Author Archive
Poor Time Management Flows From Lack Of Purpose
Posted by: | CommentsI started a coaching call yesterday by saying I was feeling bogged down with everything I have on my plate at the moment. Supervising the outsource worker is taking way more energy and time than I imagined it would. Then there’s my own work I’m trying to keep on top of. Plus keeping an eye on The Challenge by Ed Dale. And, then there’s all the personal stuff.
However, there’s been a niggling thought at the back of mind lately, that some of this activity is just filling in time. I’m doing it because it’s there. Not because I’m consciously choosing to do it. I drift into it and the tasks expand to fill the space.
During the course of the call my coach mentioned she had a few potential internet marketing coaching clients she would like to send my way and would I, during the next week, think about whether or not I’d like to take them on and if I had the time to do so.
My response was a very decisive “I will make the time”.
Suddenly all this being bogged down was out the window and I knew, without a doubt, I would do whatever I needed to in order to make space for these coaching clients. And, in the prcoess I reconnected with what is really important to me.
The focus shifted from an internet marketing business in its own right, to an internet marketing business as grist for the mill of my life. I remembered what it is I’m about. What I’m truly trying to create here, and in that moment the time management issues fell away.
If you’re feeling bogged down or find you don’t have enough hours in the day, it’s usually because you’re not clear about what you’re really about. When you know what you’re up to it’s easier to say “no” to those things that aren’t really moving you towards your goal.
If you don’t have a strong sense of purpose for your day – no personal mission – you will be pulled in all directions. It’s very hard to say “no” when there’s no real “yes” that you’ve created for yourself.
When you have something in your life that really excites you it’s easier to say “no” to the other stuff.
Coaching is that thing for me. And I will make time for it.
What is it for you? And, more importantly, are you actively creating it?
Why Market Leadership is a Process, Not a Goal
Posted by: | CommentsWhat a delight to log onto my blog this morning and read the comments from Oliver and Jon. It’s such a boost to know that people are reading, and that what I’m writing strikes a chord. Thank you to both of them. And thanks to Herb who’s comments on an earlier post – want to versus how to – which touched on market leadership, gave me much food for thought.
There seems to be a bit of synchronicity going on here. On Sunday evening I watched Julie and Julia for the first time and, blow me, if Ed doesn’t recommend it in his webinars on Market Leadership yesterday. (See Module 4, Day 1 of The Challenge).
One of the things Ed mentions that puts people off becoming a market leader, is that they think they will get negative responses to their stuff as well as positive. He doesn’t disagree.
A lot of people choose the web because they feel they can be anonymous, he says. But the problem with this is that if someone else comes into your market, who has a presence and a following, your business will be “blown out of the water”.
Does that bother me? Nope. Because this isn’t about a business.
But hang on. Ed makes it clear that part of Market Leadership is doing something for no reward so isn’t “the business being blown out of the water” a bit of a contradiction? But, I digress . . .
Although you might not think so, from reading my blog, I am one of the “wishing to stay anonymous” ones. At least that’s the part of me I identify most with.
I feel like someone who is holding back, peering through the bushes, waiting to see if it’s safe before I come out to play and yet, I’m writing this blog. I’m choosing to expose myself so to speak!
I suppose it’s just a question of degree. How much exposure can I stand? But there’s no denying there’s a part of me that wants to get out there or I wouldn’t be publishing.
Yesterday, as I was writing my post, I found myself thinking, “why are you bothering to put that bit in about crying?” – “Who’s going to want to read about that?” And, in fact, I toned the story down.
But here’s the interesting bit . . .
What do these 2 comments have in common?
“thanks a lot for writing this blog post. I got a LOT out of it… It’s one of the topics I have been “failing in my head” over a lot.
My Dad runs his own business and I have seen what can happen if you postpone the inevitable. It got really really ugly.
Good luck with your outsourcing from this point forward!
Oliver”
and
“Just wanted to say that you hit the nail on the head with the part about this is what it feels like to be alive.
I couldn’t agree more…
Everyone knows the phrase about doing one thing that scares you every day, but in their uninspired comfortable existences most people wouldn’t willingly put themselves in a position where they’re tested… let alone actually step up to the plate when it came down do it.
