How to Build a Better To-Do List

The dot com lifestyle means that you’ll be able to experience a lot more freedom compared to holding down a more conventional kind of job at a regular company. You’ll have location freedom, because you can work from practically anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable connection to the Internet. You’ll have time freedom, because you’re not bound to specific office hours, freeing you up to take three-hour-long lunches on Wednesday afternoons.

And you’ll also be free from having a boss, manager or supervisor breathing down your neck every 30 seconds to make sure you’re staying on track and sticking with the specific plans and procedures that the higher-ups have dictated for you. This last point is a double-edged sword, of course, because it means that you become the sole source of direction. No one is going to crack the whip but you and no one is going to tell you where to go but you. That means you need to be decisive and you need to be organized.

This means you need to have a great to-do list. For my part, I tend to break this down further into a set of three to-do lists: daily, weekly, and monthly. The monthly is more like long-term goals, as those tasks and projects can easily spill over from month to month. For the purposes of today’s post, we’ll focus on the daily to-do list as it can cause a lot of people a lot of grief. To build a better to-do list each day, follow these key principles.

1. Actionable and Specific

Do you know what is one of the biggest problems with typical new year’s resolutions? They’re really vague. I want to exercise more. I want to lose weight. I want to eat healthier. What do any of these even mean? The items you put on your to-do list need to undergo the same kind of scrutiny such that they are actionable and specific.

Instead of saying that I’m going to “work on my website,” I’ll say that I am going to “write two blog posts” or “research and pitch three companies for sponsored content or influencer marketing opportunities.” You need to know when an item on your to-do list is actually done, so it doesn’t just go on into infinity. You need to know what specific action you need to take to satisfy it.

2. Keep It Tight, Y’All

Long to-do lists might give you this sense that you’re really out there hustling and you’re an especially ambitious entrepreneur, but it’s awfully deflating when you stare at one that’s incomplete at the end of the day, every day. You need to give yourself small victories to motivate you to keep going.

Extra short to-do lists are not any better, because they’re far too easy and you won’t actually accomplish very much. As with so many other things in life, you need to strike a happy medium and the sweet spot is usually somewhere around five items of varying difficulty and complexity.

3. Item Size and Length

Some items on your to-do list should be easy to do in a relatively short amount of time, like running through your main email inbox in less than half an hour. These are easier to tick off the list and can help you get a sense of positive momentum.

Other items should be a little more substantial and can take a little longer, like crafting the first three emails as part of a drip campaign for a specific affiliate marketing offer. This might take an hour or two. These are the bigger tasks that really help to move you forward.

Any item that you anticipate will take you more than two hours should probably be broken down into smaller, more manageable items.

4. The Schedule

I know. This is going to sound completely counter to the whole philosophy of the dot com lifestyle and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t adhere all that strictly to this last principle. That being said, people who do will have a better shot and accomplishing their goals and achieving their dreams. Schedule your to-do list items.

In other words, it’s not enough to have a tightly organized to-do list with very specific, actionable items of varying complexity. Now, you need to decide when you will do what. And this will really depend on the kinds of things you want to do and the circumstances surrounding how best to do those things.

Let’s say that you want to shoot a video. Well, you might only be able to do that during a certain “sweet spot” during the day when you get the most natural light coming indirectly into your studio, for example. You could shoot at other times of the day, but it’d be less than ideal, so you might schedule your video shoot for those couple of hours.

Maybe you want to minimize computer time toward the end of the day, so that youc an reduce the screen time before bed and get a better night’s sleep. Maybe you want to do more invigorating, energy-intensive tasks earlier in the day. It’s really up to you, but by placing these items on a schedule, you reduce the chances of infinite procrastination and distraction. You increase the chances of holding yourself accountable.

And isn’t that the point of a to-do list in the first place?

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How to Stand Out in the Super Saturated World of Affiliate Marketing

Looking at the online marketing industry it’s easy to get lost in all of the details. There are many different ways to generate new leads and make money on the internet, but affiliate marketing has to be one of the most popular. If you are completely new to the concept of affiliate marketing, it’s easy to get lost within all of the information, resource sites and options to choose from.

