Take a look: http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/funnel

If you’re not quite sure what to work on this week, or this months, I recommend installing this plugin, reading through the included pdf and listening to the audio tutorial. Then fill in the blanks and come up with your own fleshed out marketing funnel. From there you should have no trouble at all to create your to-do lists for the coming week. Just start with one missing element of your funnel and get to work.

P.S. I’m not sure how long this plugin will be available for free, better get your copy while you can

http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/funnel

Yesterday I blogged quite a bit about my goals for the new year and how I came up with those goals in the first place. Today I want to show you how to go from a list of goals to making a plan for the the year. The biggest secret to my own success and that of many of my students is to take those big projects and break them down into small, manageable chunks. From there it’s easy to come up with daily to-do lists.

Here’s my project list for this year. Of course this is subject to change and I won’t focus on just the one project each day. It’s more a guideline to make sure I work on these projects at least a little each day.

• January – Guest Blogging For Daily Affiliate Tasks
• February – Create DAT Lessons For The Entire Year
• March – Build Up The Quinoa Site
• April – Promote Affiliate Niche Packs
• May – Come Up With 10 to 20 New Niche Packs
• June – Focus on Getting More Subscribers to My Free Lists
• July – Add Autoresponder Emails To Lists For The Rest Of The Year
• August – Guest Blog For Affiliate Treasure Chest
• September – Build Up Affiliate Shortcut Reports (more reports, more sales).
• October -Build a New Niche Site And Make It Profitable
• November -Improve an Existing Niche Site To Double My Income From It.
• December – Create at least 20 viral reports and videos to be released the following year.

If this is overwhelming, feel free to start smaller. Come up with projects for the next three months instead and get  used to the process.

Now that we have an overall plan, it’s time to break it down into smaller chunks and get a little more specific about what we want to get done with each project. Set aside a little time (an hour max) toward the end of the month to plan out your following month’s project.

In January, I want to focus on promoting Daily Affiliate Tasks via Guest Blogging. Next, I come up with a goal of how much I’d like to get accomplished that month for this project. The goal should be attainable, but be a bit of a stretch to make sure I’m challenging myself.

January Goal – Write And Submit 50 Guest Blog Posts To Promote Daily Affiliate Tasks

From there, I need to come up with a strategy on how to accomplish my goal and create daily to-do lists or tasks for myself.You can use pen and paper for this, create a spreadsheet, use a calendar or even a smart phone app for this. I like the “Remember The Milk” app.

My January 1st task list will look something like this:

• Create a list of 10 blogs to guest post on.
• Come up with 5 general topics to blog about.
• Create a list of 2 blog post titles per general topic for a total of 10 blog post ideas.
• Optional – sketch out outlines for some of the blog posts.
• Optional – Write and submit the first guest blog post.

For the following couple of days, I’ll then be focused on writing two guest blog posts first thing every morning before working on anything else. Which brings up a good point … this doesn’t mean I’ll stop working on all my other sites and projects. I’ll continue to do what needs to be done throughout the rest of the day and probably start a few new fun little side projects along the way as well.

But let me back up for a second here. Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling a little blah about my blog and haven’t gotten much done in terms of guest blogging, article marketing or product creation. In other words, I had a bad case of Writer’s Block :(

Thankfully I have enough niche websites that continue to bring in residual income, but I was just not feeling productive. That is until this morning…

My friend Peg Baron from AllStar PLR has come up with something new that she’s calling “Article Starter Packs”. I ordered some of them this morning while sipping my first cup of coffee. I figured they might give me some ideas for a couple of much needed new blog posts at AffiliateTreasureChest.com.

http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/articlestarter

Let me show you can example of one of the article starters:

****************

Do You Really Need An Internet Marketing Coach?

Intro – Getting help and direction from a coach
can mean a faster path to success. But before you
go jumping on the “I need a coach” bandwagon,
first ask yourself if you need one and if you even
qualify for one.

Body – Be truthful with yourself: [Expand on each
of these and/or add more]

1. Are you able to follow instructions?
2. Are you willing to take action?
3. Will you do things outside your comfort zone?
4. Are you making any money yet? And can
afford to pay for coaching?
5. Do you have the time to do what your coach
tells you to do?
6. Can you commit 100% to this?

Conclusion - Coaching is a sure-fire way to get
ahead with your business, but it’s not for everyone
at every stage. Be honest with yourself and
determine if now is a good time.

****************

Pretty neat, isn’t it? And it wouldn’t take you long to turn this into a blog post or article.

So far so good… but as I was looking through these article starters, (and the caffein from my coffee started to kick in), I got a few more ideas.

Since these article starter packs are grouped into 5 articles on a similar topic (i.e.5 article starters on article marketing), I could easy turn them into a short report that I can then use to build my list and get viral traffic from.

