I have talked about the topic of FOCUS before but I find that it is important to remind ourselves about it from time to time. If we haven’t got a clear and precise goal that we can keep our focus at, we will often drift from one thing to the next and get very little productive work done. I don’t know if you have ever tried it but I have personally done it so many times that I stopped counting.

Ever since I started a challenge based on a webinar I heard on the Keyword Academy where I am a member, I have had no problem keeping my focus and been able to work consistently and effectively to achieve the goal I sat out to reach. The plan was a one year plan but because of my focus and the fact that things gets easier when you are doing them consistently, I have almost reached my goal already.

Reaching that goal as doubled my online income and from the looks of it, I am going to double it once more before the year has passed. That means that listening to a webinar, keeping my focus and taking massive action will most likely result in a 4x increase of the monthly earnings.

What Have You Done Lately?

So now you know why I haven’t taken the time to post on this blog and what I have spent my time on instead. Even though I enjoy writing these posts I am not making any money from it and when time is limited it will therefore be kept at a minimum and when I feel that I have something valuable to share.

But what about yourself? Have you taken the time to look back at the first 4 or 5 months of this year and made up how far you have come towards your goals? Because you do have goals, right?

If not, now is the time to set some goals and start working on them. It doesn’t have to be money goals. You can set goals about all kinds of stuff. Health goals, travel goals, family goals etc. But without them you can’t focus and without focus you will always tend to drift.

Don’t drift through life. It is simply too short to not make the most of it. Focus on what you find is important and start taking action towards it TODAY.

To Your Success,

Mikael

I don’t want to sell you their program (even though you can get access to everything for $1), but merely explain some of what it is that I have learned through the TKA membership.

More Virtual Real Estate Means More Income

When you are making money online from websites that bases the income on traffic, you will need to focus on getting more of it. Now there are at least two ways to receive more traffic and they are: 1) getting more links to improve ranking and 2) adding more content to your sites so that they can rank for more terms.

Both of these will to a large extent involve content creation and whether that content is placed on your own sites (expanding your virtual real estate) or place on other sites (article directories, guest posting etc.) with links back to your sites, it will increase your traffic.

So what it all comes down to is to create more content. You can write the articles yourself or you can outsource the creation. Only key point is that you must make sure that it is quality content.

Some will argue that any kind of content can work and I agree. The difference between crap content (spun, scraped etc.) and quality content (unique, written by a human) is that quality content will work for you long term.

If you plan on staying in this business and not running a “business” that has to outsmart the search engines all the time, you need to focus on quality and on quantity. Both are needed to grow your business long term.

So what did I achieve in the last 3 weeks? Well, to be honest I am quite proud of having expanded my online business with a total of 100,000 words of quality content (about 70-80 articles). I have had help in the form of VA’s and hired content writing, but I did write a large part of it myself as well.

In comparison this equaled what I did in about 4 months in the end of 2009. Talk about in increase in productivity. And all of this is due to a single webinar from TKA that made me realize what I needed to do.

To Your Success,
Mikael

But enough “call to action”

What I really wanted to talk to you about is something I re-learned from listening to a 2004 Jim Rohn leadership event training.

In that training, one of the speakers is the well known Denis Waitley and even though I had heard this lecture several times, then one of the things he talked about hit me and I therefore want to share that with you as I believe it can help anyone that is struggling or who feels discouraged or impatient.

Becoming a Master at What You Do

We live in a world where everything is happening at rapid and increasing speeds and still we’re struggling with accepting the speed (or lack thereof) and most of us feel that things should happen even faster (especially the success we seek). I don’t know about you but I find it to be a very strange phenomenon even though I also suffer from it from time to time.

In the seminar Denis talks about the fact that it will take 7 years and 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of your field. 7 years and 10,000 hours! That will probably seem like forever for most people.

But when you think of it then it probably makes sense. Practice makes perfect and whatever you job or education is I am sure you can agree that you didn’t become a master in that area in a year or two. You will definitely get better and you might even become “good” in a matter of a few years but mastering the skill takes more time than that.

