Today is a wonderful day! For the first time, I made the commute to work from one room of my house to another. I am excited to announce that this Halloween marks the first day that I am no longer a part of the 9 to 5 workforce, but am instead a new member of the proudly self-employed!

The Transition

The transition from 9 to 5 to self-employed has been a long journey filled with long days spent in front of a computer screen. One day I will have to write about it in length, but in a nutshell it involved about three years of spending eight hours at the office, followed up by another four to five at home. I tried many forms of making money online, including advertising on my blog, AdSense sites, affiliate marketing, and maintaining a directory.

While those things bring in some passive income, they aren’t the things I am most excited about doing. I love writing. Hence, it wasn’t too much of a surprise that I started getting into freelance writing. So far, I have done mainly blog posts and a pinch of ghostwriting. But ultimately, writing is my passion, therefore freelance writing is what I enjoy doing the most. And there is nothing better than making a living doing what you love.

My New Tagline

For those who have paid attention to my profiles across social media, you might have already noticed some changes. Since I like variety (and diversified sources of income), I plan on combining my love of writing plus my experience in online marketing in what I offer which can be summed up in the following tagline.

I am an online marketing consultant, freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast who enjoys photography, tennis, and the outdoors. Let me know how I can help you with your website, blog, or business.

I vary it a little from network to network based on the number of characters I have to work with and the audience. But it summarizes exactly what I want to do and who I can do it for, plus gives a little insight into the things I love outside of work which is what the perfect tagline should convey.

This is a guest post by Ana Hoffman.

What does it really take to build a hustling and bustling blog with a thriving and active community around it?

Kristi knows – just look around.

PageRank 5, Alexa rank about 15K and constantly dropping (in case you are not familiar with how Alexa rank works, the lower the number, the better), a wealth of comments on every post.

It seems like Kristi knows everyone and everyone knows Kristi.

Want some of that?

Let’s talk about her not-so-secret secrets that power up her blog.

Besides her numerous guest posts all around the blogosphere, several prestigious awards like Finalists: Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2011, and being an all around nice gal, Kristi is always about GIVING to her readers.

Yes, her readers come back over and over because of the exceptional content Kristi provides, but also because she rewards those who take their time to read her posts and leave their thoughts in comments with Dofollow, CommentLuv, and KeywordLuv enabled links back to their blogs.

Let’s face it: most commentators on any blog appreciate a high-quality backlink or two – after all, link building is still the cornerstone of top Google rankings. And blog commenting is still one of the easiest ways to get backlinks.

However, what I see many bloggers do, newbie bloggers in particular, is not really knowing how to use the resources Kristi and so many other bloggers provide to maximize their link building efforts.

So how do you use Dofollow, KeywordLuv, and CommentLuv to their full potential?

Glad you asked.

This is a guest post by Jill Shearer, creator of SimplyLaunch.

It’s part of a blogger’s job to keep abreast of changes in the blogging world and to take advantage of new and improved tools. Anything making your job easier and more effective as a blogger should be a welcome change.

Tumblebeasts by The Oatmeal

One of those changes could be Tumblr, a microblogging program developed a mere four years ago and which has recently taken over Wordpress.com as the blogger’s favorite platform, according to Mashable. Tumblr has also attracted well-respected news outlets such as Huffington Post and the NY Times Style Magazine.