ROFL. This was the funnest contest. EVAH. Am thinking I have to do it again just because you guys are so dang funneh!

The Sparkplugging authors have made their selections. The following four LOLCat Caption Contest entries are the winners of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s new book ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income. Please send me your snail mail address so I can send you your bookz.

From Andy Murd:

Entreprenoo cat sez “I will gladly give you equitiez tomorrow for cheezburger today”

From Sherry:

I IZ OFFENDED! I IZ NOT LOLCAT, I IZ SERIUS BLOGGER!

From A. B. England:

No nom timz? No probemz. Et cheezburgers at cumputr.

From Missy:

MeOwZA! I Iz Da 1st pRoBloGger KiTtY, anD i Iz SpArKpLuggIn AWaY.
LEaVe mE NoW, I hAvE mOnEy 2 cOunT.

Honorable Mentions:

From Dawn Miklich:

AS CFO (CHIEF FELINE OFFICR) IZ BOUT TIEM THEY GIMIE MAH OWN BLOG

From Neil Creek:

Teh twitter was yum, dog do digging, me 2 gracful 2 stumble upon, so I press de wordz.

From Jenny:

im in ur hard drive deletin ur saved passwordz

From Alex:

Alt-Tab Cat Is Working Hard

From Patrick:

HOW MANY WORDZ IN UR PRESS?

and

I IZ BRAINZ

From Rishil:

LOLCatz iz Awsum Link Bait

From Marissa:

REELY, YOUZ NO THINK I FORMAT C?

From Harrison McLeod:

In ur wurdpress moderatin ur commentz.

From Karen:

I CAN BE WHOSEVER I WANTZ ON TEH INTERNETS

Here’s more from overachievers Chris Bartow, Chance, Karrine, Carboncy, Dennis Bjorn Petersen, CaraM, who put together their own LOLCat images:

. .

. .

And thanks so much to the rest of you who participated:

Rick Emmerich, JennyDecki, @Stephen, Lori, Jen McCabe Gorman, Glenda Watson Hyatt, Lisa Marie Mary, Genesis, Momma, Tori Deaux, Mike Ralph, Sime, Ange Recchia, JoLynn Braley, Kim Beasley, Matt Tuley, Gizmo, Kathie Thomas, Neil Creek, Simple Mom, Sandra, BeadinByTheSea, J 4 Jokes, Stephanie, Karen Putz, Nicole, Goal Guru, Alex Shalman, Mike Huang, Eric, Carl, Brent2, Isle, Andrew Wee, Ericabiz, John Jones, Mickie and Andrea R.

And finally, there was a tie between two Sparkplugging author submissions. They are both getting a copy of Lorelle Van Fossen’s Blogging Tips book. (Stay tuned because I have more of these to give away!!)

From Derek Semmler at The Man Page and DerekSemmler.com:

Hoo iz i not 2?
(At SOBCon last weekend, I rather passionately quoted Marianne Williamson in my presentation, “Who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?”)

From Eric Doggett at The Man Page and ShootTheBaby:

IM IN YUR WORDPREZ CHANGN YOUS COMPUHNY NAME.

Phew! Thanks again everyone for making our week so enjoyable! Next week We’re wrapping up the blog rollout celebration by giving away a NeatReceipts scanner & software. We’ll make it easy to win that one too.

KTHX ICanHasCheezburger for the inspiration!!

To continue the more in depth topic of interviewing a virtual assistant, I have added some more questions to the series. I just wanted to thank everyone who has commented on the blog. I appreciate your suggestions, ideas and comments. With this series, I am trying to give the readers suggestions of questions they could ask a virtual assistant if they would like to do so. These are questions that I have to answer when I am speaking with a potential client and I just thought that it would be helpful to others to speak to those things that I feel that business owners may wish to ask during an interview with a virtual assistant.

What operating system are you working with for your business? This normally doesn’t effect too much, however, this is something you may want to know. For instance, I have Windows XP and 2003 on my computer. Some of my clients with Vista have to convert the documents over when they send them, however, it is an easy fix. I am planning on upgrading to MS Windows 2007 soon.

How long have you been a virtual assistant? For some this may not be as important as if the person can complete the tasks needed to be done. However, if this is an important question to you…ask it. For instance, I have officially been a virtual assistant for 1 yr, however, I have managed my husband’s floor cleaning business 2 years prior and that entailed everything administrative, promotions, customer service, and book keeping.

