how-to | CoffeeJitters Media

Does your blog need a disclosure statement?

by Judy Schwartz Haley | Business, Creating a Living, Writing & Blogging

The term disclosure statement sounds boring, dry, like legalese.

It is.

It sounds like something complicated, that would be better put off till you have 6 or 8 hours of free-time to dedicate to the project. Or a week.

It’s not.

It’s really not that complicated. It wont take all that much time.

And it’s really important.

This may not be the fun stuff of blogging, but it’s important stuff if you are making a living (or even just trying to cover your expenses) while working on the web. It’s important even if you’re not making money from your blog. Just clear the air so everybody knows where you stand.

The Federal Trade Commission has ruled that bloggers must disclose all compensation received for their work on their blog. This not only for sponsored posts, but all kinds of compensation received for running your blog. This decision is not surprising as the influence of bloggers has increased, along with the opportunities for bloggers to make money using their blog as an advertising medium.

What is a disclosure statement?

A disclosure statement is information provided to readers of your blog that you are receiving, or may receive, compensation for the words you write, for hosing advertising or affiliate links, or for free products or services received in order to write a review.

Having a disclosure policy simply means that you are being straightforward and honest about the information you are presenting on your blog. It is a mark of integrity.

A disclosure statement acknowledges that the words you write on your blog are benefiting you financially, or at least in terms of product and services.

Why do I need a disclosure statement?

If you receive any compensation for your blogging, or even receive free products or services about which you write reviews, then you need a disclosure statements. There are a number of reasons for this:

It’s the law.
You really don’t want to have to pay the fines.
It’s just the decent thing to do, and it makes you look like a professional. Bloggers are influencers. If you are influencing other people, you should reveal what is influencing you. Yes, material gain can be an influence. One of the things we do as bloggers is build trust with our audience. That’s why readers return. This kind of transparency is integral to building trust.

Examples of disclosure statements on other blogs

How do I write a disclosure statement?

I wrote my disclosure statement by examining those listed above. I pored over each one, and created a document that covered the requirements, and still reflected a bit of who I am.

If creating your own disclosure statement feels a little daunting, head over to DisclosurePolicy.org. They have a disclosure policy generator. Simply answer a few questions, and they will generate a disclosure policy for you.

Go to the source for more detailed information

The Federal Trade Commission makes the rules on this issue, and they created a document (PDF), .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising, to address the rules around disclosure statements.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, although I did once set foot in a law school. If you need legal advice, please contact an actual lawyer who actually attended law school.

Disclosure: I didn’t so much as get a free cup of coffee for writing this post. However, there are a few ads along the sidebar, and if enough of you click on them, I might get a few pennies.

How to make baby shoe ornaments

by Judy Schwartz Haley | Creativity, Parenting & Family

When Gem grew out of her first baby shoes, I couldn’t bear to get rid of them. I wanted to keep them, but I didn’t want them just tucked away in a box for decades either.

I didn’t know what to do with them until we started putting up our Christmas tree.

Now, they are included among our most cherished Christmas ornaments. Yes, they spend most of the year tucked away in a box, but they bring a smile each holiday season.

How did I do this? Simple, just threat a little string through the loop in the back. For one pair, I poked a small hole in the back and threaded string through with a needle, but most of the baby shoes had a place to attach the string already.

Pregnancy 101: How to Roll Over

by Judy Schwartz Haley | Health & Wellness, Parenting & Family

You might think rolling over is no big deal unless perhaps you’re training your dog, or your infant has developed a greater degree of mobility. Consider, however, the plight of the poor pregnant woman, a beached whale trapped on her back in the divot of a sagging mattress.

Rolling over is no small feat, especially once you’ve reached the point where you can no longer see your feet.

Deconstructing the rollover

Before we get into the bio-mechanics of rolling over for a pregnant woman, lets first consider the act of rolling over while not in that most delicate state.

I sleep on the right side of the bed. If I start out lying on my right side at the very edge of my side of the bed, rolling over involves falling to my back and then using momentum and my abdominal muscles to pull me up on my left side. At this point I have traveled over 3/4 of the way across our full sized bed, and my husband has been displaced onto the floor.

Now, if your spouse is willing to just stay on the floor, you’re golden. But if your spouse is anything like mine, he expects to get back into the bed – of which you are taking up your 2/3 right out of the middle. Making room for him means you must scootch (I’m using the technical term here) back over to your side.

Scootching of course, involves bending your knees and pressing your feet into the mattress enough to lift your bum and swing it to the right, then use your abdominal muscles to pull your upper body the rest of the way back over to your side of the bed. Notice that so far in this description we have used our abdominal muscles twice. After that much exercise, it’s time for a nap.

A different perspective

Now let’s reconsider this scenario from the perspective of a pregnant woman.

Sleeping while pregnant requires a lot more pillows. By far, the most critical pillow is the pillow between your knees that helps keep the spine straight. The other pillows may be added or subtracted according to relative comfort level, which may change at any given moment. What are the other pillows for?

One for between the feet to keep them from, heaven forbid, touching each other.
Another smallish or super soft down pillow goes between the belly and the mattress for support.
A pillow in the arms for holding and snuggling and squeezing, another at the lower back for lumbar support, and of course,
the pillow that goes under the head.

