My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » program

Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Why I Should Be An Izea Insider

Lisa — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:20:09 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

Izea is having a pilot program to help them spread the word about IZEA sites, products and services, create a stronger bond within our existing community, and provide provide product insight and assist in continuing innovation. They are looking for some people to give them a hand and want to know why we think we are a great fit for this position. What do you get for doing all this for them? Well, there is no hourly rate (darn!). However, you will get a $1500 travel fee, Ted Murphy’s phone number with access to him, a blog makeover, the ability to try out new products before anyone else, recruiting bonuses, Postie Packs, etc. As you can see, there are a ton of fringe benefits.

I wish I could say that I was one of the first members. However, PPP started in July of 2006 and I joined up in September. I had started my blog to keep in touch with my parents and friends in Green Bay, Wisconsin (I live in Illinois now). In 2006, I only had my daughter, and she was growing up so fast. However, as a stay at home mom, we really did need me to make some extra money. Since 2004, I had been doing freelance work for various companies (creating websites and such). That extra money paid for satellite TV, daily newspaper, internet access, etc. It also allowed me to step out of my mommy roll and allowed me to be an adult again. However, as anyone who works freelance will tell you, sometimes there is a lot of work out there — sometimes there isn’t. I came across PPP on somebody’s blog (I don’t even know who) and signed up. That was the beginning of this fantastic journey I have taken over the last 2 years with them. My blog has went through my ups and downs of my family (there is a miscarriage and my son’s birth involved in there). Currently, I am a work at home mom. I still freelance, and now that I have 5 blogs under my belt, I consider myself a professional blogger. I am lucky. I make enough money to pay for the extras we need and want (see basement remodel), so I must be doing something right!

What do I know about marketing? Well, one of the places I freelance for considers me their social media manager. I have accounts at places like StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, etc to name a few. I even have joined a new bookmarking service called tagfoot that is still in beta and requires an invite to join. I promote all of my blogs using social media. I belong to several social networking sites such as Facebook, Namyz, Ryze, LinkdIn, Twitter, SocialSpark, Entrecard, and several forums. I even was a moderator for six months on the Izea forums! I also belong to MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. I also moderate over at Chicago Moms Like Me (which is a social networking site for Chicagoland moms). Here are my stats for this blog for since October 1st:

I was able to achieve these numbers due to social media. I think I would be extremely helpful in recruiting a crew for several reasons. I know a lot of posties just due to being here so long. When my son was born, Amy ran a baby pool on the forums for me ( I can’t find the link due to the boards not letting me search that far back). As a moderator, I had several posties tell Izea not to get rid of me as a moderator, so I get along great with the posties on the forums. I know several of the posties personally like Robyn, Elizabeth, Corrin, Christine, Julie, Breezie, Drew — just to name a few. I know I am missing a lot of people in that list, but it’s just a start. I try to help when possible too — check out this thread on the forums about bluehost and hostgator for hosting. I often get emails and tweets from people with questions, so I think I am considered a very approachable person which definitely makes recruiting much easier.

What events have I attended? I was at Blogworld last year:

I also attended PostieCon and did a cake plow (that alone should score me some bonus points):

In January of this year, I attended the Social Networking Conference in Miami. I actually ran into Ted there. However, I didn’t bring my camera, so no pictures for that conference. I worked a booth here also, so I do know how to do that.

In April, I attended the Sony Mommy Bloggers Event with Laura and Heather who also are posties:

In May, I went to Agency Bootcamp here in Chicago:

In August, I was invited to the Pampers Mommy Blogger Event:

I also attended Izeafest this year:

Also, I have been invited on October 23rd to attend the Epson and Sparkplugging Girls Night Out (pictures to come). As you can see, I’ve attend several blogging events and conferences this year.

Three conference I would have loved to attend are SNSX, Blog World Expo, and BlogHer. However, travel expenses for these three events were not in our budget this year (especially with the downturned economy). I own a laptop that follows me everywhere. I actually use my laptop so much that many of the keys have the letter rubbed off them! I do not have an aircard. However, my husband tells me when my cell phone contract is up at the end of the month, he’d like to get an iphone (so any iphone advice is appreciated). I have heard that you can use your iphone as a modem of sorts, so does that count?

I would love to have Ted’s ear. There are several things that drive me completely insane with Izea, and I would love to hear what he has to say about them. I have to be honest, I don’t think my actual resume is this long!

What do you think? Should I be picked as an Izea Insider?

EDIT: Here’s a pic from the Epson/Sparkplugging Event:

I was also asked to join the Social Media Club here in Chicago. I missed last night’s meeting due to not having a babysitter, but will try attend other ones.

Big Decisions To Be Made

Lisa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:39:14 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

We decided to join a new church here. We haven’t 100% decided to send Madison to private school yet (we have a school referendum on Nov. 4th. If that passes, it solves all of my issues with the public school. However, after watching the debates of Friday night, that may not hold true either. If McSame, I mean McCain, wins he proposed a spending freeze. In theory, that sounds great. However, the schools don’t have enough money for No Child Left Behind as is. If they keep the amount frozen, that means even less money going towards the kids.) The church we joined is a part of hte private school we are looking at. It is a very cool looking church, and we have been there before. Bill’s friend got married there and his daughter will be baptized there this weekend. We also started working on her tuition. They have a program called VOICE. That has you buy gift certificates from them for stores like Speedway, Kohls, Jiffy Lube, Walgreens, etc. to name a few. A percentage of the purchase amount goes towards the school. Madison has to raise $150 with that. With the certificates I bought on Sunday, we are up $17. Woohoo! The cool thing is that everything we earn over the $150 gets taken off her tuition. If we don’t end up sending her there, I just figure that money will go towards another family who can use it. I just think that is super cool that we can start earning towards this now already! So, if anyone needs gift certificates come Christmas time, let me know!

I’ll be honest, this school decision makes me sick. I get a stomach ache every time I have to think about it. I would rather have to use a colon cleanser than have to make this decision. Public schools are suppose to be good. I shouldn’t have to worry about the class sizes or if subjects like music and art are being taught. I just always assumed that my kids would be able to have the same education I have.

**okay, whine over. I think**