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Get More Done By Working Less

I think the 40 hour workweek is a waste…

Nobody has the attention span to work on ANYTHING for 8 hours straight in a day. I read a stat somewhere that on an average work day, most people only actually do 2 hours of “real work”.

The rest of the time is spent browsing the web, checking emails, chatting on instant messenger, talking with co-workers, spent “in meetings” and other non productive work just to fill up an 8 hour shift.

I wonder who came up with this schedule for employees?

Even though I haven’t worked a 9-5 job in many years due to my internet business success, I still carry on the same values I’ve always held about how much work time is optimal.

Personally, I can get more work done in 3 hours than almost anyone who works an 8 hour shift. So, that’s what I try to do with my internet businesses as well.

Here’s how I do it…

Think about what goal you need to achieve for any given day. Make a quick bullet point listing of each task you must get done.

Next, turn off your cell phone, your instant messenger system, close your door and do not allow any distractions whatsoever.

Then, you just dive right in.

When you are 100% fully focused on a particular task, you can get it done so much faster than if you have distractions around you.

This technique is what I call my 3 hour work block and it works amazingly well.

In many cases, by blocking out a certain amount of time like this, I’m able to get ALL of my work done for the day in just three hours. And I still get more done than I would in a typical 8 hour workday without this extreme focus.

I don’t care if you work a job or if you have a full time internet business, try this and see what happens.

It’s very refreshing when you start at 9am, plow through all of your tasks and by noon, you are basically DONE working for the day.

I don’t recommend working this hard for more than 3 hours at a time because you will get burned out. If I’m a little behind or want to accomplish more and get ahead, I simply work a 3 hour block, take 3 or 4 hours off to relax and then do another 3 hour block.

Still only working a total of 6 hours, but the amount of work I get done is incredible.

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Link Building Success

Every web owner wants to get one way natural links but oftentimes this is easier said than done. If you’re not a link baiting enthusiast then you’ll need to get links the old fashioned way: ask for them. First though, you need to ask yourself, “Do I really want to get this link?” don’t just link for the sake of it, make sure that it is relevant to your site.

Analyze Your Competitor’s Backlinks

One of the best tried-and-tested recommendations is to analyze your competitor’s backlinks. You can make this the starting point of your link building campaign. Remember though that you need to keep track of all information you get in excel or word file; this will not only make you organized, you will also discover the link map of the whole industry as you progress along. Soon, you will have an impressive list of link prospects.

When you visit the sites that your competitors are linked from, look for the “recommend as site” and “add URL” links. There are times when it would be easy to just fill out the form and submit your link but there will also be times when you need to dig a little before you find the “add URL” link or even find their contact info.

Stay Organized

Once you have a healthy list, stay focused and organized by grouping your prospects into different sections including authority links, blog links, directory links, social media links, newsgroup links, and forum links among others. And depending on your industry, you can further categorize your list. For example, if you have a “make money online” site, you can categorize your links into:

• Sites about Blogging
• E-commerce Sites
• Auction Sites
• Search Engine Optimization Sites
• Web Development
• Business Information Websites

Having an organized list will also help you determine the anchor text you should use. Once you’re organized, you’re ready to start your successful link building campaign.

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Making Big Money In Weird Niche Markets

Typically when I talk about making money online, I tell people to focus on the big, proven money making website ideas like health, wealth and relationships. Those markets are always in demand so it’s easier to make money in those markets.

BUT, every once in a while I come across a story of an entrepreneur who takes an unlikely idea and turns it into a huge money maker.

Here’s one of these examples I just came across…

As you know, gas prices are out of control right now. It’s a super hot topic that is on the news pretty much everyday. Most people sit around and complain about it because they think there is nothing they can do.

Here is one guy who is not complaining one bit!

Basically this guy found a way to run a car using WATER. It sounds crazy to me, but after watching the video on the middle of this page, it’s pretty impressive.

He says in the video that his car was about to drive about 100 miles or so on 4 OUNCES of water.

