Work Smarter - Not Harder

For all those who have been in touch with me through this Blog I hope that you are looking forward to Christmas. For me Christmas is such a great time to be at home and for me a trip back to Ireland to see all family, cousins and friends is a real treat.

I would like to wish all who visit my Blog a very merry Christmas and every success with your online businesses in 2009.

In 2009 I will also be announcing some other projects I am working on and will hopefully help even more of you make a successful living online.

I met up with some friends recently and we were discussing what we were planning to do in 2009. This was both in our business and social lives. After listening to everyone I then told everyone what it was I was going to do and they were somewhat taken aback by how precise and direct about what I hoped to do and ‘achieve’ in 2009.

You see I’ve already set out my plan for 2009 and that includes a very detailed outline of all my goals/objectives and what ‘I will’ earn and achieve with regards my online business. And more importantly of all I have all this written down on a few cards and each day I read it aloud to ensure that I drill it into me.

You see I’m not one of those that make those ‘New Years Resolutions’ at mid-night where it’s all normally done in the spirit of the moment. To me it just doesn’t make sense and ultimately as we all know New Years Resolutions are normally broken within weeks or even days after they have been made.

Here is what I do and although you may feel it sounds very simplistic it really does work.

For my life goals all I do is write down all the things I am going to do and achieve. And although with a lot of life goals people will put a date by which they will achieve that goal. However I don’t as that can be very restricting in some respects and can also lead you to feeling bad if the target date is not achieved.

Here is an example (Not my own, but similar) of a well worded set of goals.

• I own a british racing green Aston Martin DB9 with 8 spoke alloy wheels, cruise control, ABS brakes and a five speed manual gearbox
• I own a beautiful 4 bedroom detached villa on the outskirts of Puerto Banus with extensive sea views
• I work 2-3 days per week from home with plenty of time for leisure pursuits, family & friends
• I earn £100,000 a year
• I have absolute belief in my ability to succeed. This is my manifest in everything I say and do.

Now I know that you think all this is mumbo jumbo but believe me that by making sure you write this down and then read this back to yourself each day that it builds it into you and over time it gives you a self belief that everything on your list will happen.

I must admit I’m not very good at explaining as to how this works but all I know is that it does work for me, plus it doesn’t cost you anything to try, using the above as an example.

If you’d like to know more about how to become more successful in everything you do, by Goal Setting, then I suggest you take time out to read a short book by Phil Gosling. It’s called Success Engineering and you can buy his book as a downloadable PDF.  You can buy the book, or find out more, at the following website address: http://www.success-engineering.com/

This eBook comes with my highest recommendation and if you only buy one book on setting Goals or how to be sucessful in everything you do then this is it. Just drop your husband/wife/partner/son/daughter/friend a hint and get them to buy it for you for Christmas.

In the few short years that I have been working online I have been been hearing over and over again the phrase ‘multiple streams of income’ and it seems that all the ‘gurus’ teach this basic online business philosophy.

But how do you go about building ‘multiple streams of income’ and why would you want to do that in the first place? Surely if you are making good money in one area then you should just build on that.

Let me give you a precise example of why you should build up ‘multiple streams of income’.

When I first started to make serious money online it was mainly in Affiliate Marketing, which for those who don’t know is where you promote other companies products and services in return for a small commission on each sale made as a direct result of someone visiting your site(s).

Over the last few years I have been very successful in building up my affiliate business and just when things were looking like I had hit the big time we had the credit crunch. As it happens most of my affiliate related websites were in the Finance sector i.e. I have lots of sites which help people find loans/remortgages online so over the last 6 months as the lenders have tightened their lending criteria they also dropped, overnight, the amount of commissions they were paying affiliates. This in effect cut the income generated by my Finance related websites by over 50%. Ooouuccch!

Can you imagine running a business where you lose that much income and then not having anything to replace it? Well luckily in my case I also have lots of other websites in other Niches so although I was losing income I was also in the process of building sites in other Niches so that I could replace the lost income.

