How am I Supposed to Keep Up?

For those of you who think I manage to juggle everything, I guess I have you fooled a bit.  Working full time and then finding time to keep up with my Etsy shop and this blog without neglecting my family....so hard!  The number of blogs I am subscribed to just keeps multiplying and I have to do some major speed reading to get through all the posts.  My projects to make things for the shop have to be postponed to weekends.

One thing that has come out of being this busy is that the hubby is taking more of an interest in how all the marketing and social networking stuff works.  It's kind of fun sharing what I've learned with him and showing him all the great ideas I stumble across.



I am definitely realizing my limits with the number of networking activities I can do.  There are quite a few sites out there to help you network, stay connected, and get opportunities to review/promote products. Here are some sites I've found myself playing on:

• The SITS Girls - great networking for women
• Bzz Agent -  Help promote products, sites, and companies by participating in campaigns and sharing your opinion
• Living Social - Daily 50% off deals for your city and the possibility of earning free deals for yourself if your friends participate
• Ebates - Go shopping at your favorite online places by starting here and earning cash back on your purchases.
• Etsypreneur - A community of Etsians who share information and help each other out.
• Comment Luv - This site enables a feature on blogs that use the Comment Luv widget so you can choose one of your recent blog posts to be listed with the comment you leave on that blog.
• SwagBucks - Using this site to do your internet searches helps you earn Swagbucks that can be redeemed for prizes, including Amazon.com giftcards.
• Squidoo - On this site you create lenses (pages) about different topics. There are opportunities to monetize this with Google ads.
• SocialSpark - Still trying to figure this one out.  It's supposed to allow you opportunities to be paid for sponsored blog posts.

I've been entering various giveaways on blogs (I've won a few) and linking up to linky parties for promoting giveaways, latest craft projects, blogs, Etsy shops, etc.  The time investment is pretty big right now, but those linky parties have led to some sales and some new blog followers.  I keep wondering if the other blogs and Etsy shops I follow struggled with the same challenges when they were starting out.