I’m not trying to start an argument over whether or not you can run your can on water or not. I don’t know anything about cars or how they work and I don’t see myself converting my car into a water burning machine anytime soon.

But it’s a great lesson of taking a huge problem in the world and coming up with a possible solution to the problem.

I’m sure this guy will make millions if not BILLIONS of dollars if this thing actually works.

Anytime it feels like everything is going wrong, the economy is crashing and the sky is falling, a few smart people always find a way to capitalize on the situation and become wealthy…

I wonder what other kinds of solutions we can come up with like this guy just did?

Not Getting Enough Traffic Love from Google?

Search engines are probably the single most effective way to generate traffic to your web page. Because of this, web owners will inevitably complete with each other in order to get a higher ranking. But how would then do this? Well, a lot of e-books, blogs, websites, podcasts, and other kinds of content are dedicated to this topic. But there will always be web masters who complain that they are not getting visitors from search engines. This can be due to different factors but some of the most common reasons I know of include:

1. New Website – when your site is new, you should expect that it will not perform that well with search engines. Take note that there are over 30 billion pages on the internet and a lot of these can be categorized as “spam”. Before search engines start to give your site a good ranking, they need to achieve a certain level of trust with you and this will grow over time as you build your content, traffic, and one way links.
2. Black Hat SEO Techniques – very few people want to be called a black hat marketer; or in layman’s term, a spammer. But no one can deny that being a black hat marketer does have its own appeal because of its immediate results. If you decide to take this route, you should realize that you can be hit by a penalty or in some cases, banned altogether.
3. Useless Content – even if you invest a lot in creating your website, it would not matter if you don’t have good content. Searchers are exactly that, they search for information that is relevant to their needs over the internet. In addition, good content will generate a lot of links which are “votes” for your website.
4. Duplicate Content – some people debate on the impact of using duplicate content on their websites. But as far as I’m concerned, search engines love fresh content and it will reward websites and blogs that frequently posts new and original articles.

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What The F#% Should I Sell?

I got a pretty funny email a few minutes ago that I thought I’d share with you…

The subject line of the email was “What The Fu## Should I Sell?” Use your imagination to fill in the blanks…

Typically I get emails from people who ask for advice, and most of time they are really nice about it. They tell me how they tried this or that and they just don’t know what they are doing wrong.

This guy’s email was no different. He just wanted me to tell him what he should sell online.

If you took my buying and selling websites training class, you know that one way to greatly increase your sites value & income from a website is to convert your site to a different revenue model.

For example, changing your site from a content site that makes money from adsense to an e-commerce site will typically double or triple your income (sometimes more). It doesn’t matter what your topic is, you can sell a physical product in that market pretty easily. It’s usually EASIER to sell a physical product online than an information product because there is a higher perceived value there.

The key to doing this is to make sure you don’t turn your site into a “super mall” where you sell 5,000 different products. Focus on just a handful of highly targeted products and promote them within the content of your site.

So, where do you buy these products to sell on your site? (Hint - right here…)

Some people like to use affiliate programs from places like cj.com to find products to promote. I’m not a huge fan of that method because you typically only earn about 5-10% commissions on sales, plus sales are not tracked very accurately so you only get credit for a portion of the sales you actually generate.

A much better option is to buy the products wholesale and ship them out yourself. (Or you can use a dropshipping company to fulfill orders for you).

We used this model for the website we sold for $575,000 and it worked very well. The problem is, it’s HARD TO FIND wholesale suppliers or companies willing to dropship products for you!

I did a lot of research when I owned that last website trying to find suppliers. There are two ways to find suppliers. You can search for hours online and “hope” to come up with what you are looking for, or you can pay a small fee to access a directory of suppliers already researched for you.

I like the choose the easy option, so I signed up for a wholesale directory (this one to be exact).

