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How To Be More Efficient

You hear all the time that you or your company needs to be more efficient. But do you know how to accomplish that?

And with more people working at home, efficiency and productivity are the name of the game at the moment.

There are many distractions around you, both in the workplace and especially at home so you really need to stay focused to remain efficient and get your tasks done.

Efficiency seems like a word that is thrown at as the end-all be-all answer to problems within an organization.

However, without a proper plan, the likely result will be confusion and chaos, and this could potentially have the opposite effect! So, you need to plan out how you and/or your employees can become more efficient

The following ‘efficiency hacks’ can help you when you are given the initiative to be more efficient.

Learning

Always be on the lookout for how to improve your job or your teams’ jobs.

This often requires learning new skills. The more you learn, the easier it will be to find alternative methods that work better.

As an entrepreneur, you should always be looking to increase your skills, especially your marketing skills.

Anyone who wants to be successful in life should be constantly learning.

Organization

If your office environment is cluttered and there is no sense of organization, it can impact the productivity of the entire group.

There are professionals who can assess your current situation and make recommendations on how to improve the environment.

This can include such aspects as desk clutter, filing, and even ergonomic issues and proper placement of fixtures or furniture.

Automation

When you find ways to automate, this frees up your staff to work on more important tasks.

Mundane tasks that eat away the time of your staff are the best candidates for automation. It is possible to go overboard with automation which can cause slowdowns when the automation processes fail.

There are many types of software that can automate tasks and this is useful to a business and invaluable to an entrepreneur (particularly a solopreneur)

Try to determine the best tasks to automate without overdoing it.

Delegate

If you are micromanaging the work of your team, you won’t have time to handle your own tasks.

Your team won’t respect the fact that you are doing tasks that they should be doing. You hired them for a reason. Let them get their jobs done. It’s okay for them to come to you when they get stuck.

But you should guide them rather than simply doing everything for them.

Outsource

With corporate cutbacks, delegating may not be easy to accomplish.

Companies are expecting their employees to do more with less. But managers still need to get their work done. In such cases, it may be worthwhile to consider outsourcing some of the tasks of your team.

The benefits of outsourcing are that it does not increase the company’s headcount. And as a solopreneur, you can outsource content and product creation and then you can concentrate on the marketing.

If you want to know more about outsourcing, you can download a really useful free report here.

Time Management

If you and your team are not managing your time efficiently, you are going to find it hard to move the company forward.

The team will constantly be missing deadlines and playing catch up. This makes the group look bad and causes undue stress on the team.

The likely result will be high turnover at times when team members are needed the most.

If you are working from home, especially if you are an entrepreneur, you can employ the Pomodoro technique. If you want to know about this, check out this post here.

Time Management And Efficiency Go Hand-In-Hand

If you want to know the best time management system available, the answer is, choose one. This may seem like a cop-out to you. But it’s like a gym membership. What is the most expensive gym membership available? The one you never use.

Time management systems are going to have similar traits from one to the next. Whether one is better than the other is largely dependent on who is trying to get you to use theirs. If you find a time management system, give it a shot and see if it is right for you.

The key is to find one. That is going to be one of the main components of increasing your efficiency. If you read about a particular system, implement it for a couple of months and see how it goes.

But and this is crucial, keep going. The worst time management system is not having one. You will be spinning your wheels if you go this route.

Time management is going to take discipline and habit, especially if you haven’t been doing it. You need to get started, and you continue using it. If you are one that believes habits form in 28 days, then use your system for 28 days.

Just make sure you have something in place that allows you to evaluate that system. Hopefully, you will be experiencing higher productivity during that period.

Don’t get discouraged if you stop using your system. Maybe it isn’t the right one for you. Find another one. Ask colleagues and friends for suggestions. Just make sure you “get back on the horse.”

Once your time management system is habitual and useful, there will be no stopping your progress.

When you discover a time management system that works for you, become an advocate. You can help others and, in the process, help yourself. If you and your team are operating more efficiently through the use of proper time management, your company becomes a bit more efficient as a result.

Who knows, your team may become the model for the company. Stranger things have happened.

One outcome that is highly likely is your team will get recognition. You will get your tasks done faster and will be able to take on more than you were able to before.

You and your team will prove to your management that you are capable of taking on bigger and better tasks. It’s all possible with the help of time management.

