Productivity Tips for Income Producing Activities

You might be working like a maniac on your business but could use some help deciding how to focus on income producing activities.

After all, that’s why you’re doing this in the first place – to create time and financial freedom.

Chances are you have felt like a hamster on a wheel as you build your business.   Your little feet are going so fast, you’re scurrying here and there and everywhere … but, you’re not getting anywhere in your business but to the point of exhaustion and overwhelm.

Ever happen to you?

These tips and strategies will help you get focused and productive every day.

And that’s important, because here’s what happens to most who are working online …

  • You start out excited about the possibilities – you are energetic and ready to go
  • You are eager to learn everything you can – more skills, more ways to market – more of everything
  • Suddenly you have ten or twenty things you are working on – and it’s all good because it will all help you business grow – but
  • Now, you are becoming exhausted and overwhelmed and you begin to procrastinate. You are easily distracted by more training, new software, plug ins, apps and you suddenly become that little hamster … going lickety split in circles
  • And then, instead of being productive every day, you are accomplishing little or nothing in your business

Didn’t you imagine a life of ease when you first got started working from home?

No alarm clock to get you out of bed, no commute to the office,  you can work in your pjs, decide when to  “clock in” instead of being told when and where and what to do.

….  Aaaaaaah, the good life of an online marketer.  Freedom and ease and fun is what you pictured, because heck, you see those leaders walking on the beach, going on month long vacations, taking off with their families in the middle of the day to roller skate or see a movie.  Right?

You decided to start your online business because you desired that kind of lifestyle and the good news is that it WILL be your lifestyle.   It’s coming to you.

The not so good news is that for a little while, there is no ease. There is work, work, and more work to be done.

So the first thing you have to decide right now is this:

Are you willing to put in the time right now so that you can take off the time later?

Oh, I could be like many of the gurus out there and paint a pretty picture of a bed of roses and rainbows, eating bon bons and drinking pina coladas at the beach.

But, I want this message to be as real as possible.

Here’s the reality …

There will be days you want to quit.  There will be days you want to crawl back in bed and hide under the covers.  There will be days you scream – you cry – you almost toss your computer out the window.

But hang in there, for it’s part of the journey, the process, the roller coaster ride to success.

So, if you are still reading this after the reality check I’ve shared, you’re ready for some strategies to be more productive.

So, how do you stop this craziness?  How do you get off the hamster wheel and actually be more productive every day?  How do you get laser focused on income producing activities … and what are they exactly?

You have 24 hours every day and if you subtract 8 for sleeping and 8 for family, errands, eating, exercising, reading, etc., you still have 8 hours to work.  (I know, it sounds like a job already, but for now, you are the CEO and the employee and your job as the employee is to get the work done every day – or you won’t get paid!)

Here’s how to be more productive and focused on income producing activities to grow your business.

STRUCTURE

An unstructured day is the ultimate dream, but for now, your day must be very structured.

Decide when you are most creative and energetic.  Some are early birds, some are night owls.  You need to know when you are most alert and able to focus … and set 2-3 hours aside during that time to laser focus on your business.

This is the time to turn off all distractions (yes, even Facebook) and zero in on getting the tasks done that absolutely are the most essential for growing your business.

You don’t answer the phone,

You don’t reply to emails or text messages or chat messages.

Turn off the dings if they are too distracting. Whatever the issue is that is dinging away will wait. You can deal with it when your work is done.

Unless you clock in as if you were an employee – you will allow anything and everything to distract you.

Here’s an important tip for working during this block of time.  Be sure to take five minute breaks at the end of each hour.   Set a timer if needed to remind you to get up, stretch, drink some water , walk outside for some fresh air , take some deep breaths.  A five minute break will increase your energy and rejuvenate your mind.

PRIORITIZE THE TO-DOS

If you’re like me, you have a never-ending to-do list.  This is where the overwhelm starts to creep in and suck all of your energy and attention.

The following exercise will help you organize and accomplish all that you desire to do.

Make a list of all the things you feel you should get done every day in your business.  All, not just what you are currently able to do, but all those things that are always in the back of your mind that you’ve gathered as important to do to grow your business.

