“How do you do it? You’ve got school, friends, (girls?) + this huge business thingy. How do you do it?”

Before I start blabbing about the “ceremonies” and “chants” that I do that help me handle all those stuff, I’d like to tell you upfront that…

I AM THE WORST TIME MANAGER EVER.

Goofyness aside, I am. I am always late at almost all stuff + I keep forgetting things (Heck, there was once a time that I asked my dad where my iPhone was and it was just in my hands!)

Here’s The Secret…

That was kinda cheesy, but here’s how I do it…

(Some are from personal experience and some are those stuff that really, has worked from the start.)

1. Get Into A “Spell”

This is probably the hardest part to do for me back then. Sounds very simple, but very hard to do.

The thing is, you should get “in” to a spell – or a “work trance”. When you’re in that spell, you can do almost anything, even if it’s the most boring task, when you’re in a spell, it’ll be hard to stop you.

Now here’s a little technique I do to get in to that spell…

What I’ll do is I’d start my day with a very easy task. A task that I like to do – say firing up Photoshop and whipping out banners or arranging computer files (hey, I like doing it. OCD?) Then progress on complicated tasks to the most boring tasks.

Now what happens is that the easy tasks will get me in the mood so as Iprogress to the most boring tasks, I’m already in that “work trance”.

I wouldn’t recommend starting your day with emails because you’ll definitely get lost with who you are talking to. Starting your day with your daily reads isn’t a good idea for me also.

2. Daily To Do List

This is probably the most overused tactic.

But hey, this is VERY crucial – without a daily to-do list, I’d be lost and probably would wander off to Youtube after 10 minutes of work.

Making a to-do list could be one of the very easy task you can do to get into that “spell” too. Takes me around 5-10 minutes.

One of the most important things you should do is to prioritize tasks, or arrange them from easy to hard if there’s no time constraint to help you get into a spell.

By the way, I use Google Tasks on gmail.

3. Cross Out Finished Tasks

I didn’t know that little things like this would matter – but when you finish tasks, it’s important that you cross them out or make a mark or something that tells that you have successfully completed it.

This will give you a sense of accomplishment, and if you’re like me, you’d feel more relaxed.

4. CLOSE Distractions

The biggest distractions that I have are Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Email and Youtube. And one of the biggest mistakes I made to avoid these distractions is to put a status message on Skype, Yahoo and Gmail…

“Busy”

or

“Message if important only”

Now what happens there is that yes, the number of people who message me reduces BUT the “temptation” (is that the right word?) to talk to someone is still there. Heck, even to look who’s online.

So here’s what I did.. I CLOSED IT.

That also applies to websites that waste your time – Youtube, Facebook, Flickr all sorts.

But there’s always a temptation to open it again right?

Block it.

You can simply block a website by going to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc then opening “hosts” with notepad. (Note: to Vista users, open notepad first as an administrator then open the “hosts” file) then adding….

“127.0.0.1       website.com”

under

“127.0.0.1       localhost”

5. The Stop Play Music Routine

I don’t know why and how this works, but it serves me very well.

The idea is, to play 3 of my favorite songs in a row to start my day.

Although I did mention before to turn the music off, I found out something better…

When the first song starts, I’d go ahead with my first easy task to get into that “spell” then when the 3rd song is in the half way, I’d stop it and just continue working afterwards – this really gets me in the mood.

I don’t know, maybe the first 2 songs gets me to that “spell” then stopping at the 3rd song helps me concentrate to the tasks instead of the song.

6. Take Notes, Don’t Act Right Away

Yes, they say that without action, you won’t get anything.

But, with action PLUS the right timing, you’ll get everywhere.

So when you’re in the middle of a task and an idea or an additional task pops out of your brain – right it down and get to it later on after you finish what you’re currently doing.

7. NO!

Learn to say no.

There are stuff that won’t really benefit you that much, learn to say no to interviews, to meetups, to speaking engagements.

Of course, you wouldn’t want to say it with an all caps “NO!” but you don’t want to beat around the bush as well. Be frank, but polite.

8. Delegate & Automate

This changed my life.

And I hope this will change their life too.

