Sound familiar at all? I think it’s something most people can relate to actually.

Recently however I’ve been forcing myself to be more productive each and every day, so I’ve written up some of the strategies I’ve been using in this blog post.

Make a to-do list the night before

One thing I absolutely hate is turning on my computer in the morning and then deciding there and then what I’m going to do. The problem is you start checking your emails which have come in overnight and looking at your Google Analytics stats – all essential things to do I agree but not very productive in terms of moving your business forward. By writing out my to-do list as the last thing I do each day I can turn on my computer the following morning and immediately get to work.

Don’t try to be a perfectionist

The truth is perfection simply doesn’t exist – and one persons ‘perfect’ is very different from somebody elses. I’m as guilty as hell of tweaking things to the point where I never actually finish them. Don’t get it perfect, get it out there.

Don’t overload yourself with work

One of the biggest reasons why you might not be very productive is that you have too much work to do. If you sit there and you feel like you’ve got a mountain to climb before the end of the day then it’s pretty unmotivational to say the least. Make sure that you allocate yourself a workload each day that is manageable and realistic – How much better would it feel to get to the end of the day and know that you’ve gotten everything done that you wanted to in the morning?

Do the things you hate doing first

It took me quite a while to figure this one out but by getting the tasks you dread done first thing in the morning you are lifting a massive weight off your shoulders and you’ll find it easier to do the rest of your tasks.

Think about what working environment suits you best

I personally like to work with the radio on but I know other people who prefer to work in absolute silence. Try out different working environments and find out which one suits you best.

Have a change of scene

I have a lovely big office at home – but funnily enough I don’t work from it every single day. If you’re ever sitting there and feel like you’re lacking a bit of inspiration it’s amazing what getting up and working from a different room can do. It gives you a whole new take on things and I find that new ideas come to me and I can focus much better.

Realize that you can’t do it all yourself

I don’t like outsourcing because I’m a picky sod and usually end up feeling dissatisfied with the work of others – but I have to force myself to outsource because you need to realize you can’t do everything yourself. If you want to become more productive you need to outsource the things you don’t enjoy, aren’t good at or simply don’t have the time to do so that you can free yourself to do other more productive things.

Give yourself a deadline

I like to give myself a deadline for everything and I tell myself I’ll turn my computer off at a certain time and it MUST be done by then. I got this from my days as an employee. You know the sort of thing – you were working on a report for your boss which you thought was in by the end of the week. Then your boss comes in on Wednesday morning and says there has been a change of plan and he needs the report by the end of today instead. You can bet your bottom dollar you’ll have finished it by Wednesday afternoon but if your boss hadn’t have told you that you would still have been working on it until last thing Friday afternoon.

Do you have any productivity tips of your own? Let me know by leaving a comment now.

So what have I been up to recently?

Well quite a few things actually and I have a number of new sites and projects in the pipeline which I’ll keep you up to speed on.

My latest site however is ready TODAY…

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(Click on the screenshot on the right to check out the site)

I started writing and selling my own PLR because I’ve bought lots of PLR myself over the years and I’ve usually been left disappointed. Lots of the PLR you find online is very poor quality and often contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and even outdated or incorrect information. I knew I could do better and so Direct PLR was born!

Some of you are also members of my FirstPLR.com site and this sits along side it nicely.

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Thanks – and I’ll be back with another blog post very soon.

Daniel

I’ve just returned from a short break to the Central/Welsh borders.

It was mainly a “chill out, away from it all” kind of holiday (vacation) with the family and involved a little walking, a couple of trips around local museums and some wine and good food in the evenings (the most important part of course

The picture on the right is at Ludlow Castle, and the other one is at a Victorian museum – which was VERY interesting.

We didn’t do anything especially exciting…

Yet AMAZING things happened whilst I was away.

I had several business ideas – and a couple of “lightbulb” moments – which I just know are going to make me a lot of money.

Before we went away I had been quite busy and wrapped up in lots of day to day tasks. Basically just ‘running my business.’

I was lacking in ideas and little direction, yet a few days away in the countryside and I could think freely again.

