Entries Tagged 'Inspiration and Motivation' ↓

As the new year approaches, I’ve been obsessing more and more about what 2010 is going to bring me – or rather, what I’m going to achieve in 2010. I’ve got some pretty hefty goals set and one of those goals is to get so organized, it will make me want to puke. To say that I like to have my ducks in a row is an understatement. I need my ducks perfectly aligned and if one feather is out of place, I don’t run at optimal speed.

My passions and interests have changed drastically over the last decade but one thing that always stays the same is the fact that I’m an organizing freakshow. I love to be organized and I love finding new ways to become even more sickenly organized.

Motivation and inspiration are two big things for me. I need one to jump start the other, but I need to be organized before I can even begin to be either. I continuously make more money each month and I can thank my insane organizing skills for the majority of it.

Working online involves a lot of juggling, no matter what, and it’s not a skill that everybody has. Some people actually work better when their desks are piled miles high with random papers, dirty dishes, nail clippings and remnants of snacks from weeks before. If that’s you, no need to read further.

On the other hand, if you’re like me, here are some handy resources to check out so you can get your organizing skills in shape for the new year:

Organizing Your Home Office – Links

A designer’s tips for organizing the home office with some style – 5 tips for organizing a home office.

Nicole Balch is the Queen of making organization pretty. Check out her studio to see what I mean.

There’s nothing like some pleasantly eye-catching file folders to encourage you to get organized and stay organized.

Clutter is evil. At least for me it is. That’s what the unclutterer blog rocks, and in particular, the office organization archive.

Lifehacker has some worthy home office hacks to think about while you’re in organizing-mode.

If nothing else in your house is organized, at least your computer should be. Read How to Create a Minimalist Computer Experience.

20 Time-Saving Tips to Improve Designer’s Workflow – Even if you’re not a web designer, there are tips in this post that can not only help you organize your Mac or PC, but they can save you loads of time especially if you deal with a lot of images while blogging.

Organize your browser. Organize your desktop. Organize your folders. If you’re bold enough, branch out from your office area and organize other areas of your house too. It’s much easier to keep each room clean and in order when the rest of the house is too. Otherwise, the clutter creep will rear it’s ugly head in no time flat.

If staying organized isn’t your strong suit, keep these resources handy and plug away at them as you have time. You’ll find that the more organized you get, the more time you have to get more organized! Or spend time with family and other important things like that…

So what are your favorite organizing tips or resources?

You know how everyone is always saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? While that may be true, it can actually prevent you from reaching your full potential if you have too many eggs in too many baskets.

Information overload is quite common in the online world. It’s also very common to get overwhelmed with all the tasks that come with working online. There are so many options! Which ones do you choose?

Time is money, right folks? No matter how good you are, Santa isn’t going to bring you more hours in the day for Christmas.

If this is you, here’s a little exercise you can try to help you determine which things you should focus on and which things you should drop.

You’ll need to think about everything you do that you consider part of your business building methods and compile them all into a list.

The items that may be on your list could include but are not limited to:

• buying advertising
• article marketing
• social media marketing
• affiliate marketing
• selling your own products or services
• blogging
• posting in forums
• recording podcasts, interviews, etc.
• offline marketing
• email marketing
• building membership sites
• setting up squeeze pages
• cost per click advertising like Adsense, Chitika, etc.

For this to work, you’ll need to know how much money each task brings in. This may be hard to monitor in some cases so just do your best and “guestimate”.

Now, take everything that currently makes you money or will be bringing money in soon. Write each thing down on a piece of paper with plenty of space between each item. (Some things may overlap a bit since certain tasks will directly and indirectly affect other tasks, but that’s OK for now.)

Beside each one, write down how much money it makes per day, per month, per year. Then write down how much you think it can potentially make you per day/month/year.

Once that part is done, go back through each item and list how much time and effort each thing needs to keep bringing in that money. For example, blogging may take you 1 hour a day whereas buying advertising may only take a few hours a month.

Now rate each item on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 is “I’d rather stick a needle in my eye than do this.” and 10 is “This is so freaking fun!”

