Discover Product Creation

“If you want it done right, do it yourself.” That’s a piece of bad advice I had drummed into me as a kid. But I won’t go into why it’s bad advice today.

Instead I want to share with you an excellent program called Discover Product Creation that will help you do it yourself, if you are interested in creating your own Free Report to post on your blog or to build traffic via an upcoming Give Away Event.

I recommend you go there immediately and buy and then take the course. But if you wish, you can read my whys below.

The course is taught by one of my favorites, Bob Jenkins or Bob the Teacher as he likes to call himself. Bob was a high school teacher and is very good at breaking down the process of creating a report from start to finish. If you take his course and do the homework, (yes he assigns homework,) you will end up with your own first report that you can sell or give away in just three weeks.

Some of you will dash ahead and do it quicker, others will need more time if your lives and the holidays interfere. But if you commit to the process, you will succeed. Bob breaks it down into three segments, and provides nice bite sized video modules in each segment that permit you to proceed at your own pace.

When you are finished with the course, you will not only have a new fresh report of your own, but you will have mastered some basic skills with at least two free software programs that will pay you dividends for the rest of your life.

I had the opportunity to participate in the original course, and can personally attest to its completeness and value. Actually, the first class is still in session. But I have gotten enough from the first two of three segments to give it my unequivocal endorsement. I have learned not only how Free Mind works, but have come to see it as a super valuable, easy to use tool to capture my “loose thoughts” and ultimately make sense and order out of them. It’s a far better approach than the traditional outline format from high school. And much better than trying to organize my scattered thoughts on paper.

And then in the second segment, I learned how to use the free Open Office software. This is a major money saver since you can easily create PDF files without having to pay for Adobe. But while I have used open office before, by the time the second segment was over I learned in detail how to format my reports so they look truly professional.

Now much of this stuff, I already knew, or kind of knew, and other aspects were revelations to me. Some of it I used to know, but had forgotten. Unless you are already a professional editor or accomplished report producer, you should give serious thought to grabbing this course soon than later.

Even though the original session are yet to be completed, Bob has the course on the market now. He is only asking $99 for it, and I’m telling you it is a bargain. I have no doubt the price will go up significantly in the not too distant future. Particularly after the class is over and he starts putting the glowing testimonials into his sales page. He will have more than he will need.

I’m a fan of Bob’s. I’ve taken several other courses from him, and for my money, this is his best effort yet.

You will learn how to Create, Format And Deliver Your Own Free Reports To Your Customers On The Internet With Step-By-Step Video Training” Your Progress Is 100% Assured! The course is split up into 3 sections for every skill and experience level…

* Part 1: Planning And Creating The Content For Your Report
* Part 2: Formatting Your Report As An Ebook (PDF)
* Part 3: Delivering Your Report Online

You will learn all the Steps From Start To Finish

Create, Format, And Deliver Your Report With Simple, Step-By-Step Instructions Delivered
Through Video You Can Watch Online Or Download.

It is meaty, comprehensive and extremely valuable. Get it this weekend, and apply what he teaches. Do your weekly homework, and you will have a marketable report on any topic you desire in three weeks. Just in time to kick off the New Year in grand style.

If you want to do it yourself, there is no better advice I can give than to pick up a copy of DiscoverProductCreation today.

Internet Marketing Thanksgiving Break Through

I hope my US readers have a Great Thanksgiving tomorrow. I will be spending it at my sister’s house this year, despite the fact that she was laid off from her job a few weeks back.

Things are getting tough these days…all the more reason to get serious about internet marketing.

There is a learning curve involved, and you only really learn by doing.  Let me encourage you to make your own personal Breakthrough this long Thanksgiving weekend.

Last Tuesday I suggested that you download a $7 report from Mike Paetzold that went into detail about how to set up your web pages to effectively monetize a free give away event. (See Links Below)

If you haven’t caught on yet, a free give away is designed to start building a list of people to whom you can sell products. It’s not the only way to build a list, but once you’ve got the basics down, its one of the quickest and cheapest ways to go.

I have begun a blog that you can use to keep up on upcoming give-aways. And since you are already on my list you can be sure to hear about upcoming events through me.

