The Art Of Planning: Making Before Taking The Plunge

In a time where most things are becoming quicker to do, to achieve and to receive, many people feel that the internet holds all the answers and can help take your life from the dark ages into a new age of instant gratification.

If you think that what I just said does not hold true, do a quick search for “make quick money” on our favourite search engine and take a quick peak at those 60 million results.

As you can see, some false hope has been sprayed around and people are beginning to think that the internet is the next gateway to 24 hour riches.

Whilst the aim of this post isn’t to slander every single Get Rich Quick Scheme out there, I wanted to focus on a method that could actually help you to develop not only income, but success, branding, marketing, content creation much more quickly than before (but still not overnight either).

And I think you’ve heard this buzzword before. The name of the game is planning.

What Are The Benefits Of Planning?

Some talented individuals always make plans before starting anything new including a new website or internet business or before doing something as simple (or not) as a Wordpress upgrade. These people make sure they know every single step in detail before actually undertaking the project, even though this might cost them 5-10 minutes of their time.

For those skeptics who never plan, here’s a few reasons why you should:

• The human memory isn’t bulletproof. I often forget things half-way through a task and try and rack my brains to search for the thing I was thinking about. By writing or typing a plan, you make sure that you don’t leave out an important part of the procedure, which could end up costing you more time in the longrun.
• Allow ideas to brew. This point is especially useful in content creation. By jotting down a plan of your next blog post, you can let your ideas brew, and don’t have the pressure of trying to write a post on the spur of the moment, something that guarantees a lack of quality.
• Be more productive. Whilst planning takes up some of the precious “action time”, in the longrun, it can actually help you to organize your activities and to make sure you perform the most useful activites whilst you’re in the groove. Leo Babauta always mentions making a plan before undertaking any task, so you should too.

How Do I Make My Plan?

Once you’ve decided that planning really is necessary before you take the plunge, then the next step would be to decide how you are going to make that plan. In the world today, there are 2 places where you can write down pre-thoughts; on a screen or on a piece of paper.

It’s up to you which one you use, I myself personally prefer jotting things down in my roughbook (which you’ll be able to see below). The advantages of doing this, is that you get to step away from the screen a bit (which in turn uses less power), but at the same time, you’re using paper. So from an environmental perspective, you’re doomed both ways. Find out whichever one works for you - experiment a little.

Once you’ve decided upon the medium, it’s time to decide upon the method. Here are a few methods that I’ve used in the past:

• 1. Spider Diagrams - the picture you can see above is of a plan for an upcoming guest post on a Top 10 blog. This method was great, as it allowed me to link factors together, to continually add on top of the ideas I had already formed for the post, and it inevitably led me to realize that I could put together a great series, instead of a single post.
• 2. The Simple List - ideal for planning events or continuous steps (again great for Wordpress Upgrades). Planning this will help you get rid of uncertainty and will make sure you carry out the task in the quickest time possible. This technique is great also for creating social media linkbait.
• 3. Flowcharts - again a flowchart can be awesome for planning an event or for detailing your workday. These can also be more visually attractive, helping to detract from that boring, planning experience.

Again, I’ve only detailed a few pieces of opinion here, but the key here is to continually trial and improve upon your planning techniques.

Once you’ve mastered the art of planning, not only will your productivity shoot up, but you’ll be left with more time to focus on aspects of your website, blog or company that are lagging behind and which are causing you to lose potential gains. Patching up these leaks will guide you to success; sooner rather than later.

WRevenue.com - Web Business With Scott Wainner

It’s not often that you get to review a fellow blog, let alone a blog about online entrepreneurship and business. That’s why I snatched up the review of NorthxEast and was eager to complete this review that Scott Wainner ordered up.

The blog in question is called WRevenue - a name which highlights Scott’s last initial, and is also a clever play on words which sounds like “Double Your Revenue” if you say it right - something which has also been emphasised in the tagline.