But it didn’t stop there, these packs gave me ideas for autoresponder messages, videos and entire products.

In fact, I’m having so many ideas on what to do with these packs already that I thought it would make a great bonus to share those with you. Here’s the plan …

You order one or more of the packs and I’ll invite you to a special Webinar I’ll be hosting with my good friend Nicole Dean from NicoleOnTheNet.com. We’ll walk you through various ways you can use these article starter packs outside of “just” writing articles.

The webinar will take place within the next two weeks … we’ll need a little bit of time to put this stuff to work so we can show you live examples.

http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/articlestarter

So here’s the deal. Order the packs, forward your order info and you’ll get an invite to the webinar.

Step 1
Go to
http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/articlestarter
and order the article starter packs of your choice.

Step 2
Email me at affiliatetreasurechest [ at ] gmail.com with your order information

I’ll email you as soon as we have the webinar set up (it’ll be within the next two weeks) and we’ll record the whole thing as well in case you can’t make the live event.

I’m looking forward to sharing all those awesome ideas with you and can’t wait to see how you’re using these article starter packs.

P.S. I want you to be able to take action right away, so I’ll put together a little cheat sheet with some of my ideas for you. I’ll email it to anyone that signs up for the bonus webinar as soon as I get it ready.

Hmmm… hard to decide who to listen to, especially when I would hear both from the same person.

It took several years before I understood that yes, both statements were true and they should in fact both be taken to heart. Here’s my take on it. Maybe it’ll clear some things up for you.

Before I give you my take on it … my brilliant friend Nicole Dean had a discussion on this topic on her blog as well. Take a look at her post on diversification of your income. Then come back to keep reading …

The big secret to solving the mystery of “focus vs. diversification” is that you don’t do both at the same time. Instead you focus on one project, one website until it becomes profitable and somewhat self sustaining. That means that you have some content on it (several pages at least), are getting traffic via various sources (including SEO, article marketing, guest blogging and social media for example), and the site is at least somewhat profitable (you’re making affiliate sales, earning a few dollars per day in Google Adsense etc.). In other words, the site will still continue to flourish if you start working less on it.

Then and only then, it’s time to start looking for and working on another project, creating another stream of income. The biggest mistake I see newcomers to this industry make is that they jump to a new project to quickly and never the first site a chance at making it.

It’s a question of creating enough momentum. Sorry if I’m busting your bubble here, but no, you can’t just build a great website and then expect visitors to show up. “Build it and they will come” may work for certain special baseball fields, but it doesn’t work for your niche sites.

Instead, you can expect to spend at least 4 times as much time out marketing your site as you do creating content for it. It’s your job to go out there and spread the word. Be active on social media sites, targeted forums and comment on popular blogs in your niche. Write some articles, guest blog on other blogs, record some videos, write and share short reports … do whatever you can think of to tell as many people as possible about your site and point them back to the awesome content you have there.

Now that sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? How in the world are you ever going to have time to do the same for multiple websites in multiple niches? Here’s the good news… you don’t have to do this much all the time. Your job in the beginning is to get the ball rolling and create some momentum. Once you’re starting to build a bit of a following and are starting to see some search engine traffic, you can slow down a bit and focus more on adding a bit of content and only doing the occasional promotion outside your site.

Your loyal readers will start to pick up the slack and mention your site on their favorite forum, talk about it on twitter, facebook and any other popular social media outlet. Many of them now have their own blogs and will gladly mention you there. And don’t forget about emails and good old fashioned “word-of-mouth” advertising.

If you have some articles and viral reports out there… they’ll gladly share those as well. Your job at that point is to simple continue to give them stuff they can talk about. That leaves you with plenty of time to focus on that next project and start work on your second (or third) stream of income.

P.S. I didn’t realize I could have both focus and diversification until long after I had build several profitable affiliate websites in different niches. Ready to learn more from me about what I do on a regular basis to build and grow those site? Join me at DailyAffiliateTasks.com for $10 per month and I’ll share my exact strategies and to-do lists with you.

Let’s talk about stepping outside of the comfort zone and doing something that isn’t routine or safe. Every single time I’ve done that, I’ve seen some amazing results. All of a sudden new doors open and my business grows. Let me give you some examples.

If you’ve been reading this blog from it’s humble beginnings about 2 years ago, you know that I started it as a direct result of attending NAMS2. It was there that I realized that I had something of value to share and didn’t have to be a “super affiliate” with a huge house, a fast car and a shiny boat. I was making a very nice living with this “online stuff” and had plenty to share and teach others.

But going to the conference was the first hurdle. I almost didn’t go. It was very much outside my comfort zone and honestly I would have passed on the opportunity if it hadn’t been for my wonderful friends Nicole Dean and Tracy Roberts. The end result (so far) has been a popular blog and a whole line of info products that together with affiliate promotions created an entire new stream of income for me. (And yes, creating those info products was another step outside my comfort zone).