Jon”
Answer:
They are about Oliver and Jon and their viewpoints. They’re not about me and my story and whether I cried or didn’t cry. And that’s the clincher. Because market leadership is about service. As Ed says “It’s about serving your market and putting something into it”.
So . . . service is good. I like it that other people find stuff I write helpful. BUT, I like even more the idea of doing it my own way. When I try to do what the expert’s tell me it all comes unstuck. Remember the posts I wrote on The Challenge because I thought I should . . . boring!!!!
So, market leadership, like so much else, is best viewed as a process.
It’s not about setting out to be a market leader. It’s about putting yourself out into your market and seeing what emerges. It’s about learning what works for you, personally – about finding your own way. It’s about stepping out from the bushes and risking being seen. It’s about adding what only you uniquely can add. It’s about putting YOURSELF into the market. Nobody else can do that!
Scarey? Yes, maybe.
But exciting and life enhancing? Most definitely!
Outsourcing Tears and Fears and Meeting the Challenge
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s hard to believe it’s almost 2 weeks since I last posted. But it’s been a real “head down” time for me. I’ve had my son to get sorted for the new term and his Woodcraft camp, wedding dressings to peruse with my daughter, friends and relatives staying and re-engagement with the whole oustourcing thing.
So, here I am again in my favourite cafe, skinny cappuccinno and ham and mozorella panini ordered, ready to write. If I’d stayed at home the tasks of the day would have taken over and it would have been an even longer gap between posts.
So, where did I leave off?
. . . I was off to find 20 likely candidates to email.
This time I foccused most on English language skills. I sent 20 emails and received 11 responses, 2 of which were to say they were no employed elsewhere. After some emails back and forth where I was looking primarily for examples of content they’d written, I chose 2 people from the remaining 9 to take on on a trial basis. John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends taking on 3 to 4 with a view to finding 1 good candiate. But I’m glad I only chose 2. Even that was a lot to manage.
One was primarily a writer (I’ll call her Elaine) and I had most hopes for her. The second (I’ll call her Ann) had some SEO experience as well so I set her off with a 5 Day Traffic Blitz project from Web2Mayhem.
After 2 days I could see that that Ann was going to be a better choice. They were both very keen and both worked hard but Ann followed directions more precisely and actually had a better standard of English. To be fair, Elaine’s English was very good compared to other writers I have tried over the years but I found myself editing more of it.
I’m the first to admit that my standards are very high and I was tempted to go with “good enough” and keep Elaine on but my gut was telling me not to. That opened a whole ‘nother can of worms.
I felt really, really bad telling Elaine I didn’t want to keep her on when I knew she was desparate for the job and had tried her best.
I normally deal with this type of situation by coming up with a load of rational reasons as to why I should keep her on and then doing so. This just makes matters worse as I’m really just delaying the inevitable.
This is an old pattern of behaviour that doesn’t work.
I could see the most likely result of ignoring my feelings now would be that I would have to tell her later, anyway, that I didn’t want to employ her. And it would feel even worse, having raised her hopes and I would have grown more and more frustrated.
I was surprised how hard this was for me and ended up becoming very tearful over the whole thing. But, better out than in!
The next time I have to do this it will be less emotional and the time after that, easier again. So I feel I’ve made a big step forward with this.
I’m never going to have a successful business if I can’t make the hard decisions. And, of course, that is also true for you.
Although, what’s hard for me may be easy for you, whatever your personal challenges are, they will need to be faced and taken on.
But, ultimately, this is good. This is what makes us feel alive. It’s a bit scarey at first but there’s such a sense of achievement and movement that it’s well worth doing.
So, if anyone needs a bit of a support with a challenge they’re feeling stuck with, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to help you tackle it.
Outsourcing Article Writing
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been dragging my feet a bit in relation to restarting my internet marketing outsourcing project. Partly because I wasn’t successful last time and partly because I now realise my expectations were way too high.
For example, John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends that you start off by giving your worker just one task to begin with. He describes how he works with content writers by expecting them to write 1 or 2 articles a day and then submit them to article directories.
