If you value your blog income business – and you should – then you simply must backup everything that you have on your computer.  It will save you worry and needless hair tearing as well as gnashing of teeth.

A little over a week ago my dear old laptop that I called Big Money died.  Poof!  Gone!  Panic engulfed me as reboot after reboot failed.  Bluescreen, Fat 32 rebuild successful but the mouse would not cooperate and I could not log in!  My whole internet marketing life dwelled in that computer!  Life looked dismal.   Blog Income was dead.  I was dead.

After the initial shock I went shopping and got me a brand new snazzy looking Toshiba job.  The first thing that I liked was that the prices for PC laptops have really come down and boy, do they pack a lot more toys and whistles than dear old Big Money had!  But of course there were additional items to purchase, such as configuring the new darling – which I quickly christened Money Magnet – transferring everything from Big Money, a new office software package, Outlook which  I can’t live without, and of course the extended warranty plus those pesky taxes that the government seems to insist on.  Add it all up and the price of the  computer doubled!  Ouch!

Never mind – this one is called Money Magnet, ergo it will attract money, not like Big Money which didn’t quite get the gist of is moniker that it was supposed to MAKE, not cost, big money!

Granted at almost 5 years of loyal service Big Money had run its course but OMG!  Everything of any value rested in that sleek silver rectangular thing called a computer.  We had a relationship.  It had traveled the world with me.   All my courses including the videos, all the PDF’s that I downloaded, all my original work that has been published online as well as off, all my usernames and passwords!  They were all there!

I vowed that never, NEVER, again would I be so careless.  From here on in, I would backup everything and if you haven’t been backing up all your valuables then its time you do.

Job One:  Terrabyte external hard drives can now be had for under $100.  Another option is to backup everything in a cloud … new term for me too.  Basically what it means is that all your content can be stored somewhere out there in uber space, with the clouds sort of like self storage boxes in the sky.  There are free ones but as you need more and more storage room, you have to either upgrade to a paid version or open yet another one elsewhere – now we have clutter.

I was recently introduced to DropBox.  You get some free space and can increase that with referrals, or just bite the bullet and buy what you need – it can always be increased.  What I like about this system is that it is so user friendly for us non-tech types.  Just drag and drop.  I had a huge file that I wanted to share with my friend.  The attachment was way too big to send by email.  I was faced with either breaking it into several pieces or creating an online document that would be hyperlink downloadable. The notion of each option took me down into a tizzy downward spiral and I kept putting it off.

Dropbox to the rescue.

First I created a share file in my dropbox with my friend’s name.  Then I dragged the whole schmiel into that file and voila!  Just like that my friend had full access to the goods!  Check Dropbox out (yes, that is an affiliate link :-)

Job Two:
Create a document for all your products that need a username and password.  Yes, store them on your computer for ease of access but also up in that cloud or Dropbox.  Go low tech if you need to and write them down in a notebook along with other important data and put it somewhere safe. I actually did have a lot of my usernames and passwords in my little black book.

Job Three:
Keep your computer free of clutter.  It’s not just your closet that needs a good cleaning. Go over what you have on your computer.  Do you really need everything that you have there?  What about things that you downloaded years ago but have not even cracked open yet?  If you are still married to the thought that you will someday read those files move them over to your new storage in the sky.  My dear old Big Money got so bogged down with downloads that eventually I could not even defrag it as there was less than 15% free space (actually less than 5% which is a cardinal sin).  I started to toss things out but the space was slow in being freed up.   While at it go to all of your email accounts, or  your Outlook;  if you haven’t read it and the dateline is a month or older, be ruthless, be strong:  DELETE!  Ditto your “sent” and “junk” files

Des out at Affiliate Progress has some good suggestions on how to use Filezilla and FTP to back up all your sites as well.  Hop on over there.  He writes good stuff – makes tech seem like a cake walk.

Come to think of it – spring is a mere two weeks away.  That closet is getting rather full.  I am sure that there are clothes there that will never see the light of day again, at least not on me.  They belong to a different era – one that was slimmer!   Yeah.  Bundle them up and take them over to the local goodwill store!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

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