So this brings up the question, how much sleep should you get to keep healthy? This question has been argued time & time again. Some people/doctors suggest 8  hours for an adult, while others suggest 6 is more then enough.  Either way, when you really start to think about it, do you really get  more then 6 – 7 hours of sleep a night anyway?  I don’t know about you, but I usually read a little, followed by some tossing and turning, and then finally I pass out.  When morning comes around, I’m like a dead log not wanting to move.  It usually takes at least 30 minutes to crawl out of the sheets. (all in all, that’s about 1-2 hours of wasted time just trying to fall asleep)

Anyway, this has led me to try changing my schedule around. I really want to make the most of my days and not waste any time. We have more then enough time to sleep when we’re dead. So here are some new rules I set for myself…

No matter what, my alarm is set to 6am and I’m on the computer by 6:30am latest. This is everyday, including weekends. There is no rule when I have to go to bed although I aim for midnight. If I get less then 6 hours sleep because I had a later then usual night….I’ll still get up in the morning at 6am and just go to sleep that night a little earlier when my eyes start shutting on me. (But no matter what, the alarm is always set to 6am)

Want to know something? I feel great with this new schedule. I think the quality of sleep I get is also MUCH better now. I’m so exhausted by the time midnight approaches, my body goes into a deep sleep the second I lay my head down. When 6am rolls around, my body feels so well rested that I jump out of bed ready to start my day…no “dead log” syndrome.  BUT WAIT, that’s not all….I have also seen a HUGE increase in the amount of work I accomplish in a day. I don’t know if it’s the extra time, or the fact that there are fewer distractions at 6am, but whatever it is, it’s working.

Now think about this for a min…

If you were to add just one hour more to your working day, that equals 9 full 40 hour weeks at the end of the year. How much do you currently earn per hour? How much more would you earn with this new additional time added to your day?  Do the math:  (Hourly pay) x 40 hours x 9 weeks =  ?   Not bad eh?

Conclusion: Sleep less, feel better and make more money.

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As a small business, trying to play the low price game is a losing strategy, yet ironically that is the strategy so many small business owners start out with. This is a fear based strategy which is the first sign that it is the wrong one for small businesses. A flourishing business does not operate with a fear mindset. It runs on a plan of positive self expectancy and of wealth creation and charges full price for its value. By utilizing the following six steps your company can start to flourish too by maximizing your profit margins and not succumbing to the temptation of useless and many times dooming price cuts.

1. Don’t be afraid to charge what you are you worth.
The old saying, “You get what you pay for,” is a commonly held truism. And perception is reality when it comes to marketing your business’s products and services. A flourishing business centers its strategy on value, and value by its very nature has a high price tag. When people see a high value, they expect to see a high price. If you looked at a Mercedes and then saw an unusually low price tag on it, they would immediately think, “What’s wrong with it?” So, if you proceed to tout all the great benefits of your product or service, your superiority to your competitors and your high quality or service and then slap a low price on it, you are planting this same question in your customer’s minds. What’s wrong with it? Contrast that with using a high price to differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace, causing you to stand out and have people thinking, “I wonder why they are so expensive, they must be really good.” By discounting your price, you are sending the message to your customers and potential customers that your value is that of a jalopy not a Mercedes.

2. People like paying for quality.
People do buy high priced goods. They even buy the highest priced goods. Think Dom Perignon, Tiffany’s, Prada or Gucci. People love to splurge. They like to buy the best and spoil themselves. Being the low price provider is certainly not the only way to go. Of course many people go for the lowest priced item, we’ve all done it, but sooner or later many consumers get burned. They find the quality of the low priced provider problematic and they get sick of it. Or they get fed up with bad service, and decide it is worth paying a bit and have a more enjoyable consumer experience. When you look at how other top brands have positioned themselves successfully you can see that coming in high on the price end is not always a negative. To some people it is in fact a positive. This is not just a business to consumer phenomenon; plenty of companies that sell to other businesses have also taken this approach as a way to gain a market leadership position. Law firms, software companies, manufactures, consulting firms and almost every industry has one smart guy positioning as the premium player in the space and charging high prices and really delivering. There are also a bunch of low cost players trying to undercut him and focusing their pitch solely on price. Do you think the premium player is worried? Heck no, he is laughing all the way to the bank.