So if you take this as a fact and apply it to your online business or in your search for financial independence, then ask yourself if you have really spent 7 full years and 10,000 focused hours to get to where you want to go and master the skills of that particular area? My personal answer is NO and I therefore know and accept that I am not there yet and that more work, trial & error and education are needed. But when you have a deadline that says “7 years and 10,000 hours” it isn’t quite as difficult to accept as when you work without a definite goal and timeframe.

It will still feel like a lot of time on days where you’re in a bad mood or feeling discouraged but that is when you need to remember that it will take 7 years and 10,000 hours and if you choose to do nothing for a week, you’re only postponing the deadline.

But What If I Can Only Find 1 Hour Per Day?

The short answer is that it will take you more than 7 years but still about 10,000 hours. This might not be what we want to hear but I find that it is even more important that we stop lying to ourselves. Lying to yourself or living in denial is one of the easiest ways to waste your time and end by giving up. So stop doing that. Call a spade a spade and get going.

The more action you take, the more momentum you’ll get and momentum creates the results that will be required for you to stay motivated to keep going towards the 10,000 hours of practice and trial & error. 1 hour per day will not create a momentum in most cases.

If you can’t find more than one hour per day, then tell your family that for the next long period of time you will need to have Saturdays or Sundays for yourself in order to work on your dream. Lock yourself in your room and plug away. If you cut back on sleep and eat fast, you should be able to crank out at least 15 hours of work in one day and that kind of action is what creates the momentum and generates the results that keep you going.

But since I am not always around to remind you, please (for your own sake) go find some motivational tapes or CDs and start listening to them on a regular basis. They are great when you’re driving your car, vacuuming or before you go to bed. 30-60 minutes per day is enough and it will change your thinking in a way that you will not believe until you have tried it. I promise!

To Your Success,
Mikael

But let me take you back to where it all a started…

About 6 months again I had come across an absolutely brilliant e-Book by an online marketer that I highly respect. Not just because he makes +$100k per month (profit) from his online ventures but even more so because he tells it like it is. If you are running in circles and spending all of your money buying new e-books he slaps your face (virtually) and tells you to wake up. His name is Chris Rempel and you might have heard about him and his blog called TheLazyMarketer.

Anyway… His e-book is called Conduit Method and is a top notch book with no fluff and hype (except for the salesletter). It costs a mere $14.95 (which I think it ridiculously cheap) and the stuff it covers is simply amazing (and simple). But that is not the point of this post.

The point is that I promoted this little e-book to a group of online marketers and about 12 of these people grabbed the book but only a selected few actually did something with it (no surprises there). Two of the guys that actually took action and followed the instructions in the book has since shared their results with me and this is where the ”beating yourself up” part comes in.

One of these guys told me that he had ONLY had a ROI (return on investment) of 720% in a 6 month period.

What did you get on your bank account or in your 401k last year?

Seriously people!!!

If you can take an online product like the Conduit Method and turn it into a 720% ROI product then what is the problem? Now I am not trying to pick on this guy because I have been a victim of this myself and do the very same thing from time to time.

What we need is to put things in perspective. I fully understand that generating a 720% profit from a $15 investment might seem insignificant but if you are able to do this quickly and with very little effort, then why don’t you just do more of the same thing? Eventually you will get to bigger numbers but on the flip side you are probably going to see your monthly growth (in percentage) go down.

The reason I bring this up is that I saw about the same ROI with the Conduit Method e-book, but I was thrilled about the results (even though the total profits in dollars might have been insignificant). But when it comes to my monthly income from Adsense and affiliate sales I track both the total income as well as the growth from one month to the next in percentage.

Over the last 3 months or so, I have seen my income from online activities grow more than 80% (and more than 170% since January) but when I looked at the growth from September to October and found that it was a little over 9% I started to beat myself up.

I couldn’t help but say to myself that I had done a poor job and that everything was bad. Have you ever been in a situation where you had some expectations and even though the result you got was phenomenal you were still not satisfied?

If you have ever had a JOB, you would probably be more than THRILLED if you were given a 9% raise in a 12 month period and here I am complaining about a 9% increase in 1 month. Why is that?

See the Big Perspective and Celebrate Results

I hope that the two small stories above have made you think and if you have been acting like my or the guy I was referring to, then think of this story and stop acting this way. Celebrate that you have made improvements and if it isn’t monthly improvements then look at the quarterly improvements or the yearly improvements.