Plus, I also have an eBook that I put together some time ago which I also generate income and although it doesn’t generate a lot of money it is another ‘income stream’ which helps to add to my monthly profits.

And I also build websites and sell them on once they are high enough in the search engines to be of any real value. This is much simpler than you think and with so many Niches from which to choose this is another Income Stream that can be easily set in place once you have even the most of online skills.

Even in these hard time the Internet still provides each and every one of you the ability to make a fortune online using the multiple streams of income philosophy. However, you must start somewhere and the first thing you need to do now is ‘take action’. Don’t get left behind!

Lots of small businesses who start online face a number of challenges when it comes to driving traffic. There are a number of routes you can take including the use of paid advertising like Google Adwords, eZine Adverts, Banner Ads etc.

However for those businesses running on a budget you should also consider lots of free advertising on the web that can help drive traffic to your website. Of course there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’ and in the case for free advertising a little exta work is required but the results can certainly help provide profits at no expense.

The following represents 5 of the most effective ways of free advertising on the web and should form part of your website marketing online.

Method 1 - Craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org
This is one of the most popular websites online and your advertising can be specific to Countries, Counties & Towns. It allows you to place adverts into specific Categories such as ‘Small Biz’ and people searching Craigslist will be able to find your business.

In order to maximise the power of Craigslist you need to place your advert in multiple Towns/Cities and you should post to the busiest Cities every day, and in some cases a few times per day.

Plus there are numerous other Tips & Tricks required in order to place your ads on a regular basis to Craigslist. For example if you find that a particular Category gets a lot of posts each day then you will need to post to that category a few times per day, in order to keep your ad at/near the top of the listing. In order to have your follow up Ad(s) passed by the Craigslist filters you will need to change your Ad Title and the main body of text by at least 25%. There are other ways around this and you can find loads more ideas on how to get the most from your FREE Craigslist adverts by visiting http://www.craigslistpowerposting.com/

Method 2 - Articles
A well written, keyword rich, article will help feed the search engines with content that people are actively searching for online. What I mean by that is you should initially do some Keyword Research which allows you to see what people are searching for in your Niche. Then write an article relating to that keyword term.
Plus, when you write an article you can place a link either from within the article or in your Biog at the end of the article. This link is also used to optimise your website for that specific keyword term.

Article example: If my site is about ‘making money online’ and I want to optimise my website for that specific term then I would write an article about maing money online. And at the end of the article I would include a link, including he words ‘making money online’ back to my website.

The main article directories you should consider submitting to are:
- http://www.ezinearticles.com
- http://www.goarticles.com
- http://www.articlecity.com

Method 3 - Press Releases
A lot of small businesses believe that this is an option only available to much bigger businesses. However this is no longer true and there are now loads of places online where you can submit your Press Release for free. The power of Press Releases are pretty much the same as articles and as Google likes sources such as online Press Release sites for its contenet you can have some of your articles Indexed and showing in Google within hours.

Free Press releases sites to consider
- http://www.1888pressrelease.com
- http://www.free-press-release.com
- http://www.free-press-release-center.info
- http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk

Method 4 - Video
Although still in its infancy online this method of free advertising on the web should not be overlooked. Apart from the power of being able to ‘talk’ direct to your potential customers the search engines search Video sites like YouTube on an hourly basis and if you submit a Video Clip which is tagged with relevant keywords the clip can be picked up in the search engines. Plus if someone is looking on YouTube for clips relating to your business then this will help them find your business and once again provide you with free traffic.

To maximise the power of using Video clips use a FREE service such as http://www.TubeMogul.com to place your videos on multiple Video Sites.

Method 5 - Blogs
Anyone who has been working online for even a short period of time will have heard of blogs. Blogs are much easier to create than websites and because you can have your Blog posts sent to lots of different online sources the chances of your blog posts getting picked up by the search engines is also a lot higher.

Like Articles and Press Releases you must try and make your Blog posts keyword rich and you should also post on a regular basis to your Blog with topics that will interest your visitors. This can be something very specific to your Niche but you can also provide posts that relate to things happeing in the news etc.