The thing is, I’m not really like the master of internet marketing. There are a lot of stuff that I don’t know how to do. I can’t even code or touch a single php script.

Not to mention, how I suck at copywriting and PPC.

But here’s the secret… I let other people do these stuff for me.

Since I got my first fulltime employee working for me, the time I spent on my business is less but I’m still able to maintain the income.

Your “Techniques”?

These stuff are just some of my personal techniques – and I can’t even say that I’m “that” productive – I’m able to do stuff nonetheless.

So if you’ve got something that really keeps you productive, I’d love to hear it :)

© Make Money Online

Pay-Per-Click Marketing Is A Double-Edged Sword

Pay-per click marketing offers instant exposure, traffic and profit potential for one’s website business. It also  provides up-to date analytical data which enables an advertiser to learn more about his/her customers, exploit new markets or opportunities and reduce costs by taking corrective action quickly and efficiently.

The flip side is also through. If the advertiser is not continuously split-testing ads, doing proper keyword research and creating meaningful relevant landing pages, he/she will not only lose a lot of money, but also credibility in his/her respective niche. This can be a frustrating ordeal, and is often the case with most new internet marketers.

PPC marketing should be an essential part of one’s internet marketing strategy for a number of reasons. It should be mainly used in combination with organic SEO, email marketing and ezine advertising to improve web visibility and establish brand.

In order to be successful at adwords, one has to understand the importance of relevancy.  There should be a shared or meaningful connection between the targeted keyword, adcopy and landing page. They all have to tell the same story, with each element building upon the next. This improves overall CTR, which in turn positively affects quality score.

(CTR, also known as click-thru rate is an excellent measure of relevance. It is a major part of Google’s quality score.  A lot of us know and understand that.)

Exploring Key Ways To Improve Your Adwords CTR

Certain CTR factors are obvious or more agreeable:-

Use keywords in the title, adcopy and destination URL, address a question/captivating call to action,  state the product’s benefit and features and observe the content in the ad above you. No question there.

But, should your ad copy include or exclude product price?

That’s what i’d like to ask. Personally, i’ve experienced good results either way and i can easily argue both sides.

Including product price qualifies your visitors a little more. It acts as a weed barrier, if you will, eliminating or discouraging curiousity clicks. This provides for better targeting. The result may be a lower CTR, but a higher conversion rate. Then again, this also depends on whether your product is expensive, competitive or cheap. If it is lower than the competition, then expect high CTR and conversion rate.  If it is expensive, expect low CTR and low conversion rate, unless your product has very strong brand recognition/loyalty or better product features than its competitors.

The flip side with including price is that some of the clicks you will be discouraging are from people with a low to moderate interest in your product. People who are not ready to commit as yet, but may convert depending on the quality of the sales letter.

Think of it this way. If i don’t have the opportunity to convey the product’s value to you either in the form of a sales presentation, letter, or demonstration, why would you be willing to buy based on price alone?

While, price inclusion effectively hedges or protects against wasted clicks, it also eliminates  certain “prospect” clicks or clicks from individuals that are somewhat interested, but need more persuasion before fully committing.

These type of individuals are not “wasted” clicks, their simply “price-sensitive”. They need more assurance before buying.

Like i said earlier, there’s pros and cons to both. But, i would love to hear your take on it. Include or exclude price?

Ryan DSouza is a financial analyst, fiction writer, food critic and part-time internet marketer.  He maintains a small blog where he freely discusses different internet marketing strategies and techniques for beginners. His current interests include blogging and mobile application development.

© Make Money Online

Not anyone until now.

I know I’ve been out for awhile, and the reason I keep telling you guys is that I manage a lot of stuff lately, especially right now because I was so blessed that I was able to get my own office with a full time programmer – which is pretty cool to say the least. Someone calling you “sir” just ups the ante.

So to get back to the game, I’ve compiled a couple of insider secrets that happen to work and get good results when I make banners for the advertisers on this blog.

And these insider secrets, doesn’t need you to be a graphics expert or a high paid copywriter, these secrets are the kinds that you can do by yourself.