I bought a couple of “wholesale lists” which were a complete waste of time so don’t waste your money. There are a bunch of things I like about the wholesale directory though. Actually, I think I’ll just go ahead and show you what it looks like rather than try to explain it.

(I’m not sure I’m allowed to show you the members area or not, so if I get in trouble I’ll take down the video).

As you can see in the video, you literally have access to hundreds of suppliers, you can read reviews about other members who have used them in the past and there are all kinds of training & advice for members.

For the $67 bucks they charge, you get a bunch of valuable information. Especially since when you add one of those physical products to your site, you will be making 3-10 times more money from your website than you are making with adsense.

Don’t even get me started on selling your site!

If your site is making $100 per month from adsense, your site is worth about $1,500.

If your site is making $500 per month from physical products, your site is worth about $12,000.

Is it worth the $67 investment in the wholesale membership thing? Yup…

A few other cool things about that wholesale directory is you can find stuff to sell on ebay, so if you don’t want to manage a website, you can sell on ebay instead. I don’t recommend selling on ebay because you get VERY LOW profit margins. I love to buy on ebay, but selling is a joke.

Or, you can just buy stuff for yourself at wholesale prices as well. Why pay $289 for a pair of Gucci sunglasses when you can buy them wholesale for $141.85? That alone would cover the cost of the membership!

So, there’s my answer Steve (if you are reading this).

I’ve just given you the motherload of ideas for WTF You Should Sell

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Article Marketing 101

The concept of article marketing has been around for awhile and there’s a good reason for that. I’ve never found it to be the best method around but it will give you some decent backlinks and possibly a bit of exposure for a very small investment. The real beauty comes in the simplicity of it. You just have to write an article about your niche and click a few buttons.

There is one tip I have for you. I really wouldn’t bother hiring an article submitter to send it off to a bunch of directories. The duplicate content penalty removes a lot of the link juice and at the end of the day you’re not much better off than if you had just done the directory submission. The only way it would be worth it is if you use a service like Isnare to get thousands of submissions for $2. It’s still basically directory submission but at least it’s cheap.

EzineArticles –

This is just one of many sites in the genre of top article directories. Google doesn’t tend to penalize their articles, it’s not too rare for them to rank favorably in a search, and they’ll usually hold a decent page rank. This makes for a decent long-term linkback with a good chance of relevant traffic.

How exactly do you use it? Well like I said its pretty simple overall. You just have to write an article in your niche. They usually just need to be about 450 words long. Sign up for an account with them and you’ll get 10 free article submissions. The form is pretty standard for the industry. You’ll pick the appropriate category, write a little summary, and then add the appropriate link to your resource box. You cannot use a direct affiliate link in the box. It needs to be a link to a personal website or blog. It’s okay if that page is full of affiliate links as long as you keep the actual box clean. They’ll “review” your first ten submissions and decide whether you’ll get pushed up to a platinum rank. The truth is that any readable article will get through, so don’t sweat it too much. Your articles will be reviewed and accepted within a few days. That’s it.

Associated Content –

This is another good choice for article submissions. My tip is to write one article for EzineArticles and then take five minutes and quickly rewrite the article enough to pass copyscape. Then you can submit this one to Associated Content. If you want you can repeat for the process for submission to a few other top directories, but let’s get these two under our belt first. It works in a similar fashion to EzineArticles. You sign up for an account and then submit your pieces. Submission occurs through a four page form, but you can skip most of the parts about adding pictures and citing sources.

The important part here is to keep the entire article clean. They will not accept blatant advertising and they will ban accounts if you put affiliate links in the article. You need to follow the rules and link to your own site via the related links section. The really great part about their system is that they will pay you for the articles. You can usually get about $3 for a standard 500 word SEO article. If they don’t want to buy it you can submit it for free and still earn a few cents for the pageviews. It may not be a king’s ransom but I consider it incredibly cost effective advertising.

