ramblingsbyamy

System requirements for Metal of Honor PART 4

Play station or PS2, Optional memory card if you want to save your progress during the game. Go ahead and purchase this game off the shelve of a classic game store.

Overall

This is a classic first person shooter, that is loved as much now as when it was new. Since it is an older game, purchasing Medal of Honor for a special person this holiday season it will be less expensive and that is always a plus.

We have one Medal of Honor game here, adults and children play it alike. The teenagers seem to love this game and will play for hours. 

http://psx.ign.com/objects/011/011925_articles.html

http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=29862&rid=28352

I began writing on bright hub and it is keeping me beyond busy, but the pay is good. I need all the cash I can get because it seems as if prices are soaring on everything. I am not one of the lucky ones who have a second person in the household to help ease the money woes that is my own responsibility.

I am working hard now, because I have a sewer bill that needs to be paid, as well as my internet bill and the house payment. I could grab them all but the internet will be turned off, because that shut off date is 12/9 and my online pays do not come in until around the tenth of the month. If I do not pay the sewer bill by 12/7 they will add late charges to it again, and it’s already $110. I am screwed and it is Christmas time, and all I can say as I am so glad the kids are older so they will understand better than they would if they were younger.

On the tenth through the twelfth I get page views from ac, helium, today, e-how, and bright hub, which will amount to almost 700 dollars,  but that will help to turn things back on. On the other hand, perhaps I can use some to pay back a family member should I get the courage to ask to barrow money for a few days at Christmas time. I hate barrowing it any time, but Christmas is the worst time you know.

This is why I write my butt off,  I have written dang near 300 articles this month, some of which I was paid up front for, by many of the higher priced ones come with the pay views. I love those pay days most of the time, and it is quite the reward to get those emails that says payment has arrived.

Voice recognition software

Anyone who works from home knows how drive and determination shows in the work we put forth. If we lack the drive or determination to sit down and type, we suffer the ramifications of our actions.  

After typing six to twelve articles a day with varying word counts, fatigue begins to set in. Beat the fatigue by using voice recognition software in your home office. You need to install and then train the software to your voice by talking to it. After the training is done, you can easily talk into a microphone and the software will type it out.

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8 along with Office 2002 to help ease the fatigue to my hands.

Many people who work in a home office do not have a separate room to perform our work in solitude so they learn to improvise. My home office serves the purpose I require yet allows me to be the single parent I need to be.

Word

I only write in the program Word, because I can set up my spell and grammar checkers to help me move along within my work. If I need to leave the work for any reason the save icon works beautifully. There is an auto-save feature within Word so the program automatically saves your projects every 10 minutes if you forget to.

You need to have a strict schedule of time set aside during a time of day where you can focus on writing.  This does not mean you have to write on a daily basis for eight hours straight, it means that during a day you sit and write when you find the time. If you cannot get three hours in one day, no sweat there is always the next day. On occasion, I have saved the file, before I went to bed without closing it, so when I woke I picked up where I left.

As a single mom, I need to have a flexible schedule in which to work as parenting always takes precedence. If I need to take a few hours off, I save the file, which I am working and come back to it.   

Stay tuned for part 4

Microsoft Excel

One of the biggest advantages to working from home is having a flexible schedule. If the schedule remains too flexible than we are likely to allows little things slide.  Those little things can grow into big things if we are not careful and Excel will help you be flexible. Having Microsoft Excel installed on your computer is a great start, but you will also need to learn how to use it.

Having a flexible schedule is good, but only to a small extent. Yes, freelance writing for example has distinct advantages as far as the schedule goes but if you do not sit and do the work, you receive no pay. Plan your monthly schedule easily.