Want to learn more about increasing efficiency and productivity? Then check out the featured resource below to grab a free report; download, read it and take action 😊

Continuity: The Secret To Reliable Profits

When you first get started online, you might be worried. Frankly, you probably should be worried.

Yes, you made sales this month. But will you make sales NEXT month? And how will you pay the bills if you don’t make sales?

It can be scary going from a job where you know exactly how much you’ll get paid and when you’ll get paid to working your own business online.

If you are the entrepreneurial type, then you are probably not afraid of a little risk for yourself but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be diligent when thinking about a new business venture.

Of course, online businesses don’t have the large overheads that physical businesses do, and you can get started for virtually free, but for most entrepreneurs the slowly, slowly approach can be a lot to swallow and they want to dive in head first. Sound familiar??

Once you have your business up and running, what then?

In your business you might have a brilliant month and then two months of starving followed by a mediocre month followed by (hopefully) another great month.

The trouble is that if your business is your sole source of income, you want your profits to be a lot more reliable than that!

Thus, the question becomes, “How do you get stability in your business – and your income -as quickly as possible?”

Or… how do you KNOW for a FACT that next month you can make the mortgage payments and eat, too?

Simple – continuity programs. Call it what you want – memberships, recurring payments, monthlies, etc.

It all boils down to getting people signed up into a continuity program so you can continue to get paid month after month.

Now you have a choice here: You can either promote other people’s continuity programs or create and promote your own.

If you’re acting as an affiliate, then you don’t have to worry about sales funnels, membership content, customer service and all of that. You just need to focus on making the sales.

Drive the traffic, offer your own bonuses, and do what you’ve got to do to get people signed up.

The problem, of course, is that in exchange for less responsibility, you also have less control and more competition.

The membership site owner has control over content. If s/he takes a “churn and burn” mentality and doesn’t care about keeping members happy, then people won’t stay long. You’ll have to continually make new sales, which isn’t what you’re looking for.

You want stability. That’s why you only want to promote truly great memberships and continuity programs that deliver a ton of value.

As to competition, you are competing with every other affiliate who is promoting the same program.

If you have your own list, then this isn’t that big of a problem. After all, people on your list know and love you, right? And so, they’ll follow your recommendation.

Unless they’re on someone else’s list (they are) who has already promoted the program. In which case, you’re not going to make many sales.

Promoting affiliate memberships is a give and take. Less responsibility, no control and lots of competition.

And this is why you might want to start your own membership. Look around and see what people in your niche desperately want and need, and then fill that want with your site.

Outsource the content creation if you can, so you can focus on the important part – filling it with people.

Use either a WordPress plugin such as Wishlist Member or an independent solution such as Product Dyno to create your membership site.

Once you’ve got your membership site up and running, it’s time to get busy promoting it. Use every technique you can think of and track everything.

Find out what your best sources of traffic are, and then put all of your effort into just those methods.

For example, maybe you buy traffic from Facebook, Adwords and solo ads. You also get free traffic from guest posting, forums and social media.

9 out of 10 new members are coming from Facebook, so what are you going to do?

Drop all of your other methods and focus exclusively on the Facebook advertising.

Get your conversions up and your costs down and now you have a viable way of getting a continuous influx of new members into your site.

One thing you need to be aware of is that selling a membership can be a big ask with cold traffic and your conversion rate probably won’t be stellar.

So, what you could do is offer them a cheap product upfront to get them into your funnel, and then offer them your continuity program.

You could even offer a 7-day free trial to tempt them in. Also, keep the price of membership low. If your content is good, you shouldn’t need to keep looking for members because they won’t want to leave.

Plus, most folks won’t even notice a payment for $10-20 leaving their account every month.

Another thing to think about is whether you want to be creating content month after month, year after year. You could outsource the content creation if financially viable, or you could create a fixed membership site with 12 months of content that the customer pays to access.

Want even more members? Show affiliates how well your offer is converting, and you can get them to promote your membership site, too.

There are plenty of affiliates out there who want that continuous, month to month income that a good membership site provides. All you have to do is show them that your funnel is converting, and members are sticking.

Naturally, there are a lot more details than this to starting a membership site. But hopefully this gets you thinking in that direction.

Because if you want true financial freedom as quickly as possible and with as little stress as possible, then almost nothing can beat having your own successful membership site.