After you have everything written down, take some time to decide what your top 5 items are. If you didn’t have many to begin with, choose the top 3. Those are the money-making methods you should be focusing on.

That doesn’t mean you need to stop doing the other ones, just don’t spend a lot of time or effort on them right now. You can outsource those tasks to someone else, or wait until your top items are on auto-pilot and you have more time to spend on them.

If they really don’t help your business at all, cut ‘em loose.

Ultimately, you want to be focusing on things that not only help improve your business but are also things you can see yourself continuing to do without them becoming chores you despise doing.

The whole point of working at home is to have freedom. You want the freedom to be able to spend time with your family, and also financial freedom so you’re not always tied to your desk.

To get to that point, you need to periodically analyze your business plan as well as your daily routine and update it accordingly. This exercise will help you do that.

I’ve been a long time subscriber of Paul Myers’ TalkBiz Newsletter for three reasons. He’s funny, he’s insanely good at what he does, and he has a knack for saying something profound in each one of his newsletters.

Every time I read one, I’m inspired and end up thinking about things in a completely different way which helps me continue to grow – both personally and in my business.

A few newsletters back, when talking about Internet Marketing “Gurus”, he said this:

These folks are not smarter than you, they’re not better than you, and they don’t have mystic Kung Fu powers. At most, they’re a few blocks further down the sidewalk.

So jog a little.

Think about that. Doesn’t that give you a surge of motivation and make you want to work hard? That’s one of the main reasons why I enjoy Paul’s newsletters so much.

You want to join the big leagues? Pick up the pace a little. Work a few extra hours. Go above and beyond. Kick some ass!

If you need a nudge in the right direction, read his report “Why Johnny Can’t Sell”. I read it as soon as he emailed his list about it and I’ve read it a few times since. It’s that good.

If you can read at least 10 pages of it and put any of the ideas you get from it into action today, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the masses.

If you sign up for the free newsletter, you’ll also get “Need to Know” which is another great report I’ve read more than once. That puppy is stuffed to the nines with useful nuggets that any Internet Marketer can use.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately designing websites (mostly WordPress themes but some static pages as well) and I’ve been looking at things in a completely new light.

When I read magazines, I pay attention to the layout of the pages, the font used, the images, etc. which inspires me to create new designs. I also get inspired by nature – going for walks always gives me ideas and I can’t wait to get home to draw them.

I also love to look at photography which is always really inspiring. I get all my wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT. They have some amazing photos and the one I downloaded today is particularly crazy cool.

I like to minimize all my windows on my desktop and just sit back and admire my current wallpaper. I usually get a lot of design ideas from them. It’s also like having a piece of ever-changing art on my desk while I’m not working.

I might have to keep this Buddhist Temple wallpaper on my desktop for longer than usual since it goes so well with my Buddha head sitting on my desk.

So take a look around you. Chances are there are many inspiring elements right in front of you, you just have to look at them with open eyes!

Need Money Right Now?

Can you wait 5 days?

Sure, some quick cash would be nice, but wouldn’t a steadily increasing paycheck be even better?

How about writing a small report, and setting up a short ecourse to promote it?

This post will tell you how so listen up! (This post is also full of free goodies, FYI.)

This method is easy. Yeah, I said easy. It requires work and some of your time, but it doesn’t require a degree to get it right.

This method will also generate as much income as you want it to. The more you promote it, test it and tweak it, the more money it will make. The more you repeat this method, the more your income will grow.

So let’s begin.

Summary:

1. Write a short report
2. Promote that short report with an ecourse (If you think ecourses are old school and overdone, think again!)
3. Build your list

So three steps.

Let’s dive into step 1 – Writing a short report.

If you already have a website in a certain niche, then chances are you already have an idea or two for a short report topic. If not, it’s brainstorming time! Here are a few ways you can drum up some ideas:

• Dig through your website statistics and find out what people are searching for to reach your site. Any “how to” key phrases should provide some ideas. Pay attention to this information because it tells you EXACTLY what your readers are looking for.
• Poll or survey your readers. You can set up a form on your website or send out a request to your email list. Preferably both. If you don’t already have a list, get one!
• Hang around in related forums and find out what people are talking about. This works every time.