Things take time and as long as you keep doing what you have proven to work, you will get to where you want to go. Surely you can do more, do it more effectively and efficiently but as long as you are moving ahead you are on the right track and you need to acknowledge that and stop beating yourself up (and I need so too).

To Your Success,
Mikael

P.S. Click here to see what the Conduit Method is about

But since we all value our time I also feel that it is important that we all learn to outsource as much of our work as we possibly can. This will both free up our time and also increase our online income.

And we all want both, right?

Normally the different outsourcing courses and seminars that are available online will cost you a fair amount of money and will not always be worth it (I recently tried a well known outsourcing course where I had to ask for a refund).

But this time I have come across a series of very valuable videos (as well as a free report) and I am in the middle of viewing and reading it all. What I have gone through so far has been really high quality and I don’t really understand why it is made available for free.

However instead of wondering about why it is free I thought it was better to make all of you aware of it as well. Head over to Mass Outsource and watch the videos and get the ebook.

If you value your time and want to have more of it while making more money, do not hesitate. Procrastination is the worst killer of online success, and when something this good is offered for free, you would be a fool to not grab it.

To Your Success,
Mikael

To give you a small recap, the service or membership is run by 2 guys and their sidekick. Better known as Mark, Courtney and Peter (the technical mastermind). If you haven’t heard about them before, don’t worry. Who they are is not important but what they can teach you and what the program can give you is.

In the beginning (we’re talking June and July) I was aware of their membership, but couldn’t quite see the benefits of it and wasn’t quite sure whether it would be the right thing for me. Even though their service is incredibly cheap, I am still not the kind of guys that will run around buying all kinds of stuff that I have no use for (even if it’s cheap)….. Well, at least I don’t do that as often as I used to

Anyway…. Let me start out by issuing a little warning!

The warning is that if you are not trying to make money from Adsense, then this program is not for you. If you’re trying to become an affiliate marketer or a successful webshop owner, then you are not going to get what you need from this program.

Everything is tailored towards making money from Adsense placed on either niche websites or larger higher traffic websites (the idea is basically the same and only the size differs).

What Is Good And What Is Bad

As I try to be a positive human being I will start off by telling you why I find that this program has been extremely valuable to me (and still is) and why I find that it can become extremely valuable to you if you decide to test it out. After all the first 30 days will cost you no more than $1 and you can cancel at any time.

The Video Training

If you are not 110% sure how you should run your Adsense website empire or if you feel that there are some areas in which you would be able to learn methods that would give you even greater success (*hint* there always is), then the video library is your savior.

I haven’t added up the time but I’ve been through most of it and my guess is that there are more than 30 hours of video content teaching you everything from finding the right keywords to setting up your site and start promoting it.

But that is just the core videos…

There you’ll get the monthly 1-2 hours trainings on topics that are in high demand and you will be able to ask questions along the way to make sure you’ll get your answers and be ready to break through. I’ve had so many moments where I said to myself: “Aha… that’s how I should do it!”

But that is not even all…

On top of that there are 3-4 monthly Q&A sessions where you are able to ask any questions that you might have about anything being taught (you do not have to only ask about the monthly topic). And for those of us living in Europe, they’re even offering one of these monthly sessions at a time where we’re able to participate without having to stay up all night

These videos alone have made me a TON of money already and I’m not even getting started I’ve put the videos on my iPod so that I am able to remind myself and motivate myself to keep going when things are tough or when I feel that I need another boost to keep plugging away. A real time saver!

The 50 Unique Link Opportunities

We probably all know (or at least have heard) that getting incoming links is the NUMBER 1 factor when you are trying to get your websites to rank better in the search engines.

You have probably also heard that the more links you can get from sites with UNIQUE IP addresses, the better. If you haven’t heard this yet, don’t worry… you will. Right now you will just have to trust me on this.

