“Success is the sum of small efforts,
repeated day in and day out…”

- Robert J. Collier

I’ve spoken to a lot of marketers over the years.

Some hugely successful — 6 figures a month.

Some not so much — $0 in ten years. (Seriously.)

If there is one thing all the successful marketers have in
common, that the unsuccessful ones do not, it’s this…

They produce. They focus. They get things done.

And they do it consistently.

Do this for me quickly:

Take out a pen and paper.

Write down all the offers you have in the marketplace — products
for sale, websites promoting affiliate products, squeeze pages
building your opt-in list. Anything “out there” that either makes
you money directly, or builds your list.

Write down all the traffic sources you’re using — PPC, articles,
banner ads, press releases, text links, ezine ads, viral reports,
forum signatures, affiliates, joint ventures. Anything “out
there” actively driving traffic to your offers.

Now… what have you done this month, this week, today, to…
produce offers, get traffic, get affiliates, secure joint venture
partners, and improve your conversions?

How did you go?

The sad truth is most people don’t have a single offer out there.

They’re not actively driving traffic in any consistent manner.

They’re not taking action every single day to improve their business.

They’re not in the game.

Are you?

THE REAL (BORING) SECRET TO SUCCESS

Your ability to focus on a single task, to produce products,
offers, marketing and traffic, to complete projects that grow
your business… and to do it on a consistent basis.

Get in the game and start playing!

Sounds simple enough but less than 5% of people actually do it.

However, make no mistake — it is a skill, it can be learned,
and you’ll actually find it easy if you have a SYSTEM.

No matter how unfocused and unproductive you are now, you’ll be
shocked at how much you can achieve when you’ve got a system
with simple action steps you can follow.

This week I’m going to outline the action steps you need to take
to setup systems for your Internet marketing business.

There is a reason I’m doing this in the very first issue of
Four Hour Entrepreneur — because it’s the single most important
thing you can do to ensure your success!

Nothing is more important than knowing what you’re going to do,
when you’re going to do it, and how it’s going to get done.

Here are your action steps:

1. SET YOUR OUTCOME

What do you want to do?

This should be blindingly obvious but you’d be surprised how
many people have no idea what they actually want. How can you
ever hope to hit a target if you don’t know what you’re aiming
for?

What niche are you going into? How much money do you want to
make? How long do you want to work each day? What skills do
you need to learn? What tasks are you going to do, and which
will you outsource?

Write this stuff down! Make a commitment and stick to it.

Use the blueprint I show you in The Lost Blueprint to see how
to structure everything and the order in which you should
develop each part of your business.

Remember: Step 1 in the blueprint is to develop a low-risk offer
and start driving traffic to it. That’s it!

2. SCHEDULE YOUR WEEKLY TASKS

What do you need to do?

Once you’ve decided what you want to do, now you’ve got to break
the big goal down into manageable chunks and schedule time each
week to work on them.

For example, my weekly tasks include things such as writing copy,
writing emails, developing info products, testing offers,
generating traffic, networking, recruiting affiliates, and
strategic planning.

You can imagine how easy it is to let any one of these activities
slide for days or even weeks if you don’t have a schedule
reminding you exactly what needs to be done when.

Your task list may be longer or shorter, but the important thing
is each day you are making small efforts on key tasks. And each
week you are making progress towards your desired outcome.

3. SYSTEMIZE YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES

Knowing exactly what you need to do each day certainly helps
productivity, and many people find just having a daily task
list keeps them “honest” and they get a lot more done each day.

However, if you want to make real productivity breakthroughs you
not only need to know what to do, you need to know HOW to do it.

This is where processes and procedures come into play.

By breaking your tasks down into simple action steps — or
procedures — you simplify their execution, ensure you get
consistent results, and greatly simplify outsourcing.

Having a task laid out in step-by-step format also lets you
quickly spot inefficiencies and bottlenecks so you can improve
the steps and get things done faster or easier in the future.

I’ve got mind maps as well as simple text files (depending on
the complexity of the task) where I outline processes for
everything from writing a salesletter, to creating a report,
setting up an Adwords campaign, writing an email…

… anything I do regularly in my business.