Within Excel, you can set up a month spreadsheet of how much money you want to bring in or how many articles you wish to write for the month. When your goals are visible, in Excel it gives you an incentive to write more often and finish tasks on time. In another page of the excel work book I create spreadsheets for every month to track where I write, how many words and the price I received among other detailed information and this also helps me keep focused and on track.

stay tuned for part 3

Working from home, being a freelance writer has many advantages. All those advantages help us to perform better in our assignments, and technology helps us to perform those assignments easier. 

Some of the advantages are visible, and some remain hidden for a while. Those hidden advantages which you many not see right away are little surprises to uncover as you proceed. Let us began with the software for this article, these are the first items we must

With the many advantages that being self-employed brings we need to keep focused so that we can forge ahead to make the money we need, to remain in business. Microsoft’s office suite can help us immeasurably, although keeping up with the current software can be costly. Purchase a full version of the older versions of this software on eBay, from a vender at a fraction of the cost.

Home office workers can take advantage of many of the programs within Microsoft Office but for the article, we will focus on Excel and Word along with voice recognition software. These there software titles will help you within your home office to be more productive.

stay tuned for part 2

SEO is search engine optimization. It means your article is easily searchable. If you follow the rule of your keyword appearing at least one time in fifty words it will be searchable. With the right key words, your article will be visited more often. 

To determine your keywords, think about how you would search for something. Would you search for chocolate cake or chocolate cake recipe? Your key word should be whatever term you search for more. Personally, I would use recipe in the title but not within the article.

Remember to use your key words or key phrases at least once every 50 words to assure that the article is searchable. Yes, it may look goofy if your key word or key phrase is a bit wonky, but it does make your articles searchable.  

Making your articles more searchable requires a few things, a good title, and of course SEO. Either one of these alone will get you nothing. They both must work together hand and hand to achieve the task. 

First, let us discuss what a good title is important. It is of course what will bring in the visitors. When you create a title on most content sites this is also the URL of the article. It plays a big role in determining your placement along with of course the key words or key phrases. 

Let us say you are creating an article on how to clean a lawn mower for example. There are a great many ways you can create your title, but a few will be better then most of those ways. The best way of course is to have lawn mowing as close to the start of the title rather than the end. Lawn Mower Clean it right is better then how to clean your lawn mower.

 Just like Homemade Chocolate Cake recipe is a better title than how to make a chocolate cake at home. Notice the words lawn mower and chocolate cake in the proceeding sentences. Try to keep your keywords towards the front of the title. 

If you are writing a chocolate cake article then your keywords should be the chocolate cake. Those words should appear at least once for every fifty words. Most content articles require four hundred words so to have this article searchable you need to type the words chocolate and cake each eight times.

Time management is essential for any type of career but it is extremely important when you work from home as a freelance writer. If you do not keep a close watch on the different areas of time, you will run into trouble by running out of time. 

If it is a day when I am writing articles for one of the many content sites I work on, I must carefully watch my time. Do I use a set schedule? Nope that is too easy to mess up. Instead, I write an article or two off the top of my head and then get up and do some type of physical activity. This allows me to get both my articles done and the housework as well.

Just as you have lunchtime in a regular job, you must take time away from work to eat your lunch. Use this time to check your emails, play a game, eat, or call a friend. Usually I am eating as I type an article, and use my breaks to do something physical. Trust me with others living in my house, there is always plenty of housework to do right along with my paid work. 

No schedule is going to work for everyone, so it is important to figure out what works for you. Make the time you have work for you, and you will accomplish more within your limited writing time.

Some people ask how I find the time or motivation to be a power writer, and let me assure you I do not feel as if I am a power writer in the true sense of the word. Yes, I may look like it with so much work, but I assure you it is just a shuffling for the most part. I will state they are all new to the particular site they are being shifted to.

I lack the drive to begin today’s workload, but I know once I am done I can began the fun stuff. Some days I feel as if I cannot copy and paste one more word, yes it is that bad. I keep reminding myself that there is another twelve days in this month to go. The only day I am planning to take off from writing anything new would be Thanksgiving. 

I need to find some motivation and quick so I can be done for the day.