But the chicken and egg question is, “Where do you get the free products?” I’ve told you it was easier than you may have thought, but now I am going to prove it to you.

I’ve just put together a site where you can download not one, but six quality products you can resell or give away. Pick any one, or all six, and offer them on one or another of the free give-aways and you will be building your own list in no time. Use Mike’s advice on how to set up your pages, and you will be on your way.

Once you have a list, you can either sell the remaining reports individually or even resell all six complete with resale rights and keep all the profit! (See Links Below)

(This assumes you already have a Web Hosting service, know how to get a URL, and have access to an auto-responder service. If you don’t, send me a return email and I will let you know what you need to know to get set up properly.)

The six reports together with resell rights will cost you $27. That’s less than $5 a report. Mikes How To report will cost you another $7. If you buy both, I recommend you do, you will need to invest $34. Well worth it even if you never take action, but don’t let them sit on your hard drive. Read the reports, they are worthwhile, but more importantly, dig in and get started.

Pick one of the reports and get it listed on the Merry Christmas Give-away. (See Links Below) Take advantage of this long holiday weekend and make something happen for yourself.

Now like everything, it will take some effort. Some things are difficult to do the first time, but you can do it. Take your time and figure it out and you will succeed.

Step 1. Sign up as a contributor for the Merry Christmas Give-away. (If you don’t already have a big list, you probably should spring for the upgrade it’s only $17 and is worth it) This is crossing the Rubicon. Make a commitment to get a product up.

Step 2. Buy my six pack, and pick one to offer as a free gift.

Step 3. Buy Mike Paetzold’s Report and use it to design your download and confirmation pages, as well as get a handle on the entire Give-away scene.

Step 4. Once you have a list, sell them the other eBooks from my package, or sell them the entire package with resell rights. The sales pages for each of the books are part of the package as well as a sales page for the whole enchilada.

Step 5. Repeat.  Watch for upcoming Give-aways on my Give-Away Blog

Step 6. Spend next Thanksgiving or Christmas in the Bahamas or where ever you want.

GiveAways: It’s Thanksgiving Time!

The Thanksgiving Give-away is now officially open. I am happy to report that I have already had 22 people download one or the other of my two offerings. Give always are great win win opportunities and no matter where you are on the internet marketing skill line.

If you are new and just starting out its a great place to pick up some useful material. But word to the wise, be selective in what you grab. Feel free to get as much as you like, but try to approach it systematically. If you RSS the feed to this blog, you will soon learn that there is always another giveaway down the line.

Speaking of which you can add the Merry Christmas Giveaway to your list of upcoming events.

Time Management: Exercise Whirlwinds

In my past articles, I have advocated creating 90 minute work periods to focus on a single topic.

If you were able to do three or four such 90 minute periods every day and really focus during that 90 minutes on the task at hand, you will probably be more productive than 90-95% of people in the workplace.

To get six hours of real productivity in a day is doable, but I fear rare. My purpose today isn’t to dwell on these 90 minute periods, but rather the in between period between these focused efforts.

I like to create what I call whirl winds. I am perpetually fighting a cluttered desk, for alas I don’t always succeed in doing what I preach. So I use my handy timer and give myself 15 minutes to clear as much of the clutter away as possible. This is a great between 90 minute activity. Another great in between effort is to have a set of desk exercises that you can do between sessions.

Finding time to exercise is always difficult. By incorporating it between two 90 minute periods, you can get it in and refresh yourself between periods of concentration. I sometimes stand and do stretches, shoulder rolls etc., other days I take out my set of dumbbells and do some arm exercises or both.

It helps me feel good about myself and builds my energy as I prepare for the next period of concentration.

Time Managment: Urgency vs. Importance Avoiding the hamster wheel of time.

Urgency vs. Importance: Avoiding the hamster wheel of time.

The critical battlefront in the time management game is the conflict between the urgent and the important. This conflict and resolving it is the crucial factor in determining whether we move ahead in our business and life or get trapped on the great hamster wheel of time.