No wonder my first worker disappeared. I told him I expected him to work up to writing an article in 45 minutes. After 2 days he hadn’t produced anything. I can see that that gap would have seemed enormous to him to be able to close.
Something else John Jonas said that really struck home was “Some people, after listening to my initial presentation, think that hiring someone in the Philippines is a magic bullet for their business. They think this is some magic talent pool of people who are going to fix all their problems.” Although I didn’t think an outsource worker would “fix all my problems”, after listening to John Reese’s presentation back in May, I definitely thought it was going to be a hell of a lot easy than it turned out to be.
John Jonas spends more time emphasising the learning aspect of hiring someone overseas to work with and that it takes time to learn how to manage them and the systems you will be using.
So this time around I will have to be more patient. Last time I was looking for someone who was good at English and had some SEO and WordPress experience. This time I will focus primarily on the English skills since article writing will be the first thing I need to have done.
Currently, it’s relatively easy to get good enough articles written for $5 each so I could be losing money when I start out. If my worker writes 2 articles a day that’s $50 worth a week which works out about $200 worth a month. Chances are I’m not going to find someone with good enough English for that rate so I really need to look at this as a long-term investment.
I won’t know until I try though so I’m off to find 20 potential candidates to email.
Moving Forward
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I experimented with doing only what I wanted to do, in the moment, rather than things I felt I “should” do because it would bring me a certain result in the future. It was hard, not least because the critic in my head kept telling me I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t knuckle down and focus and I’d just gone back to my old, bad habits, and I was just avoiding things.
But, surprisingly I did actually get a lot of things done and, a lot of time I worked in a more balanced way. As soon as I found myself staring at the computer screen or trawling through email or forums I made myself get up and went and did something physical. Then I came back to the computer and did the next thing.
When I wrote my earlier post, I’d got to the point of questioning whether or not I should continue with the internet business because I was not enjoying my life writing and spinning articles. That’s what it felt it had been reduced to, so narrow had my view become.
But, after a week of experimenting, I confirmed for myself exactly what it is I enjoy doing in this business and what I don’t. I feel a new determination to find a way to make this work without spending so much time on tasks I really dislike.
In addition to this I also discovered some other things that had been buried by the daily grind. One was that I really, really want to do an apprenticeship with Michael Neill and the other was that I’d been allocating no time to my coaching business.
In order to do the apprenticeship I need to create a big chunk of money by the end of December. Previously, the only way I could see to do this was to force myself to ramp up the internet marketing, doing stuff I don’t want to do and I now know that that just isn’t going to happen.
As soon as I began experimenting with the “want to” and let go of the “how to” I started to notice other options.
One is an autoblogging course being piloted by Web2Mayhem (more about that in future posts) and the other was an old site of mine from which I sell an ebook I wrote a while back.
The ebook and site is about depression recovery and has been languishing away in cyberland untouched for years. It’s an obvious place to step up my income but I tend to ignore it for a number of personal reasons.
If I put those aside I ought to be able to increase visitors and sales. However, I don’t want to handle the customer service or spend a lot of time updating it and then maintaining it, so I put it to the back of my mind again.
A couple of days later I realised a better idea would be to make the improvements needed and then sell it. Then I wouldn’t need to manage customer service or keep the site updated. And, since buying and selling websites is one of Ed’s special areas of expertise I’m in the perfect place to do this.
Finally, I attended a call that was given by John Jonas of Replace Myself. He’s the owner of the site I used previously to try to find an outsourcer. An encouraging thing he said was that it is common for workers to disappear overnight (as happened with both my attempts) and it was usually due to their feeling embarrased about not being able to do something. That fits with my experience. I was probably expecting too much from them, too soon.
So, armed with that knowledge I now feel ready to give my internet marketing outsourcing project another go. This time I will have a more precise plan of exactly what I need them to do. Starting with something simple and building up from there.
I’ll let you know how it goes . . .
Focussing on the “Want To” Not the “How To”
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve had a complaint that, of late, my blog posts have been a bit boring. And if you’re not into the Ed Dale Challenge I can see why that would be. And, even if you are, I’ve not really made them personal. It’s been a bit a of a gallop through as I try to catch up, so I can see there’s not been much of interest.