1. Know Who Are The People You Are Talking To

The ad above is the one I give out to Ultimate Blogging Theme affiliates – and they work great. If you look at the first line of the banner, it calls all the bloggers. The Ultimate Blogging Theme is a product for bloggers so most likely, my affiliates place this banner on sites where most people have blogs.

Having the line “hey bloggers” get people’s attention because they can relate.

2. Short And Sweet, To The Point

People on the internet have less time compared offline.

The thing is, there’s a big “x” button on the upper right hand corner of the screen. There’s also a nifty back button on the browser – and there are tons of websites to visit. A lot of choices, so why would they stay on your site?

Like they say, the first 3 seconds is your chance to impress, to make them stay or to tell them your message.

3. Curiosity, Curiosity, Curiosity

This ad has been on my blog for quite some time. With a little dash of attitude, POOF! Click magnet!

Curiosity is one of the most effective techniques to get people to click, it’s human nature – we want to know more, we don’t need to, but we “want” to.

It’s powerful, especially when you add this ingredient…

4. Benefit, Benefit, Benefit

I’m letting you in in a little secret… that green little ad you see above, is by far, the most effective ad on my blog.

Simple, straight forward – benefit.

All the stuff we do, we do it because we benefit from them.

Let’s have a little question and answer here, for example, the people who go to the gym.

• Why do you go to the gym? – to lose weight
• Why do you want to lose weight? – to look good
• Why do you want to look good? – to impress others, to feel good

Everything we do, there’s a benefit – that’s what keeps us going.

5. Easy To Read

The most often question people ask about ad typography…

“What font should I use?”

Some people say, Arial, some say Times New Roman, Georgia, Tahoma, Verdana, the list goes on – the results varied.

But what most people forgot to test is – the font the blog is using. In other words, blending the ad to the blog.

Now what happens here is that your ad gets read more often because the typography is the same as the blog and people think it’s not an ad.

Also, one thing – don’t let readability suffer for design.

6. Salestickies (Handwritten text)

In the contrary, you can standout. Handwritten texts just grab attention like a man sleeping in a rock concert.

What can I say it’s unique. Have a look at this…

If you want to download some Salestickies, you can check out my Direct Response Templates, it’s one of the bonuses.

7. Namedropping

This simple edit will only take you a minute to implement on your ads but you’ll get something big in return.

For example, you can turn…

“How to rank high in the search engines”

To…

“How to rank high on Google”

“Make money with videos”

To

“Make money with Youtube”

Test, Test, Test!

The good thing about online advertising is you can implement changes quickly. In a matter of minutes, you can change the banner ad that shows up on your website. In a matter of seconds, you can change the copy of your AdWords ad.

The internet is testing paradise.

You should use this to your advantage because not all these tips work on all places.

Like my favorite speaker/author Tom Peters always say…

“Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.”

© Make Money Online

Ghostwriting services are much needed in the online money making world. If you struggle to write or have a phobia with writing, then you definitely need to hire a ghostwriter. This article will show you how to hire a good ghostwriter so that you can increase your online sales.

It’s worth mentioning first of all, that looking for the cheapest price is definitely not the way to select your ghostwriter – unless you’re working on an Adsense site where content doesn’t matter and  you’re only concerned about Adsense clicks.

If you need 10 articles (500 words) to be ghostwritten, and the ghostwriter charges $5 for each article, that would mean he will earn $50. But it takes him a minimum of 3 hours to finish them. Why would anyone work 3 hours for $50?

If they’re in India or the Philippines then yes, than would justify the pay. However, you need to be extra careful to see what their standard of English is and the amount of research they will do for your articles or ebook. You are writing content to provide valuable information to your customers and readers. You’re not writing content for the sake of it.