Next time you sit down to do something in your business, ask
yourself if you’ll ever have to do this again. If so, take a
few minutes to write down the steps you take as you’re doing
them.

The time and frustration it saves you in the future will
dramatically improve your efficiency and bottom line results.

4. SUCCESS MAXIMIZERS

A few last minute tips to help you get more done faster:

Separate learning time and action time — set a day or time aside
for learning and figure out what you need to know to complete
your tasks BEFORE it’s action time. Once you’re working you
just want to crank through tasks and not have to lookup “how to”
information. (This is one of the key drivers of impulse buying,
so you’ll save yourself a few bucks as well.)

Trust, but verify — in your business you are the boss and no
one else will tell you what you should be doing. That means
you’ve got to manage yourself. In the corporate world we used
the mantra, “trust, but verify”, which basically means you
leave people up to their own devices but monitor that they’re
doing what they are supposed to.

I use rescuetime.com to verify I’m hitting my productivity
targets and not slacking off too much. You can “tag” websites
and applications to categorize them, and mark them from -2 to
+2 in terms of productivity. So forums might be tagged as -1,
while the text editor you write copy in is +2. It’s not a
perfect system but it gives you a good idea of what you’re up to
and how productive you are.

I also use a Firefox plugin, Leechblock, which stops me from
being able to visit certain websites at certain times of the day.
You can block out forums, email, blogs and news sites etc during
your peak productivity periods to ensure you stay focused.

Finally, there are a few well-known marketers whose online
personas are basically “lazy surfer dudes who slack off, do
no work, and money just falls from the sky”. You know who I’m
talking about.

Be aware these are PERSONAS — they’re designed to attract
and appeal to people who want to make money online, because hey,
we all want to slack off and make money, right?

Make no mistake, these guys work their tails off. If you pay
attention you’ll notice they’ve even let the cat out of the bag
a few times and admit to how much work they do, but it’s
always overshadowed by their “lazy” personas.

Don’t be sucked in by the next “get rich quick” thing just
because it looks easy, at the end of the day there is ALWAYS
work involved.

THE MOST IMPORTANT FHE ISSUE EVER

I’m serious about how important systems, processes and procedures
are to your business — there’s a reason multi-billion dollar
companies like McDonalds and top Internet marketers like
Terry Dean, swear by them… they work like gangbusters!

Take 15 minutes right now to complete each of the action steps
in this article and I guarantee, if you follow the systems you
create — and improve them as you go — you’ll become more
productive and get more done in 4 hours than most people do in
a week.

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Sometimes setting goals alone is not the only problem that you must face. Sometimes, choosing the right goals to begin with is harder.

Basically, you can choose to work any goal that you feel is necessary for your health, stability and happiness.

Goal setting is nothing more than a formal process for personal planning. By setting goals on a routine basis you decide what you want to achieve, and then move in a step-by-step manner towards the achievement of these goals.

The process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing exactly what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to do it. You also know what nothing more than a distraction is.

Goal setting is a standard technique used by professional athletes, successful business people and high achievers in all fields. It gives you long term vision and provides you with short term motivation.

It helps to focus your attention and knowledge which helps you to organize your resources. By setting sharp and clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless effort.

By setting goals, you will also raise your self confidence, as you recognize your and ability to meet the goals that you have set. The process of achieving goals and seeing this achievement gives you confidence that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals later on.

Goals are set on a number of different levels. In the first place, you decide what you want to do with your life and what large scale goals you want to achieve.

Second, you break these down into the smaller aims that you must hit so that you reach your overall lifetime goals.

Finally, once you have your plan, you start working towards achieving it.

The action machine is a software that can help you achieve your goals day after day.

To learn more Click here

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Discover The Cure to Time Wasting

Discover The Cure to Time Wasting

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We have not only invented time and its various measurements (seconds/milliseconds, days, centuries, millenniums); but we’re also able to give meaning in the usage of time when an experience was felt or when a task was done.

The highly organized structure of human society gives us the ability to limit our physical and mental space. Our environment is composed of objects and things that we have invented, and associated with these are the labels and concepts that define their existence. For example, medicines have expiration dates, which give us the time period to use them within their period of potency. We have birthdays, wedding dates, anniversaries, and other special dates to recognize as important events, as they signal significant changes or developments in our lives.

