True Results To Replace Your Job

Generating Traffic To Your Website – So Many Advice? Which One Do You Follow?

Generating traffic to your website – It’s pretty obvious why you would want to drive visitors to your site. If your site does not have any visitors, then nobody is going to know your existence or the existence of your products and services.

Sure you can have the best product out there, but it’d be useless.

It’s just like a restaurant that serves excellent food but nobody knows about the restaurant in the first place. No one is going to dine in there.

When it comes to generating traffic to your website, there are many ways to do that. One of the BIGGEST mistakes read more…

Internet Business School Tip: BORING Is Better!

A lot of beginner and intermediate marketers make the HUGE mistake of trying to create NEW business ideas or concepts to work from because they think that by creating NEW things, they will attain ADDITIONAL revenue. It’s like “multiple streams of income”, so they say.

(my Internet business school tip though, as you’ll see below, is the TOTAL OPPOSITE…)

For instance, it’s very common to see people read more…

How To Improve Time Management – The 3 Golden Principles

I’m sure almost everyone will agree with me when I say there is always not enough time to do what we want to do. We all want to have more time. 24 hours is simply not enough.

Since we can’t fit more than 24 hours in a day, what can we do about it?

The solution is to learn how to improve time management.

Below I’d like to share with you 3 GOLDEN principles that are BOUND to help you manage your time A LOT better so that you can finish what you want to do in MUCH LESS time than what it would take you if you weren’t applying these principles.

Last month I’ve just finished reading the famous book “The 4-Hour Work Week” (I know I know! I should’ve read that ages ago…)

Like many people, I’m very impressed by the book and the concepts and ideas taught within. So I decided to immediately implement a few of the strategies in my business as they really made sense to me.

After all, there is no point in spending your precious time reading a book when you don’t actually implement what it taught but only saying to yourself “ohhh… so this is how it’s done. I see…”

There are 3 key concepts from the book that I’ve implemented:

1. The 80/20 Rule

2. Parkinson’s Law

3. The Email Rule

I’m actually already aware of some of the principles above even before reading the 4-Hour Work Week, however like I’ve said above, simply knowing and not implementing will not help your business at all. As the saying goes “to know and not yet to do is not yet to know”.

1. The 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle)

This rule states that 20% of our actions will determine 80% of our results. I’m sure that you’ve heard it umpteen times and have long known about it.

But my question is: Have you implemented it?

I’ve spent some time thinking hard what are the VERY FEW UTMOST IMPORTANT activities (the 20%) in my business that I know if I did will directly result in 80% of the revenue.

(… well it may not necessarily be 80% – but you get the idea)

The 80/20 rule not only applies to the business activities or priorities you have in your business. When it comes to customers, this principle holds true as well.

You should FOCUS servicing the 20% of your customers that bring in 80% of the revenue.

What about the remaining 80% of customers? Well you can still do business with them, however don’t spend too much effort and time as they only contribute to only a small fraction of your revenue.

Let me ask you a question: which would you rather be doing business with? 5 customers that contribute to your organization’s 80% or 100 customers that only contributes to the 20%?

I’d take the former any day.

Speaking of customers, there are also customers that are worth FIRING. Usually they belong to the 80% that contributes only the 20%. These people spend very little money on our business yet they demand and complain A LOT. They EXPECT to be treated like kings.

I say FIRE them! I’ve done the same in my business and you should too. I can guarantee that you’ll free up a lot of time and headaches and your business will soar to new heights now that you can concentrate on servicing the20% of your customers BETTER.

I have now identified the 20% that I should focus most of my time and effort on. Let’s wait and see how much things are going to take off in my business.

I also talk about the Pareto Principle in an earlier post: 5 Reasons Why Most People Fail To Earn Money Online

2. Parkinson’s Law

Taken from Wikipedia, Parkinson’s Law means:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

In simpler words, the more time you allocate to getting a specific task done, the more “perceived” work you have to do.

I say “perceived” because often the case, you can complete the same quality (sometimes even better) work within a shorter period of time, when the time allocated to getting the task done shrinks.

Why does this happen?

One answer: Because of GREATER FOCUS.

Think about it: when you’re assigned to complete a project and you’re given 3 months to do it, how much time would you take to complete it?

Answer: 3 months, right until the last minute.

If I point a gun at your head and demanded that you complete the same task in 1 month, do you think you can do it?

Absolutely! And the final output would be of equal or higher quality, all because of GREATER FOCUS.

Use Parkinson’s Law in your business to shorten work time to getting only the VERY IMPORTANT things done.

3. The Email Rule

Do you check email first thing in the morning before doing anything else? Or do you check your email every 5 minutes?

For most people, the answer is Yes.

If so, you must STOP this bad habit now as this is ruining your business!

