I am excited to have Malia from One2One guest post on my blog.  If you are a blogger and want to work with a fabulous company, check out One2One…and now here is Malia!

Hi readers of Tammy’s Two Cents! I am delighted to be here today to tell you a little bit about One2One Network and how we work with bloggers!

A few years ago, our founder and CEO, Barbara Jones left her work in music industry marketing when she noticed a lack of resources to reach adult women and moms especially online. She saw the opportunity to build a grassroots network of socially active women that love to share information about new products and services with those around them. One2One Network was built to be bridge between women and brands to provide opportunities that benefit both parties.

Our motto is Fun Projects, Cool Perks, Nice People.

• Fun Projects: We want the projects you work on to be a fit for your life, your blog and not a chore or another item on your to-do list. With One2One Network you only sign up for a project if it interests you and we try to only reach out to you if the project fits the information you’ve provided in your member profile. So you can be sure that you won’t get asked to do a project about diapers if you have tweens or to do a steak review if you’re a vegetarian!

• Cool Perks: In addition to receiving new products to review, being an O2O member can also have fun perks like attending concerts for artists we’re promoting or being invited to member hosted events in your area.

• Nice People: We also pride ourselves on being easy to work with and approachable! We know that relationships are the “secret” to success. Our path has been lined with friends who have cheered us on and offered assistance. We want to do the same for our members.

Valuing friendship and relationships is what led us to be part of Friends You Love. While we were in San Diego for BlogHer, we met up with some of members and heard first hand from Kristin about this event. We knew it was a great match! It makes us happy to see our members reaching out to each other and fostering friendships. We want to support and encourage that!

To learn more about us, please visit our website, blog, Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. We’d love to connect with you! And if you have any questions, feel free to email me!

TerriAnn from Cookies and Clogs is one of the sweetest bloggers I know.  She is always willing to help those of us who might not have the experience.  Cookies and Clogs is a mix of deals and reviews with an emphasis in her great city of  San Francisco.  Go over and say hi, you will love her!  Thanks TerriAnn for this great post about cell phones, with a tween and soon to be tween I have had this conversation over and over.

When should you give your child their own cell phone? That seems to be a hot topic these days and one my family has been facing. Since my daughter turned 10 she has been away from us more often on sleepovers, at extra classes, etc. We activated an older iPhone we had for her. Based on our experience, here are some things you may want to consider.

Responsibility
Before handing them a mobile phone, it is a good idea to first see if they can handle it. How consistant they are with always having their wallet or purse? Do they often leave it at home or misplace it? Just in case, you might want to start them with an extra phone you might have or a really cheap one.

Safety/Security
Turn off most location services including the geo-tagging on pictures taken. Talk to them about not giving out their number too easily and not accepting calls from numbers they do not recognize. “Find My iPhone” is a great (iPhone) app that we use for many things, not just to spy on each other.

Parent Permissions
Many newer phones have the option to input a master code to lock certain features. We chose to turn off internet access, email, in-app purchases, and installing apps. Also, adding your child to your family plan can give you access to the numbers they call or text if needed.

Time
You will need to set limits, especially with games. This is little piece of hardware can be the single worst culprit to procrastination, hindering of family communication, and basically doing anything productive. If you do not set limits, you will be regretting it after a few weeks – trust me.

Protection can be misunderstood as restrictive and caution can be perceived as mistrust. So open, candid conversation is very important for both parties. Adjustments are constantly being made but, so far, giving my daughter a cell phone has worked out very well for us.

If you have never stopped by Telling Dad, YOU MUST DO IT NOW!  Greg is hilarious and entertaining.  I love spending time on his blog reading his real life stories, especially from a Dad’s point of view.  His writing style rocks!  (As you will seen in the post below.)   I have enjoyed getting to know him through his poignant posts…one of my all time favorites is the one about the dog (Dory) they recently adopted.  It was absolutely touching!  Check out A Dog’s Life and see what I mean.  Thanks Greg for sharing the following post!

While it’s too late to save Tammy, I can at least make up for the demise of Emily and Brad’s college fund by saving yours. Before you embark on your next vacation, you’ll want to heed this advice. It took bazillions of wasted dollars and countless bouts of buyer’s remorse to acquire this knowledge. Knowledge that can turn you from witless tourist to savvy vacationer. A title I hope to eventually earn myself assuming I ever practice what I preach.

Even when armed with this guide, you’ll still spend too much on your vacation. Nothing can save you from that. But, when it’s over, you can at least return to a home you still own.

1. Respect the VBF

Proper budgeting is a critical part of any successful vacation. The last thing you want to do is lose yourself in the frenzy of vacationing and discover that all the unplanned jet-skiing, wax museums, street tours, restaurants, and souvenirs mean you’ll be spending the five remaining nights of your six-night vacation in your minivan. Assuming you didn’t already pawn it.