3. Take your focus off price and onto to value.
The key is to find out what you can provide better than anyone else. Make your value worthy of a higher price and then find the right customers who will recognize the value that they are getting and be willing to pay for it. Rather than asking yourself how you can beat your competitors on price, ask how you can provide your customers more value. People are pressed for time more now than ever before. Despite technology’s claims that it was going to save us all time, we are now busier than ever. Anything you can do to save your customers time, provides them with more value that they are likely willing to pay for. To many people time is more valuable than money because it is finite. Combining other complimentary services as part of a bundle, adding in additional accessories, delivery and pickup can increase your perceived value. While you should remain constantly focused on providing a value that does not need anything extra, adding time saving accessories can attract more of your ideal value appreciative customer base. This is not true for everyone. There are plenty of people that will drive out of their way and stand in endless lines just to save a few bucks, but are these the people that you want as your customers? Do you want the ones that are always complaining about price and trying to haggle you down and will switch to someone else as soon as they hold a sale? I think you will find it is much more enjoyable to have a customer base that appreciates and is willing to pay for value than one that frequents the blue light specials.

4. Put the emphasis on quality and service and the experience.
A good strategy for a small business hinges on your ability to competitively differentiate. Low price and high quality are incompatible competitive advantages. They simply do not go together. Quality costs money; hence the intuitive connection between quality and price. Most small businesses cannot invest in good quality and service and sustain a low price advantage. The economics of it simply do not work. As a small business, rather than trying to compete on price, you should compete on quality and service and compete for a niche of customers who are seeking a level of quality or service that the big guys are unable to provide. Even the goliath discounters like Wal-Mart who do focus on price are ultimately selling on value too. Their value is to bring an enormous selection of goods under one roof providing a one stop shopping experience with a low percentage of stock outs through a well managed supply chain, as well as a friendly experience, through their greeter program. You should focus your sales and marketing strategy on finding your specific niche customers and then accentuating how you are different from your competitors and how worthwhile your value is for them.

5. Use your price point to cultivate your niche.
Usually the people who have gotten sick of poor quality are your ideal customers. They tend to have higher income, and they have started to demand better things. They tend to be loyal and place a higher value on quality and those extra touches that are valuable. They are okay with paying more as long as they can be assured that they will be satisfied with the product or service. Sometime paying more helps them to reinforce the self image they have of themselves as a rich and successful person, or a big company that always has to have the best of everything. If you can manage to delight these people consistently, they will be your customers for life. After a while, they will not even glance at the price tag.

6. Ask what you can do to add more value and listen.
Give your customers a mechanism by which they can provide feedback to you. Before you add a new product or service or a bundle of goods, test the marketplace to make sure the value perception is there. Remember that value is not an objective quantifiable thing; it is whatever people perceive it to be. Customers that like you and plan to continue to do business with you are more than happy to give you their opinion on what they would be willing to pay for. Give them a quick questionnaire the next time they stop in and tell them about some service offerings you are thinking of adding and the proposed price point. Make sure you add in a healthy profit margin. Or better yet start a dialogue with a customer. When they know that you are trying to do more to aid them, they will be happy to tell you exactly how to do it.

Providing the best value to a niche market at a worthy price should be the aim of any business. Your business is guaranteed to flourish when you figure out that you cannot be all things to all people and you decide to narrow your scope and demand a fair price for your value.