For example, just looking at the various components of affiliate marketing and the many different labels associated with it can be a headache in itself. An affiliate network is there to provide you with offers to promote, affiliate marketers are the ones promoting such offers, advertisers and brands are looking to recruit more affiliates and of course you also have bloggers that create their own content and often provide guidance on affiliate marketing as well. Where do you fall into the mix?

No matter if you are a rich affiliate, a big name brand, or someone just starting out, it’s important to make sure that you stand out from the crowd —  especially if you are looking to get attention, increase business, or maybe even create a brand of your own.

Today we are going to break down several main components of affiliate marketing, while also giving some real-life examples and how you can start using similar methods to increase your personal or brand exposure.

As a platform/affiliate network

If you ever wanted to find a saturated market where everyone is always looking for more attention, look no further than affiliate platforms and the ad networks that are providing the offers. Back in the day, there were only a handful of networks to choose from — like Commission Junction, Linkshare, and Shareasale, but now it seems like they are all over the place. Often times, the only thing separating one network from another is the offers they promote and how much higher of a commission they can squeeze out for their affiliates.

When it comes to standing out from the crowd, some platforms might run their own contests or even sponsor an industry party. These are great ideas, but the ROI and long-term value usually aren’t there. Another example of how to stand out is to create an advanced platform or new tracking technology that benefits both the advertiser and the affiliate. Not only will this provide value, it will also likely get talked about and make its way through the industry as well.

This is exactly what Attrace is trying to accomplish where their new decentralized and blockchain technology-driven platform.

The concept of affiliate networks is nothing new, but the technology behind them and how leads are tracked is something that can definitely use improvement on. Advertisers and merchants can save money on this new type of ad platform, as the associated costs are a mere fraction of the 20 to 30% that you would typically see on other networks. Affiliates can also find improved earnings and faster payouts when using a decentralized platform like Attrace as well.

With so much focus on blockchain technology thanks to cryptocurrencies and coverage through big news media and financial outlets, there is no doubt that platforms like Attrace will start getting more attention and word of blockchain marketing technology makes its way around the industry.

The benefits of a dedicated public blockchain network over what’s currently in the marketplace right now, lies within the common issues we are seeing in relation to “attribution” and “payments”. With a decentralized platform in place, not only can a network offer super low transaction costs, it can even track clicks and leads that result in non-sales, which leads to further monetization and remarking options. In summary, a decentralized platform could potentially be one of the best ways for a network to not only benefit advertisers and affiliates the same, but also online tracking as a whole — with little to no chance for discrepancies or cash back issues.

As an advertiser

To create a successful business on the internet, you need to have a brand that audiences trust and actually purchased from. At the end of the day, if you want to make real money, there needs to be a monetization model in place, and actually selling something is one of the best ways to get there. This is something more affiliate offers and advertisers need to keep in mind when trying to scale their business and recruiting new affiliates. It’s no longer enough to simply create an offer and throw it on your favorite ad platform — instead, it’s all about the recruitment process and gaining the trust of your affiliates.

Sure, higher payouts are always going to be important, but it’s that personal relationship and getting private offers, payouts, landing pages and ad copy that is going to make a big difference. It’s also important for affiliates to be able to understand the product that’s being promoted, which is key when trying to sell or promote a ‘real product’ and not a fly-by-night weight loss pill of the month.

This is also a topic that Flippa recently touched upon, and recommended the following takeaways:

• How just asking for a raise often works best
• How to trade placements & promotion for higher payouts
• How setting incentivized goals benefits you both
• How shopping around can benefit your bottom line

One of the best ways for advertisers and merchants to accomplish this is to attend internet marketing conferences and also get active in online marketing forums. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the world of affiliate marketing is extremely saturated and competitive, and the more time and effort you put into this personal outreach and networking, the more likely you are to find success in the long run.