One more thing – the first site is the hardest. Once you have a membership site that’s clearing at least a couple of thousand dollars each month like clockwork, continue to build on that one while building your second membership site, and so forth.

Create a membership empire to secure your finances, and then you can experiment with anything you like.

Security first, right?

By the way, if you want to know more about outsourcing check out this article here and the featured resource below where you get a free report all about successful outsourcing; download, read it and take action 😊

Are You Overwhelmed And Lacking Focus?

If you’re a creative type, then you’ve likely encountered a situation where you have a ton of ideas and you keep thinking up new ones, only to eventually get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them to the degree that you never put any of them into practice. A lack of focus can be a creativity killer!

This isn’t uncommon at all. Many people who let their creativity run unchecked can get overwhelmed when it’s time to sit down and focus. One of the solutions you can try is only allowing yourself a certain amount of time to just be wholly creative.

When your time’s up, you should break for a bit before looking over your ideas with focus and intent and select one of those ideas to actually develop and work on. You can go back to your other ideas later on, but for the time being, pick one and work with it to completion.

This allows you to actually make some progress and have something that’s tangible, instead of just having a collection of ideas. Ideas are certainly valuable, but if they’re never implemented and brought to fruition, they become worthless.

Even if the idea you choose doesn’t end up working out, at least you’re getting some practical application out of it, so that you’re not spending all your time just being creative.

The human mind often gets dazed and confused when being presented with too many options. It’s like when you can’t decide what you want at a restaurant, when you’re looking at a really long menu with so many choices.

You can easily evaluate and pick among ten or so items, but when you’re dealing with 30 or 40, you’ll start to quickly lose focus and not be able to make a good choice. It’s important that whatever idea you select to work on, it should be seen through to completion if possible.

If you just work on it a little bit and leave it unfinished, then it’s no better than never starting to begin with. The whole point of focusing on one of your ideas is to actually have something to show for it in the end.

If you have a half-completed project to show, then you really don’t have much at all. Don’t worry that doing this will stifle your creativity.

You’ll be able to get back to creativity as soon as you finish the project you’re working on. In fact, the break from brainstorming is like cleansing your palate – you may even come up with better ideas after a longer break filled with work.

The thing is that you need to stay focused on whatever it is you are trying to achieve and if you don’t, you’ll simply become frustrated.

Apart from overwhelm, having a poor attention will also affect the way you focus and how productive and creative you are so you definitely need to work on your attention span and that can be a major undertaking in todays modern world where everything is vying for your time and attention!

However, sometimes a poor attention span may actually become a benefit so is not always negative.

Intrigued? Let’s look a little deeper…

A Poor Attention Span Can Be A Benefit!

Like I said in the previous couple of paragraphs, if you have a short attention span, you’ve probably always considered it to be one of your drawbacks. It makes it difficult for you to focus and it makes working long shifts at work a real pain.

However, it does have its benefits, though they’re mostly going to help you in the long run, not in the short term. A short attention span can help you come up with greater creative ideas over time, allowing you to return to them when you have the time to dedicate to it.

Those who are more easily distracted have been shown to be more creative in a number of studies. The problem is, you’re likely not being paid to be creative all the time. You need to have time to be creative, but most of your time is likely spent doing physical work or work that’s bringing ideas to life instead of making new ideas.

In those times, a short attention span can be detrimental, because it disrupts your focus while you’re trying to actually create something that embodies the ideas you’ve come up with previously.

The workaround here is to have a system set up for quickly logging your ideas that pop into your mind so that you can return to them later, and spend time focusing on the task at hand in the present.

You could use something as simple as a little notepad with a pen. Anytime you’re working and get pulled off track by an idea, quickly jot it down and you can return to it later when you have time.

You’d be surprised at how much you continue to be distracted by ideas just because you don’t want to forget them. Once you know they’re written down and can be returned to later on, you can return to focusing on what you’re doing.

It’s beneficial to have all of these little ideas stored away, because at some point you might try to brainstorm something to work on, and you might not have anything coming to mind. Then, you can reference your notebook and use one of those little sparks of imagination to fuel a whole new project that you might’ve otherwise forgotten.

By keeping tabs on your overactive imagination like this, you retain all of those smaller sparks of creativity that can blossom into wonderful, big projects – while still working diligently to bring existing ideas to fruition.