Before you became a virtual assistant, what did you do? This way you can find out what other experience they have and you be surprised to find they have other skills you could use for your business. For me, before I managed my husband’s floor cleaning business, I worked in different industries from financial planning to landscape architecture, to property managing in the administrative field since 1992.

Do you know how to____________? Now this could be something like, “do you know how to do a graph in MS Excel?” And the virtual assistant may say yes. Well, if that doesn’t satisfy you and you want to know how well they know how to do graphs, ask them a more in depth question about what you need in your graph for your project. See how they answer. Again, if you don’t feel comfortable with the answer then this may not be the task for them to complete.

What program do you recommend for ________ and why? Maybe you are looking for a autoresponder provider and you may wish to ask the potential virtual assistant what company they would recommend or use for your business. And then ask them why they would recommend this company. For instance, I would recommend aweber, however, and this can be a big however for some people. Aweber is not intuitive or user friendly. Even though, they have tutorials on the site and the customer service is helpful, most people can’t go in and easy navigate on the screens.

Do you allow trial periods? Now, this can be a sticky situation and even I feel a bit on both side of the coin on this one. For one thing, I feel like saying, “Hey, if you don’t think I know what I am doing then” however, really the person may not feel comfortable sending me a great deal money until they know how we will work together. So I don’t really mind doing a task trial period with a new client. However, do not get me wrong here, they still need to pay for my services during the trial period but they don’t have to pay upfront for a set number of hours. But the trial allows us to find out if we “mesh well” and establishes the connection wanted by the client. To me, there is really no sense in continuing a business relationship if it doesn’t feel right between the two people. That is just silly to me so I don’t mind offering a trial period for my customers.

All of these interview questions are to aid the business owner in finding the right virtual assistant for them and their business. It can be a bit of a lengthy process but I think most people will feel a lot better after an interview with these questions being answered. Also, it really is up to the individual asking the questions. Some of these questions, may not be important to one person and so they don’t feel it necessary to ask all of them. Make the interview of questions you would like to know. As I have mentioned before, if you do not feel comfortable with the answers or the “feel” of the conversation, you will know it and trust your gut.

Teresa Morrow is on Board of Advisors with The WECAI Network ™ (http://www.wecai.org) and Editor at Large at WE Magazine for Women ™ (http://www.wemagazineforwomen). She has over 15 years working with various industries to include property management, landscape architecture and financial planning firms in executive administrative positions. In 2007, Teresa started Key Business Partners, a virtual assistance & online promotional company for coaches, speakers and writers. She cares about her clients and is available for 20 minute free consultation. You can contact her via email at keybusinesspartners@verizon.net or visit her website at http://www.keybusinesspartners.com.

I used to write a lot earning money from blogging - these days the topic is getting terribly overdone and there’s not much to add to it. But I’ve always loved helping parent bloggers earn money from blogging, and I must admit this post has been sitting in my drafts for almost a year. With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day almost upon us, I decided this post would be my present to all of the blogging parents around here.

I’ve worked with most of these affiliate programs, and I’ve definitely chosen these merchants with care. I don’t think we want to sling around more baby products. Rather, these are programs that promote products you can easily fit into your content, because you are probably already blogging about things like childcare, entertainment, social networking, productivity, going green or cool parenting stuff.

In case you didn’t know, all affiliate programs are free, so you just need to join the networks below in order to get access to these programs. By the way, want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing? Funny you should ask!

Programs from the Commission Junction Affiliate Network

Tutor.com ($5 per lead and 100% of first sale [sweet!] )
I love programs that pay per lead - it’s much easier to make money off of leads than sales. And 100% of the first sale is rare and generous. It’s also new - last year they weren’t offering that.

CafeMom ($2 per lead)
Ditto from above on paying for leads - and just how hard do you think it is to get a blogging mom to sign up for a social network??

Angie’s List ($10-$20 per sale)
Ratings and reviews on local contractors and service companies. Word of mouth in action!

Green and More (10% of sale)
For an eco-friendly home - they even have a big selection of green appliances. I hate to imagine blogging about laundry - but I must admit that if anyone can make laundry interesting, parent bloggers can do it!

