How to be Successful by Being UNfocused

December 19th, 2008 sukiyoma

I’ve often advised people to remain focused on one activity
and not to multitask to be most productive.

While focusing is such an important aspect of being
successful and getting lots of work done, it can be a
double edged sword.

If you focus on an activity for a short period of time then
you may have not given that activity enough time to work.
If you work on an activity for too long then there’s a
chance you’re focusing your efforts on something that will
never work.

So how do you know where to focus?

I tend to only focus on one activity with all my efforts
and then let time take care of the rest.

I see a lot of people give up on something too quickly
before giving it a chance to work. I guess its
a habit that grows on people who work online. They want
instant gratification because they heard things
were supposed to be easy and quick online.

When compared to offline marketing, doing things online
does often time provide faster results but you
still have to give it time to work.

I’m referring to things that you may do on a regular basis
such as generating backlinks to a website or
waiting for your site to get indexed using a certain
method.

Back to the issue of focusing, I will try my hands at
different methods and then once I see some results, I will

focus my attention on which methods worked the best. You
should cast a wide net and then hone in on what works with
intense focus. Study what worked for that method and try to
improve on it.

You will never know for sure why something worked but if
you focus on it then you will get a better understanding of
the method.

This will get you a lot further than to randomly do one
thing here and one thing there with no way to actually
measure your success factors.

So the main point of this lesson is to try many things and
then focus on what works best. You can use other people’s
experience as a base for making your own discoveries.

Only once you focus on a single task will you be able to
analyze it and really know for sure how to make it work
best for you.

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Devious Web 2.0 Website Ranking Tactic That You May Have Overlooked

September 9th, 2008 sukiyoma

With the emergence of Web 2.0 sites comes the ability to easily get first
page rankings and free traffic.

If you’ve ever searched for the long-tail keywords in any market, you
may have encountered phrases in which a majority of the first page
rankings belong to Web 2.0 and social networking sites.

It’s becoming common knowledge that the search engines love to
rank Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, Propeller and many
others.

Here’s how you can benefit from this fact.

Perform a search for your long-tail keywords of choice. When you
find one of these keywords which rank on the first page, go to the
Web 2.0 site which is ranking and sign up for an account.

Now that you have an account at the site that is ranking for
your keyword, create a page on the site and use your keywords
when creating the name of the page.

Usually, the Web 2.0 sites will place your keywords in the url for
that specific page. Let’s look at Squidoo for example. When you
create a Squidoo lens, your page will look like this:

http://www.squidoo.com/your-long-tail-keyword-phrase

Let’s say however that your keyphrase is already taken
on the site. The site would not allow two people with the
same url so you would choose something similar. For example,
if someone has already used the key phrase with dashes in
between the words then you create a page without the dashes.

What will happen is that you will also rank below the page
that is already ranked. On Google, your page will be indented.
Google indents pages which belong to the same website but
have similar title tags. This method will generate some traffic
for you as you already know that the page has the ability to
rank well for that set of keywords.

Here’s a little tip that will boost your rankings even higher.

Many Web 2.0 sites have RSS feeds for your pages. Just take
these RSS feeds and submit them to various RSS feed directories.
This will generate backlinks to your pages and increase their
rankings.

Here is a small list of Web 2.0 sites which are very search
engine friendly. Look for these sites when using this strategy
for ranking your long-tail keyphrases:

Wordpress.com
Hubpages.com
Weebly.com
Propeller.com
Squidoo.com
Ezinearticles.com
Wetpaint.com

Searching for long-tail key phrases will uncover many more sites
which are search engine friendly.

By focusing your energy on just this one tactic, you can receive
some nice free traffic to your webpages.

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Outsourcing Your Business – When is The Right Time?

August 16th, 2008 sukiyoma

If you have a growing business there comes a time when you need to outsource tasks in order to maintain growth.

In fact, there are some activities which necessitate being outsourced because you may not have the skills required.

What we’re trying to figure out is when to begin outsourcing.

If you begin outsourcing at the wrong time, it could hinder  your growth and cause more problems.

A lot of people make the mistake of waiting too long to outsource.

By waiting too long to outsource, you could lose the motivation to work on your business. If you have to do everything yourself, it gets pretty easy to become bored and complacent.

If you find yourself doing the same activities over and over again then you must figure a way to systematize your activities and then hand it over to a qualified freelancer.

By creating a system to optimize your work flow, you will reduce your outsourcing costs. An optimized method of doing things will speed up the production of your outsourced project. If you’re paying by the hour for a virtual assistant you could greatly reduce your costs.

Something else to consider before you outsource is your profit margin
and the value of your time.

While outsourcing can cut into your profits, it can greatly increase your productivity, allowing you to scale your business.

Let’s say that you can consistently make a profit of $200 while working on an activity for 4 hours. Let’s say that number is an average profit for 4 hours of work.

When calculated, you’re making $50 an hour. If you can pay someone to duplicate your process for under $50 an hour then you’re making a
profit.

Of course, when you’re first teaching your process to someone it will
take them some time to learn at first. Once they learn the process,
they can complete it faster and increase your profit margin.

Let’s recap what we’ve discussed thus far.

Before you begin outsourcing, you should optimize your work flow by creating a system that is duplicatable by someone who has little to no knowledge of your system.

You should also write down the amount you make per hour doing things yourself. This way you know how much to pay freelancers to take over your work.

By outsourcing at the right time, you will substantially increase your volume of work and not lose motivation in your business.

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