But, I’m sure you’re already doing this. There’s no way you’re operating a part-time (or full-time, for some of you) business without keeping track of all of these things. Right? Wrong! I’ve spoken to dozens of bloggers and Internet entrepreneurs who have no idea how FreshBooks works and don’t think it’s really necessary to track everything in so much detail.

Well, allow me to give you a few, brief reasons why every blogger should be using it. Then you can decide.

First of all, it’s business standard to have an accounting program in place.

Believe it or not, if you’re making money blogging, you’re operating a small business! Though the standard accounting software for small businesses, and large businesses for that matter, is QuickBooks (they own something like 94% of the accounting software market), I think FreshBooks is a better option for bloggers who probably know little to nothing about how to keep accounting records. The interface is easy to use and the customer support is superb.

You can track your clients, vendors, contractors, and contacts. All in one place.

This is an extremely important feature. I have everyone I do business with in one place. And because I have them all in once place, I have the ability to invoice any of them at any time.

It makes invoicing ridiculously easy to do.

Essentially, all you do is choose a person to invoice, assign time (if you’ve been tracking time in the interface) or expenses to them, and send the invoice off via email or snail mail to them. FreshBooks does everything from assigning them an invoice number, to sending snail mail invoices. Your records will be updated for you when someone pays an invoice, disputes an invoice, etc. You can also go in and manually mark an invoice as paid, if you need to.

It’s an online service, so you can access it anywhere.

That’s a huge convenience right there.

It makes tax time a whole lot easier.

Anyone who’s self-employed knows what a nightmare tax time can be. But with FreshBooks, it’s easier to pull records when tax season rolls around.

There’s a free version you can use.

If you’re just starting out, or if you don’t know if you have enough of a need for a program like this, or if you don’t want to pay for an upgraded version, there’s a free version available. It limits client records, etc, but it’s a good place to start.

You can brand nearly every aspect of your account.

You can add a logo to your invoices, change the colors of your account, configure the emails that are sent to others, etc. You can almost make it look like there’s no third party involved at all.

It works with different payment gateways (PayPal, Authorize.net, etc).

Just link your payment accounts to FreshBooks, and your funds will be deposited into those accounts.

You can use apps to enhance your account.

You can link your account with your Basecamp account, amongst a huge list of other applications.

Here’s a breakdown on the pricing:

FreshBooks has worked extremely well for me. Not only do my virtual assistant clients love it because it makes paying their invoices seamless, but as a blogger I use it to:

• track and pay contractors who do design work for me
• track all of my contacts
• invoice advertisers

So if you’re looking for a way to easily manage income, expenses, invoices, etc – check out FreshBooks.

Thanks to FreshBooks for the screenshots, since I didn’t want to give screenshots of my own personal account.

You spend days (or maybe even weeks) on creating and customizing an awesome WordPress theme for your blog. You’ve got all the bells and whistles, everything is snazzy to the max. So, you launch. Next thing you know, you’re getting emails from your readers that say something like: “Hey, just so you know, your links are all messed up.” And “Hey, just so you know, your header is all messed up.”

Big. Bummer. First impression is everything, and already your readers are annoyed.

While it’s really tough to make everything look and work 100% the same across Internet browsers, there are some things you can do to avoid any major issues.

Before you launch your blog, check how it looks on all of the most popular Internet browsers.

BrowserShots.org is good for this. So is this site. I’d recommend checking (at minimum) FireFox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. Also, don’t just check the latest release version of the browser. Check the two or three most recent. Sometimes people take a long time to upgrade (we’re all afraid of change). Do this every few months.

Just do your best when it comes to CSS.

CSS is a fickle thing. I doubt that anyone has found a way to make it work consistently in all browsers. Just try not to fix browser-specific problems with CSS. You’ll end up having to change it a lot with new browser versions, etc.

On that topic, don’t waste a ton of time going through code. Use a FireFox plugin like CSSViewer or FireBug to make spotting trouble code easier.

Don’t use pixels for fonts. Use ems or percentages.

Simply put, if you assign pixels to fonts then you’re specifying that size font no matter what the reader’s screen size and browser are. The result of that can be distorted text (smaller, larger, smooshed together, etc). Em’s are a general measurement that can be read by different sized screens and browsers and interpreted to fit the screen properly. More info on this topic can be found here.