To-do lists are notorious places to find “Urgent” activities. These are the things that must get done today. The grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner, the bills that need to be paid today lest we get a late penalty, the appointments we must make because they are part of our job, or business or mandatory to our family life. These are the things that make up the majority of most people’s lives. And what’s left is filled in with the routine. The teeth brushing, paper reading, evening news, midnight snack and their zillions of cousins.

We allow our lives to be filled with these because they are “normal” daily activities and the urgent things we need to attend to. What usually gets left out are the important things, things that are deferrable because they are not urgent.

Tax planning for example could assist you in saving significant sums come tax time, but for many will be put off until tax time, when it is too late, but is urgent.

One of the most common difficulties for people attempting to get a better handle on their time is the finding of time to plan their day, or their week. The urgency of their day gets in the way. I’ve got to do this, I need to be there, all take priority over taking the time to sit down and spend 15 minutes writing today’s list of urgencies and scheduling some time to focus on something important.

Planning is important. Imagining is important. Meditating can be important. Researching can be important. Writing a new book or article, or building a new product, or planning a marketing campaign, or learning a new skill, or building a web page, all can be important, if they serve to advance you personally and/or your business to a higher level of productivity and profit.

A sales call is vital to the ongoing success of your business. Mapping out a new marketing campaign could help all future such calls be more successful. The first, the routine sales call is urgent. The mapping out of the marketing plan is important. They both should be done. They both must be done. But for many of us, the urgent encroaches on the time available for the important.

A glitch occurs and you are delayed 15 minutes in traffic, you need to adjust your schedule and move that 2:30 appointment into the time you were going to sit down and do some long term planning. The important once again loses out to the urgent.

The picture for many of us is bleak. Our calendars are filled not only with today’s urgencies but also a backlog of several days of unmet urgencies we are struggling to catch up on. How can we possibly break through and eliminate the urgencies? Well the truth is we can’t. The urgencies will always be there. If you let them, they will also take up as much time as you permit them to. Which is, usually, as much time as there is.

The critical underlying secret to time management is to understand that you must make a decision to make time for the important. And the first important step is to set aside some time to plan. And you need not to just plan you day, but your week and month, if not beyond.

When doing so, take a moment to decide is an item is important or urgent. Recognize that things can be both. Focus first on the urgent important. Then the urgent followed by the important. The goal of time management is to find ways to compress the urgent and routine to make time for the important.

It’s not necessarily easy. But it is important. So recognize that among your urgent important tasks each day is to plan your day. Do it first. And make sure your find a time each week to plan your week. That too is important but need not be done every day. But it is urgent that it be done every week.

In my next blog post I will begin discussing the nitty-gritty of planning you week, and then your day. We will explore the idea of a mental lock box I learned from Mark Joyner.

Mother’s Milk: Nourish Your Bottom Line with Generosity

List building is the mother’s milk of internet marketing. The easiest way to build a list is to offer something of value for free. And the best way to do that is to make that offer where a lot of people are going to have a chance to see it. Even better is when you find a place were people are already actively downloading other peoples free products at the same time.

Those familiar with fishing will recognize this last idea as chumming. While chumming is not legal in most places, it is effective and more important it’s perfectly legal in internet marketing. I’ve used it to multiply my list and you can too.

A good place to start is with a holiday giveaway. I’ve joined one for Thanksgiving and another for Christmas I recommend you do too.

http://vur.me/easier/ThanksGiving-Giveaway
http://vur.me/easier/Santas-Big-Giveaway

Time Managment: Magnitude

In my last posting on time management, I discussed Magnitude, Urgency and Importance. Today I will dwell a bit on the first of the three, magnitude.

 

Our life is filled with countless projects, big and small. Some items are as simple as a quick phone call, others may require not just minutes but hours, days, or even months to finish.

 

To effectively manage your time you must come to terms with projects of all sizes.

 

For simplicity I will categorize three sizes of projects: Mega Projects; Special Projects; and Revolving Projects.

 

What constitutes a mega project for you may be different that for another person in a different field. If your normal day is occupied by a 9-5 of required routine work, the writing of a project that might take 5-10 hours could well be a mega project.

 

The writer who churns out articles that require anything from several hours to several days of work may see their planned attempt at Great American Novel as a mega project requiring months or even years.