The main purpose of your blog is to provided useful information to your target Niche but you should also use it to reflect your personailty as a Blog is a very powerful way for potential customers to interact with you through comments on your post.

Used effectively Blogs can help direct targetted traffic to your site and you should consider using one of the following two Blog platforms:

- http://www.WordPress.com
- http://www.Blogger.com

Conclusion
The bottom line is that no matter what type of business you want to start online there are plenty of FREE ways to get traffic to your website. All you have to do is ‘take action’ and you will reap the rewards. Lots of multi-million dollar online businesses have been built on the back of little or no money and in order to start your own little ‘online empire’ you can take advantage of free advertising on the web to help you get started and making profits.

And how the other 10% succeed and make all the money.

I like to think that I am one of the ‘10% success club’ and have been successful at making a Life Changing Income online over the last few years. And over that time I have discovered why so many people fail and only a small percent actually go on to make a serious amount of money.

There is no ‘secret’ to all this and not only can I now show you how to make a Life Changing Income online but I can also give you my one-to-one help for success.

In order to succeed you need to:

1. Find and duplicate an online business that is proven to work i.e. a business where people are already doing what they preach, making money, and not just trying to flog you an eBook about what they ‘think’ will work.

2. Find a business that provides you with your very own Mentor i.e. a person who knows everything there is to know about getting you to make money online. And who will support you every step of the way.

3. Have multiple streams of income, which will guarantee you long lasting success, and income from the Internet. So if one income stream should dry up you still have other income streams as backup.

4. Be seriously committed to making money online and not someone looking for a Get Rich Quick scheme.

5. ‘Take Action’. The last but most important step to succeeding online.

Ever sit at your computer and think about what you have to do that day? I bet you have a list of 101 things that need your attention and throughout the day you battle to get everything completed. And then at the end of the day you only find you completed a few tasks and although you worked flat out you don’t seem to have accomplished much?

Well, this is something experienced by a lot of people who work from home, online or in fact in a lot of work scenarios. And one which I too suffered from only too often when I first started to work online.  I was working long hours thinking that all my effort would eventually pay off. Yeah, but was I working on the right things and even worse I was getting hit by loads of daily distractions, making my work day even longer!

Then I learned that to become more productive meant making a few small changes to the way I prepared for my work day and how I actually worked on the day. This in turn meant I ended my working day having completed tasks that were most important to helping me make money and as a direct result also meant I was earning money quicker too.

The routine I now use in my daily work life is very straightforward, no magic or meditation required, and if you put it into practice I guarantee that you will increase your productivity by more than 50%. All you need to do is the night before your next day of work, is to take 2 minutes and write down the 6 most urgent tasks that need to completed next day. Don’t write anything longer than this or you will end up taking on too much. Once you have your 6 tasks make sure nothing, and I mean nothing, stops you from completing those tasks. If you manage to complete all 6 in a working day with time left over then by all means work on something else.

I now do this every evening and put all 6 Tasks in the Task Manager provided by Microsoft Outlook. After each Task is completed I scratch it off and start on the next one. 

And an additional Tip, and perhaps the most important, to ensure you stick to your list of daily tasks is to avoid being distracted by continuous alerts from your computer etc. Maybe you use alerts as activity or task reminders, or maybe just an email alert. Either switch the alerts off completely or turn the sound down. And even better if you can set aside a block of 2 hours where you switch off all alerts, telephone etc so you can make a good start on your 6 Tasks. You can then take a break and then do a similar 2 hours, and repeat again if necessary.

I do all of the above and in addition I always make sure I start work only after having a good breakfast and even more importantly a few glasses of water.  The water keeps me hydrated and coupled with a good breakfast ensures my energy levels remain high, which in turn keeps my concentration levels high too. This allows me to stay totally focussed on the 6 daily tasks and since implementing these new routines has allowed me to be over 50% more productive.

