Artwork & photo - Jessica Erin Higgins

My friend Cindy Bidar wrote a great post called Are You Afraid of Commitment? I swear—sometimes I think she writes these things to send me a subliminal message or something. Well, not so subliminal I guess. More like a big bonk on the head like they do in the V8 commercials to people who don’t eat their vegetables.

Cindy writes about making the commitment to be successful at your own business. About changing your mindset from treating it like a hobby to treating it like a business.

For me it’s much more comfortable to treat it as a hobby. It’s fun, it’s freedom, it’s doing what you want to do instead of what an employer needs done, it’s meeting great new people through social media and blogs. It’s a lot of things. Like a sparkly orange and pink aura swirling around you.

But Cindy is right – if we want to make money, we need to add an element of business to the mix. And it needs a lot of work to make money happen. So what is it that makes that so tough?

Here’s my theory. When you are a one-woman or one-man business, you are the business. It is like selling yourself. And that’s uncomfortable. Like a slightly less colourful and wrinkly grey aura spiralling around you. And any artist can tell you that if you mix too many colours, it gets muddy. No one wants a muddy aura.

So maybe the answer is to separate yourself from the business side of things. You can be the writer, the artist, the virtual assistant, whatever—but the “business” is another entity separate from yourself. A “thing” that you create and then commit to feeding and caring for. A thing that has its own swirling aura—preferably getting greener and greener.

Now if I can figure out how to do that, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, what tips do you have for getting into that business mindset?

Photo by Luca Conti

My bookmarks are out of control. There are so many good websites and blogs out there–and I bookmark them all. One of my favourite activities is to follow links and see where I end up. Happily bookmarking as I go. The only problem now is that it’s easier to find something in a search engine than it is in my bookmarks.

I considered starting over, but then it dawned on me that I should check out something that I’ve been ignoring–the personal homepage. Also known as the start page, personal portal, personal page, personal start page, personal web portal, or personal news aggregator. There are many names for it, but I’ll stick with personal homepage.

These are the customizable pages that look like newspapers and that you set up with such things as the weather in your area, local news, stock reports, traffic reports, widgets, gadgets, and whatever other feeds that strike your fancy.

RSS or Atom Feeds

There is so much more to feeds than I had imagined. Besides blogs, you can get feeds from many forums, websites, alerts, readers, email, bookmarking sites, news sites, press release searches, blog search engines, article sites (by subject or author)–and I’m sure many other sources I haven’t found yet.

Multiple Homepage Tabs

Much to my delight I also learned that the personal homepage is not restricted to just one page. You can set up multiple tabs. This is so cool. Set up a tab for each area you need to keep track of and fill them with relevant feeds. Then set up each one with a different design theme so they have their own unique identity.

Homepage Options

Some of the options for a personal homepage are iGoogle, My Yahoo, My MSN, Pageflakes, My AOL, Netvibes, and My Zooloo. I tried the first four of these and was happy with them all. They all offer basically the same capabilities. Originally, I decided to stick with iGoogle because I use several other Google applications. But then I tried Pageflakes and was quite struck with it. So I will use them both for a while and then decide.

Continually coming up with new things to write about can be a challenge. Not to mention keeping up to date with your own particular field and niche. But bury yourself in information and it only gets worse. It’s important to choose some main sources that are relevant and that you feel comfortable with and then follow those closely. When you need something that’s not covered there then surf away.

Your personal home/start/portal/aggregator page awaits and it’s hungry. Feed it! And then feed your mind.

What other feeds can you find to add to homepages?

Update [June 8, 2010] Pageflakes has been having some significant downtime problems – days at a time in some cases. I’m not sure how long Netvibes has been around, but I have just discovered it and am giving it a try. It seems to be another great alternative. Deb

Being Canadian is one of the great perks in life. Except for little annoyances like not having access to Hulu, being shut out of some article sites, and excluded from Google Checkout – there’s no place on earth I’d rather live. Thanks to some tweets at Twitter, I was led to this spunky little video called “Canadian, Please” by Julia Bentley & Andrew Gunadie and I thought all you Canadian wannabes would want to see it. Happy Canada Day on July 1st!

Photo by John D. (macrophile)

If you were to change your life, what would you do? If your life is about to change for you, how will you handle it?

Change is opportunity. Transition is a move from one thing to the next. To evolve is to be reinvented – and realize it is the right thing for you. I am reinventing myself right now!

As we boomers enter into the second half of life, many of us will leave jobs in favour of consulting, coaching, home businesses. Others will search for ways to spend their new found time. Still others will look for ways to share their knowledge or body of work.

If you are transitioning, consider building a presence on the internet. Your potential audience or client base is huge. And you have something we want. The work you’ve done, the things you’ve learned, the experiences you’ve had, the places you’ve been, the people you know – these all combine to give you a different perspective than everyone else on the planet. Unique wisdom.

This is valuable. And a presence on the internet is all about adding value and building relationships. These are key to a rewarding and/or profitable online experience. This is your chance to bloom!

On this website I focus on two of the best ways to build your presence – content sharing and social media. This first series of posts will attempt to explain what exactly that means. Then I will get more into specifics and hope to introduce you to some interesting and helpful people.

In the meantime, I would love to hear from you. What transitions are happening in your life?

Ivy Freelance is dedicated to the widespread benefits of content sharing and social media. And to Boomers in particular whose experience and vast wealth of knowledge is needed in this medium.

Healthy debate is encouraged! I look forward to your comments (policy) and emails (contact me) and hope you find value in these pages.