Today it’s my pleasure to have Andromeda Edison in the hot-seat with us, as we discuss several areas of working from home, social networking, Internet security and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

1. What lifestyle change did you have to make after the arrival of your daughter, when it comes to being self employed?

I was very fortunate in that my husband is also a consultant (IT consultant) and a very successful one, so he made it possible for me to totally stop working for a short period and be with her. Then I was able to slowly ramp it up until she started daycare, consulting companies on what to do to get ranking on search engines. I warn all my clients before they sign me that I have a daughter who takes up all my evenings and weekends. They can call me and I will do my best to help them during those hours, but I might be distracted

2. From experience I know that it takes a fair level of time management and dedication to work for yourself, especially in the home environment. How do you cope and what advice can you give my readers who have that desire to telecommute?

Fortunately for me, I have always been good at administration type stuff so can set up systems quickly that work. I keep a pretty tight schedule for myself: certain days and times of day are for certain activities (accounting is Friday, Monday is mostly email and emergency handling, rest of the day are a little more flexible). I live and breath through my Blackberry, I get all my email there, access my social networks through the browser (and various plugins) and don’t commit to anything unless it goes in my calendar. I also run all the administration for my husband and have helped keep him sane.

3. When did you decide it was time to start working for yourself and was there any event that prompted you to make that decision?

Actually it was the news of the expanding family that made me realize I wanted to be as flexible as possible, I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted with them. Fortunately I was already well experienced in a field (SEO and Internet Marketing) that lent itself very well to the consultant platform. Before I jumped ship I already knew people who would hire me as a consultant so wasn’t walking into it blind. I have managed to keep myself more than busy (turned away a few projects) just on word of mouth and people I know, which has been great.

4. If you could name 4 things you consider is the best part of being self employed, what would they be?

1. The flexibility of doing things with my family

2. Being my own boss and knowing I don’t have to take anything from anyone

3. Getting to work on a bunch of very different projects and never feeling bored

4. Knowing that what I create, I did it and no one can try to take credit for it

5. On that note, what would you say are the 4 things that can be regarded as being the opposite? 4 things you wish you didn’t have to do if you were employed in everyday America.

1. There are no benefits or Xmas bonuses which I miss sometimes

2. Taxes - they aren’t easy on the self-employed

3. No paid vacations, have to just take the hit on not getting paid (similar to 1 above)

4. Aren’t as part of a group all driving to the same goal as much (especially because it is just me)

6. Can you summarize what SEO involves and maybe leave a tip or 2 for readers who also publish a blog or website?

SEO isn’t as much of a mystery as people seem to think it is. My main tip is to build a beautiful, rich in content website that a computer program could easily follow (realize the little search engine web crawlers can’t read Flash, Ajax and stuff like that, but you don’t have to remove it completely). There needs to be enough content (words) in plain HTML on each page for the programs to read through and be able to figure out what the main subject is. If you write about interesting and fun stuff you will get links and all the other stuff that follows just by getting the website known.

7. We connected via Twitter. What’s your take on social networking and can it be used as part of someones job search technique? Would you say it’s an untapped resource when it comes to job search?

I have seen people get jobs on Twitter (seen someone forward their request to my list of friends). If someone has enough friends or the right type of friends, you can announce what you are looking for and ask people to forward it to their friends and so on. It is under utilized from that respect, of course you should already be on twitter making friends before you need to send around the job request. It will work better if you have participated as part of the community first.

8. Internet security! I’d have a hard time counting the number of times I’ve had to argue with our girls about the dangers of the Internet. What advice do you have for those who do not take security seriously. BTW, About 2 years ago I got a cell phone bill (nope I don’t own a cell phone) for a few hundred dollars. I was the victim of identity fraud and I’m very secure with my personal information online.

My advice is to always be careful. Log off when you are done doing anything on any account. Watch for secure icons before buying anything on-line. If you get an email to check your account, always go to the site yourself, DON’T click the link in the email.

If you have kids, install a filter where you have to approve a site before they can visit it (do your research to give them access to a lot of stuff so they don’t feel limited). Get used to watching their social networking profiles to see what your kids are doing, insist they set all social networking accounts on private so only real friends can get in (I believe if you just flat out forbid it, they will find another way to do it and then you can’t monitor it, it isn’t illegal). Set them up with an email where you have to approve the sender before they get a message and so on.

9. I think I read that you do some work with pictures online. Can you share what it is you do and some of the benefits as it relates to job seekers?

I do Internet Image Management, the main people usually interested in this are owners of companies (or anyone who has their name out there in connection to their business) and celebrities. My business is to monitor the search engines and any other popular research tool for mis-information and do whatever is needed to handle the mis-information. There are rules to follow based on the community you are talking about and with search engines, you just have to bury the content off the first page of results (where my SEO background comes in very useful).

10. We’ve covered things such as… being self employed and having a family, SEO (thanks for the tips), Social Networking and how to apply it to your jobsearch, Internet Security and the real dangers that lurk behind every click of the mouse and protecting how people (employers) see you online. Was there anything else you’d like to add?

Haha, um I think you did a good job here.

My only other project is email spam filtering company called Internet Defense technology. We provide filtering for email spam, viruses and mal-ware using an artificial intelligence and multi-filter technology designed by network security experts. Users notice an immediately improvement of almost no spam when moving to our system. Additional, the system learns as you receive emails and mark them as spam or clean as needed. While there are several companies out there providing email spam filter there are very few who offer a solution where the user has to do almost no work. We include a review of their existing email set-ups and handling of any technical problems the customer may not be aware of.

On behalf of everyone here at Obzokee.com I’d like to take a moment to say thanks to Andromeda for taking time off her already busy schedule to chat with us and share her thoughts on the issues presented.

Andromeda Edison has worked in the search engine optimization space since
1996.

She began working in-house for a non-profit organization before “SEO” was a
formalized concept or even a word. She eventually became their Director of
Internet Marketing, overseeing the design, programming, implementation and
marketing of their sites.

Since 2005 she has been working as an independent contractor helping small
businesses and start-ups increase their visibility on the Internet. She has
developed complete Internet marketing campaigns through search engine
optimization, website best practices, natural link campaigning, blog
creation/popularization, social networking and more.

She now focuses her expertise on two main activities:

1) Founder and CEO of Internet Image Management, which specializes in
reputation monitoring and management online, for both personal (names)
and commercial brands.

2) Chief Marketing Officer for Internet Defense Technology (IDT), an email
spam filtering solution. The IDT blog written by Andromeda is located at:
http://www.internetdefensetechnologies.com/blog/

In addition, she is the proud mother of a 3 year old girl and regularly writes on
her personal blog about the adventures of being a mother at:
http://romies-rants.blogspot.com/