Contributing Guest Author

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# 1 – Package Them Up

If you opted to write low quality articles, then sorry, this isn’t for you.  If however, you took the time to write a decent article, then why not take those well wrtten articles and package them up into one or more free reports.  Give these reports away and give others the rights to do the same. The more your free reports get passed around, the more traffic you get. Just make sure anyone giving away and passing your free reports arround understands that they can do this provided none of the content is changed/altered.  By having links that point back to your website (or squeeze page) within these free reports, you will now have doubled your article marketing efforts. Oh and it doesn’t hurt to recommend a couple of affiliate products in these reports so you can also pocket some extra money while driving more traffic to your own website.

Places to give away your free report

• Give it away on related forums
• Do you have an affiliate program? Let your affiliates give away the ebook and alter the links using their affiliate code.
• Free ebook directories. A quick search in google “Submit Ebook” or “Ebook Directory” will pull up tons of ebook directories you can submit your report/ebook to for others to download for free
• Have a marketing budget to play with? How about continuing to build that list by using adwords and yahoo ppc search marketing. Send people to your squeeze page that’s offering the free report(s) and really start building your list
• Cross promote. JV with other marketers in the same niche and promote each others products and free reports on your thank you pages or in each others auto-responder series.

# 2 – Make Some Money

The alternative to giving away free reports is packaging your articles into a report or ebook that can then be sold. (upsell to your list maybe?)

#3 – Guest Blogger

Make some changes to your articles so they are unique and network with some popular bloggers in your niche. Many bloggers are open to having guest bloggers post on their blog provided that the content/articles are well written and informative. In return, they credit you as being the guest blogger and link back to your site

#4.) Forums

Take your articles and make some small variations.  Become an active member in some forums (related to your niche market) and post your articles in these forums. (make sure you follow the forum rules) Help people, build trust, and become recognized as a leader in the field.

#5.) Scribd

Take your articles and submit them to Scribd.com Scribd is a social publishing site where millions of people upload their documents for the world to read. With millions of readers, this is a great place to upload your articles for more exposure.

So there you have it, 5 simple ways to make the most of your article marketing efforts. Have any other ideas?

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When it comes to setting up an affiliate program, you have a couple of options available to you.

1.) Set one up in house
2.) Use a third party solution

I only have experience setting up successful affiliate programs using 3rd party solutions so I don’t think I should be giving any advice on running your own in house program. What I can tell you is why I never opted to run one in-house.

Reason 1:

I don’t want more on my plate. Why worry about tracking and paying out affiliates/partners when I can leave that work to someone else. Cutting checks, tracking, etc. is better left to someone else while I can focus on building relationships with my affiliate partners and marketing my business.

Reason #2

Affiliate partners trust smaller companies more when they work with reputable third party affiliate program networks. They are almost always guaranteed to get paid. There is no guarantee that an affiliate will get paid when they promote an offer that is run in house. Sad I know, but it happens. So by running a program using a trusted third party, you open the doors to recruiting some of the larger super affiliates.

Reason #3

Affiliate networks already have a large base of affiliates that you can tap into. When you run a program in house, you don’t get this advantage

Reason #4

I’m not a programmer, and I don’t want to play around with affiliate software. It’s so much easier to just plug in some code and be up and running in minutes.

Those are the main reasons why I chose to run my programs using a third party solution but don’t let that stop you from running your own in house program. The one big negative to running an affiliate program using a third party is that you don’t have full control. Your affiliates are tied in through the third party. Imagine if you ever waned to leave that solution to start one in house. It could be a big mission to convince every one of your partners to switch later.  Second negative is that the third party solutions take a nice % of the profits that you could be using to pay your affiliates more commission (and really motivating them). Either way, both options have there pros and cons and you should research which option suits your needs best.

So what does it take to run a successful affiliate program?

1.) A product or service that actually converts. You better be damn sure your product or service converts well. The last thing you want is to lose those good affiliate partners because you can’t convert visitors into sales. Once you lose your affiliate partner, good luck getting him to coming back. Even worse, he will usually share this info with his buddies and it won’t be long before word gets out that your offer just plain out sucks!