So for greater daily productivity:
1. Write up a list of 6 tasks you need to complete for the next day. Even better if you start off with a longer list and pick the 6 Tasks which will help you to earn money quicker. Doing this process will make you realise what is and isn’t as urgent as you initially thought.
2. On your work day, start with a few glasses of water to get yourself hydrated. And then follow up with a good breakfast (mine is always toast and scrambled eggs, and a cup of tea)
3. Set aside a 2 hour block to start your tasks.
4. Switch off any alerts etc you have on your PC etc. And if possible unplug your phone or divert to voicemail.
5. Start your list of 6 tasks and work for the 2 hour block. To stay hydrated during this time try and keep a bottle of water by your desk and take regular sips.
6. After 2 hours take a break and if necessary grab a snack.
7. Repeat the cycle throughout the day and I GUARANTEE you will be at leat 50% more productive than your current work days.

So, get focussed and get working on your daily work routine that will help you to be a lot more productive and will help you reach your financial goals a lot more quickly. It works for me and and I know IT WILL work you too. So, work smarter-not harder.

Yes, here I go again with some more interesting facts that will help you win friends and influence people. Maybe a slight exaggeration but these facts certainly do trigger those ‘really!’ moments, and may even provide you with the winning answer to your local pub quiz or the £1million prize in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

1. Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.

2. There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

3. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

4. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

5. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

6. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

7.  Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

8. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.

9. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee. Lovely thought!

10. And finally, most soccer players run 7 miles in a game. And if you are the goalkeeper on the end of a 10-0 defeat then you dive the equivalent of 7 miles!

I’ll keep my blog post short and sweet today.  I know some of you will be breathing a sigh of relief!

Over the last few months I have been getting lots of calls and emails from people with lots of great questions about My Internet Business. One of the questions that has popped up a few times is ‘Are enough people looking to make money online?’ and whether people are really interested about making a living online.

Well let me cut straight to the chase and give you some hard facts. In terms of the ‘general trend’ of whether people are still interested in making money online then you should check out the follwoing 2 graphs. These come straight from Google Trends (www.Google.com/Trends) and show the trend in volume searches for 2 very popular keyword search terms.

This first graph shows the volume searches for the search term ‘Make Money Online’. And you can clearly see there has been a steadily growing over the last 3 years and this is expected to continue and rise very sharply over the next few years.

Make Money Online

And the following Trend is for the search term ‘how to make money online’

How To Make Money Online

So as you can see there is clearly a growing number of people who are looking at the Internet to help them make a living. And just to round things up with some real numbers, the following is taken from Googles own Keyword Tool which gives out ‘approximate’ numbers of searches for various Keywords each month. I have shown both the UK searches and Worldwide searches for just one of the related keywords terms.

- Make Money Online (UK searches) - 25,000+ searches in August 2008

- Make Money Online (Worldwide searches):  400,000+ searches in August 2008

 
So you see, there are more than enough new possible recruits coming online every day and a large percentage will be looking for a proven method of making money online.

Surely you don’t want to miss out on this growing trend of online opportunity seekers which you can tap into with my personal 1to1 help and advice.

Sometimes personal blogs and blogs related to business can take themseleves a little too seriously. I will do my best to reflect my personality in my blog with a mixture of business, my own personal experiences and things that are a little light hearted and bring a smile to our day.

I’ll kick things off in this blog entry with some ‘interesting facts’. Now, although I can’t personally vouch for the validity of all these facts they do make interesting reading and could come in handy at your next Pub Quiz.

Hang on to your hats and here goes:
1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

5. The Mercedes-Benz motto is “Das Beste oder Nichts” meaning “the best or nothing”.

6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.

7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

And my personal favourite: (The following also applies to paintings of people on horses.)
11. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause.

Watch out for more of these ‘interesting facts’ in future blog entries.

What I love about the Internet is that not only does it help you earn an unlimited amount of money but likewise it also allows you to share information with others. As such I thought I’d share a little secret.

Although this first post is a bit long I guarantee that it is worth your while reading. A real eye-opener!

For those of you who have already worked with will know that I keep going on about how to ‘work smarter - not harder‘ at your Internet business and how this has helped me to become a lot more productive and successful online. The following shows you how you too can evaluate your own business and apply the same principle to make your more productive and successful.