As an affiliate

Being an affiliate marketer is quite special. You have the opportunity to run your business from anywhere you like, and also promote whatever offers to return the most profit for you. There are also two important questions to ask when becoming an affiliate marketer:

1. Do you want to stay focused on being an affiliate marketer that is behind the scenes and simply make as much money as you can?
2. Or go the route of successful affiliate marketer to online guru/mentor, and show off your expertise and guidance to other — thus parlaying this success into a brand or creating a product of your own?

If you decide to go the route of creating your own products and trying to sell your expertise, it’s best to have a squeaky clean reputation and make contacts with some of the other top affiliates in your industry. After all, once you put yourself out there, there really is no turning back.

This is something Neil Patel has a lot of success and experience with. In addition to launching several successful companies and blogs at NeilPatel.com and QuickSprout, he is also launching new products and tools all the time. With the association back to his name, this keeps building his brand power and reach.

At the same time, don’t forget about the smaller players who are just starting out and might be looking to you for advice or motivation. The more time you can spend in these areas, the more likely others will start talking about you and sharing how they have learned from you. Get the formula right, and you might just be the next Gary Vaynerchuk in the making!

As a blogger

Content creation has always been one of the most powerful components of affiliate marketing. However, as more people are moving away from search pay-per-click marketing and organically ranking sites within Google, it’s more of a pay to play model when it comes to creating and promoting the best content possible. However, affiliate marketers and bloggers are still paving the way for content creation and sharing information when it comes to making money online.

A perfect example of this can be seen right here on John child.com along with other affiliate blogging Superstars like Pat Flynn, Darren Rowse, Neil Patel, who have all other created their own online brands, built massively huge blogs, and turned their expertise into real profits.

John Chow was featured on this list from SEJ as well. The great thing about John, is that no matter what happens to the industry or even the offers he promoted, he can always reflect back on the blog and brand he has built time and time again.

The secret success formula behind each of these examples is that they created a blog, put out amazing content and then promoted the heck out of it –thus further building a name for themselves. That expertise and passion have come out through their blogs, while also helping them build a massive social media following in the process.

If you want to create content and be a successful blogger, follow any of these top players and implement their winning efforts into your own process. But don’t forget to add your own style in the process.

What’s your gimmick?

From what we’ve gone through so far, you probably found that you fall into one of the four categories above. No matter what your gimmick is it’s important to never think that it’s too late for you to find success or that you will never have the following that you’ve dreamed of. Like everything worth doing, this all takes time.

At the end of the day, it’s not about being the first in any industry or market, it’s simply how you market yourself, your product, and provide value to your audience. New bloggers and affiliate marketers are entering the space every day and in a few months time many of them will find amazing success with either their new ad campaigns or the content and brands they start to create.

Stay inspired my friends and always work towards hitting your goals.

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Turn Your Passion Into Profits with These Steps

Implementing your passion doesn’t have to be tough but if you’re just getting started, it can be, especially because you don’t know what to expect. I’m a true believer in that with the right outline and a clear vision, anything is possible, but you need to know the important factors involved. For example, many people waste time worrying about the things that don’t matter, however, I’m here to give you a list of “5” important elements that I’ve learned over the years. Each one is unique, but will definitely help you get sorted and implement your passion online.

Let’s get started.

Get Help

No one can do anything on their own and when you ask some of the MOST success people, they’ll tell you the same thing. Some people had a head start within your niche so you can learn a lot from them, but they also know something you don’t. Working with people is a great way to get your brand out and build even more awareness through networking. Why compete with each other when the market is big enough for both of you to make money…right?

If you’re just getting started and have NO prior knowledge, then reach out to others within your niche for help. Pick at their brains and try to find out as much as you can, which will help boost your business.

What it’ll Do for Others

Your passion must resonate with others for you to build momentum and brand awareness. If you are using your passion to start a business, then you need to make sure you answer this very simple question: What will it do for others? You can consider these people your customers and you need to find a way to help them. The more problems your “passion” solves, the better for you.