2.) High payout. Unless your offer converts like crazy at a low price point, you have to offer at least 40% and even as much as 60% commission.

3.) Long tracking periods. Don’t be a fool and only offer to track referrals for 30 days. Your affiliates put in the time and hard work to bring you those sales. At the very minimum, track those referrals for 90 days…and that’s the bare minimum.  I always have cookies set to never expire. This way my partners get paid their commissions even if the referral purchases 1 year down the road.

4.) No leakage. Your affiliate partners don’t want to send you traffic if you have adsense plastered on your site. They are not working their asses off to send you traffic so that you can send it somewhere else. Other ways you might leak traffic away without even realizing it is by having to many links to other websites or recommended resources.  Put a stop on the leakage.

5.) Proper tracking. If I’m promoting an offer, I want detailed up to date stats. Show me I’m making money with you, show me the stats. If I like what I see, I’ll promote you even harder.

6.) Build a relationship with your affiliate partners. Coach them, give them tools that will help them promote you.  Run a contest and reward your top affiliates.

7.) Tools, Tools & More Tools.  Provide your affiliates with tools to help them make more sales. Design high converting banners, sales letters that convert like crazy, articles they can use to email to their lists…etc. etc.  Help your affiliate partners make money and in turn they will make you money.

8.) Having  a 2 tiered program. This way your affiliate partners can earn commission on sales generated from affiliates they recruit into your program.

Third Party Affiliate Tracking Solutions

Next, you need to decide who you’re going to use as your third party affiliate program solution provider.  There are many choices available, but the two I have personally used and had great success with are…

ClickBank.com – They are actually a third party payment processor that have a built in affiliate program. A very popular solution with webmasters selling digital downloads. With a network of hundreds of thousands of affiliates promoting clickbank products, you should definitely check them out.

ShareAsale.com – Very reputable company, been around for years and really easy to implement with all the major payment processors. Highly Recommended and they also have thousands of affiliate who search their listing every day for products to promote.

If you have any experience using other providers, please leave a comment and share your experiences with us.

So how do you find and recruit affiliates?

Well for starters Einstein, put up an affiliate page on your site outlining all the benefits and details of  your offer.  Next I would turn to all your past customers. What better affiliate partners then those people who have already used your products or services? Moving on from there, here is a list of other ways I have successfully recruited partners

• PPC – bidding on keywords using ppc. Example: If you have a dating offer, then you would bid on terms like “Dating affiliate program”
• Affiliate Program Directories – Submit your affiliate program and get it listed in the top affiliate program directories.
• Webmaster forums – Most have a marketplace where you can advertise your offers
• Abestweb.com – Worth mentioning on its own. This top affiliate marketing forum has great advertising packages for you to announce your affiliate  program
• 2 Tier – If you listened to my advice, you will have set-up a 2 tier program. Encourage and reward affiliates who recruit others into your program
• Purchase Ads – Blog reviews are a great way to get some attention. Every webmaster forum and make money online blog is also where potential affiliate partners hang out.
• Track Them Down – Do some research and find out who’s promoting your competition. Contact these affiliates and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

And so there you have it. Everything you need to know about how to set-up your own successful affiliate program. Now get off your ass and take action. There are thousands of people just waiting for an offer like yours to promote.

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Analyze the competition and ask yourself…

• What do they do well?
• Where do they fall short?
• What don’t they offer that you can?
• Can you use location to differentiate?

These are just some questions you should be asking yourself. Look for holes in the market that will help you differentiate your business from the competition and then jump right in and grab your piece of the pie. Hey, myspace came out ahead of  friendster, and facebook is a thorn in the side of myspace. Now you have LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. What will be next?  There is always room for one more.