Think of it as your “to-do wish list” filled with everything you would love to accomplish and put into action.

It’s a huge list – right?  And, realistically, it can’t all be done in one day, no matter if you only sleep 4 hours.  It’s a gigantic list.

Now you are going to number each item on the list with a 1 or 2.

The 1’s are the daily tasks that are essential income producing activities.   Income producing activities in online direct sales are any activity that gets people or traffic to your capture page, sales presentation, and/or order page.

What are income producing activities?

Unfortunately, training is not an income producing activity, at least not yet.  It’s easy to spend hours on training and I promise you, you are not going to miss out if you miss a training.  It turns into an income producing activity is when you take something that you learned and create your own content from it.

These are income producing activities:

1.  Creating content every day. 
Blogging is a great platform for your content.  If you aren’t a blogger, create a Facebook note.
Create videos.

2. Syndicating your content.

Syndicating is sharing your content on Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube.

3. Placing ads. 

If you have more time than money, use free ads by posting on Facebook and other social media platforms, or by messaging people, phone calls, getting out and talking to people.

If you have more money than time, then invest in paid advertising.

The tasks left are your list are #2’s.  They are tasks that require some extra time to implement because you may need to learn a bit more, practice doing them, get things set up before you can really cross them off your list.

The #2’s are what you will do AFTER your #1s are done every day, as you have time.  And, they are to be accomplished one at a time, whether it takes one day, five days, two weeks or even longer to get them done.

Tackle the #2’s one at a time.  Not ten at a time.  Why?  Because trying to tackle all ten things at once will only confuse and exhaust you.  Nothing will ever be finished, accomplished, or set into motion because everything will still be in preparation mode.

One at a time is the best way to tackle the #2’s.  You’ll gain confidence as you accomplish each one.

If you follow these two strategies of structuring your day and sorting your income producing activities from all the rest, you will feel less overwhelmed, have more clarity and focus and will begin to see results in your business.

What is your biggest distraction as you work on building your business?

 

trisha barnes naked hippies roadtrip.us
Here to help you GROW your business!

Trisha
p:  573-881-6715
f:   facebook.com/trishajbarnes
s:  Subscribe to the Naked Hippies Newsletter

P.S.  We live the Freedom Lifestyle. We can work from anywhere we choose to be. We can be across the country visiting friends and family, walking on the beach, climbing the red rocks in Sedona, or parked in a campground. And we can still work ON our business. This business does not require me to punch a clock, sit in commuter traffic wasting hours we could be spending together, waking up at some crazy hour just to make it to work. We get to work with people we choose to work with, whose company we enjoy. We are the CEOs of us – the Naked Hippies!

Subscribe to our Naked Hippies Newsletter. We’ll share stories of our travels, inspiration and motivation, tips and resources for creating your own freedom lifestyle AND you’ll get our free ebook that tells the story of how the Naked Hippies came to be.  Click here to subscribe.

Additional articles you might like:
Riding the Manic Roller Coaster of Internet Marketing
How to Market Like Walmart
Why Most Fail in a Business Opportunity

path to success Naked Hippies Roadtrip

The Path to Success for Beginners

Are you following the right path to your desired success?

Most people just starting out to create a successful lifestyle as an internet marketer often get waaaaay ahead of themselves …

They are excited, ready to get growing and they have been inspired and impressed by leaders who are successful.

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So what do they do?  They begin to do EVERYTHING they see the leader doing, and soon are swallowed up in overwhelm and frustration.

WHY?  Why does this happen to newbies?  Because there is a reason those who are successful are achieving the results you are seeing. It’s because they have gone through the steps, traveled the path, learned the skills required … and that has taken them time.

You see their success, and you’re amazed and enthusiastically ready to do the same …you don’t see what it took to get there, the story behind the story. In the following article, David Wood gives a clear explanation of the stages you will go through as you follow the path to success.

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Navigating Through The Phases Of Success

When you think of a successful marketer, what do you see?

A person sitting on the beach with a smile on their face; refreshing their inbox as commissions just role in?

I see something a little different.

I see the average person at their computer, grinding away.

Working furiously to get what they want.