Don’t waste hours on making everything 100% perfect.

First of all, the moment you have it perfect is the moment a new release of a browser comes out. So, don’t stress about it. I know my blog has issues when it comes to Internet Explorer, and maybe even a version of FireFox. But, I also know that the majority of my audience doesn’t use Internet Explorer, or that particular version of FireFox. I’ve done my best to make it functional for my IE readers, but I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it. I’d rather spend that time writing! So as long as it’s readable and it functions, let it be.

There’s a lot more that can added to this list. What are some of the ways you ensure cross-browser functionality?

It’s normal to see your follower numbers fluctuate a little bit due to scammers, impatient people who are only looking for reciprocal follows, people just losing interest, and issues on Twitter’s end. It happens. No big deal. It becomes a problem when you’re regularly seeing a big number of people unfollowing you.

What comes next is a common sense, palm-to-forehead, complete “duh” list of reasons why this might be happening to you. And because it would be stupid to just point out everything that’s wrong, I’ve added some advice on what you can do to remedy the problem too.

Everything you tweet is pointless.

This would be the person who tweets about mundane daily activities, problems in their relationship, their pet, what they’re wearing…and the list goes on. There’s no reason this person is tweeting other than to get attention or waste time, because it’s not adding any value to the conversation.

This kind of content would be better suited on Facebook using the status update feature. Facebook, by nature, is a more personal social networking site. Save the “ME ME ME” content for your friends and family on Facebook, and use Twitter to build more of a community by sharing helpful content (and occasionally saying something “ME ME ME” to show that you’re human).

You don’t tweet often enough. Or you tweet every five seconds.

If you don’t tweet regularly (whatever that number is for you – it’s at least 5 times a day for me), I’ve officially forgotten about you. Therefore, when I’m cleaning out my list of people I follow, I don’t even remember who you are, so I unfollow you. You’re not memorable if you’re not consistently involved.

Likewise, if every other tweet in my stream is from you, I’m going to unfollow you. I don’t need you to be in my face that much, and if you’re tweeting that much, you’re not focused on quality.

Find a balance that works for you and stick with it. I don’t care how often you tweet. But if you set the precedent of tweeting daily, then I’m going to assume that you’re going to continue to tweet daily and I’ll expect that from you in the future.

You’re the spammer and/or Internet marketer from hell. Just admit it.

This is loose criteria for who I consider to be in this group:

1. You randomly reply to me, out of the blue, because I mentioned a keyword you’re watching.
2. Every tweet on your stream is about one of your products. It’s most likely the same tweet over and over.
3. You have auto-DMs set up that pitch me, right from the start.
4. The only replies you send to people are about you, your product, and how both will change lives immediately.

The fix for this (other than CUT IT OUT)? Change your approach. Follow people just to follow them. Spend time listening. You’ll gain more insight into your market and leads by doing that for one day, than by sending unsolicited pitches to 100 people.

Frankly, it takes a lot for me to unfollow someone and I really don’t need to that often (because I actually view every single person who follows me and make a decision to follow them back, and I’ve done this from the start). They really have to be in one of these three categories for me to consider it.

Bottomline: Twitter is about sharing knowledge and feedback with a large community and connecting with others of similar interests. Don’t make Twitter painful for those who are trying to go about it right.

P.s. – If we’re not following each other on Twitter already, follow me and I’ll follow you back (unless you fall into one of these categories)!

So here’s what I consider to be an easy way to make an info product. It’s a process that’s worked for me in the past, and continues to work now.

Brainstorm.

Take an hour or two and brainstorm what your product will be about. Here are some things to consider during this step:

• Will it be blog content that’s repurposed into a product?
• Will it be brand new content?
• What’s the topic?
• What’s the title?
• What resources are you going to pass along to others?
• What’s the one, main point that you want to get across with this product?
• Do you have all the information you need, or do you need to do more research?
• What format will your product be in? Report? Videos? Audio?

At the end of this step, you should have a solid direction to go in.

Outline.

Spend a good chunk of time outlining your entire product. If it’s a report, outline each section in detail, including introduction and conclusion paragraphs. If you’re doing videos, outline your slides, or make some talking points. At the end of this step, you should have a complete step-by-step outline of your product. The worst should be over.