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Selling A Digital Product

Ok selling digital products is my favorite way to make money online. You have unlimited income potential and the start-up costs are very minimal.  The most common type of digital product anyone can sell is information in a form of an ebook.  You might be thinking, “ya right, me write a book?” Now wait, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Writing an ebook can be as simple as doing some research on a topic that interests you (or better yet, on a topic that interests other people so you can sell this info)  and then summarizing it all into your own words and packaging it into what’s called an ebook (digital book) Ok obviously there is more to it then this, more then I can cover in this quick overview of how to make money online….but the point I’m trying to make is that thousands of people do this and make a very comftorable living online. (The pros actually make millions creating information products) Once you get the hang of it, you can start writing ebooks covering a variety of different topics and build yourself an information/ebook empire   P.S. – I promise to eventually do a follow up post with more information on how to make money creating/writing your own ebook.

Are you a Web designer who wants out of the 9-5? Why not use your skills to design templates that can be sold over and over again. Templates are another form of digital product that can make you a ton of money.  The key here is to target a specific market and avoid trying to compete with templatemonster.com Some of the more successful designers jumped in early on the wordpress craze and have been making a fortune selling wordpress templates.  Wordpress is just one example, what other scripts have a large enough customer base where you can start designing templates for its customers? There are some hidden gems that are still open and waiting for a designer to bring them the goods.  Search hotscripts.com and see what you can find

Developers looking to get out of freelancing or working for “the man” also have endless opportunities. I just don’t get some of you guys, why freelance when you can develop your own product and sell it over and over again creating a passive income? On top of that, having your own product opens the door to even more income by providing customization services to customers who purchase your product/script. Hell, I’m not even a developer but I have released scripts in the past (through JV deals) that have brought in revenues of 6 figures a year NOT including offering customization services. If you’re not developing your own products, you really are losing out on some serious money. If marketing is not your game, and that’s all that is holding you back, then you can either JV with someone like me    or just dive in head first and learn as you go along. Get active in the forums and ask for advice from other developers who have successfully developed their own profitable digital products.

Sell A Service

Selling a service is a great way for noobies to get started online with literally no money needed. Having money helps, but I know there are some of you that just don’t have much to start with…so selling a service is where I recommend you start.

No website, no problem. Wth the many freelance marketplaces online, you can now take your skills and sell them globally without needing a website. Obviously you can’t take your massaging skills and sell them through the freelance marketplaces, but if you take a look at www.elance.com, you can see some of the services that sell well in an online freelance marketplace.  For more information about selling your services online using freelance marketplaces, I suggest taking a look at elance university: http://www.elance.com/p/elanceuniversity/index.html

Other popular freelance marketplaces

www.Elance.com
www.Guru.com
www.ifreelance.com
www.odesk.com
www.GetaFreelancer.com

These are just a handful of places. Doing a search on google for “freelance marketplace” or “freelance website” will give you hundreds maybe thousands of more options. Don’t forget to also search for freelance marketplaces that cater to specific types of jobs. Example: if you’re a writer, search for “writing freelance marketplace”

Once you have built up some cash-flow, you should really look into re-investing your profits into having a website designed. This will give you a more professional and trustworthy image. It’s also the only way to grow your business and start finding clients using other marketing tactics. Oh, and let’s not forget about that portfolio. Having your own website to showcase you work will also help land those larger clients with deep pocket books.

The Henry Ford Model

Don’t have any skills? Don’t let that stop you from selling services online. Did Henry Ford know how to build a car? Not a chance, he employed people with the  brains to build them for him.  Using the Henry Ford model, you can seek out freelancers and reseller their services through a website of your own.  Mark up the price, land the sales, and simply outsource the work to your freelance contacts. By becoming the middle man, you can take on much more work. There is only so much work you can take on being the actual “worker”  Outsource the work and concentrate on driving those sales.