We have also created the working periods in which human efficiency and environmental conditions are considered to maintain balance. Just imagine the importance of rest and sleep and the rhythm/cycle that is followed in the creation of our work, play, and learning schedules. Thus, we are able to measure and define things according to their proper space in what we measure as time.

However, things are not always perfect, or should we say that time may not be perfect, all the time. There are stumbling blocks along the path towards success. One of these is the lack of time to reach your aims. The improper use of time, the wrong utilization of resources, or the undertaking of unnecessary tasks within a given period might cause these delays or time wastage.

Most people also commit mistakes because they’re not able to accurately perceive the proper time to do a given work, or because of unforeseen circumstances and delays. In these cases, we must consider the best ways to utilize our time. We must expect the limits of time in defining our tasks and goals.

Time Management is one human organizational aspect that we should give utmost consideration to. This form of management (either as part of self-improvement or within the level of professional work) is the process of perceiving the measured changes/developments and closely monitoring how we utilize our skills and labor capacity within a limited period. By analyzing our “work styles,” along with the development of other processes (machine works, transportation, communication), we can lay down basic foundation in which we can assess our development as individuals.

Part of this development is our ability to make plans and revise/improve our working conditions. The fluidity of time – its restriction or leeway – should be considered in making plans, in organizing, and in bringing out the efficiency of each individual to create a smooth work flow.

However, Time Management is also a part of an individual learning experience in getting along with other people and with changes in the environment. Practically speaking, time is constant: 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week (24/7). However, the usage of time differs among each individual. Some might give time the capacity to control their lives, and others may find themselves a slave of time. Some might have no time at all to relax and create a stress-free lifestyle. But the bottom-line is not to make time an enemy. One must have time to think of things in order, to plan ways to minimize waste of time, energy, and valuable resources.

Effective time management involves patience and practical thinking. Time and the natural changes in the environment may be modified but in the end, we should follow the natural order of things. Remember that “Haste makes waste.” Yet you must also think about the saying “There’s no day but today.”  On the other hand, we can use tools and ideas that could improve our efficiency in using time. There are things, like energy (fuel), that are not renewable; and there are moments that are irreplaceable. Actually, we can say that a thing done or a past experience cannot be recreated.

However, we can expect these changes and prepare ourselves for better or worse scenarios. We cannot control time but we can make adjustments based on a given moment. Learning or studying something to achieve mastery is one good example where we can minimize errors or develop ourselves amidst the ever-changing times. During this period of learning, we must maximize the given resources (including time) to fully develop a skill or to acquire knowledge so that by the time we need such skill, we won’t be wasting hours just by learning the necessary human adaptation to solve a problem.

One who is able to prepare for a number of possibilities upon entering a situation may have more time to think of the moves and decision to take to minimize the possibilities of errors. Here are the necessary pre-requisites to help you manage your time effectively:

1. Think of goals and aims as necessary achievements. In achieving your desired goals, you should start with a positive outlook. You must be excited with the challenges and tasks that you have to do to give you the right start or motivation. However, you should also see the path towards your goals in concrete terms.

These achievements or aims can be reached by becoming realistic and by knowing your directions. Think of the scenarios of success but you should also recognize the fact that these roads have to be traversed in a given time. This way, you are not only looking at the possibility of success, but you are also giving yourself the right motivation and the proper time to prepare for a fresh start and achieve your goals at the soonest possible time.

2. Think of the time frame in achieving goals and aims. You are to do a task at a particular time. As you begin planning your strategies, you must also look forward and recognize your time frames in doing such tasks.

Time frames are the periods you are giving yourself to finish a task. These are just estimates or approximations since you are not the sole factor that will contribute in finishing the given task. Be wary of the processes in your environment; for example, if you are to write a book or an article, consider the time you are giving yourself for this activity.

However, since you are also doing other things, you cannot devote your entire time in doing the said endeavor. Finally, think of the flow of things or the movement of time in your daily life as you move forward in achieving your desired goals. Think of your other activities that might affect the time factor in finishing given tasks.

You might be spending too much time on a very idle activity (like too many late night parties or soirées or a whole day in front of your computer playing online games) that will give you less time to go on with your plan towards self-fulfillment and success.