Checking your email first thing in the morning before doing anything else is not effective. Instead of completing the most important tasks for that day first, you aimlessly wander around reading emails after emails.

Most of them are useless and time-wasters anyway. Countless news gossips and forwarded humor messages that do not add any value to your business but only drain your time and energy away.

By the time you’re done checking your email and forwarding useless messages, you’ve wasted precious time already.

This becomes worse when you turn on automatic send/receive within your Outlook. Every 5 minutes you’re interrupted by new email messages (that most likely are personal time fillers instead of work-related).

You should never begin the day by checking your email first. Instead you ought to get the most important things done first (the 20%).

How do you know which are the 20% that need to be completed first?

You do that by having a pre-written task list the night before of what you want to accomplish the next day. Never, ever begin the day without having a list of what you want to accomplish. Always have one made the night before. Doing this will DRAMATICALLY improve your productivity.

Tim (the author of The 4-Hour Work Week) recommends checking your email at most twice daily, which is what I’m currently doing. Seemingly “urgent” matters are seldom urgent, and people are poor judgments of that.

Conclusion

There are a lot more strategies and tactics covered in the book, you can get yourself a copy of the book at Amazon or your local bookstore.

I highly recommend you read it as I believe you’ll benefit a lot from it, just as I’ve benefited. Remember though, simply reading and knowing won’t do you any good if you don’t put it into practice.

To achieve maximum productivity in your business, use the 80/20 rule in conjunction with Parkinson’s Law:

1. Identify the 20% tasks that lead to 80% revenue (80/20 rule)

2. Assign very short datelines to get the 20% tasks done (Parkinson’s Law)

What are your thoughts about how to improve time management? Please post them in a comment below…

The Power Of Focus And How It Can Make Or Break You

The power of focus….

Read this and see if this you…

You get easily excited when first starting out a new project. But a few weeks later when you don’t see the results you expect, you abandon the project and go on to find “the next big thing”, start a new project, and the all-too familiar abandoning situation repeats itself AGAIN.

If this is you, then I’m sorry to be blunt but this is absolute craziness.

I mean, ask yourself this question “When was the last time you really, truly put conscientious effort into your project for it to be able to yield at least some decent results before you deem your project ‘a failure’?”

You need to be patient when it comes to seeing results. Hey, we’re talking about building a real Internet business here.

Any kind of business, both online or offline, needs time and commitment before you can see any real results.

The key thing is to focus on what you’re doing and not move to another new project before you at least give your current project a fair try.

And by a “fair try” I mean putting consistent hard work every day and giving it some time to yield results. Not simply haphazardly putting in some poor effort and then expecting to be making millions instantly!

When I first got started in IM back in June 2006, I was completely overwhelmed with the amount of information out there about earning money online. Today I would receive information about “the best way to make money online via method X by guru Y”, and the next day I’d receive “the best way to make money online via method A by guru B”, and so on…

It is not uncommon to see conflicting advice – Guru Y says do this; Guru B says do that, etc.

And the BIGGEST LIE you and I have been told is the notorious “Make money online easily and instantly just with a few simple mouse clicks”.

So we can’t really be blamed can we? I mean, here we are being told that making money online was so easy that our grandmas can do it (sounds familiar eh), and after we’ve tried for a few days (or at most weeks) and when we don’t see any results we give up and move on to “the next big thing”.

If you’re one of these people, please wake up and come to your senses now like I did a few years ago  (you can thank me later..)

If I were to offer you only one solid piece of advice, then that advice would be to focus on what you’re doing and STOP jumping from one business opportunity to the next.

FOCUS on 1 (one) area that you’re good at, work like mad, track and evaluate your performance, and improve it.

Success in your Internet (or offline) business is about making incremental improvements on an ongoing basis. It is not about finding that “magic button” where you can simply press and money will spit out automatically!

It doesn’t work that way and it never will.

I’m not saying that you can’t enter more than one niche or market.

You can.

But before you do that, make sure that you already have an established base for your current market first before moving on to a completely different new market. Make sure that you have spent enough time and effort optimizing your current business first for maximum returns before trying to enter a new market.

You’ve so often heard of the term “rinse and repeat”. This is where “rinse and repeat” will be useful for you – once you’ve conquered your current market and are ready to enter a different new market.

FOCUS IS KEY to your success!

To summarize, today’s actionable tips for you are:

1. Building a successful Internet business requires consistent hard work, dedication, and time before you can see any real results.

2. STOP jumping from one business opportunity to another. Use the power of FOCUS to concentrate on 1 area that you’re good at, work like mad, track and evaluate your performance, and improve it.

3. Take action now!

Now that you’ve understood the power of FOCUS, the next step is to learn on a STEP-BY-STEP format how to REPLACE YOUR JOB on the Internet. You’ll also receive $488 of real value Internet marketing gifts!

