Archive for December, 2008

I have worked from home for a number of years now. The internet being my income vehicle on this wild ride into the 21st century and the days have usually began whenever I would awake.

While this seems attractive for some folks there are a lot of things you miss waking at sporadic times throughout the day, especially if you awake painfully early enough to watch the magnificent ascent of the sun from the horizon.

Have you ever noticed that the most successful people in the world tend to wake up very early? This is a common denominator for many brilliant people across the globe and very different cultures.

I have noticed the few times I managed to get up prior to the sun I always seem more energetic throughout the day and even seem to function better mentally and physically.

Now logically you may think that the best way to sleep is go to bed when your tired and wake up whenever you awake. I’ve followed this idea for many years and it just doesn’t compare.

Try this for yourself, it’s not nearly as intimidating to just set out to get up very early one day and notice how you feel throughout the day and how you react to stress. I have noticed that I have a certain extra energy that I just can’t explain for the entire day and this is something I have come to crave.

Now I have been playing with this for a number of months and have noticed that if I goto sleep at the same time every night and get up early it becomes hard to goto sleep. So I just wait till I get sleepy and then get up at 6AM each day.

Now I’m not gonna tell you there aren’t days I really don’t want to stick to my early rising but I have managed to get in the routine of jumping right up with the alarm and it seems to help avoid those sleepy mornings.

If you have trouble sleeping at night try not going to bed yet. Go for a run and then a hot bath. This seems to always rush me off to sleep for the night.

This post is a little off topic from our normal internet marketing help content but us marketers especially need to get plenty of rest to reach our potential!

Give it a try for yourself, I find my creative juices really flow with a cup of coffee before the sun comes up.

Leave a comment below if you enjoyed this post or would like to add something.

Good Luck!

Many online marketers waste much of their time spent online checking their email and chatting with friends on IM or social sites.  Often wondering where all the time went and not really getting anything done.

Please add to the list via the comments section below. We love your input!

We have compiled a little list of 1o things that you should be doing in your online business that will help you get more done, make more money, and improve your business.  This is not a complete list of course just 10 quick things that so many people don’t do that could really have a dramatic effect on your bottom line.

1. Split test your landing pages that bring in the most income weekly.  By doing this you will be constantly improving your conversion rate which will exponentially improve your profits.  The more sales you convert per 100 clicks cranks up your earnings like mad!  If you are not testing please setup a test asap and start improving your earnings.  You can use the free google website optimizer and it won’t cost you a dime.
2. Once you find winning headlines and layouts apply them to your other landing pages as they are built and if feasible apply them to older and smaller income landing pages.  You will eventually find your “groove” and you will be able to crank out higher converting pages easier.
3. Search Yahoo Answers for a question in your market that you can answer and you can also leave a link to your site.  This can be more powerful than you think but don’t spend more than an hour or so a week on it.
4. Go to a live conference that caters to your market.  If you sell gourmet dog food then go to some dog shows or trade shows around dog products.  These events are literally filled with your potential prospects.  Learn to work a room by looking folks right in the eye and smile immediately.  This will subliminally force them to smile and instantly position you as a friendly person and help you gain traction in conversation.
5. Create a facebook page for your target market and fill it with information and insight into your market.  These folks will be eager to learn more from you if your free content is excellent.  They will want to know more and you will then be able to announce special offers, news, and discounts to them.
6. Issue a new press release linking to your site at least every 2 weeks.  This is the simplest way to build quality incoming links and if you get just one reporter to pick up your story this can be the best advertising you could ever imagine.  There are many press release services on line.  In later posts on this blog we will go into detail about our favorite services.
7. Make sure you are building an email list and you must be able to segment your buyers.  Interested people that haven’t bought from you yet are called prospects and users who have purchased are customers.   While both are valuable the customer list is golden.  You need to cultivate these lists and let them get to know you.  This will humanize your web presence and lower peoples objections to buying from you over and over.
8. Make sure you have a web 2.0 style tell a friend.  Services like Social Twist can explode your traffic by harnessing the power of word of mouth advertising.  Social twist lets your visitors log in to their email/blog/web2.0/instant messengers and tell all their friends about your site with just a couple of clicks and almost no work.  This is powerful!
9. Ask your customers for testimonials, audio or video testimonials are golden.  You can use youtube for video testimonials or a service like Audio Generator can make it very easy for customers to call in and leave you a voice testimonial and a picture of them self that you can easily publish to your website.  This will generate more trust from each new visitor and help increase your conversions.
10. Give samples of your products to popular local radio DJ’s and they will gladly mention your url on the air.  If you work this correctly it can really open the doors in some niches.  This technique has earned millions of dollars in free advertising via radio.  Think about how to branch out into other markets besides radio.

Brainstorm a bit with these ideas and come up with some of your own variations.  Try to optimize your time spent working on things that actually improve your business.  There are a bunch more to focus on and we will dig into them on this blog soon.