TKA offers you a unique opportunity to get links from no less than 50 unique IP addresses and that alone is worth 2-3 times the monthly fee (the normal fee after the $1 trial month). Seriously!! If you want to go somewhere in your online business, you will eventually need to find a way to leverage some of these unique IP opportunities. Obviously you can go and buy your own 50 hosting accounts on 50 unique IPs all over the world, but as you can vividly imagine, this can easily cost you hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per month and that is without including all the hassle of managing 50 different hosts.

I am not going to go into detail about this awesome tool as we’ve been told not to talk too much about it (because it is so powerful). But you can easily check it out for yourself. The intro price is still just $1 for the first 30 days.

Just Launched – Getting High PR Links

This may sound like yet another “High PR Super Trick” that is sold in small Ebook packages all over the net (and especially in the Warrior Forum). Let me tell you it is NOT.

Just recently Mark and Courtney took over the little known (but very successful) concept called ConnectContent. I was a member of that service before (and loved it) but now it seems like it is going to get 10x better and the best part is that it will be included in the monthly fee, which means that it is free if you’re already a member.

What it does it that it gives you the opportunities to get relevant keyword targeted quality backlinks from related websites to your own sites. Again I will not go into too much detail but it is basically a link trade solution where people are helping each other getting better ranking for specific keywords.

On a side note I will say that I don’t find the link trades to happen as often as I would like them to, but I guess that is no different than not making as much money as fast as one would like to

The Forum Offers Massive Amounts Of Info

Up till now I have been overly excited and positive about the program but there is one thing that I don’t like about it and that I feel I will need to warn you about and that is the forum.

Now don’t get me wrong. The forum is an awesome place for you to get help and to find business partners and other people with similar interests. But it can also be the thing that keeps you from moving ahead.

Unfortunately I see SO MANY people that spend hours and hours in the forums and sadly enough they don’t even realized that the reason that they are not getting the results that they want, is that they are spending that much time in the forum instead of actually following what is being taught.

If you ask me I think the forum is keeping people from achieving what they could get out of the program. But luckily you are not obligated to participate in the forum and if you don’t you won’t be wasting your time. In my view the forum is there to act like a support function if you have questions or want to find business partners and that is it. It is not meant as a social tool where you can hang out and talk about the weather. That is what Facebook is for

Is This All There Is?

I might have left something out and Mark, Courtney and Peter will keep improving the membership and adding new features to it, but at the time of writing the answer is “yes”.

If you ask me, the service and tools they are providing is worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month. And I am not saying this to create HYPE. I have personally increased my monthly Adsense income by $1200 since I became a member about 2-3 months ago.

Would I have paid $1200 per month when I didn’t know what is was? Definitely not! Would I do it know? Well…. I probably wouldn’t but I would definitely be willing to pay more than the lousy $33 they are currently charging for the service.

Should you take their $1 offer?

If you want to make money with Adsense websites there is no question that you will benefit from this membership. Greatly!

But as I said, this is for Adsense earners only. That might change at some point (they have started talking a little about Affiliate Marketing), but right now their core is Adsense and they are damn good at it!!

To Your Success,
Mikael

Most online marketers know that there is a difference between “good content” and “poor content” online and I’m sure that we have all clicked on a search result in Google that sent us to a page filled with a lot of crap content that either didn’t provide any value and that was just gibberish.

I’ve never been an advocate of always trying to make everything you do online perfect. In my view “perfect” doesn’t exist and no matter how hard you try and how much time you spend you will always be able to do better.

But settling for something less than perfect is not the same thing as accepting crap. Far from it! My point is that producing quality content and doing it in a way where you can look back on it and say to yourself that you are quite happy with the result, is the optimal content.

Can Crap Stick?

I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I have never auto generated content and that I’ve never tried to put up 1000 pages of generated content, because I have. I’m sure that some of you will disagree with me but I think that it might be an essential part of the learning process. To test a lot of different things to see what works have been the best way for me to learn and I am sure that I’m not the only one.

Now the thing is that you can get really poor content to rank in the search engines and you can even get it to #1 position and make a lot of money from it.

But the thing is that it will not only require more work on your part to get it to a number 1 position but it will also become a continuous battle between you and the search engine because they will obviously not want crap content to be in the first position or even the first page of their search results.

