that offer this kind of protection at a very reasonable price...after all, having one's identity safeguarded is priceless!  IdentityHawk offers a comprehensive solution to people looking for identity theft protection.  Identity Hawk says your identity is "like a chain.  It's only as strong as its weakest link."  IdentityHawk offers the most comprehensive identity theft protection available.  I invite you to visit their website today and check out what they have to offer...everyone should protect their identity.

What is local marketing, and why do smaller businesses need to engage in it? This means targeting people in your area.

Obviously many businesses can go after people around the country. However, others can only do business with local customers.

Restaurants and financial planners are prime examples of smaller companies that do business with only local people. There’s only so far people are going to drive to do business with you if you have a physical location.

However, if you have a business that lends itself to national customers, you can also target local customers separately. There are some people that would simply rather do business with local companies. Therefore, you might want to do some local advertising apart from your national efforts.

So how do you get more local customers? There are a number of ways that work. Here are four you can start with:

#1) Newspaper advertising
This is one of the cheapest ways to target people in your area. When done right, it can be effective.
The problem with it is that it’s very untargeted. The majority of people reading the paper will not be interested in your product. However, if even a small percentage respond, it can be effective.

#2) Yellow pages
This is another one of the “traditional methods” of local advertising. It’s been around a long time, and when done right it can again be effective.

#3) Direct mail
This is hands down one of the top local advertising methods. This is where you buy a list of people in your area based on certain characteristics. You can choose based on age, gender, income level, etc. then you would send out an advertising campaign to them.
This way, you can choose exactly who you want to focus on. Therefore, it’s more targeted than the previous two.

#4) Internet
Online advertising is another effective strategy to get local customers.
So how do you convert traffic into sales? Now that you know how to drive traffic to your offer, you have to focus on making sales.

Get their contact information.

This should be your main goal, so you can keep marketing to them. The average customer requires at least four to seven touches before they do business with you. Therefore, if you give up after the first contact you are probably missing out on the majority of your sales.

Track each advertising source separately.

You might want to track each advertising method, so you can tell what’s working and what isn’t. For this reason, you might want to send the traffic from each source to a different place so you can tell what’s working and what isn’t.

The bottom line is, local advertising can be effective when done right. Implement these tips, and you will get your marketing efforts on track.

Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.

Have you ever spent hours searching online for gifts?  Have you ever wished there was a website that would filter out all of the nonsense and just give you relevant results for your search?  Have you ever wanted a site that would compare prices (including tax, shipping and handling) so there are no surprises at checkout?

You are in luck, because there is such a site!  That site is Become.com.  The powerful search engine on Become.com filters out irrelevant results.  They use next generation search technology so that only pertinent information is delivered to you.  You can comparison shop as well.  They have over twenty million products from 5000 retailers so you can get the best price on the item you want.  If you want to see a product in person before you buy it, they have a feature called 'Nearby Stores' so you can see where the item you want is locally.

Whether you are shopping for Roxy Bedspreads, Lowes Prices on Generators or Mirrored Canopy Beds (and everything in between) you will find what you are looking for at Become.com at a great price!  I invite you to visit Become.com today.  You will find tons of items such as electronics, computers, cameras, home and garden items, clothes, jewelry and health and beauty products.  When you visit the site, be sure to check out the About Become link on the bottom of the page so you can learn about their terrific next generation search engine and put the power of that engine at your fingertips!  Check out Become.com today!

It’s always easiest to promote products that you have used and like, so start there when venturing into affiliate marketing.

The field that seems to be growing the fastest these days is the medical field.  There are so many things to do in the field and a definite need for more professionals.  Given much of the flexibility allowed by the different positions, moms have taken advantage of this by working in this field.  It allows them to earn an income while still being able to spend time with their families.  Many moms do this while simultaneously building a business at home so they can eventually work from home.

Working in the medical field can be demanding and moms working in the field want to be comfortable.  It's a bonus if they can also look good while being super comfortable!  Moms want a place to get comfortable scrubs to wear to work but also want to look good.  Is it possible?  It sure is!  Go to http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/ where you can get scrubs that are comfortable and look great! 

They have scrubs for nursing, medical, veterinary, women and men.  They even have different hats for short or long hair!  If you are in the medical field you know that it can be difficult to find hats made especially for long hair.  You can find their wonderful scrub hats in their cotton medical scrubs collection.  If you work in the medical field and want to look and feel good while working, definitely check out what this company has to offer!