It also lead to the invitation to speak first at the NAMS 5 virtual event and then to speak not once, but twice during last week’s NAMS 6.

By the way … if you missed it, you can get recordings of NAMS 6 here.

Was I nervous? Absolutely! But I did it anyway and I’m already starting to see the ripples of success to come as a direct result of stepping outside my comfort zone yet again.

How about you? What have you done that helped you grow both as a person and as an affiliate or online marketer?

P.S. Ready go grow and step outside of your own comfort zone? The best way to become part of NAMS and get a great deal on tickets to the next event is sign up for the new My NAMS membership. Click here to join and use coupon code MYNAMS90 (right now, you can get in for less than $10, but David will raise the price if a certain amount of sales have been made).

When I was able to find a quiet hour or so, it would take me forever to get into the swing of things. By the time I was starting to make progress, the next distraction or interruption had arrived. I was counting the days until school would start again.

Then I came across this: The 15 Minute Marketer

It’s a short little report that shows you how to get a whole lot more done, even if you can just get away for 15 minutes at a time. There’s nothing earth-shatteringly new here, but it’s the most hands-on stuff I’ve read all summer (and I buy quite a few internet marketing products). This is already making the biggest impact on my bottom line.

Jenn (a busy mom of two little ones) walks you through her process of finding a little time here and there to work. She has a great system of “chunking” up any project so it can be finished in 15 minute intervals. She also includes some great tips for finding extra little chunks of time to work.

You can grab your copy of the 15 Minute Marketer report for under $10 here:

http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/15min

I’m sure it’ll make a difference in how you work on your online business and how much you get done.

P.S. I’m getting more done while spending less time than ever in front of my computer thanks to http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/15min and so can you.

If you’re not familiar with the show here’s a little clip of a profile:

Notice how much detail they go into when describing the guy. They often include age, race, family status, his relationships with his family, character traits, hobbies, etc.

That’s the kind of information you want to have on your potential subscribers and customers. Who’s that ideal client that you are building your business around?

Sit down for a few minutes tonight (or this weekend) and create an FBI worthy profile. I also like to give my “ideal customer” a name. Take some time to describe this person. What does she do, where does she work, how many kids does she have? What kind of food does she like? What are her dreams and hopes for the future.

Once you have that detailed profile, it will become a lot easier to “talk” to this person in your blog posts, articles, email messages and sales material.

Give it a try!

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

I’ve been a bit of a shopaholic this past week or two, which means I’m mostly writing this post for myself, but figured you might benefit from it as well.

Here’s the problem I run into every so often … I buy a pretty inexpensive course, report or ebook on something. I download it to my hard drive planning on studying it a little later that day.

In the meantime another email comes in for a new plugin, some software or another report, ebook , video. And I buy that too. It looks helpful and could make big difference in my online business.

I download it to my hard drive as well. I’m feeling very productive!

And therein lies the problem. These purchases make us instantly feel better because we’re doing something to grow our business – except we’re deceiving ourselves.

Buying information products, software or PLR doesn’t help us grow our business until we take the next, all important step – Implementation!

The software I bought a couple of days ago won’t make me any more sales or generate any more leads until I install it and learn how to use it.

The course on marketing with video won’t help me until I actually go through it, record some videos and upload them.

The ebook I bought on getting better at list building and email marketing won’t make a bit of difference until I finish reading it, create a list of action items and again… start implementing what I’ve learned.

Here’s my task for myself for this coming week…

Stop Spending and Start Implementing

I’m not going to buy anything else, instead I’m going to set aside 2 hours per day. The first will be to go through one of the information products I’ve bought this past week, the second hour will be to implement what I’ve learned. Hopefully that’ll be enough to get me motivated to spend more time that day implementing and actually growing my business.

If you happen to have  a lot of PLR sitting on your hard drive collecting virtual dust, why not turn it into a small affiliate niche site that’ll make you money month after month? Sign up for this free 7 day ecourse to walk you through the 7 steps of setting up, marketing and monetizing your site:

Affiliate Fast Track Ecourse

And don’t forget to implement what you’re learning each day!

P.S. : How about you? Are you having trouble implementing what you’ve learned sometimes or do you end up buying stuff and then don’t end up using it? Leave me a comment and let me know I’m not the only one with “issues” :)

I’ve had this on my mind quite a bit lately and am holding a NAMS Deep Dive presentation on the topic tonight. I’ll be talking about how we can take advantage of other people’s websites (in a nice way of course) to gain momentum. When we do some interesting things happen:

• People start to talk about your website on twitter, facebook, in emails, on their blogs. If they like what they see, they’ll send their friends your way.
• All those links send you plenty of free traffic. They’ll also help you rise in the search engines, sending you … you guessed it … even more free traffic.
• You get more comments, your list grows and you start to make more affiliate sales.