Here is a checklist of things you should go through when hiring a ghostwriter:

1. Does he have samples to show you his writing style? Does his samples have informative content written in an interesting tone with good English?
2. Does he have testimonials from his past customers? Do the testimonials sound real?
3. Search for the ghostwriter’s name on forums. Does anyone mention his name and say they liked the work ghostwritten for them?
4. Look at the prices the ghostwriter is charging. Do they seem reasonable? If they’re too cheap then you run the risk of receiving poor quality content or a delay in receiving the material. If they are good and cheap, then obviously they will get bombarded with work.
5. Ask the ghostwriter questions on your ebook or articles that you want written. Look at their responses to your emails. Are they written in good English and do they reply your email in a timely manner?
6. Ask for referrals from friends or word of mouth. If several people recommend a ghostwriter, check them out and see if you are comfortable with working with them.
7. Ask the ghostwriter if they can do the research for you or whether they need a lot of hand holding from you. Some ghostwriters will expect you to supply them research material so that they can work on it. This is costing you time. Professional ghostwriters will do the research for you. You need to make sure.
8. Ask if the ghostwriter can write a sample for you based on your topic. If they say yes, then you need to consider if they’re worth hiring. A good ghostwriter would not write for free to prove themselves. It could mean that they are desperate for work due to lack of clients. Good ghostwriters are very busy.
9. Does the ghostwriter understand how to write a Search Engine Optimized article? Do they know what LSI is? If they’re knowledgeable in this area then they can write articles for you that can rank high in the search engines.

And finally, if you do get good quality work from a ghostwriter, then make sure you stick with them. The more you work together, the more you will understand each other. They will know how to produce work that you want.

Conclusion

I am not saying that ghostwriters that are charging low prices produce low quality content. But you run the risk of hiring someone who’s first language is not English and therefore produce below average material.

If you fiind that they are good ghostwriters then they will be so busy with work and therefore very likely delay in delivering your ebook or articles.

Think about it. If they are good and cheap, why would people not use them again? Also once they get many orders, it’s only a matter of time that they will increase their prices.

If you want to make money online, then you need good content. Content is what the internet is about. If your readers like your ebook or the articles that you have produced, you will get loyal subscribers and customers. Ghostwriting services are an important part of your business to outsource. They make money for you. So make sure you get this part of your business right.

Alan Cheng is a professional ghostwriter who delivers a complete solution for information product owners. His ghostwriting package includes ghostwriting an ebook, sales letter with minisite graphics, squeeze page, thank you page and press release. His website is at http://www.bestinstantsites.com.

© Make Money Online

Answer the three questions below and after that you’ll find out if you caught this spreading disease…

Question number one

How much soil is there in a hole measuring one meter by one meter by one meter? (Answer below)

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None, it’s a hole!

Question number two

A man dressed all in black is walking down a country lane. Suddenly a large black car without any lights on comes round the corner and screeches to a halt.

How did the driver know there was a man in the road?

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It was daylight!

Question number three

A mute person goes into a shop and wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of brushing his teeth he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done.

Next, into the shop comes a blind man who wants to buy a pair of sunglasses, how does he indicate what he wants?

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.

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He would simply ask.

What did you get?

If you have answered the three questions correctly then you are clear of Attentionitis but beware this is a contagious disease you might catch it from suffering patients.

If you have answered only one or two correctly then you are in the stage 2 of this disease, go get some tea to calm down and concentrate.

If you haven’t answered any of the questions right, I’m sorry but I can’t do anything for you, just read on.

Attentionitis everywhere!

When I logged in to Google Analytics a while ago, I checked one of my sites and saw a huge traffic spike yesterday. Looking at the traffic sources, Stumble Upon topped the leader board. Unfortunately, the bounce rate was horrible and the average time spent on the site is less than a minute! Imagine that.

A recent study was also conducted that people watching Youtube videos judge the whole video on the first 20 seconds. If those first seconds sucks, they’ll switch to the other video, if it’s entertaining then they’ll finish it.

With that said, we can declare that most people online has Attentionitis.

Cure?

Nope, at the moment, there’s no world wide cure going on so if you are selling or want to give a certain information…

“Do it shorter because less is more. Speed matters.”

On a side note, Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher once said to his friend in a letter “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

But shorter is harder.

© Make Money Online

Writing for web is different than other types of writing. The quality of content matters more than anything on your site. And instead of defining your own definition of quality content let your visitors do the job. Visitors don’t read on the Web; instead they scan the pages, find what they want and leave the site. You’ve to tweak your content in such way that they’ll keep visiting your site. But how you can do that?

