JR's Marketing Insights

OK, it’s been over a month since I last wrote about my progress, and I think it’s a good time for an update.

I feel I’m continuing to make good progress, although perhaps a little slower than I was hoping for. There are a number of things I am happy about, but there are certainly things I can be doing better.

I have built my mailing list to 321 people

The majority of this growth has been from giveaway sites, which I have continued to participate in. I have also put all of my free products on a page in this blog, which has generated some sign-ups, and my Twitter messages have also sent a decent amount of traffic. I have participated in one Ad Swap so far, with my fellow Alex Jeffreys student David Walker. That appears to have been a great success, as I had at least double the number of sign-ups on the day of the ad swap over the usual daily numbers.

Incidentally, the email that I sent to my list for David was to promote his ebook, Stop Slogging Start Blogging. The unintended consequence of promoting his product to my list is that I read his ebook in order to write the email copy, and I learned a few things myself! This isn’t part of any ad swap, but I highly recommend everyone check out his ebook here: http://www.stopsloggingstartblogging.com/.

I have 5,943 Twitter Followers
This is in large part thanks to the Tweet Elite Pro software that I reviewed here. I have had a great time interacting with everyone on Twitter, and there is a noticeable surge of traffic every time I tweet about a page on my blog or one of my free products. I think I’m only just getting started on Twitter, and I hope to use it a great deal more in the coming months.

I have built this blog to an average of 20 visitors/day

Again, not a particularly impressive stat, but it’s double the number of visitors I had a month ago. If I can keep up that kind of growth, I think I can get to a respectable number of visitors fairly quickly.

I finished my first product

I’m particularly proud of this one. Productivity Power Plan has been released! I’m getting tons of great feedback about the book, and I have been encouraged to expand upon it into some additional great productivity materials. I’ll have more about this in a few weeks, but I hope I can continue to provide valuable productivity advice. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, there is a link on the right-hand side of the page at the top, or under the Free Products link.

I haven’t made any money yet
I have made $51.84 this month!

I have made two sales from the One Time Offer behind my free Twitter ebook, which is for a product I have Master Resale Rights to that I’m selling for $27. After PayPal fees that works out to $25.92 per sale. Again, I’m not quite ready to retire, but considering I’ve never made a cent from Internet Marketing prior to this, I think it’s a great start!

I’m getting more comments on my blog posts

I’m assuming this is due to increased traffic, but I’m seeing a few more comments on each of my blog posts. It’s still not quite where I’d like to be, but progress is a good thing.

The thing I feel I need to improve on is the frequency of my blog posts. For the first month, I was posting just about every day. Now I’ve dropped down to once or twice a week. I’m not looking to inundate you with a ridiculous amount of blog posts, and I’d rather have a few quality posts rather than a ton of junk. I do feel I can probably post closer to three times per week and still maintain the quality.

The other area I want to increase my efforts is in my videos. I have only created two so far, one a tutorial and the other a product review. I would like to do many more of each of these. I’m going to focus mostly on the tutorials because I have received more positive feedback on them, so I think they are what you want to see. Let me know in the comments if you feel differently.

Overall, I think things are going well. It’s slow going, which can be frustrating at times, but at least I’m moving in the right direction finally!

Well, I’ve finally gone and done it! I’m releasing my very first ebook, Productivity Power Plan! After countless hours and many revisions, I think it’s ready. I could keep agonizing over it for a few more weeks, but at some point you have to stop delaying and get it out there.

I’d like to thank everyone for their encouraging comments and constructive advice while I’ve been working on this ebook. I seriously don’t think I could have kept up the momentum without the feedback I was receiving to keep going.

For those who are interested, Productivity Power Plan is my solution to the problem of too much to do, and no time to do it in! If you follow my four-step process, you will see massive gains in your productivity, whether you are using it for your business or your personal life. Best of all, I’m releasing it for free!

If you want a free copy of the ebook go here:

http://www.productivitypowerplan.com/

Please let me know what you think of the ebook. Also, I’m considering expanding it into a full-fledged productivity course. Would anyone be interested in that?

I finally did it! My ebook, Productivity Power Plan, has reached the final draft stage! While it was an interesting and rewarding experience, I’m glad it’s over for now. I will be releasing the ebook in the next few days as a free product, both here and on http://productivitypowerplan.com.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on my own little secret project.  I’m writing my first original ebook, Productivity Power Plan!  I know I’m probably jumping ahead of where I’m supposed to be in Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program, but it’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a while and I don’t think I could wait any longer to get it written down.  There are many products out there on how to become more productive, but I’m writing this specifically from my perspective.  It should sound familiar to many of you out there: a person who does the majority of his work from home or would like to in the future.

The process of writing an original ebook has been both easier and more difficult than I imagined.  For example, I thought I would have trouble thinking of things to say, but it was quite the opposite!  I will go into much more detail in a future blog post, once the ebook is finished.  Right now, I have to concentrate on completing it, and don’t want to complicate the process!