GameFly ($15 per lead)
That’s a seriously great payout on a brand that’s pretty much a household name.

From the PepperJam Affiliate Network

PepperJam was founded by Kris Jones, a super-fantastic guy who is working hard to improve transparency and ethics in the affiliate marketing industry. Any program run in their network will be run well. I don’t know one parent blogger that hasn’t mentioned at least one of the following TV shows/stations in a post:

Sesame Street Store (8% -10% of sale)

Cartoon Network Shop (7% of sale)

Warner Brothers Shop & Warner Brothers TV Shop (7% of sale)

From the Shareasale Affiliate Network

Shareasale has quite a few niche merchants you won’t find anywhere else. It’s because they have a more affordable merchant program that allows smaller mom and pop shops to run affiliate programs.

MomAgenda (10% of sale)
I’ve written about MomAgenda in the past; I really love their products. Glad to see they finally have an affiliate program!

Land of Nod (7% of sale and $5 per lead)
They are active communicators and some of their affiliates do very well.

FlipClips (10% of sale)
They turn videos into the most adorable little flip books. Their program manager is also very accessible and willing to help.

gDiapers (10% of sale, $0.25 per lead)
Earth-friendly diapers. I’ve heard rave reviews about them - but since my babies are big, I can’t speak from experience.

Tiny Prints (10% of sale)
They have the most adorable baby announcements and holiday cards. Seriously.

Nannies4hire ($40 per sale)
A nationwide online nanny and family database that matches families to nannies.

Programs from the LinkShare Affiliate Network

Although Linkshare has a clunky interface, they have some really premium advertisers, and most of them are exclusive to their network. That alone makes it worth it to join.

Nick Jr. Shop (6% - 10% of sale) & Nick Magazines (25% of sale)

HBO Store (10% of sale)

As we continue to celebrate the new blogs and new name ’round here, I figured it’s high time to have some geeky fun and give you some goodies.

I am a huge LOLCats fan. You may have enjoyed my caption above, but I’m quite sure you can do better. Put your creative thinking cap on and come up with a caption that puts my caption to shame. Then I get to give 4 of you copies of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s new book ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income. (And by the way, I finally got to meet Chris this weekend at SOBCon and he’s, like, absolutely awesome).

The LOLCat Contest

So it’s super simple:

1. Recaption the LOLCat photo above in a comment - Make it related to working at home or entrepreneurship if you can. (If you’re an overachiever, here’s a copy of the photo with no caption).
2. You’re automatically entered to win a copy of ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income.
3. The panel of Sparkplugging judges will chose 4 winners - whoever makes us fall off our chairs wins!
4. All entries will get their name in lights and lots of link love. We’ll pick a winner on Friday May 9th.

Not feeling very creative? Then let the LOLCat Translator help you come up with something.

That’s it! Have fun! Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

I am uber::pleased to announce the launch of our new eBay and eCommerce blog on Sparkplugging! I’ll have to jump in and say this is technically a relaunch, because what originally started as eBay Selling for eParents has now evolved to cover all ways to sell products online - from two authors that I admire both professionally and personally.

Megan Jordan is returning to write about eBay selling. And she is the perfect person to do this - in fact, the reason that eBay Selling for eParents took a hiatus is partly because Megan bought a home over the holidays. And Megan qualified for that mortgage based on one thing: her eBay earnings.

Kristie McDonald will be taking her expertise from her own successful NitroToyz remote control toy eCommerce store and covering the independent retailer angle on this new channel. She’s a wiz at Pay-Per-Click, SEO for product sales, and has extensive training from some very big-names in the internet industry. She also actually lives close enough to my house that I could walk over to hers, so for me this is a whole new (and cool!) treat to be able to start merging my online and offline worlds as my company grows.

I hope you learn as much from these business owners as I have since I’ve gotten to know them. Please go give them a big hello!

Right now I am at SOBCon, and we just wrapped up Chris Garrett’s presentation on “More Bang from your Blog”. He’s put a challenge out to us to write a 5 minute blog post that actually creates value.

Since I’ve had to do this in the past, here are a few ideas on how to pull it off:

1. Do a quick summary and throw up a link to a post or article that made you think this week (please don’t make a habit of this, or you become an echo chamber)
2. Ask your readers a thought-provoking question and turn the conversation over to your community
3. Twitterize your thoughts so that you have to come up with an influential thought/idea/statement in less than 140 characters

In fact, I think Twitter has been one of the best influences on my writing of all time. It makes you cut out  unnecessary words, thoughts and fluff and get to the point - fast.