And that makes me realise I’m trying to catch up so I can write about it on my blog because I’m being mentored by Ed and it’s his thing.
But is it my thing? That’s such an important question to ask yourself. Are your working at something because you want to or because you feel you “should”.
Truth be told, I’m not enjoying writing about the Challenge so far because most of it I’ve covered before and I’m only really interested in the new stuff, and that lack of interest is reflected in my writing. So, I will no longer write because I think I “should” and hopefully things will become interesting again.
While I’ve been busy boring readers with my Challenge renditions I’ve been avoiding writing about the more important stuff that I’ve been grappling with. To tell the truth I’ve been feeling a bit embarrassed about my lack of progress.
The “should” of writing about the Challenge is part of a bigger “should” connected with how I “do” my business. It’s been Ok reporting about my experiences of tackling CFT and the daily grind, as long as I was actually doing it.
I thought I could sustain hours of doing work I really did not enjoy because I was determined to create a successful internet business. But, it’s not working for me. I’m finding the end goal is not sufficient motivation to keep me in the grind.
So, what to do?
I could throw in the towel once and for all and feed the story that I will never be successful at this, or I can shift my focus.
One of the problems with living in the grind is you lose your creativity and things get to look a bit black and white, a bit either/or. It’s easy to get caught up in the details and the “how to” and before you know it you’ve lost touch with the “want to”.
If I change the question I ask from “can I do this?” to “do I want to do this?”, I find my answer is still “yes”.
So, I need to take a step back in order to gain some perspective and reconnect with what it is I really want to do.
As Michael Neill, a widely respected transformation coach says, “if you allow yourself to navigate by your own desire instead of what’s possible you’ll find so much more is possible than you currently think”.
So, I’m going to have a week of paying close attention to what I really want to be doing at any moment and experimenting with what happens when I do.
Module 1 – Using Market Samurai – Days 4 To 6
Posted by: | CommentsDays 4 to 6 of module 1 are all about using Market Samurai to evaluate your niche and carry out keyword research. You can sign up for a free trial copy of the software by clicking on the link.
The most important thing about this part of The 2010 Challenge is to keep going until you find a niche that meets the criteria. Don’t be tempted to give up or settle for less than the minimum’s described. You’re be very thankful you did later on.
~~~~~~
Day 4 – Finding Theme and Category Keywords
Learn the difference between theme and category keywords and that for both types of you are looking for good levels of traffic and acceptable levels of competition.
Successful evaluation of your potential niches requires you to follow The Challenge filter criteria.
They are as follows:
- SEO Traffic should be >80
- Phrase to Broad Match should be >15%
- SEO Competition should be <30,000.
Targetting keywords that meet or exceed the above criteria which greatly increase you chances of success.
Day 5 – Understanding SEO Competition
Day 5 is an introduction to the concept of SEO competition and how to use the Market Samurai competition module to assess it. Both amount and strength of competition are important. The amount relates to how many other people are trying to rank for your keyword (covered on day 3) and the strength relates to how much authority your competitors’ sites have, in the eyes of Google.
Even though a keyword phrase may get lots of traffic, if the competition is strong you will struggle to rank. Therefore, you should only go after keywords where you not only do have a good chance of ranking well but also where the SEO competition is not too strong.
The Market Samurai Competition Module allows you to carry out real time SEO analysis of the top websites on the first page of Google that are already ranking for the keyword phrase you’re investigating. This results in an “SEO matrix” which is explained more in future lessons (see below).
The five key factors that you can use to assess your competition are:
- Page Rank (PR)
- Number of Backlinks to the page (BLP)
- Whether or not there is a Yahoo Directory listing (YAH)
- Does your Keyword appear in the Title?
- Does your Keyword appear in the URL?
and you will using the “SEO matrix” produced by the Market Samurai competition module to do this.
Day 6 - SEO Matrix Analysis
There are a number of factors covered in the SEO Matrix so it can seem a bit overwhelming at first. Like anything else, the more you use it the easier it will get to make good choices.
The day 6 lessons goes into detail about what each of the columns in the matrix mean and how to use the data to assess the strength of your SEO competition. The more weak competitors you can find in the top 10 results the better. But for now, finding one is sufficient.
