1. Don’t Work To Hard Or You Will Risk Burnout
2. Set Achievable Goals That You Can Regularly Check Off
3. Surround Yourself With Friends That Encourage You
4. Speak Positively About Yourself
5. Start Early When Your Mind Is Most Active
6. Have A Good Breakfast Before You Start The Day
7. Regularly Connect With Your Peers To Talk About Successes
8. Map Your Progress - There’s Nothing Better Than Seeing Where You Have Come From
9. Reward Yourself For Achieving Goals And Targets
10. Take Time Out To Have Some Fun
11. Relax And Listen To Your Ipod
12. Go For A Walk Or A Run And Get Some Fresh Air
13. Consistently Shake Up Your Routine - Don’t Let Things Get boring
14. Make Your Job Fun
15. Have Goals In Eyesight - A White Board Is Great For This
16. Read Goals Daily Before Starting Work
17. Make Your Goals Public -Now There’s Some Motivation!
18. Visualize Your Goals -Don’t Just Read Them
19. Grab Yourself a Coach
20. Challenge Yourself Constantly
21. Dream Big, Never Stop Dreaming
22. Take Regular Breaks
23. Turn On The Air-Conditioning, Fan or Just Open The Window To Let Some Fresh Air In
24. Have Consequences For Unachieved Goals
25. Remember Why You Are Doing What You Are Doing
26. Make A Collage Of Your Dreams
27. Identify Your Excuses And Have A Response Ready
28. Recognize That Having ‘Down’ Days Is Just Part Of Life
29. Pray
30. Have A Vision For Your Life
31. Fuel Your Passion
32. Read A Motivational Book
33. Help Someone Else Out And Get Your Mind Off Of Yourself
34. Take Advantage Of The Times You Are Highly Motivated
35. Make A List Of Things To Do For The Day
36. Don’t Work In Your Pajamas!
37. Set Your Business Hours And Stick To Them - Even If You Work From Home
38. Make Sure You Are Doing Something You Enjoy
39. Delegate Or Outsource The Jobs You Don’t Like
40.Block Your Means Of Procrastinating (Web Surfing, Emails, etc)
41. Know The Difference Between A Reason And An Excuse
42. Do Something New
43. Have A Competition With Your Friends
44. Listen To Motivational Tapes
45. Make Sure You Are Eating
46. Be Accountable To A Friend
47. Sometimes Just Let Your Mind Wander - Let Creativity Flow
48. Let Past Failures Fuel Your Motivation
49. Get Excited About Your Dreams
50. Teach Others What You Know
51. Take A Holiday
52. Stay Confident And You Will Stay Motivated
52. Ask For Help
53. Read Magazines And Success Stories In Your Field Of Work
54. When You Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything, At Least Do Something
55. Turn The TV Off When You Are Working
56. Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals -Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic And Time Based
57. When You Are Struggling, Focus On The Fun Jobs
58. Feel Good About Yourself
59. Sit Up Straight - Good Posture Promotes Good Breathing
60. Chose Never To Give Up
61. Get Some Sleep - Tiredness Causes Unnecessary Troubles
62. Laugh Often
63. Watch ‘The Secret’
64. Accept That Mistakes Happen
65. Don’t Take Criticism On Your Business Personally
66. Do What You Love And Love What You Do
67. Always Be On The Lookout For Opportunites
68. See Your Competitors As Future Partners
69. Get Angry, Then Do Something About it
70. Have A Clean Workspace
71. Face A Window And Take Time To Look Out It
72. Don’t Get Jealous - Be Happy For Others Success
73. Decide Not To Let Short Term Problems Affect Your Long Term Goals
74. Make Affirmation Statements
75. Get Some Put Plants For Your Office
76. Wear Comfortable Shoes
77. Take A Break And read Your Favourite Blogs
78. Drink Plenty Of Water
79. Aim To Prove Others Wrong
80. Stop And Be Thankful For What You Have
81. Don’t Isolate Yourself
82. Find Successful Role Models To Look Up Too
83. Have A Sense Of Humour
84. Do things Your Way - Don’t Try And Copy Others
85. Have A Favourite Quote To Bring Out On Necessary Occasions
86. Alternate Between Boring Tasks
87. Keeps Your Eyes On The Prize And Don’t Look Back
88.Treat Yourself
89. Don’t Try And Do More Than One Thing At A Time
90. Loser Is Not Your Middle Name So Don’t Tell Yourself You Are One
91. Eat Healthy, Stay Healthy
92. Stay Organized And Keep Processes Simple
93. Believe In Yourself
94. Share Your Achievements
95. Be Patient
96.Think Of All The Hard Work That Would Be Wasted If You Quit Now
97. Make Sure You Have A Balance Between Work & Family/Friends
98. Focus On Now, Don’t Worry About The Future
99. Become Addicted To What You Are Doing
100. Continually Readjust Your Goals Upwards
101. If All Else Fails, Just Think Of The Money!