Money Through Selling Ads

You can make a fortune selling advertising, but without a high traffic website, no-one is going to purchase your ad space. Therfore, this really isn’t a topic for the noobie who is just starting out. Either way, I’ll give you a brief overview how this is done…

First you obviously need a high traffic and popular website. The next step would be to put up a page that specifically talks about the ad space you have available for sale. You must also include all the statistics like the amount of unique visitors and page views your site receives, length of time spent on your site by the average user, demographic of your visitors, etc.  The more information you provide, the better.  My opinion is that you should set-up an email form with autoresponder if people want to know the ad rates. Anyone looking for more information can submit their email address and your auto responder will deliver the details. Reason behind this is you can build a list of potential advertisers that you can market to later. You never know when you might have unsold ad space available you want to sell at a discount. Having these emails allows you to announce this special to people who already showed an interest at one time or another.

Lastly, if you don’t have adspace sold, you can always check out Googles adsense program where they will pay you to show ads on your site on a per click basis.  If this interests you, Google has all the details. Go to Google.com and click on the “Advertising Programs” link

Affiliate Programs

I should have probably talked about this first, but my #1 suggestion to all noobies is to start here. In affiliate marketing you have nothing of your own to market. And you are not offering any goods or services for sale. What you are doing is placing advertisements and links to other businesses or websites, on your own site or blog. You will usually write a few words about the product or service to arouse the interest of the visitors to your site or blog, and encourage them to click on the advertisement or link.

The trick here is to be able to make the visitor to your site or blog want to know more about the product or service without actually sounding like you are selling it – you are trying to attract people without looking like a salesman which often puts people off.  A common and very effective way to make money as an affiliate is to start a review site where you review the products you have affiliated with. Example: You can review hosting companies and the different hosting packages they offer. When someone comes to your review site looking for more information about hosting, they will read your reviews and click to visit the hosting companines you have affiliated with. If you did your job successfully, and your affiliate partner can turn that visitor into a sale, you will make earn commision

How do you know how much money you made? Well, your affiliate partner will use software to keep track of how many visitors to your site purchased their service or product, and based on your agreement, you will be paid a commission for every person who followed the link from your site and placed an order. Usually this information is available to you 24 hours a day and in real time.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to start learning how to make money online. Low risk, low start-up costs, and the ability to earn an unlimited amount of passive income from the comfort of your own home make this my top pick for all noobies.

Places I recommend you find affiliate products to promote:

www.ShareAsale.com
www.ClickBank.com
www.Azoogle.com
www.MarketLeverage.com

Sell A Physical Product

Ok to be honest, I have never sold physical products online aside from a few transactions over ebay and craigslist.org  However I can still give you a very brief overview of how people make money selling physical products online (a very brief overview). With this method you find a product you want to sell, then contact a distributor/wholesaler to make arrangements to purchase the items at a discount.  The products can then be listed in an online store where people can purchase them through your website 24 hours a day. Another option to get your feet wet is to sell products without a website and use auction sites like ebay.com and classifieds like craigslist.org or kijijji.com  The downside to all this is you need to come up with the money upfront for the products you sell, and you are responsible for all of the shipping arrangments.  My personal opinion is that if you’re still new to all this, I would avoid starting an online business that requires a lot of captial to get started until you know a little more about the ins and outs of marketing your business online.

Another option which would allow you to sell a product online without the high initial investment is to find a distributor that offers drop shipping.  Using this method, when a person purchases a product from your website, you are responsible for handling the sale. You in then place the order with your dropshipper, and they take care of packing and shipping the item.  You will receive fewer profits for each item sold, but there are a lot fewer upfront expenses, and you never have to actually handle the product. The big downside to this is it could be difficult to compete with other more established sites online that can undercut your price point. They key to success here is to find a niche market that’s not overly crowded and where price isn’t going to be an issue. Do your research before jumping into dropshipping.

So there you have it, a quick overview of how you can make money online. For the pro’s that just read this, how about helping a noobie out by contributing your thoughts in the comments below.