For the purposes of The Ed Dale Challenge, the rule of thumb for a weak competitor is finding a complete row of green in the SEO Matrix. In order to do this the PR must be <3, the BLP will need to be <200, the YAH listing will be “No”, and the Title and URL will not be optimized for your keyword phrase.
Once you’re more experienced with this you will look at the numbers rather than the colours and you’ll be looking for results in your top 10 competitors that have a low PR, a low number BLP, no YAH listing and no keyword phrase in the Title or URL.
~~~~~~
The most important thing to remember when you’re doing your keyword, market and competitor research is not to get discouraged when the results that don’t meet The Challenge’s minimum criteria. Just keep plugging away until you find something that does.
It’s much better to keep checking new niche ideas than go with one that’s not quite right, only to discover that it doesn’t make you any money further down the road. Be patient and you will find a good niche/keyword phrase.
~~~~~~
Even once The Challenge is over (October 2010) you can still give Market Samurai a go for free. I’ve been using this software since if first came out and can’t recommend it enough! Just click on the link to sign up.
Module 1 – Keywords and Market Research – Days 1 To 3
Posted by: | CommentsKey Points:
It takes the same amount of time to build an unsuccessful business online as it does to build a successful one.
The biggest factors that determine whether you succeed or fail are the market you choose and the keywords you target.
~~~~~~
An explanation of the market, niche and micro-niche hierarchy, and keywords and their importance.
Market – A community of people who share a common interest in a particular subject or activity which often has its own language made up of terms and acronyms.
Example – brides to be market who are interested in weddings and use acronyms such as MOH = maid of honor and FH = future husband.
Niches - subset of market which the community would be interested in. So in the above example niches might include wedding cakes, wedding flowers, wedding dresses etc.
Micro-Niches – these are niches within niches. For example within the wedding dress niches you would find vintage wedding dresses or wedding dress hire. The 2010 Challenge targets mciro-niches since they are generally easier to get a first page ranking on Google with.
Keywords – the words or phrases which members of a market type into a search engine in order to explore a particular niche. Searchers use different phrases to access the results and, as a result, the number of people using any one phrase varies considerably. The higher the number of searches for any particular keyword, the higher the potential value to you.
~~~~~~
By the end of this day you need to have identified 7 market or niche ideas that you can investigate further.
Suggestions for where to look include Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool and the magazine section of Amazon.com.
~~~~~~
Day 3 – Traffic and Competition
Traffic Estimates
When someone carries out a search in Google the search engine records the keyword phrase they used and, over time, develops estimates of how may times a day people search using that specific word or phrase. The result is 3 different traffic estimates.
For the purposes of this example let’s assume that you’re searching for an internet marketing coach. The 3 different estimates would be:
1. Exact Match – the number of people who type the phrase internet marketing coach exactly as written.
2. Phrase Match – an estimate of the number of people who are searching for a phrase which contains the words internet marketing coach, in that order, but also has other words (or numbers in it). e.g. find an internet marketing coach . . . or . . . internet marketing coach recommendations.
3. Broad Match – this refers to any phrase which contains all 3 words internet, marketing and coach but not in that order and with additional words included. e.g. hire a coach for internet marketing success.
The distinction between these types of traffic estimates is important because Google tends to rank your pages for keyword terms in a certain order. Usually you’ll be ranked for exact match first then as you add content and obtain links you get phrase match rankings. Then, as you site develops authority you obtain broad match rakings.
Aside ——
This hasn’t been my experience. Exact match usually comes last for me so I’ll be interested to see what happens with the site I put up for this Challenge.
—— end aside
Because of the different time frames associated with the different traffic estimates you can use this key to map out the traffic potential of any particular keyword phrase:
- Exact Match = short term traffic potential
- Phrase Match = medium term traffic potential
- Broad match = long term traffic potential
This means that when you’re trying to decide which keywords to target in your online business you should use Broad match data. This is because it’s the long term traffic potential of a keyword phrase that is most relevant at this stage of the process.
Competition
The second important concept introduced on Day 3 is that of competition.