So, this dude if offering to double my website’s revenue? This seems like an outrageous claim, until you checkout the official About page of the blog and read the short bio on Scott’s entrepreneurial journey so far. Here’s a short quote:

“In 1994 I started a computer hardware reviews site called SysOpt.com in high school and by 1997 (Freshman in college) I was earning $100,000/year from banner ads. In 1998 I launched a second site, ResellerRatings.com. I continued operating the sites until 1999, when a company called Andover made an offer to buy them. A second company, EarthWeb, got into a bidding war with Andover and eventually bought the sites for several million dollars…”

Wow, so you can already see that you’ll be learning from an experienced guru in the online business niche. I just wish that I had started online way back in ‘94 (although I would have only been 4 years old then). Think of the amazing domain names you could have purchased. In the end, due to the Dot Com Bubble Burst, Scott managed to buy back ResellerRatings from the original purchaser at a fraction of the cost, and convert it into a money maker again - a sign of a true entrepreneur.

Above is a screenshot of WRevenue.com’s homepage. It seems to be a custom-coded template installed on Wordpress and looks very clean and stylish. The colours blue and black are soothing to the eye and the picture of Scott in the header is a very good marketing tactic - this will ensure that people instantly recognise Mr Wainner, and he gets to connect with his audience immediately and provides a sense of authority and a personality behind the blog.

Credibility

Another thing that adds instant credibility, is the fact that Scott has a Feedburner widget which shows how many subscribers he has. At the time of writing, this figure stands at nearly 400, which is an absolutely phenomenal increase since the 28th September when the blog was started.

This of course, would be mainly due to the high-profile interviews Scott has ordered up on the likes of TylerCruz and JohnChow, again helping to increase branding opportunities - a must for any new blog, even if you don’t pay for it.

The Design

There are a few issues which I would like to bring up in terms of the design aspect of WRevenue. Firstly, in the header, there are 4 other images besides the photo of Scott which show various aspects of his life (cycling, piloting and internet business). These appear to be hyperlinked but don’t lead anywhere - so either linking them up to bigger versions of the pictures or removing the links altogether would be best.

Also, a fact which Tyler mentioned, would be to reduce the size of the sidebar, especially as we can see that the Categories and Blogroll section only take up a narrow amount of space. The Meta area also needs removing - as it is unnecessary and is maybe a security issue, although I’m not sure of the technical details on that one.
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We Can Make A Difference - Blog Action Day

Today is BlogActionDay. In this 24 hour period, more than 15,000 blogs will write about one topic - the environment. This is my post in a bid to spread the word and raise publicity for the most important asset we have.

Take a walk around the small village where I live, and you’ll be able to see the beauty and intricacy of the earth on which we reside. From the tall pine trees to the mesmerizing lake, complete with it’s own mini-waterfall, ideal for a mid-afternoon stroll.

It is here where I realise how lucky I am to be living in such a serene area of the UK, away from the hustle and bustle of the City, and far from the noise, visual and particule pollution that is all too common these days in major settlements.

But all is not perfect in this idyllic setting

Looking in through the large, manor windows, and peering into the gated driveways, you begin to see how much these people take their livestyles for granted. There are 3 expensive cars parked on the tarmac, the latest petrol-guzzling BMW alongside the 4×4 and the speedy Mercedes SLK. The lights are on full blast inside the property, the sprinkler has been left unattended, watering an already waterlogged lawn.

Indeed, the same can be seen pretty much across the whole of the UK, even if it is on a smaller scale. We leave the lights on, we drive our cars even when walking is both a cheaper and healthier option, and we import food from thousands of miles away, when our own homegrown produce is just as good.

Don’t look at me like that, I’m just a blogger

You may think that as a work-from-home blogger, or even someone who just writes articles in his spare time from work or as a leisure activity, that you don’t or can’t have a big effect on the environment.

You’re wrong.

You still use electricity to turn on your computer or laptop, to power your printer, to enable your Wireless Router, to keep your fridge cool for those mid-morning treats. All this electricity usage means that more coal and gas is burnt in order to drive the turbines, which in turn produces more carbon dioxide, which in turns helps contribute to the Greenhouse Effect, raising temperatures in our homely sphere.

It doesn’t take panda-killing John Chow to work out that the emissions we’re pumping out are having negative consequences (although some scientists still wish to follow other theories).

The point is, we’re all responsible, and we all need to change our habits in order to contribute to a greater good, and to better the environment in which we live.

Should we stop using Oil and Gas altogether?

This is the classic Economics argument. Whilst it is true that cars do help to contribute towards the emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, they do add a significant amount of marginal benefit that helps us to add more value to our lives. For example, if you drive to work, then the activities you perform at work will (in most cases) be productive and to the benefit of the whole economy.