Before I divulge this ’secret’, maybe you can think about the following:

- Are you always under pressure from your ever-expanding To-do list? People to see, places to go, people hassling you, people wanting more and more of your time?
- Does your day just never seem to have enough hours to get everything done?
- Do you put some of your family commitments to one side for the sake of your work?
- Wouldn’t you just love to have a few hours extra per day so that you could spend it on something a little more worthwhile?
- Are you not finding enough time to devote to family and friends?

Well, I don’t know about you but if you answered yes to any of the above then you need to grab a coffee (or your favourite beverage) and sit back, read the following, and where possible apply it to your daily life.

The secret in question is called The Pareto Principle, commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule. Pareto was in fact an Italian economist, full name Vilfredo Pareto, and he created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country. He observed that 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. And then in the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto’s Principle. The 80/20 Rule means that in anything a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are trivial.

So how does this apply to any of us in real life?
It can apply to the most mundane of everyday activities to the most important daily work tasks that are responsible for helping us make money.

For example we wear 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time or we spend 80 percent of our time with 20 percent of our friends and family. All you need to do is look around and you can see where this principle is already in action. Although bear in mind that sometimes it may work out at 90/10 or 70/30 and even sometimes it may not always add up to 100 percent.

Here are a few more ways in which this principle applies in everyday life:

- 20 percent of those in jail commit 80 percent of the crime
- 20 percent of the football (soccer) team score 80 percent of the goals
- you eat 20 percent of your favourite foods 80 percent of the time
- 20 percent of the sales team generate 80 percent of the sales
- 20 percent of the customers generate 80 percent of the revenue

And a really important one is:

- 80% of your measurable results and progress will come from just 20% of the items on your daily To-Do list. The major problem is that most people are so busy fighting fires that they never get around to completing the main tasks that lead to the best results.

The bottom line is the Pareto Principle reminds us that we should only try and focus on the 20 percent that matters. Which when applied to our daily workload will eventually lead you to freeing up a lot more time from your working day.

Here are a few examples from one of my first Online Businesses
Part of my online business is based around Affiliate Marketing. Although I am pretty ‘hot’ at PPC my main source of traffic for my network of 90+ affiliate websites is through organic search or SEO, mainly Google searches. You can imagine the amount of work needed in order to design, build and then rank all of those websites in the search engines. No mean feat but the biggest task for any SEO Affiliate is keeping the sites high up the search engines. This is done mainly by getting links from as many sites as possible to link to your site for specific keywords or search phrases. This can be done manually using a variety of methods such as Article distribution, link exchanges with other webmasters, Blog postings, directory submissions etc etc.

It then suddenly dawned on me that after a while 80 percent of my time was being taken up by only 20 percent of the tasks on my daily to-do list and the main thing that caused that imbalance was the constant and never ending search and creation of links to my large network of sites.

You can imagine the volume of emails I had to send websmasters just to get links to my sites. For every 20 link exchange requests I made I might only get 2-5 giving me a link. And with 10’s of sites to get links for the amount of work was staggering, so you can imagine why I was working 10 hour days and 6-7 day weeks.

There is only so much you can take and eventually I thought there just had to be a bettwer way. A smarter way to do all this work. I then sought and discovered a way to create those links on auto-pilot and within 1 week I was back to completing 100 percent of my daily activities, which in turn made me a lot more productive, which in turn…you can see where I am going here… made me a lot more money!

And by the way, just for the record, and this is indeed spooky:

- 20 percent of my affiliate sites now generate roughly 80 percent of my revenue

And finally
Sometimes you get caught up with the daily grind and take your eye off the bigger picture. Over time you can get sucked into doing tasks, which are just not making you productive. Effectively, most of what you do is likely to be a complete waste of time. And your ‘Not to do‘ list becomes even more important than your ‘To do list‘.

But by remembering the Pareto Principle you can finally discover the 20 percent that generates 80 percent of your results. And you can then put your heart and soul into that 20 percent. As a result I can guarantee that you’ll be a lot more productive, resulting in much more success and happiness.

And this can be equally applied to both your business and personal life.