6 Ways To Stay Focused On Your Goals

Almost every Internet Marketer or anyone that I meet admits that they have difficulties staying focused on their goals.

Well, even though this is the case, they are still a lot better than those people who do not have any goals at all.

Most of the time, they find it difficult to stay focused on their goals because there are a lot of distractions out there.

You know, those get-rich-quick-schemes that spread like viruses all over the Internet, and those emails about receiving a humongous amount of inheritance from some middle east countries.

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of the saying “if it sounds to good to be true, it usually is”

In this article, I’d like to show you 6 ways on how you can focus on your goals:

1. Chop your big goal into smaller goals

Do you know how to eat an elephant?

Before you exclaim “No way! That’s impossible!”, what if I say that to eat an elephant, you simply cut it into small pieces and put those pieces into your mouth?

If your goal is too big, it is very hard for you to stay focus.

Let’s say that your current goal is to achieve $10,000 nett profit/month from your Internet business. Maybe $10,000 nett profit/month may sound out of reach for you, and you feel a little discouraged by that huge figure.

Now what you can do is chop or cut your $10,000/month goal into smaller, more achievable goals such as $1,000/month for the next 3 months, and $3,000/month for the next 6 months, then $5,000/month for the next 12 months, and $10,000/month for the next 18 months.

Chopping your big goal into smaller, more “human-like” goals will motivate you to work harder on achieving them because they are more achievable and your confidence will definitely grow as well.

2. Focus only on the goal that you want to achieve

A lot of folks, myself included, tend to lose focus when they are working on their businesses.

It does not apply only to Internet Marketing. I’m talking about all kinds of businesses, whether online or offline. Everyone must have lost their focus at some point.

For example, let’s say that your goal is to achieve $3,000/month from affiliate marketing.

This means that the only activities that you ought to be doing are those that are geared towards how to make money from affiliate marketing. Such activities may include driving traffic to your sites, or how to build and maintain good relationships with your customers.

However you and I both know this is not always the case. Sometimes Often, you might wander off browsing and participating in forum discussions about HYIP or Forex, which have nothing to do with your goal!

My advice is to only do those things that have a direct impact in helping you achieve your goal. As for the rest, you can forget about them, at least for the time being.

3. Set a specific dateline for you goal

Simply knowing your goal is not enough, you need to set a specific dateline as to WHEN you want to achieve it.

Typically when we are asked when we are going to achieve our goals, our answers revolve around “as soon as possible”, “the sooner the better”, “next year”, or “2 years from now”, etc.

Do not use these words because they are very vague!

What does “as soon as possible” or “the sooner the better” mean? Tomorrow? Next week?

What does “next year” or “2 years from now” mean? January? December?

When you set a dateline, be specific. For example, setting a dateline like “5 Septermber 2009″ works great because it is specific.

You see, our brain works a lot better if your goal and the dateline for your goal is specific.

4. Remind yourself on a consistent basis what your goal is

Often, we set our goals today only to forget about them in the next few days or weeks.

This is why you must remind yourself on a consistent basis what your goal is.

Write your goal clearly with a big font size on your whiteboard so that you can see it every day.

If you don’t have a whiteboard, you can write your goal on your computer wallpaper or cell phone wallpaper, or just anywhere you like. The point is to make sure you can easily see it every day, so that you always aware of what your goal is and not lose focus along the way.

5. Inspire and motivate yourself

One of the best ways to inspire and motivate yourself is to find out the people in your niche who have already succeeded, and watch, listen, and feel their success.

How much money do they earn every month? What have they done with these money that they have earned? What have they done for themselves or for their families? What kind of lifestyles do they now currently enjoy?

When you are feeling down or frustrated and everything seems to not go your way, stop your work for a moment and imagine yourself having achieved success like these people. Imagine the money that you would have had, and the lifestyle that this kind of money would bring.

By doing this, you will recharge your “down” state so that you become inspired and motivated to work towards your goal once again.

6. Eliminate all distractions while you are focusing on your work

If you really want to focus on your work so that you can achieve your goal, then you should eliminate all distractions.

What I mean by this is that you turn off your Yahoo Messenger, Skype, MSN (unless you use them strictly for work purposes), Facebook, MySpace, your favorite non-work-related forum, Outlook, your cell phone, and of course your TV.

Why?

Because they are total distractions in getting your work done for the day.

I’m not saying that you can’t casually chat with your friends or check your personal email or Facebook account, it’s just that you should set aside a specific time for these non-productive activities, so that they will not distract you when you are working.

By doing this, you are bound to increase your productivity!

So there you have it, the 6 ways to stay focused on your goals.

Do let me know in a comment below what your thoughts are, or if you have anything to add that I might have missed, I would be happy to hear them