 

Revolving projects are those things that you do regularly day in and day out. They are the required functions of your daily life from brushing your teeth to getting haircuts to the day to day routine functions of your job.

 

Special projects are the “in between” category of things. For some people, their day to day work may be made up of a never ending stream of “special projects.”

 

Mega projects are in some ways the easiest to deal with. Their sheer size casts a shadow across everything else you do. Sometimes their daunting size can intimidate you. Sometimes their size will cause you to put off starting them because any number of excuses. While I started this series talking about creative procrastination, this is where the negative aspect of procrastination takes hold.

 

The simple key to dealing with Mega projects is to break the projects down into smaller chunks. Such projects almost always have things that need to be done first, and then those that follow. When such a time line can be sketched on a piece of paper you have the beginning of a plan. If your project doesn’t have a clear first and then next timeline, you have the freedom to arbitrarily assign such a sequence.

 

Once you have a timeline, you can begin to assess the amount of time each chunk will require. As a general rule most people will underestimate the time required. For planning purposes, for projects greater than 10 hours you may want to give your best estimate and then plan on double the amount of time. Some suggest tripling it. You will need to be your own judge in such matters, and your estimates will clearly be better and more accurate as you gain experience in your field of endeavor. You will get better at such estimates if you actually make estimates and then actually pay attention to the amount of time the various segments actually take.

 

To effectively deal with megaprojects that take multiple days or months you clearly need a planning calendar that permits you to assign tasks of weeks, months and years as required by your circumstances. A daily planner may not provide that long term picture.

 

Some people will find themselves best served by having two time management systems. One that keeps track of their day to day, and another that deals with a longer time frame.

 

Once you have chunked you mega project you may still need to sub chunk the chunks, and then assign goals for each week or day.

 

Mega projects require assigned blocks of time. I tend to recommend creating four 90 minute blocks of time in each day. You may want to assign 1-4 of these blocks to your mega project on a daily basis. That depends on what else you have on your plate.

 

As a general rule, for mega projects it’s often a good idea to make it a personal rule to make at least a little progress on it every day. Even on days when you purposely schedule only other activities, you should review the status of the project and how you are doing in terms of the long run timeline.

 

Revolving projects are those that recur on a regular basis. These are the things we do every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year, and every seasonal event as well.

 

There are a lot of these, and this is where a lot of time is expended. And where a lot of my four ninety minute blocks get challenged. Ideally they get handled in the in between times.

 

While a trivial task that take only a five minutes may seem insignificant, repeated on a daily basis five times a week is equal to almost 14 and a half of my 90 minute blocks in a year. Imagine what you could get done with that much time focused on a specific money making project. Now think about the myriad of such little time robbers we engage in daily. How much time do you spend reading the paper? Surfing the web? Making coffee? Combing your hair?

 

In many ways this is the front lines of the time management war. It’s not that you shouldn’t be doing these things, it’s recognizing what you are doing with your time that matters and then making choices and decisions.

 

The first step is to log your daily activities, ideally at least for a week. You will need some discipline with this, and yes this too will take time from your day, so be quick about it. At weeks end evaluate what if anything you could do without or less of. What items can be combined or rescheduled? If you check email more than three times a day, can you get that down to three? If you do three times, can you get by with once or twice a day?

 

There is a lot to be said about this topic that we will save for another day, but while this exercise can be very valuable, keep in mind not just daily recurring tasks, but those that happen at less than daily intervals. Quarterly tax filings, annual tax preparation, monthly haircuts, weekly staff meetings, Bi weekly bill paying, etc. Many of these may not show up on your initial weekly log.

 

As this is the major battlefront be sure to setup a second log on these recurring events as well. Does your office seem to have a little birthday party every other week for a co-worker? Do you spend 15-30 minutes sharing coffee and cake? That’s okay, maybe. It’s a time suck, but if these are important be sure to accommodate them in your logs and plans.

 

Special projects are those items that fall in between the mega project and the routine. I think of them in two categories, those that take less than three hours and those that take from 3 to 10 or more.

