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• 

  Managing Your Time for Ultimate Effectiveness

  Posted: April 16th, 2009, 4:27am CEST by Dan

  Tags:  General  

  One area where a lot of people have problems with running an online business is time management.  Too many of us spend too much time on the things that don’t matter and not enough time on the things that do matter.

  Recently I’ve been reading “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, and since doing so have really improved the way I use my time.  So in this post I want to share a few ideas that I’ve taken from his book.  I hope they help!

  Pareto’s Law

  Most of you have probably heard of this by it’s other name, the 80/20 rule.  Sometimes the ratio is different, but the principle is the same: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

  So what does this mean to us as internet marketers?  They way I look at it, it means that you can easily waste a lot of time!  But what if you were able to identify the most important things that you can do to move your business forward every day?

  Here’s an activity I want you to do sometime soon:

  1. Make a list of the things you do for your business.  This list could include everything from answering emails to processing orders.
  2. Next, grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.  At the top of one column write ‘20%’, and at the top of the other, write ‘80%’.
  3. In the 20% column, list the things you can do each day that can actually help to produce income.  In the other column, list the other things that you feel need to be done, but don’t directly relate to producing income.

  The purpose of this activity is to help you to identify the things that you should really spend your time on versus the things that are important to do, but don’t lead towards creating an income.

  Chances are your 80% list is longer.  This list most likely includes things like answering email, reading other blogs, etc.  These things are good things to do, but are there better things you can be doing with your time?

  So what are things that you should focus on?  Things that help to produce results!  This would include anything you do to market your site, or anything really that directly helps you to get people to your site.

  Parkinson’s Law

  Some of you may have heard of this law, but some of you probably haven’t.  Parkinson’s Law states that a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.  In other words, a task that should only take an hour to accomplish can easily take a week if you give it that much time.

  So how do we take advantage of this as internet marketers?  Well, give yourself short deadlines.  If it takes you 3 hours to write an article, you’re taking way too long to do it!  When I’m focused, I can usually get an article done in 15 minutes.  In fact, just today I wrote 3 blog posts in about 20 minutes total.  This is because that’s about all the time I gave myself to do it!

  Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that you aren’t good at writing.  Well, part of that if probably because you’re thinking about it too hard!  Honesty, it shouldn’t take you that long.  And you’ll find that you get better at it as you do it more and more.  But you’ll get better faster if you give yourself short deadlines to get things done.

  Putting the Two Laws to Good Use

  We’ve just learned two ways to make better use of time: first to identify the most important tasks, and secondly to give yourself short deadlines to get things done.  By using these two laws together you can get a lot of things done each day.

  Here are a few other tips that you can follow to make the most use of your time:

  • Only check your email once or twice a day. Too many of us are addicted to checking our email (I’m guilty of this quite often as well!)
  • Limit your information intake.  Find those blogs or information sources that are good and read them as needed, but don’t spend time just browsing for information.
  • Spend most of your time taking action, not reading!
  • Actually schedule your business into your day.  If you’re just waiting for time to work on it, it won’t ever happen.
  • Have daily and weekly tasks, find a way to track these things to keep yourself accountable.

  If you have any other tips, feel free to share them below!

• 

  A Review of Online Marketing Strategies to Use

  Posted: February 10th, 2009, 4:44pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  Marketing  

  I wanted to take a minute today and talk about online marketing strategies in general, and just give a reminder of all the different things that you could be doing to promote your online business.  The fact is that you need to be doing multiple things if you’re really going to see some long term success.  So let’s do a quick review of some of the main strategies.

  A Tip About Online Marketing Strategies

  Below I’m going to review a bunch of different marketing strategies that you can use.  I don’t want you to get overwhelmed, but you need to look at your own business model and see how you could take advantage of testing these different strategies.  Test, tweak, find what works, and then optimize what works!

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  This is probably the one strategy that everyone is familiar with and want to learn how to do.  And for good reason!  Who could pass up free traffic, and tons of it if you can get ranked for the right keywords?  It’s a great thing!

  Some things to be aware of with SEO:

  • You have to work on it consistently.  Building a link here and there won’t cut it.
  • You need to keep up on the industry.  Algorithm updates, outdated techniques, and other things change in the SEO world all the time.  Keep up on changes.
  • Be willing to put in the time to get it done, or hire it out.  This is not a quick process!

  SEO is great, but you really need to be aware that it takes time and effort before you’ll see results with it.  But because it can generate so much traffic, it is something you should learn how to do.

  Social Media Marketing (SMO or SMM)

  Social media optimization and marketing is one of the newer online marketing strategies, but it can be a great way to bring in additional traffic, get exposure, and links.  Use sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, and others to increase your exposure and traffic.