It’s not just holidays away that have this affect on me either. I often get business ideas when I’m lying in bed at night or when I’m taking a bath or a shower in the mornings.

Yet sit me in front of the computer all day and I find I start staring at the screen like a totally lost zombie with no ideas and no perspective.

It’s the same when you’re working full time in a day job. You spend so much of your life just ‘doing your job’ that it leaves little time for thinking of business ideas of your own. You get home at the end of the day and you’re basically just so knackered that the only thing you want to do is curl up in front of the TV and have a beer.

So next time you’re feeling lost or stuck for ideas with your online business – take a break. It’ll do wonders for your business and your bank balance.

By the way I know that this is nothing new. It just one of those things that it does you good to be reminded of every once in a while.

Next weekend I’m off for break with some mates and it’ll be a very different kind of holiday (most likely involving lots of alcohol hehe)

That probably won’t have much of a positive impact on my online business and it will affect my bank balance in a negative way, but there you go

Comments are of course welcome…

———–
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I’ve just spotted what looks like a fantastic new PLR report. It comes with graphics and some pretty cool extras like a 10-part autoresponder series and a ready-made mini site and sales letter.

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A training course which contains information suitable for newbie internet marketers just isn’t going to appeal to a marketer who has 5 years experience.

It’s absolute vital when you market a product (whether it’s your own or one you’re promoting as an affiliate) that you know exactly WHO you target market is.

I was watching a sales video the other day for an internet marketing training course and within the video were statements such as:

This is NOT for people who want a push button solution.
This is NOT for people without a list.
This is NOT for people who aren’t making money online.
This IS for people who are already making a full-time income online and want to learn how grow their business dramatically in the quickest possible time

The sales video was basically actively excluding perhaps 95% of people in the ‘make money online’ niche.

An unwise move to exclude such a large proportion of the market?

Definitely NOT! It was a fantastic sales video because what it in effect did was shout out to the remaining 5% of people “this is the product for YOU! This is the solution that you need!”

Your product or offer needs to be targeted at a very specific group of people.

You need to know who they are in order to be able to market to them effectively – and this is where I find writing a ‘pen portrait’ extremely useful.

A pen portrait is basically a description of the person who will buy your product; the person you are aiming it at.

It might be:

“David Smith. Aged 32. Has been involved with internet marketing for a couple of years. Last year however David quit his job to run his own online business selling ebooks and video information products. His business is currently earning $2,500 a month profit and he is keen to grow his business and increase his profits to $5,000 a month.”

I reckon that was roughly the pen portrait of the person the product I was looking at the other day was aimed at.

Of course your pen portrait might be completely different. Let’s say you’re trying to sell a product about “how to date more women.”

My pen portrait might be:

“Thomas Jefferson. Aged in his early 20s. Thomas has always struggled with his self confidence. He finds it difficult to talk to women in clubs or know how to strike up a conversation with strangers. He is an intelligent person but lacks self confidence. He wants to know how he can approach women and how to make them like him.”

Of course not everyone who wants to buy your product is going to fit your pen portrait exactly, but I find that writing it down really helps you to define who you are aiming this product at.

Who is going to buy your product? What are they like? What’s their background and where are they now? Where do they want to be? What are their interests? What are they good at? What are they bad at? What are their hopes and fears?

When you’re creating your sales page, you can then talk about the hopes and fears of your target audience. Carrying on the same example, your sales page might say “I used to walk up to women in clubs and practically freeze. I didn’t know what to say and I used to feel like an idiot. Then I discovered the secrets to boosting my self confidence. Now I find it easy to date women, thanks to the techniques I’m going to share with you inside my new product ‘Date More Women.’

That isn’t me btw – and I’m not suggesting your sales page would use those exact words – but hopefully you understand what I’m getting at

By being clear about your target audience and making it very specific you’ll make more sales. The 5% of the wider market whom you ARE aiming your product at will see your sales page and think “Wow – this product is for ME! It’s the one I’ve been waiting for and fits my situation perfectly. They are talking to ME!” Then of course they’ll buy it.

