One thing I make an effort to do is to collect failure secrets. Because if you know how to fail you know how not to fail.

Justin Brooke just wrote a great blog post called “The Formula For Failure.” It shares several failure secrets. Check it out!

One of my favorite bloggers and Internet Marketing types is Robert Plank.

This guy is a productivity machine. He’s constantly writing articles, making videos, creating products and more… all while holding a full time day job. Ya, even though his online income vastly surpasses the income from his job… he still works there full time.

For February he’s set a goal of earning $30,000.00. Because February only has 28 days, that’s more than a $1000.00 a day… and so far I believe he’s on track to do it. Nice job Robert!

And oh yeah, he’s 23.

A while back Robert wrote a post detailing how he makes thousands of dollars essentially just writing articles.

The idea is to write an article a day, package them in to an ebook and sell them. Sound simple? Well, that’s just the beginning.

He also gives a great suggestion for cashing in on the ebook before you’ve finished all the articles… AND a great way to add scarcity and urgency to your offer.

I’m going to try it out and see how it goes.

I might post my first article tomorrow, or I might post something else. We’ll see

If you want to try it with me, leave a comment and we can encourage each other.

Maybe Zazzu? Lowell Rieger? Or maybe Tony when he gets back from his self imposed information abstinence.

I’m wondering how many of my readers have a blog. If you’re reading this and you do have a blog, will you leave a comment?

If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. Blogs are a great way to start a business or generate traffic.

A great way to establish yourself as an authority is to have dozens and dozens of blog posts published to the web for visitors to read.

Plus Google loves content, so they love blogs. The more content you have the more search engine traffic you’ll get.

Whenever I start a new hobby, I start a blog with it. That way I can track my progress with the hobby, and I have a ton of content if I ever get to the point where I want to monetize that hobby.

Right now, in addition to this blog, I have a music blog and a wine blog. I keep both of them secret and don’t talk about them too much.

And I haven’t posted to either one in quite a while. But that’s OK, the content is there waiting for me when I come back. One day all that content I’ve compiled will be very useful. And if not, I’ll still have a personal record of the hobby if I ever want to go back and look.

I think I have some DVD’s that show how to set up a blog. Maybe I’ll give one away next week. In the meantime, it’s not hard. Buy a domain name, get a web host that uses cPanel, point the domain at the webhost and use cPanel’s auto-install to install Wordpress. Done!

I just watched this video by Perry Belcher. I was surprised to find we have a similar technique (and reasoning) for keeping organized and focused.

Watch the video if you’d like…

I don’t use post-it notes. But I do jot down thoughts as they come to me for the purpose of clearing them from my head. And I prioritize them similar to Perry’s method.

The difference for me is that I write everything down in a “distractions.txt” file. When I’m working, if a great thought or idea comes to me, I click a shortcut on my taskbar to open the file and type it in. Then I close the file and continue working.

It makes it easier to leave the thought alone until later so I can stay focused.

Hmmm…

I’m assuming you just read the title of this post. I wrote it, but I didn’t mean it.

I’ve heard comments like “forget the recession” or “ignore the recession” lately. And I think I understand where they’re coming from, but I don’t relate. I feel like I’m coming from a completely different position.

Am I just being a contrarian again? I guess, but I didn’t mean to.

People who suggest ignoring the recession seem to be giving advice to people who are climbing in to a hole and letting the bad economic climate beat them.

I don’t relate to either character. I’m not ignoring the recession, and I’m not ready to take a beating from it either.

The recession doesn’t scare me at all. I think I’ll make more money this year than last year. I have big plans…

…but I’m paying attention to the problems with the economy. I think it’s important.

I’m not going to give investment advice, but if you didn’t pay attention to the economy how would you know how to invest? to protect your assets? to protect your wealth? to prepare?

These are all important things to do in the face of a huge economic downturn.

But if you read those statements again… they’re NOT an excuse for getting beat up by the recession.

A recession should cleanse the market of bad businesses, bad investments, bad bets and bad debts (if the government would let it happen).

But I happen to believe I run a GOOD business that’s going to thrive while others barely survive, or maybe even die. It’s nothing to be worried about. In fact, it’s encouraging me to get MOVING and finally set my plans in to place.

With that in mind, I think the best advice is not to use a bad economy as an EXCUSE to fail… an EXCUSE to get beat up.

But you should pay attention to the economic climate. It’ll help you prepare… it’ll help you invest wisely… and if you’re really on top of it’ll help you vote wisely too.

Ron Paul, 2012.

“Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people. Michigan knows about it. Poor people know about it. The middle class knows about it. Wall Street doesn’t know about it. Washington, D.C., doesn’t know about it.” ~ Ron Paul, October 2007

Last Spring my PC started to die on me.