When someone is successful, people often look over their past. They don’t see all the work they put in, all the pain and frustration they endured.

They don’t really see the massive energy that was expended to create the outcome. Instead, they look at how effortlessly they are creating results now.

So what do people do?

They try and copy them.

Brand new people, just getting started; attempt to do what seven figure earners are doing.

Hangouts, webinars, marketing funnels, paid traffic.

But there’s a problem.

The actions the seven figure earners are doing, are a completely different set of actions that will work for beginners.

It’s because there are different phases to this business.

First is going from $0 to $3000/month.

The next is going from $3000 to about $10,000 a month.

The next is $10,000 to around $30,000.

Finally, from $30,000 to $50,000-$100,000/month.

Each phase requires a very different set of actions.

Here’s how they work:

$0 to $3000/month

This first phase is the hardest, but can be accomplished in about 30-90 days when done right.

The easiest way to make $3000/month is to make one $3000 commission a month. The higher priced products you have to sell, the easier it will be to create the results you want.

Or you could make 3-5 sales a week of lower priced products. The numbers don’t matter so much, what matters is generating about 10-30 leads a day. With 10-30 leads a day coming into your business, you can quickly figure out how to create $3000-$5000 a month in commissions.

To start, you don’t need to worry about complex marketing systems. Marketers always make the mistake of trying to be a guru before they have their first sale.

So they try and build their own Squeeze pages, videos, sales funnels and more. Stick to the proven material first. Use the default sales funnels, if you know how you can create a single Squeeze page.

The only thing you really need is a quality follow-up system. An email follow-up system that automatically follows up with your prospects and sells to them.

I talked about how to create one of these in this post:

To create 10-30 leads a day, all you have to do is focus on a single strategy. Like blogging or social media. Free marketing.

If you focus every day on creating and promoting content; you can get to about 10-30 leads/day within 90 days. As long as you’re consistent and doing something that’s proven to work; like blogging.

Finally you just have to tweak your follow-up emails improving them each time.

Free traffic generation strategies work a lot better to begin with, read why here. Sending paid traffic to the default sales funnels is a classic example of trying to skip the grind.

It isn’t going to work yet, and I’ll explain why.

$3000-$10,000/month

The next phase is the real grind.

Going from a hundred bucks a day to $10,000 a month.

All with the same lead flow of about 10-30 leads a day. Once you’re making a few sales with a really basic setup; moving to the next phase is as simple as doing live events and calling people.

It’s what I did, and it works fast.

Live events like Google hangouts or webinars are the easiest way to sell to large numbers of people without getting on the phone.

Everyone wants to only send traffic to a sales page, but that’s the slowest way to move up to the next phase. It’s only the smart thing to do while you’re building up your lead flow.

The fast way to move to the next phase is to get in front of people, by putting on live webinars or hangouts with your list every week. You can provide some kind of training, and sell at the end.

If you don’t know how to sell, buy some of the products inside Empower Network. You’re either committed or you’re not.

The next activity for dramatically increasing your conversions is to call people.

Pick up the phone, and call your prospects. Even if you’re horrible at selling, in the presence of rapport you can always close people over the phone.

You can do this really easily, without even feeling like a salesman. After people have gone through your value-based email sequence, offer them the chance to get on the phone with you for free.

Autopilot commissions are badass, and they’re something that happen more and more often when you reach the $30,000+ level. When you develop the marketing skills.

The fact is most Network Marketers are horrible at marketing. If you want to buy traffic and just have people purchase from your follow-up emails; you need to have REALLY good marketing. The kind of marketing my team create who I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to.

These two things will blow up your results, and if you’re too afraid to do them you just need to look yourself in the mirror and say “I’m a wussy”.

Live webinars or hangouts with your list each week. Offer people the chance to get on the phone with you for a free training or coaching session. That’s it. Virtually triples your conversions when you do it right.

$10,000 to $30,000/month

This is where it gets really interesting, because you’re entering the territory of another kind of financial freedom.

This is actually the easiest phase to move through; but people end of stuck because they focus on the wrong things.

Upselling.

That’s all there is to it.

Call your customers or have someone call your customers, and upsell them higher priced products.

You’ll go from the average person spending $100 to $300 in one phone call.