Fill in the gaps.

Fill in the gaps in your outline with the real meaty content. This shouldn’t be too stressful, because you already have a pretty good roadmap set up.

Make it pretty.

Go through your content and edit and proofread. Package it up and make it pretty. If it’s a report, have an eBook cover image created and turn it into an easy to download PDF. If it’s videos, edit them with intros and transitions. Make your product sparkle.

Sign up for E-junkie.

There are a ton of different ways that you can sell an info product on your blog. But remember, we’re talking about one of the easiest ways of doing all of this. I think one of the easiest way to do it is to use E-junkie. They’re cheap (starting at $5.00 a month). You just upload your product, customize some options, stick a Buy Now button on your blog, and you’re good to go. You can even manage an affiliate program through E-junkie.

Promote your product.

You should promote your product on your blog, your social networks, forums, your mailing list, and so on. Also, send some emails out to other bloggers in your market and see if they’d like to participate in a JV deal.

If you follow this process, you could easily create a product in a day and have it up on your blog to sell. Don’t make it harder than it is!

Here are the fears I struggled with before I started blogging, and some advice (based on what I did) to get over them.

My knowledge and expertise are on parade. What if I’m not as smart as I think I am?

First of all, if you have any serious doubts about your knowledge on the topic you plan to create a blog about, then don’t create a blog about it. You need to choose a topic that you’re confident about. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to be able to create a lot of meaningful content. Brush up on the topic before you start. That’ll help you to be a lot more self-assured.

I might piss someone off. I might get a whole lot of public, negative feedback.

If you have a blog, I guarantee you’re going to get some negative comments, negative emails, negative reviews, etc. It’s just a part of the business. Everyone has an opinion. Be true to yourself and don’t worry too much about offending others (don’t deliberately be a jerk or anything, but also don’t make tip-toeing around your biggest priority).

Also, don’t disregard that negative feedback. If it’s malicious, then let it be. But if it’s a well-formed argument that someone is bringing to your attention, then respond appropriately. Blogging is a two-way flow. Don’t ever forget that if people are responding (whether happy or not) to you and your ideas, then you’re succeeding!

What if I run out of things to say?

The truth of the matter is that not all topics are great topics for a blog. That’s why choosing what you’re going to blog about is so critical. Keep an ongoing list of post ideas for those days when you’re just drawing a blank. For me, this looks like a Google Document that I’m always adding to.

Also, keep this principle in mind: one idea, one blog post. Once you find yourself drifting into different topics and ideas, it’s time to start a new post. That way you stretch out your ideas and the amount of posts you can create.

And don’t forget to regularly get inspired. Read the news, catch up on Twitter, read some of your favorite blogs, talk to friends, etc. Do whatever it takes to get your wheels turning and get yourself thinking about new post ideas.

What if I set the bar too high and fail to deliver?

My biggest piece of advice is to just not do that. Don’t post daily if you won’t always be posting daily. Don’t write a novel of a blog post, if all of your blog posts won’t be like that. Don’t set your readers’ expectations higher than you think you can regularly reach.

On the flip side, continue to challenge yourself. Strive for bigger and better things. But don’t let your audience’s pressures become your main concern. You need to be happy with what you produce as well.

What if I don’t have enough time to keep up with it?

Well, where are your priorities at? If your blog isn’t your priority, then don’t start one. It’s like any other thing in life. Don’t start what you can’t finish.

Stick to a regular, planned time for creating content. Approach your blog in an organized, business-like way. And keep in mind that if you’re blogging about something you’re passionate about, you’ll want to make time to keep up with it.

Don’t let the fear of the unknown or the fear of something new scare you out of starting a blog. Let me tell you something: it’s really rewarding. If you push through the discomfort stage, you’ll see how fun it is. If you never take that leap, you’ll never get anywhere.

You have great, unique things to share. So get to sharing them!

But only recently have I begun to think about Twitter in terms of brand loyalty, in particular the loyalty I show brands. It came to mind because I was thinking back on the interesting exchanges I’ve had on Twitter with various big-name companies.

I’d like to share three examples of brands that totally did it right when it comes to reinforcing brand loyalty on Twitter. I’ll mention a little bit about the situation, what the brand’s response was, and how I (the customer) felt afterward. At the end of this post, I’ll list some lessons learned that you can take away from these examples and use to help increase your own brand loyalty using Twitter.