Here is something I live by:

The bigger problem you’re solving, the greater profit margin. I’m not saying your passion should be about “money”, but I do believe that for you to have a viable business, you should know how you’ll be helping people.

Landing Page

Landing pages are important because it’s a clever way to build a list. Through a list, you’ll be able to re-market to build within your niche and this can build loyalty. You want to make sure people keep coming back to your blog or site, which is why I love to build my list from the first day. Create a simple landing page and test them until you have optimized the results.

Social Media

Social media is important to build brand awareness because it’s free and can drive relevant traffic to your website. If you want to implement your passion and build awareness, then it’s important to use social media. It’s a cost effective way to illustrate your passion and promote your content or thoughts. I always ask my clients if they have a social media account and if they don’t, I tell them right away to set one up. Social media doesn’t have to be time consuming, especially these days when everything can be automated.

• Use Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
• Automate the process
• Add social share buttons
• Stay active

Show Results

Finally, you have to track results so you can find out what’s working and what needs to be tweaked. If you have a website, then use Google Analytics to find out about your audience, landing pages, and the way people engage with your site. If you have a physical business, then track sales and conversions over several months. The point I’m making is by tracking results, you can learn what’s working and how to implement your passion in a way that it’s more visible. You’ll then know how to market it going forward and what tweaks to make along the way.

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Do You Have Commitment Issues?

Ask anyone who is married or has been in a long-term relationship for a significant stretch of time and they’ll tell you that these kinds of relationships take a lot of work. The initial courting and dating period can be all kinds of lovey-dovey, because it’s all so exciting and new.

Then she notices that he chews with his mouth open. And he sees her without her makeup on for the first time. And they get into their first fight over something that is decidedly trivial, like forgetting to put the toilet seat back down. Relationships take work. After that honeymoon period is over, you come to realize that the other person is only human with all sorts of flaws and shortcomings. It’s when you’re going through a rough patch that you need to work the most on your relationship. That can be uncomfortable.

Some people might struggle with these kinds of relationships and they start to retreat. They become more distant and despondent until they finally break up. It’s not that they’re incompatible with their partner; it’s that they have commitment issues. They’re too afraid of leaving behind all the other fish in the sea. They’re too afraid of what else they could be missing out on. What if she isn’t the one? What if there’s someone better?

Your relationship with your online business works in much the same way. It takes work. There are going to be rough patches when you’ll question whether it’s worth all this effort. You’ll be tempted to just drop it all and walk away out of anger or resentment or frustration, because your online business isn’t living up to your expectations. The honeymoon period is over and you start to notice some of the other opportunities out there. Maybe they’re more attractive. Maybe they’re better. But maybe they’re not.

If you want to be successful in business, just as if you want to be successful with your personal relationships, you have to be willing to stick with it, work for it, and see it through. Yes, it is absolutely true that some of these relationships can be toxic and it’s best if you walk away. But it’s also absolutely true that even the best relationships (and businesses) aren’t always going to come up rainbows and unicorns.

Working on your online business, whether that’s e-commerce, blogging, affiliate marketing or anything else, can start to feel less enjoyable over time, because it’s starts to feel like an obligation rather than a passion. It can start to feel like a burden when you lose sight of why you’re doing this in the first place and you lose the kind of passion and enthusiasm you had when you first started.

But this is the most important time for you to stick with it, because that’s the only way that you’ll be able to reap the reward. If you give up, you’ll just feel resentful and neglected, like you wasted the best years of your life. It doesn’t have to be this way.

To be successful in business, to be successful in your personal relationships, you have to be willing to give it your all. You have to be truly committed to its success, and not put in only a half-hearted effort. If you only half commit to something, you can expect to reap absolutely zero of the promised rewards and benefits. You have to commit yourself fully and make it a habit.

If you don’t take your goal seriously and you let your efforts slip here and there, you’ll ultimately fall down a very slippery slope where this online venture dissipates entirely. Let’s say that you want to put up a new blog post every day. You keep this up for the first week or two, but then you have one especially tiring day or you’re feeling especially uninspired.