Maybe, you’ll have to generate a few extra leads to get to this level. But I see people get here all the time with a lead flow of about 20-30 leads a day.

The solution is simple at this point, publish more content or start experimenting with paid traffic.

$30,000/month to $100,000/month

Past $30,000/month you enter another phase where it gets a little bit more difficult.

Building teams and increasing everything.

To make A LOT of money in this business, you gotta keep people around. By keeping people around and helping them through the phases; your team grows as does your check.

The easiest way to keep people around is to establish some kind of team culture. A team membership site (maybe), a weekly phone call, Google hangouts – that kind of thing. Creating a community aspect.

I know it sounds really simple, and the truth is it is. People only make it difficult in their own minds. You can create as much resistance to doing this stuff as you want.

You can also stay broke and struggling as you resist to move through the phases or even take the first action.

As you move through these phases, resistance is normal. It’s normal for people to try and force a level one phase income into a level two or three income.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it right?

Sometimes people try and jump straight to the team building phase.

“I’m going to build a team membership site, with my one sign up”…

…”and the site will have ONE video on it about how to build team membership sites”.

Don’t resist moving through the phases. Stop doing the same things expecting different results.

It’s a lot easier to triple your income from upselling your new members than it is to triple your traffic. At first you’ve got to start with a daily lead flow.

Then you can increase your conversions, then you can increase the average value of each customer.

The most important lesson of all:

YOU CAN’T SKIP THE GRIND.

It doesn’t work.

Spending all your time doing live trainings with a list of 5 people isn’t going to make you rich.

It might make you better at selling, but you’ll never create the results you want.

First you need to build the lead flow up, by working at your blog.

You could try paid traffic, but it rarely works unless you know how to do marketing.

Instead, follow the phases.

Know when to shift your activities, and try not to get stuck at an income level. If you’re stuck it can only mean you’re focused on the wrong things.

Trying to create any income by skipping to the top phase doesn’t work.

Neither does trying to force a $3000/month income to a $30,000/month income by just blogging daily.

The only thing that will create different results is different activities.

It starts with the grind, building up your traffic, getting leads into your business.

Above everything, you have to trust your gut and have faith in the process.

There’s a sure-fire way to never be happy or successful.

It’s called listening to society.

In other words; people who don’t know what you want.

There’s also a sure-fire way to success.

Trust your gut, take massive action and do whatever it takes to get what you want.

Believe in yourself, and be persistent.

You can speed up the process along the way doing three things:

  1. Increase Your Traffic
  2. Increase Your Conversions Through Live Events And Phone Calls
  3. Increase Upsells

That’s it folks.

The phases of success in this business, and how to navigate through them.

Love ya,

David Wood

Check out David Wood’s blog for more incredible training like this:

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Following the leader … the Naked Hippies with David Wood!

YOU CAN’T AVOID THE GRIND

Those who are at the 0 – $3000 stage need to be reminded of this again:  The only thing you really need is a quality follow-up system. You just have to tweak your follow-up emails improving them each time.

These two tools will help you create and improve your follow-up emails.  Note:  we realize the financial crunch when you are first starting out – when you are at the 0-$3000 stage.  That’s why these two tools are recommended – you got $20?

Power Lead System for generating leads and creating email follow-ups.  (sign up for free) Write Smokin Ads to improve your copywriting skills.  ($20 gets you this 80 page course!) That’s it … that’s exactly what you need right now to grow whatever business you are growing and get to the next stage – the $3000-$10,000 stage. And don’t forget to create content daily to share in your email follow ups.  I explain how to use one piece of content across multiple platforms in this article. Here’s to your amazing success!

Bruce and Trisha Naked Hippies Roadtrip
We LOVE our life!

Trisha p: 573-881-6715
f:  http://facebook.com/trishajbarnes 

Why Facebook is THE Bomb for Social Media Marketing

Social Media has become the foundation of every successful business, whether offline or online.

Technology is developing at such a rapid pace and has evolved to make the web more interactive and user friendly.

Business owners have great tools at their disposal to assist with expanding, scaling, growth and making more money in your business.