It is that time of year gain.  We just had Halloween.  Now, the holiday season is in full swing!


Are you a self-employed parent?  Are you a member of Our Milk Money?  If not, you should be!  There is no cost to be a member and a multitude of benefits!

In these challenging times, we want to offer you a place to advertise your holiday products and services where you can get an inexpensive yet high visibility ad.  That place is the Our Milk Money Holiday E-Gift Catalog.

Please note that although we have had a substantial increase in our subscriber base this year, we have decided not to increase the ad prices. As always, we are committed to offering you affordable promotion at the best possible value.

The Our Milk Money Holiday E-Gift Catalog will be advertised heavily online and via our weekly radio show: This Little Parent Stayed Home.  It will also go out to all of our Facebook and Twitter followers.

The Our Milk Money Holiday E-Gift Catalog will be emailed out three times!  Once on November 21st, once on November 28th and again on December 5th.  In addition to that, the ads will also be posted on the Our Milk Money site for 1 1/2 months for all to see!

The staff of Our Milk Money has been challenged to do their holiday shopping with the Parents of Our Milk Money.  We are extending the same challenge to you…let us all support each other this year by doing our holiday shopping with each other.

If our staff needs ideas on what to purchase for the holidays. we bet our subscribers do too!  This is where we need YOUR help!  Be the expert on your products and tell us what we should be purchasing from you.  When you send us information for your ad, be product specific.

The ad opportunities:

1. Top Banner Ad: Only 1 available!  This spot will consist of a 468 x 60 banner along with up to 300 characters of text.
2. Bottom Banner Ad:  Only 1 available!  This spot will consist of a 468 x 60 banner along with up to 300 characters of text.
3. Middle Button Ads:  Unlimited spots available!  These spots will consist of 125 x 125 buttons with up to 100 characters of text.

What we need from you:
In years past, the most successful ads have been those that included a call to action so we recommend your ad promote a specific product or service or offer a significant discount to Our Milk Money supporters.

• Email address where we can send you a paypal invoice
• Best: URL to a button or banner; if you don’t have one we will need a jpeg button or banner
• A product title and description
• Include price and any discount you may be offering
• Link to purchasing information for your product(s)
• Name of your business and link to your homepage
• Your Facebook fan page link
• Your Twitter name

RESERVE YOUR SPOT NOW!

The holidays are upon us.  For many children, the holidays are a warm, wonderful and even magical time of year...definitely a time of year in which many wonderful memories are made.  Many of us will be doing a lot of things with our families.  We will be going out to movies, plays, dinners and special events.  We will be having friends and family over to our homes to spend time with us and visit and some of us will be hosting holiday parties in our homes.  During this time of year, we all want to look our best and our children are no exception...especially our little girls!  They love to dress up and look pretty not only for special events, but every day.

As parents, we want to be able to indulge our daughter's desires to dress pretty every day and especially for special events.  In these challenging times, though, we want to be able to get a very good value for our money.  There is a place where we can accomplish both!  That place is TeaCollection.com.  TeaCollection.com has a wonderful collection of girl's clothing.  As they say on their site, "A festival of sparkle and color is happening all over our holiday girls clothing styles."   The philosophy of TeaCollection.com is a wonderful one:  design distinctive collections inspired by the beauty we discover in our travels around the world.  They have a passion for cultures worldwide and it's reflected in the beauty of their designs and collections.

I invite you to take some time to shop for your daughters, grand daughters and nieces at TeaCollection.com.  They have beautiful dresses, wardrobe sets, leggings, sweaters, hoodies, pajamas, shoes and accessories...everything you need to dress your special little girl in style!   You will get wonderful clothes for every day and special occasions and clothes that your special little girl will love to wear over and over again.

Thanks to Jonathon Woods


Both of my kids somehow got mono at school so I’ve had to take the last week and a half off work to stay home and take care of them. I had heard all the horror stories about the illness but man, it really does make you some kind of sick. All they do is sleep all day and when they’re not sleeping they’re complaining about how bored they are so I’ve done everything I can to make it easier on them. I got a bunch of books for my daughter and broke down and got directTV for my son’s room so he can keep up with college football once it starts but I know what they’re really ready for is to interact with their friends again. They’re still more or less quarantined though since they might still be contagious so they can’t have any interaction outside of a phone call once a day. I bet this will teach them not to share drinks at lunch and to take those vitamin C pills I give them!