You rationalize to yourself that letting this habit slip for just one day really isn’t going to make that much of a difference. Except you’ve now set a precedent and you let the next day slip too. And the next. And the next. All of a sudden, you’re only blogging once a month at best… and you wonder why your blog isn’t as successful as you’d hoped it would be.

If you find yourself questioning why you haven’t achieved your online goals, you’ve got to ask: Do you have commitment issues? Are you unwilling to put the whole of yourself into something worthwhile?

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End of School Party At Monarch Bay Club

It’s the end of the school year and that mean it’s time to party! And what better place to celebrate end of school than at the private beach of the Monarch Bay Club, where membership starts at $1,500 per month.

How To Live The Ultimate Dot Com Lifestyle

I have many internet products and services that makes me money while I’m sleeping. Continuity affiliate programs like Aweber, LeadPages, ClickFunnel, and others ensure a steady flow of income no matter what I’m doing or where I am in the world.

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Maximizing Your YouTube Videos – Part 2

You are now reading Part 2 of the series and we’ll be going over the last two important factors when maximizing your YouTube.com videos. This is important because we all know how important YouTube is when building brand awareness and this can be huge for someone starting out in the industry. The next two I’ll be discussing are very important and many people don’t take these seriously, but they need to be considered so you can maximize the return on your videos. Let’s jump right in and your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Inner Linking

YouTube allows bloggers to flourish and has a system in place to create playlists and channels. It’s a good practice for bloggers to create videos within the same niche and around the same topic so you can inner-link them all. However, you have to make sure you know what you are doing so it’s important to educate yourself about the entire process. For example, from my experience, there are two cool ways you can internally link videos.

First, you can link by adding text within the video and have the user click through to another video. This is very simple to do and YouTube provides you with the complete interface to get all this done. Next, you can direct people to your personal channel, which will have all your other videos listed. However, if you have multiple channels, then it’s important to send them to relevant channels with related videos. I like creating multiple channels around “1” topic and send people to a corresponding channel if I feel it will provide them with additional information.

Average Time Watched

I was watching a video by Brian Dean from Backlinko.com and he mentioned something very interesting about YouTube videos in reference to ranking them. For example, it’s one thing to have views, but a completely different element is average time watched. The longer a video is watched, the better because this means you are providing more value than your competitors. Many people often use manipulative software to increase the views and time watched, but YouTube has a sophisticated algorithm in place to make sure the views are quality. For example,

First, how many times a person comes back and watches the video is a great way to show you provide value. I have gone back and watched a video 1-3 times when I really enjoyed it. Secondly, the commands of stop, pause, and play all have a very important part because this is natural human behavior. Think about how many times you pause and rewind to go over some information you missed the first time around when you are watching a video. This is all natural human behavior and YouTube is aware of this so use it within their algorithm. Third, interacting with videos while watching and some of these include reading comments, clicking on text, and advertisements within the video at different times.

Wrapping it up…

YouTube is a video sharing platform that has been growing each year and is huge for bloggers looking to expand their brand. I’ll admit I don’t use it as much as I should be, however, I do have some videos that have not only converted into profits, but also send relevant people to my blog. The easy part is uploading your video and the MOST difficult is getting started with research, creating, and editing. The good news about this process is that once you have created a video, then, going forward, you won’t have as much trouble as before. You’ll get use to creating videos just like you have with writing content for your blog.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Average time matters
• Link content
• Find the right video creation tool
• Tweak and test because some videos will work better than others to promote content and products. This applies to anything, like split testing landing pages.

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When Saving Money Actually Costs You More

Most of the personal finance experts out there will tell you that the first step to getting a handle over your money situation is to curb your unnecessary spending. Sure, getting a fancy drink at the local Starbucks might only cost you a few bucks and, in the grand scheme of things a few bucks is hardly going to make a difference in your life. But your daily latte habit can add up awfully quickly. Five bucks a day, every day of the year, is creeping up to almost $2,000.