Define your target audience. Know who they are. It’ll help you be a more effective marketer and sell more products.

Comments welcome, as always (in fact your comments and emails are what really make my days

Getting tickets for tennis’s most famous tournament is not easy and we had to camp out overnight to secure our seats on Centre Court.

It’s well worth it though because whilst it’s great to watch it on TV there’s definitely nothing quite like being there.

The only not so enjoyable moment was waking up at 3am to a rather soggy pillow and water dripping on my head.

It was bucketing it down outside and the tent was leaking. Great!

My niece, who was in a separate tent next to us, had no such problems of course.

It’s all good fun though because once we were into the grounds and sat in our seats we could really sit back and enjoy the electric atmosphere generated by the thousands of fans.

It’s not just about the tennis though. Wimbledon is as famous for it’s strawberries and cream, jugs of Pimms and the rather unpredictable British weather, as it is for fluffy yellow balls being walloped over a net at circa 100mph.

If you ever get the chance to go, I would highly recommend it. We normally camp each year for tickets and it’s great fun.

So you might be wondering what this has got to do with internet marketing?

Well when you think about it we can learn a lot from the world’s top tennis players.

Anyone who steps onto that Centre Court hasn’t got there by chance. They have worked hard for years, training day in and day out in the gym and on the practice court. They have had to spend years playing tiny tournaments with no facilities (and being watched by the proverbial one man and his dog) before they step anywhere near the big tournaments like Wimbledon or the French Open.

It’s the same in internet marketing. Despite what some of the more ‘hypey’ sales pages out there might have you believe, making lots of money online doesn’t just happen overnight. There’s no push button solution or instant cash machine where you press a button and money falls out. You’ve got to work hard at it and put in the work to consistently make money online.

But that’s not the only thing we can learn from tennis.

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘the ball’s in your court’ and that definitely applies when you work online. As internet marketers we must make decisions each and every day. We must try things out. Experiment with different style squeeze pages, products and autoresponder sequences.

It’s what I love about internet marketing and it’s why I feel motivated every day when I get up in the morning.

It’s also a little scary, especially when you’re not used to it.

Just as tennis is an individual sport, internet marketing is pretty much all down to you. Nobody’s going to do it for you. You must decide what shot you’re next going to play and where within the court you’re going to aim.

Making decisions is hard but if you want to succeed online you must get used to doing it each and every day.

There’s also a fine line between success and failure online. Even professional tennis players make mistakes and have days when it seems like they can hardly hit the ball into the court. The best players however seem to have the knack of ‘finding a way to win’, even when they aren’t playing especially well or their back is to the wall. It’s the ability to be two sets to Love down, face a match point and somehow come back to win in five sets which separates the great from merely the very good.

As marketers we make mistakes all the time. Things don’t always go as well as you expect them to and some days you sit there and think ‘I’m never going to succeed online.’ You need to learn from your mistakes, fight back and have the drive to carry on. If you send out a promo to your list one day and it absolutely bombs – don’t get too downhearted. Just put it down to experience, learn from it and carry on.

I’ve also always believed that as an internet marketer you’ve got to aim for above the net. The best marketers do things just that little bit better and aim that bit higher than marketers who fail online. If you provide fantastic value to your customers and market in such a way that you are always providing great content to people – content which is better than other marketers offerings – then you will succeed.

Finally, in order to succeed online you need to have the right equipment. It took me quite a while to realise this myself but you need to have the correct tools in order to build a solid business. You need to have a quality autoresponder account from a company such as Aweber and you need to have graphics on your websites which make you look like a professional and not just a dodgy amateur. You need to have decent web hosting and not some freebie account which will make your website crash on the day of your product launch. Tennis rackets used by the top players are pretty expensive and are customized to the needs of the player. You wouldn’t see Federer, Nadal or Murray walking out onto court with a $20 racket and strings which break every few games – so don’t make the same mistake yourself in your online business.

So there you go. Quiet please – ready – play. Go and build your online business!

Comments welcome, as always…