This led to a whole new philosophy for how I organize files and software on my PC.

I realized my laptop could suddenly stop working, so all files needed to be accessible via the web. Especially copy projects that I was working on.

I didn’t want to rely on expensive software that might be installed on my laptop, so I started using free and often very simple software programs that I could quickly download from any computer with an Internet connection.

These new changes give me a sense of independence that I didn’t have before. Someone could steal my laptop today and all it’d put me back is the $600 I spent on it. I could simply walk to the nearest computer and continue working on my business via the web.

A fire could destroy my laptop and I’d be OK. A tornado could carry my laptop to Kansas and I’d be OK. A gang of thieves could… let’s move on.

Here are the free programs that are easily accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, that completely run my business.

Notepad. If you run on a Windows platform, you likely have Notepad under “Accessories” in your “Programs” menu. I use this to write notes to myself, take notes for copy, copy and paste text into a .txt file to save for later… it has all kinds of uses while I’m working.

It has a big advantage over Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer: it barely uses any resources on your PC so your comp works very quickly.

Google Chrome. I use Google Chrome instead of Firefox or Internet Explorer. I really like the opening page that displays thumbnails of pages I regularly visit.

I also like the address bar, which automatically guesses and even selects what site you’re typing in. I can get to the Dashboard of my blog just by typing “s” then “enter.”

It also allows me to use the following programs.

GMail Previously I used Outlook Express for all my email. Then I switched to webmail on my server so that I could access my emails from any computer (which helps for independence). And then I switched to GMail because it’s the best webmail interface out there.

I love the “Archive” feature which doesn’t delete your emails but keeps them out of view. I love being able to easily search for past emails, sent or received. I love that if I get an email that’s part of a back-and-forth -email-conversation, all emails from that convo show up in my inbox with the new email (and in a very clean, non-obtrusive way).

And the GMail spam filter is amazing. I rarely see spam in my inbox. The other day I realized my Spam folder had caught 600 spam emails in one day, and not one made it to my inbox. Woah!

Google Calendar. I use this to plan my week in advance. Really easy way to outline my projects.

Google Notebook and Google Docs.

I find it easier to write in Notepad than Google Notebook. But by copying and pasting info from Notepad to Google Notebook, I can then easily access that information from any computer anywhere. Again, that’s important to me.

I use Google Docs ocassionally. It allows me to open Word .docs even though I don’t have Microsoft word.

iGoogle. I use iGoogle as a way to monitor all of the above Google tools. It’s set up to show me a glimpse of what’s in my inbox, list what’s on my calendar for that day, and allows me to quickly copy and paste info into Google Notepad… all from the same page.

WYSIWYG Killer. I stopped using Dreamweaver, Frontpage and other WYSIWYG editors because they frustrated me like crazy. So I wrote a piece of software that installs on your website and allows you to type in plain text… then click generate… and instantly have a web-ready .html sales letter that can be saved and sent to the client.

Because it’s on the web, I can write copy from anywhere I can access the Internet. It’s also set up to send backups to a free hotmail account that I signed up for, so I don’t have to worry about losing files. (This allowed me to get rid of my backup service.

It’s Your Turn.

Those are the free programs I use. How about you? Are there any free programs you use to run your business?

When did you start your business?

There’s a guy at http://teeninternetmarketer.blogspot.com who’s working to get his business profitable at 16. That’s about the same age I got started. (10 years later…)

I saw he made a blog post about GTD, or “Getting Things Done.”

I decided to share some tips with him that took me years and years to learn. If only someone would have shared this with me back then…

Hey Montie.

One thing that’ll help you to GTD is to limit the hours in which you allow yourself to work on your IM biz.

I don’t know your schedule, but if you’re working after school you could give yourself between 3-6 to get your work done.

That means you don’t start before 3, and you don’t work after 6. Period.

If you have 4 hours of work to get done in that time… you don’t have time to procrastinate. You don’t have time to tell yourself GTD. You just have to GO.

And some people think that when you limit the time in which you have to work, you actually get more done.

“Diego Norte” describes it well in this post at the Warrior Forum: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/28621-spending-less-time-online-earn-more-how-i-move-onto-4-hours-work-week.html#post256366

As for music, I couldn’t work to Lil’ Wayne either. I usually listen to slower music… like a mix I would listen to if I were going to sleep.

Songs like “Mad World” by Michael Andrews, “Whistle For The Choir” by The Fratelli’s, or “Pieces” by Sum 41.

And even then I’ll also just listen to the same song on repeat because that tends to keep me less distracted but happy.