 

The shorter projects in general should be tackled in one fell swoop. I still recommend using 90 minute blocks, so you can get up stretch and refresh yourself. The goal of the 90 minute block is to find time to focus on the specific project. During this time you do not want phone calls or interruptions. And this is the next challenge of time management. If you are to be successful in the long run with these special project of any other, you need to be able to focus. That means creating as conducive an atmosphere as possible to do your work. Time management may require you to tell your colleagues or family members to “buzz off”. Turn off the phones, disable the instant messenger, get someone else to answer customer inquiries.

 

If the work you are doing merits your attention, give it.

Projects longer than three hours or half a day may or may not be best tackled in one sitting. As a general rule, it takes time to get up and running on any project and the fewer times you need to get restarted the better. On the other hand, a break can permit your subconscious an opportunity to recalibrate your thoughts and permit a clearer look at the project once you return to it after an interval.

 

There is value to both propositions. You get to choose according to you other obligations and personal preferences. As a general rule though, it’s best to get a project done as soon as possible. Rather than doing two or three projects in tandem each using a block or two of time each day, my opinion is you are better off to get them done first one then the next and so on. This allows greater focus, and rewards your psyche with a series of accomplishments.

 

As we have seen there are big, middling and small projects to deal with in life. You particular mix will vary. This complexity is just one reason no one time management system works well for everyone.

In my next offering I will discuss Importance and Urgency and the distinctions between the two.

 

Video Camera’s What to Buy, What to Avoid

I just watched an excellent video that helped my understand the range of products available in Video Cameras, from the convenient Flip to the more sophisticated units ideal for professional video production.

Increasingly video is become a dominant force on the internet, and if you are contemplating a holiday purchase for yourself or your business you will want to watch this. While he ends the video with a suggested vendor, it’s not a sale pitch. The video is half an hour long and very informative.

Camera Gear Video

DavidGoesOnline.com

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my basement office when a not very pleasant odor caught my nose. It didn’t take long to realize that my sewer was backing up. Tree roots had penetrated my sewer line and clogged it. I needed to call a sewer service company. So I went to Google and typed in “Sewer” and “Minneapolis”. In less than a second, Google found 755,000 web pages which included 9 companies on the first page. Within a few minutes I picked one, called him, and Ron the Sewer Rat fixed the problem within 4 hours.  I was elated, and Ron won a new customer for as long as I live in this house. While I looked at several of the companies listed on the first page, I quickly settled on Ron and never bothered to look beyond the first page of Google results.

 

Today, people use the internet to find local businesses. It’s quicker and easier than fumbling with a big fat phone book.  Unlike the phone book they don’t have to guess which category a business is listed under. They don’t have to search alphabetically for your listing passing by all your competitors. Nor do they need to weed through companies on the other side of the metro area. All they need to do is put their town name and the type of business they are looking for and up pops relevant listings.

 

For small businesses this means several things. Even if you are in a traditional non internet business, you need to advertise online. Second, you need to be listed in every city or suburb in your market area, and third you need to be listed on the first page of the Google results, and finally, your web page needs to convert viewers to customers.

 

If this applies to your situation, I recommend you check out http://www.DavidGoesOnline.Com They are all but guaranteeing their customers that they can get them a top listing for their city of choice and even have a great special in which they will create a 30 second video that will knock the socks off your competitors.

 

Best part is that it is very reasonably priced.

Time Management: Magnitude, Urgency, & Importance

Magnitude, Urgency and Importance

(Sorry about delay in getting this posting up, I was distracted by the elections. I’m a political junkie among other things. I needed to help get out the vote. As discussed below, this was a large task, with real importance, and increasing urgency as election day approached. Some would say, the best time management approach would be to not do anything, but that is where personal values enter the discussion – but that is a topic for another day. -etn)

Every day we have choices to make. Every day we are faced with more things to do than we can.

We have big projects and we have small ones. We have urgent projects and those that could slip a while, as long as they got done, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week.

And we have project that are important and those that while nice are not necessarily important.

These three characteristics of Magnitude, Urgency and Importance are central distinctions in your battle to better use your time. To manage anything implies making choices. And making choices requires some set of characteristics we can use to make appropriate decisions. For purposes of time management these are the three primary measurements, similar to height, depth and width in measuring a package.