Now re-imagine the act of rolling over while keeping all of the pillows necessary for adequate rest in their appropriate positions.

You can’t do it.

You must first disengage from the pillows, roll over, scootch back to your side of the bed and then wake up your husband and have him retrieve all the pillows that fell to the floor when your whale -butt scootched back into them.

After grumpy husband throws pillows at you, you must then reposition all of the pillows to find a comfortable enough position to return to sleep. This could take several attempts as from day-to-day or even hour-to-hour, the one position that is comfortable may change considerably.

The betrayal of the body pillow

We have recently discovered the full body pillow which takes the place of several of the pillows listed above. This has been an immense improvement on our sleeping conditions and marriage.

On the down side, this pillow is about the size of a small adult, which means we are essentially sleeping three across our tiny full-sized bed.

In addition, I have returned from a potty run on many occasions to find my pillow contently snuggled up in my husbands arms, my husband’s leg thrown over the bottom half. It stings a bit that my pillow would betray me in this manner, and further extends the amount of time it takes to get settled into a sleep position when I must first wrestle the pillow from my husband’s arms.

Physiological changes during pregnancy

The two rolling over scenarios I have described above both ignore the physiological changes in a woman’s body during pregnancy.

The first and most critical being increased clumsiness. How could clumsiness come in to play when one is lying down throughout the entire ordeal? Get yourself knocked up and you’ll figure it out.

In addition, we get winded much more easily and the act of rolling over may require a stop, mid-roll, to catch one’s breath. Now it may seem like the logical place to stop and catch your breath may be mid-roll while you are flat on your back. This is, however, the worst possible position from which to try to catch your breath. While on your back the uterus and baby push the rest of your organs further up under your rib cage making it difficult to breath even if you haven’t already winded yourself.

Also, if you stop while flat on your back, you have completely lost all momentum meaning the remainder of the roll will be powered entirely by your now non-existent abdominal muscles. Besides, odds are you will suddenly have to run to the bathroom mid-roll anyways.

The easiest answer to rolling over in bed while pregnant: Get up and go to the bathroom and when you come back, rip the damn body pillow out of your husband’s arms, beat him with it for a minute and then lie down in the position in which you want to sleep.

What is an RSS Feed, and Why Should I Care?

by Judy Schwartz Haley | Blogging, Creating a Living, Learning

A really simple breakdown:

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. To further simplify that, RSS takes blog posts and news updates (called feeds) and broadcasts them across the internet. RSS readers (websites or programs also called feed readers or aggregators) can then collect the feeds to which the reader has subscribed and present them in one, easy to read location.

So how does all this affect you?

Well, if my blog were the only blog you read, you may not have much use for a feed reader. However, over time, most people who read one blog will start to accumulate more blogs, and news sources, that they like to follow. It used to be a chore for me to go from blog to blog to check and see if my friends had updates. It was even frustrating, at times, to check a blog and see that they hadn’t updated. The feed reader allows you to subscribe to the blogs and news sources you love, and then read the updates in one location.

There are a number of different feed readers you can use: yahoo, newsgator, bloglines, netvibes, and pageflakes just to name a few. But my favorite is Google’s Reader. One of the things I like about Reader is it gives you options in how you view the posts: there are a number of sorting options, you can categorize the blogs, and you can quickly browse all the headlines or have it open up to show each article in full like a magazine.

How to Subscribe:

First of all, you need to set up an account with a reader. Here’s the link again to set up with Google’s Reader. If you already have a Google account (blogger and gmail both count as Google accounts) you can just sign into Reader using that account.

To subscribe to CoffeeJitters (process should be similar for most other blogs as well) look for the RSS button in the upper right hand corner. Mine says “Subscribe via RSS,” most blogs should have something along the same lines. Click the button.

It should take you to a page that shows you a list of readers from which to choose. Click the button for the reader you chose.

If you select Google, it may give you the option to choose between Google Homepage and Google Reader – select Google Reader. Bam! You’re there.

If you want to leave a comment on a post, just click on the headline and it will take you right to that blog so you can make your mark.

Happy reading.

Patience: how to photograph an ocean wave

by Judy Schwartz Haley | Creating a Living, Photography

Sometimes getting the perfect shot can be a little frustrating and take quite a bit of patience. Most (if not all, I’m not sure) digital cameras have a significant delay between the moment you press the shutter button until the point at which the camera responds to the command. As a result, I have a library of photos taken just after the expression, or the smile fades, or the bird flies away, or in the case of these photos, just after the wave crashes.

Photographing a wave crashing means you need to pay attention to the timing of the waves. Spend some time just watching them crash over and over. What sounds does the ocean make at each point in the wave’s lifecycle?

Then take lots of pictures trying to hit just before that perfect moment to accommodate the delay in the shutter response.

And don’t be afraid to get your feet wet.

Then the blanket your husband is wearing as a cape because he forgot to bring a coat shows up in the picture.

And the cape is still in the picture when you finally get a shot of the wave crashing.

So you reposition to get an angle that does not include an ancient airplane blanket and try to pick up the rhythm of the ocean again.

every once in a while you get a cool shot, but it may not be exactly the shot you’re trying for.

so you keep trying

Well, I got a little splash there.

Oh, that’s a little better.

And finally, I got the shot I was waiting for.

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