I havn’t been posting that much over the last couple of days, but it has been for a good reason.

After finding out about this product available called Micro Niche Finder, I read the sales page and it had me hooked - I just had to give this product a go. And this is what I have been doing over the last 3 days. What I am sharing now is just my initial thoughts on the product, I will be posting a more in depth analysis in a couple of weeks when I can truly gauge the results.

What Does It Claim To Do? (Extracted From The Micro Niche Finder sales page)

• Uncover Completely Overlooked Niche Markets that are so Profitable You’ll be Absolutely Shocked at How Easily You Found Them.
• Locate the MOST Profitable Affiliate Programs for Your Niche Market Keyword Phrases with the Built in Targeted Affiliate Product Search Tools.
• Exclusive Strength of Competition (S.O.C.) Index Tells You at a Glance How Strong the Existing Competition is for any Keyword Phrase.
• Built-in Competitive Analysis gives You a Breakdown of the Number of Competing Websites Using Search Engine Optimization Techniques for a Particular Keyword Phrase.

So in theory what this is saying is the product will help you find uncompetitive yet highly searched keyword terms, help you analyze the strength of your competition and then find the best affiliate programs for you to promote.

What Are My Thoughts So Far?
I’m glad you asked! Over the last couple of days I have been spending a lot of time looking into all the features of the Micro Niche Finder program as well as testing to see if I could actually find some uncompetitive and highly searched terms for some current domains that I have.

Here is a screen shot of some results I found for one of my projects - obviously I have blanked out the keywords as I want them all for myself! ( I had to edit thescreen shot to make it fit, but I did not doctor the results)

What I have found almost instantly is 6 key phrases that are searched for over 300 times a month each (up to 1800 times!) with limited direct competition, and no strength in the competition.

I think this alone is enough to warrant the price of the program because from the information I have recieved above I can then:

1. Write articles targeted at those key phrases and link them to email capture pages, or affiliate landing pages.
2. Create made for adsense pages for those keywords and do limited SEO and rank in the first page of the results.
3. Write articles and use them as pages for my Build a Niche Stores directing traffic to my stores.

How Have I Been Using Micro Niche Finder So Far?

I have pretty much been doing what I mentioned above, but here is a what I have been doing more specifically.

1. Written a couple of couple of pages targetting two niche key phrases for my BANS store Buy Antique Collectibles (one with 1200 searches and 434 competition)
2. Getting some articles written for me for the blocked out keywords above (as I don’t know a thing about the niche) and created a review website which is full of affiliate links.
3. Creating a few articles that get sent to a new email capture page for a mailing list I am creating.

So I will have a fair few ways to judge how successful Micro Niche Finder has been for me, but I will not be able to truly judge it for a couple of weeks when I start seeing results. But from what I have seen this product is well worth grabbing if you have some spare cash because it allows you to focus your time on the most profitable niches.

Hit me up if you have any questions…

I thought that with the Federal election here in Australia happening tomorrow I would do a bit of a comparision between voting at an election and commenting on a blog. I hope you enjoy it! 