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2.) How To Win Friends & Influence People

3.) Cashvertising

4.) The Wealthy Barber

5.) Little Black Book Of Connections

6.) Focus

7.) Rich Dad Poor Dad

8.) Marketing Warfare

9.) The Science Of Influence

10.) Wikinomics

How about you? What books make your top 10 Must Reads? I’m always looking for a good book to read so if you have any suggestions, let me know by leaving a comment

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1.) Know what you want – What exactly do you want? What is your goal? Do you want to make $10,000 month?, do you want to build your membership to 50,000 members? Whatever your goal is, make sure you know exactly what you want. Simply saying “I want to make more money” or, “I want to have thousands of new members sign up this year” just doesn’t cut it.

2.) Stick It – Find a picture or pictures that represents your goal(s). Stick it right above your desk and stick another in your washroom so you can see it every day when you wake up in the morning, and again before you go to bed. Seeing your goal will help keep your ass motivated. If you can’t find a picture, then just print your goal out in big bold writing and stick it – the idea here is to keep your goal in your face and always on your mind.

3.) Your Plan: Put together an action plan. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you won’t acheive your goals overnight. It takes time, dedication, hard work and working smart…. so, a well thought out action plan is a must if you’re ever going to achieve your goals and become successful. By making a detailed action plan and then by doing a little each day, I was able to grow one of my sites from 0 to 400,000 members making it a successful business on a limited budget. Remember, nothing is set in stone and your action plan can change. You just need to lay one out and do something daily working towards your goal. Don’t forget to stick this action plan right beside that picture of your end all goal.

4.) Stay Focused – don’t get sidetracked. My biggest problem is I’m constantly coming up with new business ideas. It’s like I have been blessed (or cursed?) with a mind that never sleeps. So anyway, what I did to battle this constant self disctraction was set-up a folder called “Future Projects” Now when I get a new idea, I simply write everything down and file it away in my “Future Projects” folder. It helps my mind relax and keeps me focussed on my current goal(s). Remember – STAY FOCUSED!

5.) Don’t Cry About It – Think positively and don’t cry about setbacks or bumps in the road. It’s not going to kill you and you can’t avoid them, just keep pressing on. Only the strong survive my friends, so don’t cry about it and let the fight continue until you kick ass & WIN!

6.) Reward Yourself – You can look at your action plan as a set of small goals that will lead you to your end all goal. So, as you acheive these small goals, reward yourself. Personally, I like to reward myself by taking the family away for a nice quick weekend get-away.

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One thing you must note: choosing the right host is only step one to avoiding a hosting nightmare. The second step to avoiding a hosting nightmare is to REMOTELY back-up your website(s). Talk with your host and see how they can help if this is all new to you. You see, it’s great that you did your research and chose a reliable host, but there is no guarantee that you won’t have hardware failure and there definitely is no guarantee you won’t get hacked (believe me,
it happens more often then you think) So, by having remotely backed up copies of your website, you can almost guarantee that no matter what happens, you can be back in business within a few short hours.

Now call me paranoid, but the last step, and one I recommend everyone do, is to make sure you have a copy of your website and files stored at home. Why? Well, what happens if hurricane “screw up your life” comes and takes out your host? What if your host goes bust without warning? What if a fire breaks out? What if…..etc, etc. Now chances are these things will never happen, but this is a crazy world we live in and nothing is ever 100%. So, my advice to you is to look over your current set-up and ask yourself, “Am I ready for a hosting nightmare” If not, maybe now is the time you took action and prepared yourself.

Remember

1.) Choose a reliable host
2.) Make remote back-ups of your website(s),
3.) Keep an updated copy at home

How often you should back-up your websites is up to you. Since most of my content changes daily, I opt to have copies made for 1 day, 1 week and 1 month.

And so there you have it, 3 small steps to securing your online assets and avoiding a hosting nightmare

Have a hosting nightmare story you’d like to share?
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