3. Be realistic and expect changes. Time Management involves flexibility and open-mindedness. Do not expect that you can finish a task in what you’ve considered as your time frame unless everything is laid down perfectly. You should allot some allowance in your time frame, probably for the sake of the unforeseen or unexpected circumstances.

Remember that contradicting factors bring development so don’t be upset with these changes since everything is undergoing a sort of a synthesis. For example, you already made your business plan and a lot of careful considerations have been completed, including the period in which you expect your business to give you financial and personal satisfaction.

However, during the course of execution or theory application, there are other factors or changes, which you have not included in your feasibility study. In this case, time should not be wasted in complaining about things or about people surrounding your path. Instead of becoming immobile or paralyzed with the situation, cope up and be flexible by accepting such changes.

Level the playing field with innovative strategies based on the situation and knowledge you will acquire from your experience in doing the task. Maximize your time by examining your errors and by moving on with solutions that will sustain whatever efforts you have given to traverse difficult situations and challenges.

4. Know your work style. You are a time clock too. You work with your habits, your cycles, and bodily rhythms. You sleep, eat, exercise, read a book, or cook with either efficiency or a sloppy lifestyle. Of course you wouldn’t want to be caught like a snail and be crushed with pressures because of limited time, so it would be better if you will give yourself some time to think about yourself.

Know how fast you can work on things. And if it’s not as good as others, try to make some improvements. This may be difficult since habits and lifestyles have become personal markers themselves that give you the idea of your daily routines or tasks.

Taking three meals a day will remind you of other things you must do after eating like brushing your teeth or going to the toilet or having a 15-minute nap. Your sleeping habits and work efficiency are based on what you’ve grown-up with as an individual – you may either stay late at night or sleep early, as what you’ve been taught or what your household has been doing since you’re a child.

Finally, examine yourself and know how fast you can work on things, like typing or encoding words in a computer, filing office data, writing a term paper, or even reading a book. You don’t need to know the exact time but at least, you will have an approximate measurement of how long you can finish such task.

5. Know your environment or workplace. Your house has a time of its own, your office has schedules, and your neighborhood has activities to offer. You are surrounded by these time schedules. It would be better if you would be conscious of the time flow in your surroundings. The daily tasks in your house are definitely main factors in determining your personal time. More so, your working hours are defined by the nature of your work and your workplace.

The activities by the people around you may affect your strategies and daily endeavors. Finally, you are not alone in your workplace and other people are also wary of their time and schedules. All of these would affect your time frames and you must be in-synched with all of these to manage your limited time hassle-free.

6. Make Plans. Planning, like in any other preparations, is a way of saving time for errors. Mistakes usually happen because of unexpected and unforeseen factors such as wrong estimates of resources or the entry of new variables in solving a problem. However, with the proper plan and preparation, these unforeseen circumstances can be expected as well as minimized. In such way, you may still finish the task in a given time.

By considering the above-mentioned factors, you are not only giving yourself a period to reflect on how time flows in your life. You are also recognizing the factor that affects time and its fluidity. You will not be drowned because of the seemingly uncontrollable flow but you can now swim with the waves that time brings about.

Discover the cure to time wasting!

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Two weeks ago I was thinking about the time I waste during my day, and I realized that 24 hours a day is a very small time frame to do everything you need for your business.

What I urgently needed was a solid solution that will help me manage my day better. Something that would help me achieve my daily goals, and enable me to do much more in much less time.

I checked a couple of forum threads out there, and read some reviews. I made a list of tools I found, and I checked them all.

After my research done I came up with one that looked good, and decided I am going to buy it.

Therefore, I bought it, and well..

I am so happy that I did it, it made my days full of productive activities and Shortened my time spending during my working hours.

It’s called:

The Action Machine

and well… it does what it supposed to do, it helps in taking action.

This software allows you to make very specific tasks and to set a time for accomplishing each of them. you’ll be alerted by the program when the time is up for completing any task you are working on.

It organizes every task in the order that they are supposed to be completed, allowing you to have a visual overview and have a better feeling of control over your time.

If you are anything like me, and have trouble focusing…. you should discover the cure to time wasting.

Improve your ability to take action:
The Action Machine
I hope it will help you as much it helped me.

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