1. Everyone Has An Opinion - Even If They Have No Idea
Have you ever realised when I comes to election time that everyone seems to be an expert. They have seen the ads on tv (you know they ones with the really fast talking at the end), they have read what the papers want you to know, and now they want to let everyone know what they think. don’t think to argue with them though, because their opinions is right, full stop.

Compare that to the blog commenter who just comes to your blog, rambles on about who knows what (definately now what you wrote about) and leaves you wondering what on earth they were talking about. Or what about the commenter who posts the ‘I agree’ or ‘you have no idea’, try arguing with them!

2. Your thoughts Don’t Count Unless You Voice Them
Have you ever complained about the current government, or thought that things could be better? Or maybe you think the economy is going great and want the current government to stay. Then have your say - if you don’t vote, you can’t complain!

It is the same with blogging, give your feed back on posts and ideas, let the blogger know what you are thinking. This gives him an opportunity to know what his ‘voters’ want.
Well I tried to think of a third similarity but drew a blank, so I will open the floor. Anyone got anymore? 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

Well that is when I finish up in my job anyway!

I talked to the new owner today to tell him I was resigning, and he said I didn’t have to do the couple of days work with him in charge to make my 14 days notice, which is fantastic - so D-Day is next friday!

I am also getting the rest of my holiday pay which totals about $600 and I have a few small commission checks coming so that should keep me going for a while - I mean what does a 22y/o still living at home paying no board have to spend his money on?

We pieces are being put in position at the moment and over the next 8 days to set myself up with a running start - and I am getting quite excited!
 

Why Am I Excited?

Because I am working on a new project, that hopefully will be launched the first of December that I am sure will be a success (I have already had a great response from a few people I leaked it too!) So obviously the next 8 days are going to be late nights and early mornings as I prepare for the launch but it is definately going to be worth it.

Thankyou for all the kind words and encouragement that you guys gave me yesterday in relation to me announcing I was going full-time online. It was a reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

The journey has just begun so make sure you subscribe to my feed so that you don’t miss one single moment!
 

** Coming Soon
Yesterday I purchased a program that I have been eying off for a while, that I think will greatly increase the effectiveness of my internet marketing. I’ll be posting a quality review within a week or so once I have fully tested the capabilities.

**Sidenote Two
I have been considering video blogging for a while now and would love to hear your opinions on whether you think I should give it a go. I have been watching Mark’s lately and I think they give a much more personal touch to a blog. Let me know.

I went to check the mail today for work and received a certificate saying that I had completed my certificate 4 in Real Estate Sales traineeship. This is good news because I have been on a pretty low wage for the last year and it has been pretty hard work but I have learnt so much in the process - especially sales skills.

With the sale of the business most of you will know that I had talked about leaving and taking two months off to focus on my online ventures. Well today I took the first step.

I told my boss I was going to be quitting and asking him how much notice I have to give, and he told me two weeks. Which kind of sucks because the business changes hands on the 1st of December - so I will have to do a couple of days work for the new owner, but it feels like a weight has been lifted off me and I am counting down the days already!

My current boss told me I have to give the notice to the new boss and inform him of my intention to leave, so when he comes in tomorrow I will be telling him. I am hoping he just tells me not to worry about it and that I can finish up on the 30th.

The only thing that has put a damper on it is my current boss who kept telling me that I was acting like a high school student who was quitting just because he didn’t like his new boss - this is because I told him that I thought the new boss’ wife and I wouldn’t get along, which is the truth but not the whole story. It is just a bit frustrating because I don’t really want to tell him about my online ventures because he would probably find a way to turn that into a negative as well, but I guess I just have to push through and wait out these next two weeks.

I am really quite excited about these next two months now because it is not just a thought, it is reality. But it got me thinking:

If you were quitting to work on your online ventures full-time, what would you tell your boss?

 

With my new custom blog design due to be launched in the next couple of days, I thought I woul discuss the 5 things that made me decide it was time to make the switch. 

1. To Stand Out
   If you started an offline business would you want your store to look like 100 others stores? For me it is the same with blogging - I treat it as a business which means I want to create a way for people to remember me. With so many bloggers - especially in my niche, it is important to me that I stand out.
   