That’s enough money to pick up a new iPhone outright, possibly with enough left over to cover your monthly plan for the year too. It’s nothing to sneeze at, so this kind of advice of getting your spending under control is generally sound… but it’s incomplete. Because cutting corners (and cutting costs) purely for the sake of saving money could actually end up costing you more in the long run. Let me illustrate with a few examples.

Free WordPress Themes

WordPress is one of the greatest gifts bestowed upon man since sliced bread. It can be used most commonly to run a blog or other content-based site, but it is equally adaptable to power any number of other types of websites, including forums, business pages and online stores. It’s great and it’s got a huge, supportive community. And best of all, it’s free.

This doesn’t mean that you should necessarily be using it right out of the box, however. If you use the default theme that comes with WordPress, your site is going to look really generic and first impressions matter. And while there is a huge directory of free WordPress themes, you may not want to use those either.

The allure of free is certainly enticing, but unless you are already skilled and knowledgeable in how to adapt and customize these themes, you’re just going to end up spending more time (and money) in turning that theme into something you can really call your own. And even then, many of these free themes do not come with the cleanest of code and you could open up the floodgates to all sorts of other complications and frustrations that just end up costing you more in the long run anyway.

When you invest in a premium theme with strong support or, better still, you invest in a completely custom theme developed by a professional, you get a better end product right out of the gate and you position yourself with a much better shot at success.

The Bulk Buying Binge

I’ll admit that I’ve fallen into this trap more times than I care to recall. Let’s say that you go to your local grocery store to pick up a few things for the week. You’re living on your own, so you don’t actually need that much. When you go to grab your one-liter carton of milk for $2, you notice that the four-liter jug is only $4. On a per-liter basis, the larger jug is half the price, because you’re getting four times as much for only twice as much. It’s the better deal.

So, you decide to pick up the four-liter jug instead… but as mentioned, you live alone. Inevitably, you get closer to the expiration date and you find yourself trying to come up with creative ways to use up all that milk. This is upsetting and you’re certainly not enjoying yourself. In the end, you end up dumping half the jug down the drain anyways because it expired.

You thought you were getting the better deal, because it worked out that way on a per-unit basis, but you ultimately spent $2 more than you probably should have in the first place. Like the latte effect described above, that $2 isn’t going to make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but all of these little habits and decisions add up. When you think you’re getting a “good deal” on something, you have to ask whether you’re actually getting what you need out of it.

Entry-Level Equipment

Not everyone needs top-of-the-line equipment for everything that they do. Let’s just make this clear. The average person will only use a fraction of the horsepower found under the hood of the top-tier iMac Pro, which costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $17,000. That’s enough money to buy a decent commuter car.

At the same time, you don’t want to cut corners where corners probably shouldn’t be cut. Let’s say that you want to get into vlogging, but your budget is decidedly modest. You get the cheapest camera you can find, you pick up a really cheap Chromebook, and you have the bottom level plan from your ISP. You think you’re saving money.

On the one hand, it’s great that you want to get started. On the other hand, your efforts to save money are ultimately going to cost you in the long run. The cheap camera isn’t going to produce the kind of quality you want to have if you want to be a successful vlogger. The cheap Chromebook can’t run proper video editing software, so you’re stuck using less than ideal web-based applications that are severely limited. And then your cheap Internet plan means your upload speeds are abysmal and your computer is rendered useless for hours at a time.

I’m not saying you should always splurge for the best of the best, but you do want to be strategic with where you spend your money. Upgrading to a more powerful computer and a faster Internet connection could be among the best investments you can make in your online business.

Not All Spending Is Equal

The key takehome lesson here is that you shouldn’t be trying to save money purely for the sake of saving money. If you spend hours on end with compulsive coupon clipping, not only are you wasting your time doing something with minimal ROI (you could be working on your business instead), but you could end up buying things that you don’t actually need. You’re getting them because they’re on sale and that’s it.

Money is a tool. And like any other tool, you have to learn how to use it wisely and for maximum benefit. Oftentimes, it’s worth spending a little more upfront, because it’ll save you from a lot more frustration and expense down the road.

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