When you type a keyword in Google search and the results are returned you will also see an estimate of the number of web pages that broadly match that keyword. This is the figure that appears at the top of the page any says About xxxxxx results (x seconds). If you put your term between inverted commas, e.g. “internet marketing coach” you will notice the number of results is reduced. This is because this is the phrase match competition estimate, i.e. the number of times this phrase has been searched with the words in the specific order, plus additional words.
When creating a new website you should start by focusing on your most specific competition, i.e. those returned when you do a phrase match search. Then, once you analyse and outrank your specific competition, you will often see an improvement in your broad match rankings as well.
This means that when it comes to competition you should be looking at the results of the phrase match search, rather than the broad match.
So, to recap – for traffic research you want to use broad match data. For competition research you need to use phrase match data.
~~~~~~
For more in-depth information on these ideas and videos illustrating them, please visit the Day 1, 2 or 3 links above, sign up for The 2010 Challenge, and watch the full training. Actually don’t watch it DO IT !!!!!!
Ed’s Magnificent Symphony Of Four Parts
Posted by: | CommentsHaving a massive catch up with regard the 2010 challenge since my focus has been on other things. But I’d like to have a complete record here. If you’re doing The Challenge or are up to date there won’t be much in this post of interest for you. Just saying! :-)
The pre-module ended with:
Day 5 – The Challenge disclaimer, primarily for legal reasons, I should imagine.
Basically, we can’t guarantee you will make money and we will make a commission on some advertisements etc. etc.
Day 6 – The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts
This is an essential lesson for anyone thinking of starting an internet marketing business (or anyone who already has one), irrespective of The Challenge. In fact the success of any commercial endeavour comes down to these four things and the order is just as critical as the parts themselves.
Typically, when anyone starts a business they start with an idea for a product and go ahead and make it without first discovering if there is a market for the product. This is a high risk strategy and one that isn’t necessary, especially online. Even with good research, you can’t guarantee that you will pick a winner but you can mitigate your risk and not waste you time in markets that are never going to sell if you apply the four parts.
1. Market Research
This phase is commonly rushed through or not done at all, but if you make the effort to do this bit properly you will eliminate much of the risk right here. With all the tools and information available online there’s really no excuse not to do it. You just need to be patient and not rush forward before it’s done. In Ed’s experience, 95% of all the problems that turn up later could have be identified in advance if the market research had been done effectively. So skimp on this step at you peril!
2. Traffic
Even with the best product in the world, if no-one is visiting your offer, you’re not going to sell anything. So you need to determine upfront if there is enough traffic to sustain your business in the market place.
3. Conversion
This refers to how well your page produces the desired action from you visitors. Typically this is buying your product but it could also be other things such as signing up to a mailing list, clicking on an ad, completing a survey etc. Once you have the traffic it’s easy to test different options to improve your conversion rates and income.
4. Product
Once you have visitors they will tell you what they want to buy, or you can find out from market research, so there’s no need to know this in advance. you don’t even have to have your own produce although you will make more if you do.
Outsourcing Round Up – Back To One Task At A Time
Posted by: | CommentsThe biggest lesson relating to my internet marketing outsourcing project was that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded when I watched John Reese’s videos. I remember wondering, at the time, why anyone would buy his course since he appeared to have given us pretty much all we needed to know. There’s obviously more to it than I thought.
Looking back, I simply wasn’t ready for a full-time outsourcer since I still don’t have the strategy for my internet business clearly defined enough. So, even if the people I took on hadn’t disappeared without a trace I think it would have been hard going to manage.
So now, I’m going back to outsourcing tasks and will build from there. Maybe even find someone full-time eventually as a result.
The tasks I’ve least enjoyed doing these past couple of months have been writing and spinning content. I’m actually able to write a good article in about 30 minutes when I’m in the right frame of mind. But, since most of the time, I’m resenting doing it and feeding myself negative thoughts about it, it can take me the best part of 2 hours to complete.
I’ve tried to be positive about it and link the task to my long-term goals but I always seem to default to my moaning, complaining stance so it makes sense to outsource this first.
There are a number of places you can get articles written for $5 so I’ve started trying them out and will budget for that in my 4 week plan.
If you want to read the full story of my outsourcing experience so far just click on the link on the right of this page and you will find all the posts I’ve made on the subject in date order.