So without any more introductory paragraphs, let’s get into it with the techniques of writing quality content for the web:

Topic

The theme of your topic should be easily visible and knowable. Your topic should be easily locatable by search engines. Do your research for the topic & relevant keywords. Always keep your users in mind. Think about which information they are looking for. If you’re writing for blog, then you should avoid reblogging.

Headlines, Main idea

Write descriptive and compelling headlines. Always keep in mind the main idea of the article. Make a habit of writing the main idea at the top of the screen and the supporting information below it. Try to limit one idea to one paragraph. Edit out the superfluous information from your article.

Graphics

If your article uses graphic then make sure it supplements your writing. Align it as per the needs of the content. Image should not be meaningless and distracting to users. Avoid using large-file size images. Use the “Save for Web” option in Photoshop.

Summary, Conclusion

Most of the important facts can be written in summary. While writing concise summary use the bullet points for main points. Don’t forget the conclusion; it makes much bigger impact than any of your descriptive paragraph.

Complexity

Any complex information in the article should be logically organized. Give detail information wherever necessary. If you’re using any technical terms, then you should properly elaborate on it.

Structure

Make a good structure of your content & website. Your content should be easily navigable. Do include sitemaps; achieve pages in your blog or website.

Before You Proof-Read

Check your article with spell-checker. Break the article into short paragraphs if needed. Use white space between the paragraphs to enhance the readability.

Summary

These are just tips for you to get started in writing for web. If you make habit of it, you’ll definitely improve while writing for web. As per the research, there is simple shortcut to write for the web. Just follow the steps below while writing anything for web.

• Write content keeping users in mind
• Make your content short & sweet
• Write the factual information

It takes work and focus, but the effort will make you a more productive writer.

© Make Money Online

You don’t realize it, but after reading through this article you’re going to look at online copywriting from a new point of view. I confess, the main reason why I stumbled into carlocab.com is to look for ways to make money online. I’m sure we share similar purposes and we know making money means selling, which almost always involves copywriting.

If you’re like me, we’ve followed links from pages to land on pages that shout “MARKETTING” and “HARD SELL.” AND, if you’re like me, we hit the close button as soon as we get a glimpse of what’s inside. I’ve often wondered if there’s a rule with copywriting services regarding these bland and monotonous presentation of landing pages.

Web copywriting is a different animal from traditional print copies. The Net is a dynamic and volatile market and here’s a fact for you: there are no hard and fast rules to almost anything that we do in the web. That includes writing copies.

Alright, we want to learn copywriting and we start by not following the rules? Perfect. However, to make things easier, I’ve compiled some practical tips and advice I gleaned from copywriting forums, where they tell it like it really is.

Stick Out Like A Sore Thumb

Copywriting is supposedly a creative writing style so be inspired and get noticed! I’ll bet that the person who originally proposed that web copy should be a long white page with large black fonts and reds and yellows for emphasis is doing something different now. If you follow the crowd, you’ll blend with them too and that’s a bad thing if we are selling something.

Write for Your Target Market

Trash that grammar book, writing for the web has it’s own set of rules. Foremost among them is get to the level of your target market and speak their language. Talk to them eye to eye. I’m sure there are not too many scientist and grammar teacher types surfing the web looking to buy stuff so we can safely ignore that market if we’re selling a make-money-from-home kind of eBook or a pair of booties for our little cuties.

Learn it from the Pros

I’m not referring to experts but to real people who are willing to part with their hard-earned bucks for something they can use (or think they can use). Forums are great places to learn copywriting. They are where the nitty-gritty gets doled out by the shovel full. As a bonus, the social network we establish may jumpstart our money-making efforts.

Now we have an idea why most web copies fall short of bringing home the bacon. Why, a lot of them even fail to get us to read past the first paragraph. Fortunately, we have hindsight and the basics for good copywriting. Go forth and get persuasive online.

© Make Money Online

This post is part of the “This Is Quick” case study:

Part 1: Why Capturing emails matter
Part 2: Give It Away And Get Rich
Part 3: The Power Of Words And Colors

More to come!