I am not saying that you can’t make a business model out of trying to get poor content to rank and to keep it ranking because it is definitely possible. What I am saying is that it will be a lot easier and a lot more sustainable if you choose another route.

Give People What They Want And You’ll Get What You Want

If you have at least one website I am sure that you have already considered what it is that the people searching for your topic are looking for. If you have a website about losing weight you know that these people are looking for a way to reduce their weight.

So instead of adding a ton of generated pages or pages written by people that obviously don’t know anything and are only producing content for the heck of it, why not ask yourself how you can actually provide a valuable resource to these people.

Yes it will take a lot more time to produce that content but in the long run you will definitely not have to work quite as hard to build links to the page and you will not have to fight the search engines because they will see (from how the visitors react when visiting your page) that your content belongs in page 1 of the search results.

Does this mean that high quality content alone will cut it? Absolutely not! You will still need to promote your content (build links), but you will be able to do it with a lot less work and you’re probably also going to see that other sites will start linking to you WITHOUT you having to even ask them to. Talk about saving time!!

Conclusion

I’ve personally travelled the path of trying to make a $2 article stick at #1 position in Google and it is definitely possible to do so. But I have also experienced what effort it requires to make it stick in comparison of what it requires to make a $25 article stick and it is completely different worlds.

If you are planning on making your money from your online ventures my suggestion is to (at least) create 50% of what you do in a “high quality” way. I’m not saying that you can’t test crappy methods and that you shouldn’t test some grey areas but for the benefit of your visitors and for the benefit of your own online business you will have an easier time (with less work) if you choose to travel the quality path.

And even though it might seem difficult and time consuming at first it really isn’t that much harder if you will just ask yourself “what are my visitors really trying to find” and then provide that information to them.

To Your Success,
Mikael

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you thought about things like:

• Writing different ebooks and sell them
• Adding opt-in forms
• Starting a new blog
• Creating mini niche websites and monetize them with Adsense
• Building review websites with affiliate links
• Creating strategic partnerships with other people in your niches
• Doing massive linkbuilding campaigns using social media, video, article marketing……
• Wanting to do guest posts on other sites for links and traffic

Obviously the list could go on and on because there is an unlimited amount of ideas that you could start, improve, test, outsource, write down, brainstorm…..

I think you get the idea, right?

Stop Thinking, Start Doing

Now there is nothing wrong with coming up with new ideas and concepts and without it there would be no innovation. But the reason I wanted to write this post is that I am sure some of you are just like me and that you also convince yourself of having worked a great deal on your online business because it FEELS like it.

I personally think about my online business 5-6 times an hour (18 hours a day) because I am constantly thinking of new things that I could do or old things that I should have done but didn’t get around to doing.

When I reach the weekend I feel like I have put in a great effort even though I might only have put in 3 hours of true work. The reason is that my brain thinks that because I have thought about my business 450 times from Monday to Friday, then I must have spent a lot of time on it.

What To Do About It

So should you stop thinking about your business? Absolutely not!

But you must be truthful to yourself when you look back at your work week and tell your brain that you actually worked less than 3 hours instead of the 450x 5 minutes that it thinks that you worked because you thought of it.

If you can learn how to do this you will be able to look back (and forward) and be realistic about what it takes to become successful. Most people can accept/understand that 3 hours of work might not lead to great results whereas 450x 5 minutes (37.5 hours) should definitely create results that were noticeable.

The optimal solution would naturally be to start working more on your business and to think less and I am sure that we’re all striving to do this, but becoming honest and truthful to yourself is a giant leap in the right direction and will give you a totally new clarity on your business’ coming path.

To Your Success,
Mikael

Prioritize When You Have To

We all have 24 hours a day so when people say that they “don’t have time” they are actually saying that their priorities are in such a way that the “thing” they don’t have time to do is not as important to them as something else that they have committed themselves to.

There is nothing wrong with prioritizing and I actually feel that it is a vital part of both life and business. We all have a gazillion things that we could do and with only 24 hours a day we can’t do all that (obviously).

If you are running a blog (like me) that isn’t part of your overall business then you will have to make a choice when you have other top priority issues that you must spend time on. Will you neglect your business (not do the article marketing, linkbuilding, product reviews etc.)? Or will you write fewer posts on a blog that is not part of your overall business strategy?

