Why You Must Know Kaizen

By Mikael | 1,518 views

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I recently mentioned the concept of “Kaizen” in a blog comment (even though I misspelled it) and I was suggested to write a blog post about it and since I liked that idea and I am a big fan of the philosophy, here goes.

First I think it will be best to give the definition of Kaizen as it is mentioned in Wikipedia:

Kaizen (Japanese for “improvement”) is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen activities continually improve all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management and from the CEO to the assembly line workers. By improving standardized activities and processes, Kaizen aims to eliminate waste. Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses during the country’s recovery after World War II and has since spread to businesses throughout the world.

Why I Like The Kaizen Idea

I don’t recall when I first heard of this concept but ever since it was explained to me I have found it to be a brilliant philosophy. If you’re like most people, then you probably have a hard time comprehending major changes and it is probably in all areas of your life (family, finances, health etc.).

One of my favorite examples is related to being overweight. Let us assume that you are 30-40 pounds overweight and you want to lose that weight. But you never seem to take the steps to actually do something about it because you can comprehend losing that many pounds. Sounds like someone you’ve met?

If you instead applied the concept of Kaizen, you would try to lose just 1 pound because it will not only be easier to comprehend but it will also be a lot easier to do and because you would believe that you could do it, then you actually would (you have probably heard the saying: Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve by Napoleon Hill).

The idea is that if you break bigger tasks into smaller task and keep achieving these smaller tasks, then you will see the benefits of compounding and eventually achieve great results. Losing 40 pounds seems very difficult while losing 1 pound (and do it consistently 40 times) will seem a lot more achievable.

This applies this to the online environment and the online money making concept as well.

Use Kaizen In Online Marketing

If you have heard of Formula 5 (that the StomperNet crew launched not that long ago), they actually took the Kaizen concept and made it into a product that will help you achieve great things online. But you don’t need to buy their product. Go search for the free videos and you’ll have more than enough knowledge to get started.

But let me give you an example of where I have used it.

I run a lot of niche websites that are primarily monetized using Google Adsense. As you probably know you have things such as:

• Traffic
• Click Through Rate
• eCPM

All of these will have an effect on your earnings. To apply Kaizen to my sites I would simply say to myself that the goal was to improve traffic by 10% while maintaining the CTR and the eCPM status quo.

Do you think that you could do that? If you had 100 monthly visitors the previous month, would you be able to get 110 visitors this month? And if you couldn’t then surely the next month after that would make it possible, right?

After that goal was reached I would then try to increase the CTR by 10% and that might take me another 2-3 months. I’m not talking taking it from a CTR of 10% to a CTR of 20% (that would be a 100% increase) but merely raising it from 10.0% to 11.0%.

Then I might go back to increase traffic again or another parameter that would influence my profits. Again trying to increase it by just 10% over a period of time…

If we assume that you were able to create these 10% increases in just small parts of your online business, then that would add up. Doing it 5 times in a year would increase your profits by more than 61%. Talk about a SIGNIFICANT pay raise by achieving small improvements over time.

How To Best Use Kaizen

Now I am in no way an expert in the philosophy of Kaizen. I am a big fan but that doesn’t make me an expert So this is just my take on how I believe you should use Kaizen to your advantage.

If you have been like the guy sitting in the chair feeling overwhelmed by huge tasks (losing 40 pounds or making $10,000 a month in Adsense revenue), then find ONE area where you would want to test out this concept first.

If it is Adsense and you already have a small website with a little traffic and a little monthly income, then set a goal of increasing the traffic just a little each month. 5% would be more than enough and once you start working on it with focus and determination you will probably achieve it in less time than you think. Little goals achieved often will bring you great things!

What you should NOT try to do is apply Kaizen to everything you do (for starters). Don’t try to improve your health, your family, your job, your online income and your singing skills all at once. That would create another MAJOR task that you wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

But once you get into the habit of creating and importantly monitor the improvements, you can slowly start applying it to more and more things until it becomes second nature to you.

Everything will be hard when you’re first starting out learning something new but accept that it will be hard and take time and focus on tiny improvements achieved consistently and you will eventually get there.

To Your (Kaizen) Success,
Mikael

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