I’ve had very positive responses on my previous blog posts on productivity, so I think I can count on my readers to give me a little help putting the finishing touches on the Productivity Power Plan.  Please let me know, what little tips and tricks do you use to stay productive?  What are your biggest downfalls or time wasters?  Do you have any questions about productivity that you would like an answer to?  If you have anything to add, please go to the link below and fill out the form with your comments:

Productivity Power Plan

Anyone who sends me their comments will be among the first to receive a free copy of the ebook when it is released!  You’ll get it before anyone else!  So please leave your comments at the site.

If you have any other comments, feel free to comment on this post.  Let me know if you think you could use a guide that shows you simple ways to maximize your productivity.

Staying motivated is an interesting problem.  Almost everyone has this problem from time to time, because it is impossible to be 100% driven all the time.  Eventually, your attention wanders, your priorities change, or you simply need a break to decompress.

For me, there are three aspects of staying motivated:

First you should build some downtime into your work schedule.  You need some time for yourself otherwise you will burn out quickly.  Even a 15 minute break can do wonders for your attention level and your productivity.  For me, I like to play computer or video games (see my previous post on World of Warcraft), but sometimes it’s better to get away from the computer screen and do something more active.  My kids and I have been into tennis of late, and that has been great fun as well as good exercise.

The second is to have a defined set of goals, and an actionable plan to reach those goals.  If your goal is “make lots of money,” that’s great, but without specific steps and milestones, you are going to find it hard to keep yourself motivated to do what needs to be done to get you there.  These goals can be flexible, because plans change, but you should at least have a framework for what you’re trying to accomplish.

Finally, and I believe most importantly, you need to have some specific rewards to go along with your goals.  If you have a goal to have 1500 members on your list, for example, your reward might be to buy a new computer.  Or maybe once you start making $100 per day, you take a vacation with your family.  Those happen to be two of my goals.  I am going to set up a page on this blog with my goals and my progress in reaching them, it’s on my “to do” list.  It is easier to stay motivated if you are working to get the things you want out of life rather than abstract concepts like list size.

If you have all of these things, you will find it much easier to stay motivated.  I should also mention that these steps are not something you should do once and never look at again, but something you should review on a daily or weekly basis and revise as your situation changes.

This blog has been in existence for just under 3 weeks at this point, and this seems to be a good time to write a post about my progress.  The intention of this blog is to detail what I am learning during Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program, and to chronicle my successes and failures along the way.

So far I think I have made fairly good progress, although I think I need to ramp up my efforts in certain areas.  First, the good:

I have built my mailing list from 0 to 83 people

Using mainly giveaway sites, I have offered free products to people in exchange for their contact information.  I have participated in four giveaways so far, and they work extremely well.  I have noticed that the first day a giveaway opens is usually the strongest; some have provided me with 20 signups on a single day.  I will try to increase this by learning to write better add copy for my free product listings.

I have built this blog to an average of 10 visitors/day

Not a particularly impressive stat, perhaps, but considering I had no blog and no traffic a few weeks ago, it’s still a good start.  This was accomplished mainly through posting on forums and commenting on blog posts.  I really need to increase my efforts in this area.

I’m finishing my first product

I should be releasing my first information product within the next few days.  I have been motivated by the creations of my fellow coaching students to put some serious effort into this area!  I have ideas for about four other products, but I will have to pick one or two to start with in order to stay focused and productive.

Now to the not so good:

I haven’t made any money yet

This is perhaps a little disappointing, but I’m only just getting started.  I’m laying the groundwork for success in everything I do, so it’s only a matter of time.  I may have to revise some of my strategies to improve my results.  For example, to date I haven’t used affiliate links on my blog at all, even where it would make sense to do so, for example when discussing tools that I use.  I agree with Matt Wolfe’s post here (also the inspiration for this post, by the way) that the proper way to go is to only link to products I can personally vouch for.  I may make this change going forward.

I’m not getting many comments on my blog posts

I can attribute this to two main problems, my style of posting and the amount of traffic reaching my blog.  Most of my posts have been sort of bland, “this is how I do what I do” sort of writing, that may not be terribly engaging for the reader.  My mentor suggests that blog posts need to be more personal, and perhaps less formal.  I’m working on this (wait for my next post).  As for traffic, with only 10 visitors per day I’m not having many people show up to comment in the first place.  As I improve my traffic, this should improve as well.

I hope this post doesn’t sound overly negative, because I really am encouraged by my results so far.  I think with a little more focused effort I could really improve the areas I have identified and ultimately achieve the results I am looking for.  The ball is in my hands, and all I have to do is run with it!

Twitter, Facebook, Skype…all these things are useful tools that can serve a valuable purpose in internet marketing and other endeavors. In fact, in the days of “Web 2.0″ you almost can’t do business without them. While these tools and many others have practically revolutionized the way we communicate online, they come with the risk of being a huge time sink if not properly rationed.

Who hasn’t browsed their friends timeline on Twitter and lost track of time? Or checked Facebook a dozen times in one day just to see what their friends were up to? The point is, if you wander aimlessly through these tools, you will get nothing done.

My recommendation? Strictly schedule Facebook and Twitter time and stick to the schedule! Also, try to have an agenda, so you do more than just waste you time. Productivity comes from small steps like these!