For me the choice is clear and I choose business. It has nothing to do with not wanting to do both. It is merely a choice/priority. What I have seen is that some people will choose differently and take the “easy solution”, which in this case is writing blog posts (could also be to participate in forums or online chats).

Again this is not wrong if you accept that your business will not grow or even decline. If you take the option of doing something that has nothing to do with your business when time is limited and then afterwards complain about your business not growing as fast as you would want it to, you need to wake up and see the truth about why that is.

What About Having Fun?

But we can’t just do business all the time, can we? No we definitely can’t! We will need to have fun from time to time but we must also realize that to get great things (like financial freedom or personal growth) we will have to make other sacrifices. Nothing of value comes without giving a lot back.

There is a way that you can make sure that your business grows even if you are not spending time on it yourself and I talk more about that in my last post called: How To Get The Necessary Done Consistently

The post is about using money as your leverage by buying other people’s time. It has proven to be a huge success for me so far. My online business has never grown at this speed before. So if you have just a little free cash flow I strongly recommend you look into using other people’s time.

Conclusion

So what I am basically saying here is that when I am not posting it is not because I don’t want to but merely because I am prioritizing my business and I recommend that you do too. When you are financially independent you can spend your time on whatever you want but until then you must stay focused towards your ultimate goal.

To Your Success,
Mikael

The things that you will have to do might differ, but there is still a very narrow set of things that you must do on a consistent basis.

Adsense Sites Example

Because I focus on Adsense as an income stream let me take you through the basic things that will lead you to success in this field.

1. Find good keywords
2. Write good articles for the website
3. Get incoming links (requires both time and more article writing)

That is it! Sounds simple right? The fact is that it is simple but not necessarily easy to do. The problem is hardly ever the things you need to do but the fact that you need to do them over and over and over and over…. And you need to keep doing it for a very long time.

So if that is the problem, then how do you solve it?

Most people starting out trying to make money with Adsense will start massively but quickly slow down when results are not showing. This is very understandable but the problem is that they are often telling themselves that they’re doing something wrong and they can’t see that it is the “stopping” that is the problem.

But if we can all agree that all we have to do is keep doing these three things over and over again, then all we need is to solve the consistency problem.

One solution is that you do it yourself. But by simply looking around we can see that this isn’t working. So if you aren’t able / willing to do it, then you will find another way to get it done. This means that someone else will have to do it for you.

I quickly learned that writing a ton of articles every single day for a long period of time were not for me. Not only did I find it extremely boring but I also quickly found other things that I HAD to do which, as a result, made me unable to do the articles. The end result was that the business stopped growing or even declined.

Unfortunately the same problem applies to linkbuilding in my case. So basically there are two out of three things that I hate doing but without these two there will be no business. Sitting around finding great niches and keywords will not make a successful business.

Get Help

My solution was that I needed to find someone that could help me do the part of the three things that I wouldn’t want to do myself. What you like doing and what you hate doing will be individual but luckily you can find someone that will do all three things for you. I’m talking about outsourcing.

Some will likely argue that outsourcing tasks will cost you money and that is very true. It will, but not necessarily as much as you think.

What you need to ask yourself is whether or not you will be doing the three things (and I do mean ALL three) every single day. If you can’t honestly say yes to this then you need an alternative solution. The business simply will not work without one or more of the components.

What I did in the beginning was to accept doing the things I hate doing for a small period of time. As soon as I had built a small business that would generate a little income I quickly invested that income into having other people doing what I hated.

That is why I have now hired a fulltime article writer and a fulltime linkbuilder. Simply because I know that the work has to be done every day but I don’t want to do it. I am actually looking for another article writer as we speak and I can’t wait to get him/her onboard.

The results of making a decision to have other people doing the work for me have been huge. My business has never grown this much in such a short time and the reason is simply that now everything gets done on a daily basis (which it didn’t when I was doing it).

So I encourage you to think hard and long about what it is that is stopping you. I’ll bet that it is not a matter of you not having the required knowledge but rather that you’re not getting as much done on a consistent basis as you should in order to get the results that you want.

Am I right?

To Your Success,
Mikael