   
2. To Create Buzz
   Have you ever noticed that whenever someone gets a new design (and it is good) there is always a lot of attention given to it?It happened with:
   * Tyler Cruz
   * John Cow
   * ProBlogger
   
   I can vividly remember when each of these blogs launched their new theme and they were the talk of the town.
   
   
3. To Brand Myself
   Think of all the big name bloggers, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of them?Here is what I think:
   
   John Chow - Fast Car, and That Massive Header
   ProBlogger - His logo, and then his nice clean layout
   Zac Johnson - His cartoon of himself
   John Cow - The guy and his cap, pretty much his whole header
   
   What I realised was that the way I remember each blogger was by their layout, or part of it. So what have I done to brand myself with my new layout? You will have to wait and see, but I will say that I do have a ‘cartoon’ of myself - just a fair bit different to everyone else!What I want is for people to hear my name and automatically associate with who I am - and this is always done by visualisation.
   
   
4. Customised To My Needs
   My current design has served me well for the short while that I have had it, but it just didn’t have the features that I was looking for. With a custom blog design I knew that I could pick and choose the features that I did and didn’t want.Some Features I Have Included In My New Layout:
   
   * Featured Post - Great for Annoucements
   * Most Popular & Most Recent Post - Excellent for new visitors
   * Got Banners Plugin - Allows me to rotate the positions of my ads
   * Live Comment Preview
   * Two Column Layout - Keeps it clutter free leaving heaps of room for content.You will have to wait until I launch it to find out the rest
5. Shows I Am Serious
   I have thrown a fair bit of money into, not only the layout but also the coding because I wanted to make sure it was the best, and I think that visitors will see that is my way of saying that I am here to stay.

Do you see the benefit of a custom blog design? Why do you have one, or why are you considering getting one?

 

There are over 100,000,000 blogs in the world. That’s right over 100 million! That is a lot of bloggers and I bet less than .001 percent of them are making over $100 a month from their blog. And here is 5 reasons why you are one of the 99.99%.

1. You ‘re A Quitter!
It will all get to hard for you. When your traffic doesn’t grow as fast as you want and your subscriber count drops, when you get tired of making $0.10 a day of from your adsense ads (if you even make that much), you will chuck in the towel and quit thinking that there is no way you can make good money from blogging.

2. You’re a Copycat!
You are to lazy to spend even 15 minutes thinking up a creative blog post that will actually give your visitors a reason to stay and your subscribers a reason not to leave that you just join with the 100’s of other lazy bloggers and just post about whatever John Chow or Darren Rowse post about. Why? Cause it is easy and doesn’t take effort, and making money online is supposed to be easy right?

3. You are Just Plain Greedy!
I bet you are one of those bloggers that started the blogging journey by installing wordpress and then adding adsense and a plethera of other advertising widgets and affiliate links - before you even changed from the standard theme. You don’t care about providing quality content for your visitors and subscribers because it is all about making a quick buck.

4. Your Content Sucks!
Finally you have written a unique post. You are getting all excited because of all the traffic you are going to get from it - but you get one visitor from your signature link in a forum and even your 2 subscribers don’t even bother reading. Why? Because your post was boring. Ever thought that people subscribe to your blog because they want your opinion  not a review that looks at things from boths sides and is just a wishy washy piece of trash?

5. You Are Too Cool For School!
You don’t need to network, right? You can be a success on your own so why waste time getting to know your fellow bloggers and building relationships? I mean you are much to busy filling your posts with affiliate links to bother about building relationships that could open up opportunies. You are too busy tweaking your adsense so people accidently click it instead of reading other blogs and learning more about your niche - from someone who may actually know more about it than you.

If you liked this post then please subscribe to my full rss feed. You can also subscribe via email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

How often do you check the stats of your blog?

do you know:

• how many visitors a day you are getting?
• How long they stay?
• What they look at?
• Or where they come from?

It has only been over the last week or so that I have actually started really looking, AND ANALYSING my stats.