Drugstore.com
Brief description of the situation: I had various prescriptions on Drugstore.com that I would order every month. Usually, Drugstore.com sends you an email telling you when it’s time to order your medication. It’s a handy feature. Well, all of a sudden, I started getting these emails with the headline: “It’s time to order your drugs.” That didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t like the connotation the email had that made it seem like I was a crazy person who needed her pills.

So, I tweeted something to the effect of “Gee, I love it that Drugstore.com sends me an email with a headline that makes me sound crazy”. I wasn’t really pissed about it. It was just kind of weird.

Their response: About an hour later, a representative from Drugstore.com called me and left me a voicemail saying that their emails do not have that headline and thanks for bringing it to his attention because it could be some security problem.

How I felt afterwards: First of all, I was totally astonished that they would actually look up my information and give me a call. I felt like I was important to them. Secondly, I was impressed with the speed in which they addressed my concern (which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t that big of a complaint).

FYI: I don’t use Drugstore.com anymore. Positive lifestyle changes have eliminated my need for medication.

Southwest Airlines
Brief description of the situation: Basically, I don’t have time to search for airfare deals on a regular basis. I know that Southwest usually has the best deals around, and when I want to know what the current deals are for a trip I have coming up, I just tweet out something like: “Anyone know the best deals Southwest has for flying out of Chicago to (insert city here)?”.

Their response: A Southwest employee usually replies to me on Twitter immediately with a couple of the cheapest one-way rates.

How I feel afterwards: I felt like I just saved a precious 20-30 minutes. Which, when you’re self-employed and running a few different businesses, is kind of a big deal.

Comcast
Brief description of the situation: I’ve had a testy relationship with Comcast ever since my husband and I moved to our apartment in Illinois. They’ve given us bad routers, overcharged us for both Internet and cable, charged us for asking for help, screwed up our bill more times than we can count, given us the runaround when we call for help – you name it. I’d finally had enough when my Internet connection was unstable enough to cause me to repair the connection every 15 minutes.

I called Comcast, got transferred around, and was on hold for 20 minutes. I finally hung up and assumed I’d try again later.

I don’t tend to hold back on Twitter, so I tweeted about my complete frustration.

Their response: Seconds later, I had a Comcast employee contact me on Twitter. Within 15 minutes, she had looked up my information, diagnosed the problem, and scheduled an appointment for someone to come out to fix it. She was sympathetic, helpful, and an all-around joy to interact with on Twitter.

How I felt afterwards: I felt totally destressed. I felt understood. And I felt like I had someone’s face to think of when I think of Comcast, not just some nameless, faceless corporation.

FYI: I really don’t advocate doing business with Comcast. In my experience, their services are unreliable, you have to jump through so many hoops, and you’re just a number to them. If I had a different cable/Internet option in my area, I’d take it.

So here are some take-away lessons from those three examples:

1. Whatever your customers are saying about you on Twitter, good or bad, address it. This will establish a relationship with them (even if it is a love-hate relationship), which is something your competitors may not have.
2. Make doing business with your customers EASY. The fact that Southwest goes above and beyond and gets me the information I need on Twitter without me having to do any work, means that they become the easy choice in my head when I need flight information.
3. Give quick responses on Twitter. Don’t keep your customers waiting.
4. Don’t just be a company on Twitter. Be individuals with personality who just so happen to work for a company. The Comcast woman I had an exchange with had amazing personality. Because she was such a joy to work with, she helped to turn my overall outlook on Comcast into a positive one.

Really, it comes down to the one thing that matters the most when it comes to brand loyalty: customer service and the customer’s experience. Offer a positive experience on Twitter for your customers.

Here are some of the WordPress-specific posts I’ve done over on LisaMorosky.com:

• 3 Practical WordPress Plugins That Won’t Slow Down Your Site Load Speed
• How To Get Rid of Disqus on Pages
• How to Point WordPress Pages or Posts to an External URL
• How To Protect Files Within WishList Member
• How To Learn How To Do Things in WordPress
• [Video] How To Install the Thesis WordPress Theme
• [Video] A Quick Introduction to the Thesis OpenHook Plugin

This information is put out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is an organization made up of “lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists” that defends “free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today”. You can find out more about them here.