Your subconscious mind is very powerful, and you are using this technique of jotting things down on the fly to tap into that subconscious and some of the ideas you note down could really inspire you so give it a go and see what appears!

Having any kind of focus requires a lot of self-discipline and even if you adopt the jotting technique above you will need to be disciplined to go back and do something with the ideas.

If you want to learn more about how to develop self-discipline, click on the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊

How To Make Money With Your Free Blog Posts And Articles

As a marketer, are you one of those who has a blog or not?

Some marketers don’t use a blog to build their brand or visibility but rather prefer to use more direct response type marketing techniques and have a website to showcase their products with great sales pages and they constantly send paid traffic to those pages.

However, most marketers probably try to incorporate some type of blog into their business to try to gain some visibility using SEO and get some free traffic from the search engines to build the KLT (Know, Like Trust) factor.

Visitors will consume their content, come to think of them as someone they can trust, and will be much more likely to buy from them in future. This takes longer than the direct response marketer but is infinitely cheaper and is a good model for someone just starting out who may have limited capital to put into their business.

It’s the second type of marketer to whom this article is addressed.

By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.

I’m constantly amazed at how marketers seem to think free content and paid content are two entirely different things. The fact is your most successful blog posts and newsletter articles can make you more money than many of the products you’ve promoted or created in the past an it is super quick to do this and costs you nothing, so what are you waiting for?

The key is to pay attention to how your content is received.

Repurposing content is hardly a new strategy, but it mainly focuses on creating a video from an article, and then extracting the audio from the video, plus perhaps creating an infographic covering the main points so you now have 4 pieces of content instead of just one.

This works great for building brand awareness across multiple platforms and can indirectly lead to sales.

But now let’s take that strategy and put it on steroids and make it a much more direct way to make sales; after all, you are in business to make money!

So, this content repurposing strategy is designed to specifically make you money from your previous content!

Look back at your posts from the past year and see which ones gained the most attention. Which ones did people comment on and forward to others the most?

And don’t just look at blog posts but look at your posts on social media too; these are great because you get instant feedback if it resonates with your audience.

For example, a little 200-word FB post that people are engaging with and liking the content is trying to tell you that you’ve struck gold.

If it’s a longer article, maybe a blog post and it gets great feedback, even better.

You might choose to expand that article into a full-blown product and sell it or you could use it as a lead magnet that leads to a high-ticket offer (either yours or an affiliate offer).

And talking of lead magnets…

If you are producing free reports as lead magnets (and you should be using these to grow your email list) these are another potential untapped goldmine.

Take your most successful free reports and turn them into paid coaching programs. If you have 4 or 5 reports covering roughly the same topic, it is really simple to bundle them up and sell as a full-blown product.

Add some video and/or audio and some weekly/monthly webinars and you have your brand-new coaching program which has a much higher perceived value than a solely text-based product so you can now charge a premium price, all from existing free content!!

The other good thing about using these lead magnets is that you probably have links to offers peppered throughout these reports, so not only can you now profit from previously free material, but you can still profit from readers clicking on the links embedded into the reports.

Answer a customer’s question and then send that answer out to your list and see what happens. Do you get a lot of response? Bam! There’s another product waiting to be made.

This is such a simple way to do direct market research and you will know that the demand is there from your existing audience.

The point is to monitor the reception you receive on every piece of content you create, whether they’re posts, recordings, videos, launches, emails, reports or whatever.

If you’re not sure how something is being received, ask your readers what they thought of it.

Take the most popular topics and expand them or repurpose them into something else. You don’t have to continually come up with new ideas. Instead, figure out which ideas are working and then get most out of those.

And you can also purposely float your idea for a new product by creating a mini version of it as a post and then seeing how people respond.

Do you have 10 ideas for products? Create 10 posts, see which one is the most popular and start working on that product right away.

When creating the posts, if they are long, let’s say 1000 words or more, then offer the reader to download them as a convenient pdf. This is a type of content upgrade and they will need to give you their email address to get the report.

This way, you can easily see in your autoresponder which reports people are signing up for and start creating your product around those topics.

This stuff sounds simple and it is, but it also works so please don’t dismiss this strategy.

And because it is mainly using pre-existing content, you can be up and running in a matter of hours.

If you are just starting out and are building out your first blog, bear this in mind for the future.

And if you want to know the best way to get started with blogging you can check out Rapid Blogging Blueprint, a premium training on creating and monetising a blog the right way.