I also listen to Beethoven or Mozart every now and then. Ever use Pandora.com? Just type Beethoven in there and you’re set.

Limiting the hours I work is very important to my productivity.

It used to be that I’d dilly dally doing small tasks around the house and online until finally I’d get around to working late in the day. Which resulted in an unproductive day.

Now I set a time range before the day starts. Usually from about 10-6pm. And those hours don’t move.

It’s not about limiting myself to 8 hours, it’s about having a set deadline when I must be finished. That way I don’t have time to procrastinate, I must get started now to get my work done before the deadline.

And it’s important to stick to these hours. Sometimes I really have the urge to work at 10pm. But I DON’T. It’s not within my time frame.

Instead I transfer that energy in to being excited to start working in the morning.

It works. Try it. Best productivity technique I’ve ever used.

My sister stayed with me last week to work on copywriting 1v1.

I watched her as she wrote copy and noticed that she was doing several things to make things harder for her. She was…

• using the backspace key WAY too much, constantly deleting her progress because in her words, “It wasn’t good.”
• staring at the screen wondering to herself if she was good enough to write what she was writing.
• writing aimlessly without a Template.

Just those three bad habits were enough to understand why she had to put in dozens of hours to complete a project that would take me just a handful.

So I gave her a challenge. I wanted her to write a sales letter in ONE day. From start to finish. Here’s how I told her to go about it…

1. Outline the major sections, making a Template for yourself. Headline here, opening here, bullets here, guarantee here and so forth.

2. Write the letter from top to bottom without stopping, and NO deleting. If you don’t like a paragraph, write an “improved” paragraph below it, but don’t delete the previous one.

3. Take a break.

4. Go back and fix the sections that truly don’t work.

5. Tweak the sections that almost work.

6. Take a break.

7. Polish.

Guess what, she finished that letter in 6 and a half hours. A record for her and dang good in anyone’s book. Plus, it was a pretty good letter. I don’t think it would have been any better if she had taken twice as long. And I won’t have to tweak it much before it goes into Muvar.

That’s the power of setting deadlines and breaking a big task into smaller tasks.

I’m making some more switches to my business to make it more mobile.

Coinciding with the death of my laptop, I’ve decided to make an extra effort to make all of my business files accessible from the web. And preferably in more than one place.

This way if my laptop suddenly shuts down on me, is stolen, or some other tragedy… not much time will be lost.

Some people put this type of planning off because it will “never happen to them.” Well, I know I’m not the only one who has lost plenty of cash because of system failure.

And having a “mobile” system will help me to be more independent and more free.

Here are some of the most recent changes.

1) The email address associated with my domain now forwards all mail to my GMail account. I’ve had all mail routed through this account to take advantage of Google’s spam filters in the past… but now that I’ve started using Web Mail exclusively I’ve decided to trust Google more than my web host’s shared server.

I may have all mail sent to this email address also forwarded to another free account on Yahoo or MSN to keep backups.

2) If you’ve followed me on Twitter you know that I’m fed up with WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver and NVU. They make me curse loud enough for the neighbors to hear and I need to make sure I don’t get any more notes put on my door.

I’ve created my own text-based editor that allows me to type my sales letter at the speed of thought… and then hit “Generate” to create a web-ready HTML document. Talk about simple.

It’s set up to keep a draft on hand from every saving point to be quickly recalled if needed.

Also, the editor runs on one of my websites so I can work on copy from any computer in the world, at any time. And each saving point is saved to the web-host for easy recall if I need to go back… but it’s also emailed to another free address for instant back up.

This means I’ll be able to get rid of my “First Back Up” service that’s really been annoying me anyway.

3) I’ve started drifting away from applications that need to be saved to my computer. The text-based editor is an example. But I’m also using Google’s calendar to manage my schedule… basecampHQ to manage my projects… and more.

In all, it makes my business very mobile and not tied to just one laptop that could die at any moment (the new one will be here shortly).

Hope these tips will help your business.

While I’m working on a project, especially in the beginning when I haven’t gotten in the flow, I come up with a lot of distracting thoughts.

“Do a google search for…”

“Check your bank account for…”

“Yesterday you forgot to…”

“I need to buy…”

Sometimes trying to ignore these thoughts are just as distracting as switching to the less important activity. So here’s what I do.

As I work, I keep a notepad file open. Everytime I get a distracting thought, I write it down in the notepad file and minimize it. Then continue writing.

Because I wrote it down, I’m able to stop thinking about it. While it does stop my work progress for a moment, it’s much better than actually giving in to taking care of the task. And really, I’ve already disrupted my momentum just by thinking the thought.

Eventually I get in to such a flow that these thoughts stop.