To budget for your trip, write down how much you plan to spend on lodging, meals, and painted hermit crabs. Add up each of the columns, total the amounts, and then ignite the paper. Burning your vacation budget in effigy like this serves two purposes. First, it symbolizes the futility of even having a vacation budget. And second, it eliminates the threat of accidentally trying to adhere to what is an impossible-to-achieve budgetary limitation.

What you need to do after budgeting for your trip is add what’s known in accounting circles as the “Vacationary Bloat Factor,” or the VBF. Without this modification, you face significant emotional risk when you receive the billing statements for your still-smoldering credit cards.

Applying the VBF is easy. Simply take the grand total you expect to spend and double it. It’s a simple calculation but one that is often overlooked by millions of families. Don’t be one of those families. A Matt Foley family. A family that lives in a van down by the river because they went to Sea World.

2. Be Aware that Price Gouging Is Legal
What’s the difference between $5.00 water after entering an amusement park and $5.00 water after a hurricane?

Jail time.

Opportunistic vendors have long been protected by laws that make them immune to prosecution so long as the majority of the general public is wearing mouse ears or Bermuda shorts.

As such, you need to be cautious before buying anything from streetside vendors and snack shacks because the typical markup is roughly 1000% higher than rates that would otherwise be deemed criminal if forced on people afflicted by a natural disaster.

To counter these protective statutes, do all you can to smuggle water and food into the parks and venues you visit. Even if you’re caught, ticketed, and ultimately see your kids impounded, you’ll still save money in the long run. Enough to where you can buy new kids.

3. Avoid the One-Hit Plunder Blunder
Before running out to save $50 on five tickets to One-Armed Al’s Bayou Gator Barn, first consider whether it was even remotely on your tourist radar before you succumb to the impulse.

Spending money on tickets and trinkets you never intended to purchase just because you have a coupon isn’t saving money at all. It’s wasting it. And it’s a consumer blunder that touristy destinations depend on for survival.

Tourist traps are famous for exhibits, rides, and experiences that have never seen a repeat visitor since their inception. Once tourists are whipped into a frenzy by a constant barrage of hyped rhetoric, they follow each other through the ticket gate like lemmings, only to exit feeling violated on a personal, emotional, and financial level.

Case in point is “Niagara’s Fury” located at Niagara Falls. If you are ever tempted to pay the $15 PER adult and $9.75 PER child for a 10-minute assault of noise, lights, and dripping water, remember this: It’s a 10-minute assault of noise, lights, and dripping water.

Niagara’s Fury is, was, and always will be just another one-and-done destination. I walked out feeling like the biggest sucker on the planet and I had the burning desire to picket the ticket line. The only thing that saved me from hurling myself over the Falls was the support group I started with the other lemmings in the hallway.

One-Stop Plunders are easy to spot. The entrances are usually marked by lights, glitz, and glamor, and the exits are usually marked by people apologizing to their wallets. Approach these tourist traps just as you would a Grizzly trap laced with tetanus. Your self-respect and your bank account will thank you.

Again, Tammy, I’m sorry that my post was so late. Please also extend my apologies to your children, Emily and Brad, for dooming them to a life in Stow ‘n Go. I’d tell you to apologize to your husband as well but I’m sure he’s already out buying tickets to the Q-tip Earwax Museum because of my tardiness.

At the very least you can take comfort in the fact that your readers are now armed with the knowledge they need to return home with their self-worth intact. I suppose you can make it an ongoing PSA for the internet.

Assuming you can still afford hosting.

I am so excited to have Penelope guest post on Tammy’s Two Cents.  I have followed her for almost a year and she is a wealth of knowledge.   Check out her great blog…she is adorable too!  If you have not been by to meet her, this is a great time to do that!  Thanks Penelope for the great SEO insight!  (I needed to learn this myself!)

SEO is search engine optimization, which basically means that you want to optimize your site and posts so that search engines return them as top results when people punch keywords into search engines. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, are tools that search and index the internet so that people who need information can find the most relevant information about a topic or service. Having a top result means more traffic to your site, which in turn means more money, sales, interactions, whatever it is you are looking to promote with your site.

There are a few basic ways to improve SEO. First, it’s important to write quality content that people want to link to. Links to your site from other pages that are trusted by search engines increases your own value in the eyes of search engines. It shows you are an authority in your field, because others are citing you or sharing your information.

Secondly, write content that is succinct, relevant, and informative. If your posts are too long or provide too little information, people will bounce from your site right away. This can actually hurt you in search results, because search engines have extensive algorithms that measure these and many other aspects. Your content should be both link-worthy and useful so people spend time on your site and don’t increase your bounce rate.

Finally, use keywords throughout your posts, so that search engines that crawl your site know what the post is about and can provide the post in search results for that keyword. You should spam a post with the keyword, but a density of about 6% (using it once every 3-4 sentences, or in each paragraph) is a good goal.

Overtime, as links to your site build up and search engines see that your content is useful and well written, your posts can be found prominently in search results for your chosen keywords, resulting in greater traffic and sales for your site.

Penelope writes her own family blog at Penelope’s Oasis, and especially enjoys writing how-to’s.