So I’ll ask you - leave a comment in 140 characters or less… how can you influence your readers more by doing less?

I have written a previous article here on Sparkplugging regarding interview questions to ask a virtual assistant however, I felt that I needed to further discuss these questions topic to help those who may be searching and trying to find a virtual assistant to work with on a regular basis.

When you are…actually, let me say…before you interview a virtual assistant, you will want to have these questions (and possibly others) written on a sheet of paper with blank space in between so you space to write in the responses given by the interviewees. Another option may be to record the calls. However, you must tell the person you are recording the call and have their permission to record.

You can ask as many questions as you feel comfortable with asking. And again, as I have mentioned, if you don’t get a good feeling about how someone is answering a question, and feel cautious, maybe write a star on the paper next to the question. Have some type of symbol for yourself to know whether they answered the question to your liking or effectively.

Trust your intuition when you interview a virtual assistant or anyone for that matter. Some people are pretty clever when they wish to be manipulative or hid something, however, you will know and don’t doubt that feeling.

Ok, so now onto more detail in the interview questions—

What is your work schedule? Find out the days and times they are working.
Also ask about their daily schedule. You will want to know if they have to take their kids to band practice 3 times a week or have to go to PTA meetings at 3pm each month.

Now some of you may be saying, wait a minute! I don’t think I need to know so much about their lives, however, it could make the difference to you if they are busy in the afternoon with errands or other obligations, you will know a head of time that they will probably not be available in the afternoon.

Do you work after hours and/or weekends? Now this may be a no-brainer for some might be saying, of course they don’t work after hours or weekends because I don’t. Ok, that is fine. However, you will want to know if there is an emergency or rush project that needs to be completed for you, can you count on them to help. You will want to know if they are willing to work if possible at the time. Also, you want to ask if there is a rate difference for rush projects, working after hours or on weekends.

And if their schedule works for you, then you can move onto the next question. If it really doesn’t work for you, then you can stop right there. It really doesn’t make sense to keep going and waste each other’s time if the schedule isn’t going to work for you.

What is the best way to contact you? Now, some people prefer email, others prefer phone calls. The mutual used method of communication between you and your virtual assistant is critical for this type of business relationship. Your virtual assistant is going to be one of the people you contact a lot and if the communication style is not in sync, that could lead to bigger problems.

How much time do you currently have available in your schedule?
For most virtual assistants that I know, they have multiple clients who request different amount of hours per week or month. So you will want to know if the interviewee already has 75% of time booked, will that remaining time be enough to complete your projects? You will need to know how much time you are wishing to have aside to do the work and if the virtual assistant has the time to complete your tasks.

Do you have client references or clients that I can contact?
Now, this one to me is important because this will give you another way to research about the person you wish to hire as a virtual assistant. Another thing to see is if there are testimonials on their website. These may be enough for you to feel comfortable with hiring the person; however, you have the right to ask if you want for client references. At least that is my opinion on the subject.

Now with these interview questions, as you go through them and with talking with the individuals you will have a much better sense of who “clicks” with you and who doesn’t and that will be a good indicator of whom to talk with more and who probably won’t be a good fit for you and your business.

I know the process seems a bit tedious however, if you are truly looking for someone to be a part of your business team and to have the relationship be long lasting, and then it is best to go through this process at the beginning.

I will be continuing with more interview questions in my next post as well. I will be adding questions regarding a trial period, payment options, operating systems just to name a few.

Stay Tuned!

Teresa Morrow is on Florida Board of Advisors with The WECAI Network ™ and Editor at Large for WE Magazine for Women ™. She has over 15 years working with various industries to include property management, landscape architecture and financial planning firms in executive administrative positions. In 2005, she left the corporate world and managed the daily operations of her husband’s floor cleaning/restoration company. In 2007, Teresa started Key Business Partners, a virtual assistance & online promotional company for coaches, speakers and writers. She cares about her clients and is available for a 20 minute free consultation. You can contact her via email at keybusinesspartners@verizon.net or visit her website at http://www.keybusinesspartners.com .