Before that I would just randomly check how many visitors I was getting every couple of weeks, notice there was no improvement and feel a bit dejected.
The biggest thing that I got from analysing my traffic is finding out that I get a very substancial chunk of my traffic (almost 50%) from one source - Digital Point Forum.

Why was I getting That Much Traffic From A Forum

The next thing I needed to do was figure out why I was getting all this traffic from Digital Point, because it wasn’t like I was posting like crazy, and the link in my signature just says ‘Entrepreneur Blog’ and links to here.

What I worked out was the key was the rss feed that showed my latest blog post with every comment that I made on the forum, and the more intriguing the post title the more visitors I got.

Now What Do I Do?

Make the most of it of course. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to go and spam the forum just so people read my post title and want to click through and visit my blog.

What I have been doing for the last couple of days is:

• posting questions that I would usually just ask a friend, or search the internet for - ones that start a discussion.
• posting a replying more frequently than usual
• Making sure I have interesting post titles to capture their interests

So What Happened?

In the last two days I not only see my daily unique traffic double, with 92 unique views from DigitalPoint yesterday alone, but my rss count has also doubled as well. And if you look at the picture above that is my alexa ranking over the last
It was just one simple thing that has improved the traffic to my blog so much, it makes me think what other little things I could be doing to improve my blog.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate it if you subscribed to my rss feed!

I hear so many people that I meet on a day to day basis say things like:

‘I don’t Need to Be rich’

‘Money Isn’t everything’

‘I’m happy just working my 9-5′

‘More Money just causes more problems’

And each time I hear something to this affect, I just want to slap them!

These people think that they aren’t being greedy and just taking their place in life, but what they are really doing is just being selfish and lazy.

Lets take a look at these statements one by one, and find out whats wrong with them and what they are really saying.

1. I Don’t Need To Be Rich

What they are really saying:

I only care about myself
As long as I have enough, thats all that matters.

This statement is such a selfish one. It makes the person the center of their own universe - as long as they are comfortable that is all that matters.

Think about it for a second. If you are able to create an excess that means you will have more than you need - and allows you to be generous, and give to others who may need help at the moment.

I love reading articles about successful people giving large portions of their money to charities. So many people think:

‘Thats ok for them, $1million is nothing when you have $1billion’

But is it? Is it any easier for them to give their money away? I think it is only easier for them because they have been doing it the whole time - they gave when they had little and now there are just a couple more zeros on the end.
2. Money Isn’t Everything

Another variations: Money doesn’t bring happiness

What they are really saying:

I’m just jealous because I don’t have any money, so I’ll pretend it doesn’t matter

I’ll be the first to admit that I agree with this statement - money is not everything, but it sure can do a whole lot of good. There are so many people who are less fortunate than we are, usually of no fault of their own. What does being comforatable do to help them?

I think there is a lot of growth in the awareness of social justice in the younger generation, with young people getting behind projects like ‘Make Poverty History’ and ‘Live8′ but the thing we need to look as is are these young people going to be able to have the money and the time to actually make a difference?

3. I am Happy Working My 9-5

What they are really saying:

I am too scared to give up my job

I must make a point here. Some people do actually love their job, and are making a difference by the work that they do. But coming off the last point - a lot of people are not able to help others in the way that they want because they are too busy.

Personally I know for myself at the moment, I am working 8:30am - 5pm then I go home and have things on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday Nights most are to do with my involvement in my Church - but it is very hard to juggle my online marketing, my job, and my other commitments.

How much more time would we have to help others if we were able to remove the 9-5 of our job?

4. ‘More Money just causes more problems’

I think this is a big misconception.

People see the celebrities in the media wasting their lives away, and blame it on the fact that they have too much money. I don’t think that is the case at all. I think that the reason some (cause there are a lot of great celebrity role models - they just dont get the publicity) celebrities gain their money to easily, and there for have no respect for the power that it holds, so they get greedy and just spend, spend, spend - on them selves of course.

These people are just selfish. but think of good that you can do if you use your wealth wisely, and the satisfaction that you would receive from knowing that your money is being used for good, to help improved someone elses way of life.

Money isn’t the problem, love of money is the problem.