One special note is that Google seems to really like AC articles for specific topics. I once wrote a test article in a few minutes explaining why I liked Trident Splash gum. I stumbled it and dugg it and then left it alone. I’ve received about 950 pageviews over the last few months and it ranks in the top ten for Trident Splash. If you know what you’re doing you can get some great links while making money.

This is really basic information to get you started with article marketing. Learn the basics first with these websites and you’ll be on your way to capturing a nice chunk of your market.

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5 Reasons to Twitter

I’ve written about Twitter in this space before but the more time I spend on the site (I’ve been “tweeting” for about 4 months now) the more uses I’m finding for it. And, while the site has recently been less than reliable in terms of uptime and all its features, I would still highly recommend joining. Here are my top 5 Reasons to Twitter…

Traffic -

Several big name bloggers (Darren Rowse and Brian Clark to name a couple) have mentioned that they receive a significant amount of traffic to their sites from Twitter. That’s all well and good but they’ve got thousands of people following them on the site so naturally, they’re going to see some traffic come there way. But believe it or not, you don’t have to have thousands of followers to receive traffic from Twitter.

There are roughly 240 people following me (my profile can be found here, feel free to connect with me there) and I recently received about 40 visitors to one of my sites from a single tweet(post). If you tweet something useful, there’s also the chance that someone following you will re-tweet it, thus exposing your link to even more followers. The bottom line is that you don’t have to be an A-list tweeter to get a bit of traffic from your efforts on Twitter.

Networking -

Again, I’ve already covered this in a previous post but I’m constantly amazed at how much more open and accessible people are on Twitter. As our inboxes become more and more crowded, social media sites are becoming the easiest way to contact someone and Twitter is no exception. Simply send the person you’d like to connect with an @ message (for example, @Skitzzo would be automatically seen by me) and more often than not, they’ll respond. I’ve exchanged tweets with Shoemoney, Darren, Brian Clark, Andy Beal, Andy Beard, Jeff Walker and Ed Dale. Now I’m sure not all of these guys will remember me but over the course of a few discussions there’s a good chance that my name and avatar will become familiar and just like that, I’ll have a point of reference with several A-List bloggers and marketers. And actually, that brings me to my next reason…

Branding/Reputation Management -

Whether you want to be active on Twitter or not, you definitely should register your name or online handle. Why? Because chances are it will rank in the search engines for that term. For example, a search for Skitzzo in Google puts Twitter 3rd on the list of sites in the results. If you’ve ever heard about Reputation Management, that fact alone will make you go register. I mean wouldn’t you want to be in control of all the sites that come up in a search for your name?

Also, as I mentioned in the previous point, the more you Tweet, the more times people will be exposed to your name and your avatar. If both of those aspects center around your brand, you’ll be increasing your brand awareness every time you post. And, since Twitter is largely used by bloggers and other influencers, that’s a great group to have brand awareness with.

Post Ideas -

Another great use I’ve found for Twitter is generating post topics for me. I follow nearly 100 people and almost every day one of them will say something that inspires me. Much like the RSS feeds you follow, these tweeters will be tweeting information or links that will probably line up with your area of interests. If you have an opinion on the topic, you have the makings of a blog post.

Also, several news outlets have a presence on the site and by following those profiles you can keep track of breaking news and maybe be the first to cover it in your niche. If you still need more ideas, simply ask a question or take a brief survey. Pull together the tweeted responses and compile that information into a post. The possibilities go on and on but the bottom line is Twitter is a great source of ideas for posts.

Social Media -

And last but certainly not least, Twitter is VERY useful for social media purposes. If you’ve tried to get your site to the front page of social media sites chances are you’ve hit up a few of your friends to try and drum up support for your story. Maybe you’ve even IM’ed a few people and had to worry about bothering them or keeping track of who you’ve already asked etc. Since Twitter is a social media site as well, many of the users are naturally users of other social sites. Quite often you’ll see people posting about Digg or Reddit stories. While I wouldn’t suggest just spamming your links over and over again, tweeting can definitely help you garner a few extra votes for your stories.

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