The opposing argument is, is that such economics don’t take the negative externalities (or damage to the environment) into account. As a result, we should not be thinking of cutting consumption of petrol for cars, but rather, how can we decrease the emissions resulting in the use of our cars for important matters? Obvious answers include lift sharing or working from home for a few days of the week.

How Else Can We Help?

So many bloggers have aired their views on what we can do to help contribute to a cleaner and safer environment for our offspring and the generations after that, so I’ll just go through a few things you interpreneurs can practice:

• Turn off the lights when you leave a room.
• Don’t print for the sake of it.
• Shut down the computer at night.
• Recycle your computer.
• Get an LCD screen which uses a lot less electricity.
• Offset the carbon emissions from blogging by planting some trees.
• Buy used items instead of new.

To conclude, we are all responsible for what is happening today in the world. For the melting icecaps, for the destructive flooding in Bangladesh, to the life-threatening droughts in Africa. Even by adopting one of these measures, you will undoubtedly be helping contribute to a better way of life for another person out there in the big, wide world.

SEO Analysis of Blogtrepreneur

I’ve always wanted to rank highly for the phrase “entrepreneur blog“, but have never seemed to be able to climb into the Top 5 in Google. After reading an analysis of Carl Ocab’s Search Engine Optimization by David Elefant, I messaged him asking if he would be able to do the same on his Make Money Online blog for Blogtrepreneur.com. He kindly obliged, and you can find the analysis here.

I just wanted to blockquote some of the things he mentioned for emphasis, and to help you guys know how to rank highly for your chosen keywords or search phrases:

The keyword density for “Entrepreneur Blog” in the blog is 1.2%.
Keywords are not found in the domain name. Nothing can be done about this.
One h1 tag includes the keywords. This gives extra points.
The Meta Description and Meta Keywords all contain at least one mention of the targeted keyword. Well done.
None of the Img “Alt” Attributes contain the keywords.

The conclusion of the article, is that I wasn’t ranking so badly after all! In order to try and further increase my rank, I can add more backlinks with the desired anchor text, try to add more related outbound links, and not sharing the IP address with other domains. Thanks for the analysis David!

UPDATE: Turns out I’m ranked 6 at the moment for the term! Woohoo

The Myth About Internet Marketing

What if everything you were taught about Internet Marketing were a myth?

That’s the opening premise to Russell Brunson’s new FREE eBook called the IM-Myth. In the report, he explains how many people think that the Internet is the be all and end all for all business, and that offline promotion techniques are dead. However, Russell goes onto explain how this simply is not true, and that offline sales, if used properly and with tact, can be used to generate further income and revenue to supplement the online side of the business.

What’s In It For You?

Well, the 44 page eBook is FREE - but unfortunately requires your capturing your email address. However, if you want to get around this, simply unsubscribe from Russell’s list after you’ve downloaded the resource. I can assure you that having spent 30 minutes reading this, your head will be buzzing with new ideas.

Once downloaded, there’s also a chance to promote IM-Myth to your own blog or website readers, and you can get $1 for each Report downloaded, which is pretty phenomenal. So if you can get 100 people to signup, that’s a quick 100 bucks for you.

You have to hurry though because the payouts stop on October 9th - that’s in just 2 days time - so get promoting.

What’s In It For Me?

Well as you’ve guessed, for each report you download, I get $1 as well. And because it’s a 2 tier affiliate system, for every report that your subscribers download, I get $0.50. This means that there’s great potential for you as well to make some money.

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret…

After reading Russell’s eBook, I realised that I didn’t have any mechanism for capturing email addresses, and that I was potentially leaving a lot of Affiliate income on the table. In my feedreader, I saw that Gary was selling Minisites for only $25. In these mini-empires, you get:

• A professionally written eBook
• 10 PLR-modded articles
• Keyword Research for your Adwords
• Website Template
• eBook Cover graphics and other graphics

And most importantly, you get access to a Sales Letter - the all important part whereby you can capture email addresses. Now I don’t want to go into this in too much detail, because this topic deserves it’s own “How-To” articles, however, I bought the mini-site on Identity Theft - and at $25, it wasn’t too much of a plunge. Checkout Gary’s selection, grab yourself a free trial version of iContact Email Software (made by our own young entrepreneur Ryan Allis) and get experimenting.

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