By magnitude, we are talking about how long a project might take to complete. Some projects could be as short as making a telephone call or sending and email. Others may require many hours, or days, or even weeks to complete.

Long projects need to be evaluated in terms of the number of hours required to accomplish in its entirety and usually a more specific break down in reference to the critical sub parts of the overall project. Depending on the circumstances and your own predisposition, you may find yourself diving into a large project and forgetting everything else. Or perhaps you want to get all the little projects done first. In which case, you tend to put off the big one. Kind of reminds me of that big term paper when I was in school. I’d often let it wait until the last days when it had to get done or else.

When you schedule a large project, before or after smaller projects isn’t important from a size perspective. What is important is that you develop the ability to estimate realistically the amount of time a large project will take. Ideally, that would include estimating the time each of the major sub parts would take as well.

We tend to fool ourselves about this. So unless you have a well developed sense of the time required for a project, be prepared at initially double the anticipated time required on larger projects for planning purposes. The odds are, you will find ways to use the extra time.

Urgency is the second criteria. If you need to get the bills paid today before incurring additional late charges, paying bills is urgent. If you have an appointment with a client, that is urgent. If you need to draft an advertising campaign that due in the next week or so, it may not be urgent. In the day to day sense, Urgency is like trump in a card game like bridge or 500. It makes a topic that might not otherwise be important rise to the top, because it must get done. When evaluating to do’s, the items that are urgent necessarily need to be flagged.

The last category is the important. While paying bills may be urgent and may also be essential for your business to stay alive, it’s usually not that high in importance. More important may be doing some long term planning, investigating a new product line or even recruiting or training a part time assistant.

The quandary in time management, particularly for the micro business person is that important things are often not all that urgent. They can get put off to another day, and often are. As we will see in later installments, finding the time to identify and do the important things is the crux of successful time management.

Till next time. etn

PLR Gold Videos Rock!

Edmund Loh and Steven Luc have just released PLR Gold Videos.

Now Edward is one of a handful of marketers that has a stellar reputation for the quality of the PLR products he releases.

His past PLR Gold products have allowed me to create quite a few products and his quality is always first rate.

This time he has teamed up with Stephen Luc who is a video expert and voice over specialist. Together they have created one of the best PLR products I have seen in quite a while –

http://viralurl.com/easier/PLR-Gold-Videos

With the Private Label Rights to these videos, you can:

– Put your name or brand name on the videos,
– Change the titles, edit or voice over the videos,
– Set up 8 separate mini sites and sell as many copies as
you want with personal use rights,
– Use as content for paid membership site,
– A perfect incentive to go with a high ticket item such
as a seminar or home study course,
– Make your own product bundle and sell at a higher price,
– Offer the videos in your back-end offers,
– Sell the videos with Basic or Master Resell Rights, Much More within the terms…

Not only can you brand the videos as your own, you get the sales copy and graphics to each of them, making them very close to being a turnkey product.

They cover 8 hot topics.

1. Online Coppywriting Pro – 9 videos
2. Celebrity Blogging – 12 videos
3. Using Freelance Sites – 6 videos
4. Adobe PhotoShop for Newbies – 8 videos
5. Creating Web 2.0 Graphics using GIMP – 7 videos
6. Selling On eBay – 7 videos
7. Outsourcing Your Traffic Department – 6 videos
8. Responsive e-mail marketing – 8 videos

Click here to claim your copy of instant videos:

http://viralurl.com/easier/PLR-Gold-Videos

Edmund and Stephen are letting go the Private Label Rights to their newest collection of videos at an introductory price but it’s not going to be around forever.

In fact, the Early Bird Special is in effect only for the next 10 days or when the first 500 copies are sold out, whichever one comes first.

Secure your copy now:

http://viralurl.com/easier/PLR-Gold-Videos

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

P.S. These are worth buying just to watch and learn. The ability to make a ton om money with them is just plain gravy. Don’t let this one pass you by.

P. P.S. Have you grabbed your gifts yet at The Halloween Giveaway? Only one day left don’t miss out.

http://viralurl.com/easier/Halloween-Giveaway