If you have noticed, I’m doing some changes in that big header up there. I’ve been changing some colors, write-ups, placement, etc. It’s not that it looks bad or something but I’m just into some tests.

You see I’ve read loads of articles, watched tons of videos about this NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). NLP is about how language (linguistic) affects a person’s thinking (Neuro) using different massive techniques. You can check out my post about it, I left a video there from Derren Brown, a popular guy from London.

I got so curious about it that it made me look for more videos from that guy and wow, I was deeply amazed how he can change almost all people’s perspective and even their train stop.

Headlines Should “Suggest” Action And Time

“Buy one today, get it now, grab a copy today, etc.” You’ll see those on almost all stores worldwide, and it’s also here online. Check out my header for a quick example. No it hasn’t degraded even after all the years that marketers used it.

I got proof, on my first try, when I first added the big header, I used the headline “Your FREE Report”. It worked nicely at first but let’s not count it because there’s always big conversions at first launch. After a week, conversions just suck! I got like 10-15 names from a blog that gets 500-1000 unique visitors everyday. After that, I didn’t hesitate to change the headline and some texts and added the second one which is “Grab (Suggestion of action) Your FREE Copy Today (Suggestion of time). I’ve increased conversion rates to 15-20 (I’m pretty sure it didn’t go below the 15 line)

For a curious kid, that wasn’t enough, so yeah, I changed the headline again to “Make Money Online Now” My traffic was targeted for that because if you still don’t know, I’m on the frontpage of Google for the keyword “make money online”. That’s right! Conversions jumped!

Colors, Backgrounds and Fonts

If your headline is ready and you think it’s enough, try experimenting now on how they look. Colors, backgrounds and fonts have a major impact on the headline. Let’s just say that you have a great headline but it’s just too dark that people can’t see it. What happened? Well, unfortunately for you, nothing.

So try experimenting on these elements, make headlines stand-out with other fonts. Set mine again as an example. You’ll see that I’m using a red font color for the main headline and a black one on the not-so-important ones. I also used a white background to highlight the texts in the headline (That explains those irritating yellow highlights in salesletters!) Also, some drop shadow will help, just to pop it out a little.

Share Your Experiments

All of these are for experimental purposes only, it may or may not work well for you because we may have different audiences. So all of these results are just from experimenting but with a little science on the side.

Anyway, I know I’m not the only one who have been playing with people experimenting with headlines. What about you, do you have any experiences with these? mind sharing it?

© Make Money Online

• Write like you talk – When you are writing like your talking readers will be entertained while they read your posts unlike many bloggers, they write like they are CNN or BBC. You’re not the news you are what you are, you blog to share your feelings and opinion.
• Make posts that are priceless and worth reading – A boring blog will get you to nowhere, but if you make posts that are interesting and entertaining you will surely get positive feedbacks and, also more traffic.
• Plain and simple – Most of the visitors in the internet are scanners they don’t have a lot of time that’s why you should get to the point quickly. Posting short articles with useful content is good, but remember long but useful posts are the best.
• Write with clear thought – Your not writing a poem when you blog. Don’t use deep words when posting. Use words that are easy to understand and easy to read, don’t let your readers think when their reading your posts, go strait to the point!
• Use attractive headlines - This is very important because many readers are basing on the post’s title. If they think that you’re title is crapping they close it. So don’t let them get away by making attractive titles.

That’s it for now. After using those 5 effective article writing rules, don’t forget to check your posts for misspelled words and wrong grammars.

© Make Money Online

Remember these lines won’t get you anything! This is just the start of our topic today about opening lines on the title of your posts.

The Object of Opening Lines

The purpose of the main title is to get the attention of the readers to read your content
The object of the first line in your paragraph is to attract readers to read the next one
The object of the second line in your paragraph is to attract readers to read the next one
But how do we use opening lines?

How to Use Opening Lines

Readers like me always judge the title of the posts. So opening lines are very important most likely your opening title. The title should be:

• Attractive
• Not boring
• Interesting

If you have these three things in your title most likely your readers will continue reading and reading until he will finish the article.

I hope this would help. This would also work in getting your girl for valentines. Lol

© Make Money Online