  Pay Per Click (PPC)

  This is one of the online marketing strategies that I find a lot of people are afraid of.  At least they’re afraid of spending a lot of money without even knowing it.  Well, these days you pretty much have to set up budgets and protections so that you don’t spend more than you’re comfortable with.

  But in an overall strategy, this is one you’ll want to learn how to do and at least use from time to time.  This is for a couple of reasons:

  • You can get traffic faster with PPC than you can with SEO
  • You can do really good testing with PPC
  • You can target more phrases with PPC than you can with SEO

  So you see, there are some really good reasons to use PPC as one of your main strategies.  Learn the basics of how to do it because with knowledge and then action you can eliminate the fear of doing it!

  Shopping Networks

  If you’re running a retail business, whether it be with your own warehouse or through dropshipping, this is one you should look into.  Simply put, there are a lot of sites out there that shoppers are already using to find good deals.  These include Amazon.com, Shopzilla.com, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Google Base, and others.  Most of these run of a PPC-like program, but some are even free like Google Base.  Check them out since they can really bring you some targeted customers!

  Joint Ventures

  This is one online marketing strategy that can really be put to good use early on in your business.  Here’s a basic example of a joint venture: Let’s say you have a site that sells fitness products.  Well, what if you went and found a popular fitness blog and made them an offer where you would give them a promo code that they can give to their readers.  If any of their readers use that code on your site you’ll split the profit with them.

  So you get the benefit of having a popular blogger talk about your site, and also recommend that their readers buy from you.  All you have to do is be willing to share the profit with them!  There are plenty of other ways to use this strategy.  Be creative!

  Email Marketing

  You’ve all heard by this time I’m sure of the value of building a list.  Have a newsletter that you send out every week or two, but make sure that you’re giving out valuable content and not just advertisements.  This is a great way to keep in touch with current and potential customers.  It gives you the chance to have multiple touches with these people.

  Final Thoughts About Different Online Marketing Strategies

  So there you have a short list of some of the different things you can do to promote your site out there.  This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of all the things you can do, but this should get you started.  Think about your site and model, and think about which of these approaches could work for you.  For example, if you have an affiliate site you won’t really be able to use shopping networks the same way a retail site would.

  My hope is that after reading this post you understand that there is more to do than just SEO.  Use some of these other online marketing strategies.  As mentioned before do some testing to see what works for you.  Then make the most of it!

• 

  A Little More on Excuses

  Posted: December 30th, 2008, 5:32pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  motivation  

  I came across this Nike commercial a while back and thought that it was a great example of overcoming excuses.  This guy goes through a whole bunch of excuses you could give yourself.  Granted it is more of a sports/athletic approach, but how many times have you made the same excuses for other things in life?

  Watch this video and then share with me below what you think:

• 

  Stop Making Excuses for Yourself

  Posted: December 17th, 2008, 7:57pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  motivation  

  I wrote a post today on my site SupplementPricing.com that I feel applies to more than just health and fitness.  So rather than rewriting the post here and applying to eCommerce, I’d recommend you head over there and read the original post.  Think about how the concept relates to a business or anything else you’re looking to accomplish in life.  Then come back here and leave me a comment about what you thought.

  Here’s the quote from Tom Venuto that started it all:

  You can either make excuses or get results, but you can’t do both!

  Here’s the link to the post on SupplementPricing.com: Stop Making Excuses, Start Getting Results!

  So here’s the challenge: stop making excuses for why your business isn’t going as far as you’d like.  Look for the excuses you’re making, and then get over them and start working on results.

  Here’s another great quote from Mark Sanborn:

  Fear nothing in life but to waste the present moment.

  Make every moment count.  If you do something, don’t let it be an excuse later.  Do things consciously, with a choice.  Then you can start working on making the right choices that will move your forward rather than being pushed around by life.

• 

  How to Find the Best PPC Ads to Spy On

  Posted: December 2nd, 2008, 7:51pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  Marketing  

  I just learned a really cool PPC (pay per click) tip from a newsletter I got from Perry Marshall that I thought was worth passing on.  Speaking of which, if you haven’t signed up for Perry Marshall’s newsletter you should.  Yes, he’ll pitch product to you from time to time, but he also pumps out a ton of great info.

  How to Find the Best PPC Ads to Spy On

  As you probably well know, one of the things about search engine marketing in general is that there is a lot of competition for good keyword phrases.  And when it comes to PPC one of the tricks is knowing who to spy on.

  So here’s the trick: if you go to Google and search for something you’ll get both types of results.  Well, hit search a few times and you’ll notices that the list of Sponsored Links gets smaller.  Do this a couple of times and you’ll be left with just a handful of ads.