Now that you have an idea, you need to make sure it’s a profitable one. The “how to” and “tips” reports are usually winners. People are always wanting to know how to do stuff. They want tips to help them become more successful at whatever they’re doing.

For example:

“How To Create a Profitable Ecourse in 3 Hours”

or

“Copywriting Tips That Will Double Your Sales”

or

“7 Things You Must Do to Save Hundreds On Your Next Vehicle Purchase”

Just make sure that the title of your short report isn’t so far fetched that it’s unbelievable. It has to be compelling, but not ridiculously over the top.

Now write the report!

You can write it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. If you can’t hire someone and you can’t write worth a shit, trade services with someone who can.

Writing a short report doesn’t have to be a huge deal. I can sometimes sit down with my ancient laptop and whip one up in an hour. If what I’m writing about requires a lot of research, it can take days. There are also a crapload of short reports sitting on my hard drive that were started but never finished.

Don’t be like me.

Finish what you start!

Create an outline then fill in the blank spots. And read this book. It’s free and it’s good. If your head isn’t spewing out awesome ideas by the time you’re done it, I will eat my own shorts.

When your report is finished, you need to figure out a price. Each market is different, and you may be surprised at what price point works best, so this is definitely something to test. If it’s fairly short – 5 to 10 pages – start out with $7 and test from there.

Ok, on to step 2 – Writing an ecourse.

Typically, ecourses – or email mini-courses – are about 7 days long. Or 7 issues. They don’t HAVE to be though. They can be as long or short as you want. There is no “right” answer, but you have to take your readers into consideration.

If you send out an ecourse about gardening, your readers may want some longer, more detailed messages. If you’re targeting internet marketers who are already inundated with emails, you may want to keep them short and sweet, and no more than 7 in a row.

Decide on your topic for each email, then write about it! It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and it doesn’t have to be an award-winning masterpiece. But you do need to make it really good. Make it informative, useful, interesting, entertaining. Make it worth the time it took for your readers to sign up and read it.

If you already have a lot of content for your topic, consider re-purposing it for your ecourse. Break up some articles into smaller lessons for each email, or rewrite them and add a few more exclusive tips or info. You can even add some interviews, worksheets, resource lists, videos, audio, etc. to add to the value of your ecourse.

(I wrote up a more detailed report about creating profitable ecourses for my subscribers. Signup with the form to the right at the top and you’ll have instant access after you confirm your subscription.)

Throw your newly created ecourse into an autoresponder and send the test emails to yourself to read over. Better yet, send them to someone who will proofread them for you. When everything is looking good, it’s on to….

Step 3 – Building your list.

Now this is a gigantic topic and I could write about it for days, but instead, I’m going to point you to some awesome resources that talk about building lists much better than I could.

List Marketing Tips – This is a free 20 page report that is chock full of tips that will not only help you promote your list, but profit from it as you build it.

Triple Opt-In Requests – Another free 20 page report with tips that will help you increase your optins without increasing traffic. (One thing that I did to increase my own optins was to add an arrow with the optin form. Something bright and eye-catching will do the trick.)

Basically, create a really great ecourse that people will want to sign up for, then promote the frick outta that there link!

• twitter it
• put it on every page of your site
• put it in forum signatures
• blog about it frequently
• include it in your email signature
• submit articles to article directories with the link in your author bio
• create a free report to entice people and make it viral
• contact other site owners and offer them a large cut of your profits if they help you promote it
• etc.

If it takes you 2 days to write the report itself, another 2 days to create the ecourse, and 1 day to set it all up (autoresponder, optin page, etc.) then you can start profiting from it in 5 days from now.

Rinse and repeat once a month (or whenever you have the energy for it) and you’ll be creating a profitable little empire for yourself.

And don’t just sit there thinking about doing it, just friggin’ DO IT! I know you can!

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