That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So how do we get this momentum? That’s the tricky part, because in the beginning it feels a bit like you’re fighting an uphill battle. It takes a lot of energy and determination on your part to get the ball rolling.

The key is consistency. Do something every single day to drive more traffic to your site.

• Write and submit an article to an article directory.
• Participate on an online forum.
• Post a tip on your facebook wall.
• Comment on a popular blog.
• Approach some bloggers about writing a guest blog post for them.
• Record a video and post it on YouTube.

Go out there and do something to drive traffic to your website every single day!

I’d love to have you join my tonight when I’ll be talking a lot more about this during a Webinar with David Perdew. It’s part of NAMS 6.

I’ve blogged about NAMS – The Niche Affiliate Marketing Systems Workshop quite a few times and I’ve been part of NAMS 2-5 and will be speaking at workshop #6 in Atlanta in August. Take a look at my NAMS blog posts here.

If you’d like to join me tonight, get access to a bunch of great presentations of the virtual NAMS 5 event and attend the live 3-day workshop in Atlanta, go to http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/nams right now and use this coupon code “100special”  to save $100

Hope I’ll “see” you tonight,

Despite all this, it was a very productive couple of weeks.

• I wrote an entire new info product, created the sales page and put it up for sale.
• I’ve blogged more regularly then in the weeks before.
• I connected with quite a few people about promoting my product.
• I wrote and submitted some articles.
• I created a free short report on turning articles or blog posts into free reports.
• I ran two big sales on niche sites that brought in quite a bit of profit.
• I came up with several new product ideas and have one of them almost wrapped up (more on that soon).
• I recorded some bonus videos for Connie Green’s Money From Mini Sites class.
• etc.

In short, I got a LOT of stuff done.

I sat down and figured out what’s been different the past few weeks and it came down to three things:

• More Focus
• Less Distractions
• One Productive Hour Per Day

Let’s look at each of these, how they’ve worked to my advantage and more importantly, how you can use them in your online business.

More Focus – Working on ONE Project at a Time.

Because we were traveling quite a bit here lately, I’ve been forced to work on one project at a time. First I had to get one wrapped up before we left, and the idea for the second came while we were down at the beach. I wrote most of the report there, started the sales page and just wrapped it all up after I got back home.

The big takeaway for me was to force myself to focus on one thing, one task, one project at a time. I’ve started having just what I need for that project open on my computer. No other word documents open, no email, etc. Focusing on just one thing and working on it until it is done is working out really well and something I’m trying to incorporate more into my work hours.

Less Distractions – When I Was Working

This may seem a little counter-intuitive because I had a lot more distractions than normal over the past few weeks. After all, we were traveling (and the beach is one big distraction), a tree fell on house and so on. But a funny thing happened. I tuned it all out when it was time to get some work done. I didn’t worry about the grocery shopping, the phone ringing or checking if someone tweeted me.

Because I had only a limited amount of time to work I cut the distractions out and got it done. While we were at the beach, all I had was my laptop and the files that were already on there. When the internet was down for hours at a time, all I had was my word document. I made the most of that time and became more productive because I was less distracted.

How can you implement this? How about grabbing your laptop, sitting down in a quiet room and most importantly turn off your Internet connection and just write. Create that product, write those articles or get head on your blogging for the week.

One Productive Hour Per Day

Last but not least I want to share something with you that I learned from Jason Fladien (I’ll tell you more about him in a future post). He starts his day by working productively on a project for one hour first thing in the morning. That way, no matter what else happens during the day and how many fires there are that need to be put out, something important gets done.

Consider this … on average when we’re working, we’re actually doing something productive for about 20 minutes for every hour that we’re working. By starting your day with 60 minutes of productivity you’re getting as much done as 3 hours or almost half of a regular work day.

Lynn Terry recommends something similar. She has 3 “got to get done” tasks every morning that she does before anything else.

I have to be honest, I don’t always get to the productive part first thing in the morning. Things happen and often I’m just not awake enough to get straight to “important” work. I have however found that setting myself a time and working on a project for an hour sometime before I have to pick my daughter up from school helps me get a lot more done. I’ve also found that the earlier I do it, the better the rest of my goes.

Doing something very productive early on, keeps me motivated to wrap up other stuff as well. And during the past few weeks I often had just an hour here and there (sometimes even less) to work. It forced me to be hyper-productive during that time.

How can you implement this? Grab the kitchen timer or set one on your cellphone and work without interruption for 60 minutes. You’ll be amazed at how much more you’ll get done.

P.S. Was this helpful? Let me know if you’re getting more done with these three suggestions and of course I’d love to hear about any other productivity tips you have to share. Leave me a comment below.