Here are all the questions they answer on their page about intellectual property laws:

• I found something interesting on someone else’s blog. May I quote it?
• What is fair use?
• May I freely copy from federal government documents?
• Am I free to copy facts and ideas?
• How does a Creative Commons license help?
• I’d like to let other people copy from my blog. Can I license it?
• If a reader comments on my blog, does she license the rights to me?
• Can I “deep link” to someone else’s website or blog post?
• When can I borrow someone’s images for my blog post?
• I want to parody someone. Can I use some of their images and text in my parody?
• My ISP received a DMCA complaint about my weblog. What does that mean? Can I do anything about it?
• What are the rules for filing a DMCA notification?What are the counter-notice and put-back procedures?
• Can I sue if my site is wrongly taken down?
• When can I claim the safe harbor for comments others post to my blog?
• I want to complain about a company. Can I use their name and logo?
• Can I use a trademark in my blog’s name or in the title of a blog post?
• What is a right of publicity claim?

Definitely bookmark and explore their website further. They’ve got all kinds of legal information as it applies to bloggers.

If you’ve never worked with a virtual assistant before, you probably don’t even know how to go about approaching them. You may have seen their work and like it. Perhaps you’ve spoken with others who have worked with them. And now it’s time to initiate a conversation on how they can help you out.

I get emails all the time that say just this: “I need help with my blog. Can you help me?”. Well, if you need help setting it up and maintaining it, sure. If you need graphic design help (or some other service I don’t offer because it’s not a specialty of mine), then no. I usually respond to these people by playing a game of email tag until all the details finally come out.

It could be easier. You could have a virtual assistant working on your stuff that day, and not three weeks later.

Here’s how you should approach a virtual assistant.

Give the basics.
Give your name, your email address, your phone number, your website, and a general overview of your project or work you need completed. This is the bare minimum that should be in your initial email.

Give the details.
Answer the standard questions in relation to your project.

• Who: Who are you? Who would I be working with?
• What: What is the project? What do you need done on a regular basis? What do you expect to get out of our working relationship? What type of person do you work well with?
• Where: Where do you live (time zones matter)? Where can you be reached at? Where can I find more information about you? Where did you find out about me?
• When: When do you need this project or task completed by? When would you like to begin working together?
• Why: Why do you need this project/task completed (helps put it into priority perspective for me)?
• How: How would you like to work together? How have you done things in the past?

Include diagrams and examples, if possible.
I had a potential client email me a little while ago about a project he needs completed. In his email, he included a PowerPoint presentation of the type of design he wanted, his objectives, examples of designs he likes, etc. All of the information I needed, he handed to me in a visual format. It was extremely helpful.

At the end of your email, ask for something.
If you just send me an email about you and what you’d like done, I don’t know what you want to happen next. Give me some guidance on what you’d like to happen next: do you want me to quote you rates? Would you like my advice? Give me some clear direction to go in.

Working with a virtual assistant is a two-way street. While it is just as much the virtual assistant’s responsibility to communicate effectively with you, clients need to remember that virtual assistants are business owners. And we like to use our time wisely, just like everyone else, so we can complete your work in a timely manner.

This might seem like a lot of work to do for one initial email. But if you do it, you’ll make it a lot easier on the person you contact, you’ll cut down the back and forth communication, you’ll set a positive tone for your working relationship, and most importantly…work on your project will start sooner.

Currently, at LisaMorosky.com, I’m doing a video series entitled “Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger”. This video series will be especially helpful for those of you who have just begun blogging and are needing some direction on how to be more organized in your approach. I’ll be covering topics specific to the action of blogging, as well as other aspects of being a blogger where you might need some help getting organized (e.g., email, Google Calendar, etc).

Keep checking back, because I will continue to edit this post with links to the videos.
[Edit: The series is complete and all videos are listed below.]

Video #1: Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger: Email [Added 9/11/09]

Video #2: Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger: Google Calendar [Added 9/18/09]

Video #3: Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger: Avoiding Social Media Overwhelm [Added 9/28/09]

Video #4: Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger: Blogging as a Well-Oiled, Easy, and Quick Process [Added 10/12/09]

Video #5: Becoming an Organized and Productive Blogger: Outsourcing for Bloggers 101 [Added 10/13/09]