Or you can simply click on the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊

Overcome Obstacles By Removing Self-Doubt

Obstacles are something that everyone who has ever lived had had to deal with, so it would be a good idea to learn how to handle obstacles, wouldn’t you agree?

One of the key factors when dealing with any type of obstacle is one of belief and this is where many people struggle because they suffer with self-doubt.

Sadly, many people doubt themselves and their abilities. When it becomes a chronic situation, it can hold people back from getting what they want.

However, confidence will break through the barriers caused by obstacles.

First of all, you need to recognize when an obstacle is holding you back. Sometimes, people make excuses for their situations and pretend that they don’t exist ad this is understandable.

For instance, you could be faced with a family member who has a substance abuse problem. It’s difficult to approach the person and people ignore that a problem exists. They just keep pretending as if the person does not have a problem with the hope that the situation will resolve itself.

The problem is that sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the issue won’t resolve anything, and the person who is suffering may be crying out for help and is actually looking for someone who has the courage to stand up to their addiction.

If you are in that position, you may want to find ways to find that strength. The addict may resist you and may do so for some time.

But, if they know you care and you keep at it to confront the situation, they do hear it deep down, especially if they really are looking to get help.

You do have to be aware that if they don’t really want help, your efforts will not amount to much, unfortunately.

Self-doubt can also cripple you when others don’t have confidence in you.

For instance, if your manager has reasons to doubt your abilities, he is constantly going to be harping on at you about your work. This may cause you to doubt yourself and the situation will continue in a nasty loop.

In such cases, you need to find out why he feels this way and try to work with him to help figure out what you can do to alleviate the situation. Just having this meeting can show your manager you have confidence which could be the catalyst to turn around the situation.

Confidence is going to be your greatest ally when trying to overcome self-doubt. This isn’t easy for everyone to come to grips with and it does take courage.

But, once you gain the confidence, you will find there is no stopping you. Dealing with most obstacles will become easier for you which will lead to you succeeding more often.

Many people find that after they get past a certain situation, they wondered why it took them as long as it did. It doesn’t matter, though.

As long as you eventually gain that confidence, you can make happen whatever you need to.

Could You Imagine Life Without Obstacles?

So you know that obstacles are an unfortunate fact of life, but think of this…

Suppose you are given a choice to live a life without any obstacles? Would you take that if it were possible?

You may be tempted to jump at the chance. However, it is highly likely it would not measure up to your expectations.

Several years ago, one television program focused on only good news. It looked for good news in the local community and even in other places. The show did not last because people seem to be more drawn to bad news. This is an unfortunate fact of human nature!

Our minds are hardwired to solve problems. When problems don’t exist, our minds become idle and we become bored with our situations.

Therefore, subconsciously, we welcome obstacles so that we can figure out how to overcome or solve them.

I realise that may sound counterintuitive, especially when you are faced with an obstacle in your life and are struggling to overcome it, but it is true nonetheless.

Just think about an obstacle course. Why do these even exist? If we weren’t so inclined to solve problems, these never would have become popular. But we still participate in them because of the challenge involved.

When we get past some obstacle, we get a feeling of elation, which increases in proportion to how extreme the obstacle. Getting past the obstacle may be instant or involve some time. It could be mental or physical, or both. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the situation, we welcome the challenge.

Some people will withdraw when faced with certain obstacles. They feel as though the obstacles are beyond their ability to solve them.

This is unfortunate because we all have the capability of solving most situations. Even when the obstacles are dire, people who approach it in a positive manner will have a much greater chance of overcoming them.

What is certain is if you don’t try, you will fail, and that obstacle will become part of you in a negative way. It could destroy your life if you let it.

Obstacles are a part of life and as you have seen from this article, they are necessary for our survival. They may be difficult to come to terms with.

However, when we get to the point of overcoming them, we have tools we can use to make our lives better. This can extend to helping others as well.

Think about all this the next time you are faced with a difficult situation. It can make the difference in getting past the problem and you will become stronger in the process. You will also show others that you can deal with adverse situations.

So, they aren’t really obstacles at all, but rather chances to grow and improve your abilities and self-confidence.

Reframing obstacles like this can be incredibly powerful and requires the correct mindset.

If you want to find out how to develop a strong mindset, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report; download, read it and take action 😊