  Now why is this important?  Because the ones that are left are the ones that make Google the most money!  And if they make Google good money, it’s because they have a good click thru rate which would indicate they are making good money off of the ads as well.

  Here’s a quote from the newsletter:

  So if you want to know who the highest quality advertisers are - search a keyword, and then click “search” again and again and again.  After awhile the list of advertisers on the right side will shrink.

  After a whole bunch of searches there may only be 3-4 left.

  THOSE are the highest quality advertisers. Those are the ones that make Google the most money per 1000 searches, which is the real name of the game.

  Mimic the Highest Quality Advertisers

  You see, if you’re going to pattern yourself after anybody, you should pattern yourself off the ads that are doing well of course.  By doing this little trick you can eliminate the ads that don’t perform as well.  Here’s another quote from the newsletter that explains why this is:

  Let’s say someone’s shopping and researching hard. They search, click on an ad, look at a site, go back, search again, click on another ad, and so on.

  The more ads Google shows them, the less money Google makes because the lower quality advertisers aren’t paying Google as much money.

  *If Google shows fewer ads, they’ll make more money when people DO click.* So for people who search repeatedly, Google shows fewer ads.

  Pretty cool trick huh?  So the next time you plan on spying on some Google ads to get ideas for your next PPC campaign you can use this little trick to make sure you’re looking at the ads that you should actually be looking at, and not the lower converting ones.

• 

  An Easy Way to Save Money Online

  Posted: November 25th, 2008, 8:32pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  General  

  A lot of you probably already know about this tip, but I know that there are plenty of you out there that have probably never done this before.  So in this post I’m talking to YOU!

  An Easy Way to Save $$$

  Ok, here’s the deal.  When you go to buy something online there is a really easy thing that you can do to save some money.  This won’t apply to all sites, but it will apply to most large sites.  What you do is this: search for coupon codes.

  Let me give you an example from today.  I had a domain name that I needed to renew.  I was renewing the name through GoDaddy.com and it was going to cost me like $10.88 or so.  Well, there is a point on their shopping cart where they show you a summary of your order and there is a box that says “Enter Promotional Code” or something like that.  This is an obvious indicator that they must have some codes out there!  Now you just have to go and find them .

  Search for the Codes

  Finding codes is very easy.  I just went to Google and typed in “godaddy promo codes” and got plenty of sites that have lists of promo codes and what they’ll do for you.  On the first site I came do I found one that had a code for getting $3.50 off a domain name renewal.  So I took that code, punched it into GoDaddy’s cart system, and I got $3.50 off my domain name.

  Uses for This Tip

  There are a lot of places you can use this tip.  As I mentioned before, most of your large sites will have promo codes that they put out from time to time.  Dell, Best Buy, all sorts of places.  You can find them by just searching around, or go to sites like RetailMeNot.com and search what they have to offer.  Even if you only save $3.50 like I did today, it’s still $3.50 that I didn’t have to spend.  I’ll take it!

  So there’s your short tip for today.  You probably do some coupon clipping when you go to the grocery store, right?  Well, here’s any easy to do it online!

• 

  How to Fix Messed Up Permalinks When a Blog Already Has Content

  Posted: November 13th, 2008, 4:35pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  Blogs  

  I’ve run into this problem a couple of times and finally figured out the easy way to fix it.  Someone probably figured this out a long time ago and if I had looked hard enough I probably would have found the answer, but oh well.  At least now I know!

  Ok, so here’s an illustration of the problem.  You’ve just started a new blog and even written a few posts.  Then one day you realize that you have ugly URL’s.  For example your URL’s are something like www.blog.com/?p=5.  And the you realize, “OH CRAP!  I forgot to set up pretty permalinks!”

  So naturally the next step is you go into your permalinks options and change it to something like /%category%/%postname%/.  Then you breathe a sigh of relief, until you go to your blog and all of your pages cannot be displayed!!!  OH NO!

  Ok, so I’m being a little dramatic with this, but it’s happened to me a couple of times and who knows, it may have happened to you as well.  So here’s the quick fix that I used today and it worked:

  1. Revert to the default permalink structure.
  2. Log into your hosting account.
  3. In the root folder of your blog, find the .htaccess file and delete it.
  4. Now, set up the permalink structure the way you want it and save it.

  That should fix it!  At least it did for a blog I was helping someone with today!  If you have any other tips on this, feel free to share, but hopefully that saves you some headaches.

• 

  I Finally Wrote an About Page for This Blog

  Posted: November 13th, 2008, 3:03pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  General  

  Here’s just a short post/update for ya.  I finally got around to writing an ‘About’ page for this blog.  It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do for some time now, but for some reason I always struggle talking about myself.  And I’ve found that most people are the same way!