However, in order to achieve this goal, one must search for the best features for expansion, and know how to use them in order to increase their bottom line.

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Social media marketing on Facebook is the place to start.  Here’s why:

Worldwide, there are over 1.35 billion monthly active Facebook users.  (Source: Facebook as of 10/28/14)

One in five page views in the United States occurs on Facebook. (Source: Infodocket 2012)

Your potential audience is growing daily on Facebook..

The list below contains several inexpensive ways on how to market on Facebook to expand your business, and increase profits.

Videos & Facebook

Many online marketers use videos to promote businesses for their online presence. Videos are a valuable resource for marketers. They directly affect the ranking in which a page is listed on a major search engine queries.

In recent years, videos have become very popular on the Internet. For example, YouTube is considered the second largest search engine in the world.

Now, most developers agree creating and launching YouTube videos is the fastest way to have a website rank on Google, or any other search engine.

Also, it is relatively easy to produce online videos with the new smart phones. No need to invest in fancy
equipment – your phone will do it all – record the video and upload it to YouTube – all in the palm of your hand.

The content you can provide is wide open to your
creativity, goals and purpose, such as:

  • Instructional “how to” videos
  • Customer reviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Motivation
  • Commercials

Sharing your YouTube videos on Facebook is a
great way to expand your presence and elicit
engagement for your product or services.
Blogs and Facebook

If you are looking for a great inexpensive way to  promote products  or services for your business, blogs are the way to go.

Blogs with links to social media sites like Facebook go very far in increasing high end business visibility, and branding.

Many consumers look for credibility when searching for any product or service, especially if they are planning to spend money.

Developing a blog can provide instant credibility, and make you an authority on any given subject matter.

A link from your blog, shared on Facebook can definitely improve your page standing with the major search engines.

Here’s the power of posting your blog link on Facebook:  Facebook shows up in Google searches; however, Google does not show up on Facebook.


Content and Facebook

In the world of the Internet, the saying is, “content is King.” Major search engines take web content seriously.

Fresh and relevant content is a must in order for any website to be acknowledged by the search engines, and to receive a decent ranking.

Pushing that content through major social media outlets, such as Facebook is probably the most effective and fastest way to bring visibility to a very targeted demographic.

Facebook is one among a hand-full of advertising networks that can laser target a specific demographic, genre or concept on a global basis.

There are many social media tools to consider in expanding a website, or online promotion; however the above-mentioned resources on Facebook are some of the best to consider for increasing revenue for your brand.

See you on Facebook!

HippieTrisha

Trisha Barnes

P.S.   Get my “31 Days of Marketing Tips” to learn
some of the best ways to market your content on
Facebook, YouTube and in your emails.  Sign up here.

P.P.S.  If you are on Facebook and not generating  25-50
leads daily, this quick course will help you.  Get the course here.

Ghost writers for busy marketers … IWriter Review

Let’s be real here for just a moment.

Some days, you feel like this when it comes to
writing another blog post or email …

newbie nightmare

 

Am I right or am I right?

Some days, the words just don’t come,
the energy is wrong, the flow has slowed
down … BUT – you need a blog post.

Here is where IWriter comes to the rescue.

For a small investment of your money,
you get a big return on your time.

I tried it for the first time recently …
ordered five different articles on online
marketing topics. I spent a total of $3 for
each article.

What I loved most about this service is
my ability to review each article and decide
if it was really what I needed.  If not, I hit
reject and wait for a replacement article.

Were the articles satisfactory?  Yes!

I can take the copy, add my own flavor,
insert pictures and CTAs … and my blog
post is published in a matter of minutes.

For the first run of articles, I tested the
least expensive writers.

Next, I will choose one article and pay
for the highest ranking writers to write
it.

This video will demonstrate the ease
and simplicity of using IWriter:

The choices and smooth operation through the system
is outstanding.

I am in complete control of the whole process.

I know you have days when it’s nearly impossible
to get anything written.

This is a fantastic tool to help you through those days.

Mama said there’d be days like that.

Now, you can sail through them and enjoy the rest of your day.

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_0012_arrow2right   Get your articles here.

Happy writing!

HippieTrisha

Trisha Barnes

Let’s connect on Facebook!