  Seriously, I’m one of those people that when I’m in a situation where they say “Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves” I say something like “Uh, I’m Dan…and I like nachos.”  I figure no matter what I say, they aren’t really going to know me anyway!

  So anyway, you’ll find out a little bit more about me on that About page.

  If you’re stuggling with an About page for your blog (especially a personal blog), here are some tips from Problogger.net on how to do it: How to Write Your “About Me” Page.

• 

  Great Collection of SEO Tools from SEOmoz

  Posted: November 3rd, 2008, 11:54pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  Website Tools  

  If you’ve never heard of SEOmoz.org, you need to check these guys out.  When it comes to SEO firms, SEOmoz is probably one of the most well-known and recognized for the great information and tools that they put out.  Here’s just a snippet from their site that explains their goal and mission:

  SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide by providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help make every SEO the best they can be.

  We provide companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services. Our goal is to provide a high level of service and education to businesses and individuals so they can best leverage the unique reach of the Internet to increase visibility and achieve success. Join them by reading our blog or contributing your own content.

  Today I just wanted to highlight one section of their site that has a collection of all of their different tools along with tools from other great sites as well.  This page has a very fitting name: The Internet Marketing Handbook.

  Not only does this site offer tools that you can use, but they’ve put together a great collection of articles and other resources from some of the following people:

  • Darren Rowse, Problogger.net
  • Aaron Wall, SEOBook.com
  • Jordan Kasteler
  • Courtney Tuttle
  • and others.

  All in all, SEOmoz has put together a great resource with this one.  Check it out and start using it!

• 

  3 Tips to Better Manage Your Time

  Posted: October 28th, 2008, 2:44pm CET by Dan

  Tags:  motivation  

  For some reason over the last couple of days I’ve had a lot of questions from people about time management.  I’m no pro on this subject, but I thought it would be a good idea today to share a few things that I do that I’ve found to be helpful in managing my time.

  Actually, I wrote another post about this topic a long time ago (3 Tips to Optimize Your Time) which was more about not wasting time, but today I want to approach it from a different angle.

  Time management really is an important issue.  How many times have you heard someone say (including yourself), “I wish I had more hours in a day!”  I admit, I’m guilty of saying it as well!  Well, we know we can’t get extra hours, so here are some tips on how to make the most out of the hours that you have.

  Have a List of Priorities

  Each morning I take a few minutes and write out the things that I feel I need to get done that day.  In fact, sometimes I make the list the night before and then revise it that morning.  Either way the idea is to write out the important things you need to get done.

  The next step is to prioritize that list.  For the most important items put a ‘1′ next to them.  These are the most important items.  It may just be one thing, or you may have 2-3 first priorities.  Then number the second priorities with a ‘2′, third priorities with a ‘3′, etc.

  Be careful not to mark everything as a ‘1′ and ‘2′.  Part of this is being able to tell what really are the most important things.  Then, try to go through that list by order of priority.  This will help you to ge the most important things done first.  If anything really important didn’t get done, assign it to another day in the week.

  There are always lots of things calling for our time.  So being able to set priorities can really help you feel like you got more done that day.

  Wear Certain ‘Hats’ on Certain Days

  In the world of website marketing, there are a lot of different hats that you’ll have to wear.  You will be working on the website, doing marketing, possibly doing the accounting and other stuff as well.

  I find that it helps to select which hat or hats you’re going to wear each day.  I’ve also found that personally I do best when i assign the same hats to the same days each week.  Here’s an example (not what I currently do, but just an idea):

  • Monday: Blogging and Blog related SEO
  • Tuesday: Accounting (input bills and receipts) & site maintenance
  • Wednesday: Articles (SEO) and site updates
  • etc.

  Try something like this.  Only do certain types of tasks on certain days.  If you try to wear every hat every day you’ll find that you’re trying to get too much done in one day.

  RELAX!

  I find that a lot of us are too hard on ourselves.  It seems like society encourages us to be stressed out workaholics.  And again, I have to admit that I’m somewhat guilty of this, too!  So it’s important to not take everything so seriously that you’re stressed out all of the time.

  If something doesn’t get done on a particular day, it’s ok!  Just reassign it to the next day and move on.  Your goal each day is to do the best you can with the time you have.

  Life will happen.  You’ll have things come up that demand your time.  This is where your time management is really put to the test.  But if you’re dedicated to what your goals are, you’ll find a way to still make at least something happen.

  I hope those tips help.  If you have some that you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment!  There are a lot of great systems and ideas out there about time management, so I’d love to hear some of your ideas!