Recently I sat down and was reviewing some of the past issues to make sure that the content was current and to see if there was anything I might consider revising. Blogging was one topic that I think I’d like to give you a few more ideas about.

In the previous blogging issue I suggested that one way you could blog in ten minutes was to take a relevant article from somewhere online, link to it in your post, summarize it in one paragraph, and then write your own opinion on it in the second paragraph.

It’s an effective way to blog relevant content easily and quickly, and I still use that method today. But, as I was reviewing my past Tips In Ten articles, I realized that there were other ways that I blog that can also produce interesting blog post content in just ten minutes. So I’m writing two more of those ways in this issue so you have a bit of variety to mix into your blogs.

Let’s call that previous method (from last year’s blogging issue) the “Ten Minute Blog Post Method #1. Now, I’ll now give you two more…

Ten Minute Blog Post Method #2: The “Tips” Post

This “tips” blog post is a really popular kind of post because lots of people read blogs (especially business blogs) for tips and ideas and guidance rather than just straight-up opinion. Here’s how to write it in ten minutes.

Step 1: Decide on the main skill or activity you want your reader to be able to do once they are finished with your blog. (Duration: 1 minute. Really, this shouldn’t take very long at all!)

Step 2: Write down the first sentences and the last sentences. They will be similar. Don’t worry, no one will hold that against you; that’s just good writing. (Duration: 1 minute).

Step 3: Write down as many tips, guides, ideas, ways, things, tactics, steps, etc., that pertain to the skill or activity you want to empower your readers to have or do. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive, because it never will be and no one ever expects it to be, but it should be insightful and drawn from your position as an expert. (Duration: 8 minutes).

So, here’s an example:

Let’s say the main skill I want to impart on my readers is to be more productive on the phone. (Okay, that took about 10 seconds to decide).

Then I write down my first and last sentences…

[First sentences] Productivity helps us to do more business in less time; but when we’re on the phone, we sometimes lose track of time. In this blog post, I want to give you some tips to be more productive on the phone.

[Last sentences] Use these tips when you’re talking on the phone and you’ll increase your productivity, which will have a direct impact on your business.

Easy. That took about 45 seconds.

Now let’s write the main part of the blog post (and, of course, we’ll squeeze it in right between the first set of sentences and the last set of sentences that you’ve just written). So I would write something like…

1.    Have a plan about one key takeaway you want the other person to have by the time your call is done.
2.    At the beginning of your call tell the other person how long you have to speak to them. (“I only want to take 3 minutes of your time”). Make sure you stick to that number.
3.    Take notes. You’ll be surprised at how helpful this can be later.
4.    Schedule your calls to increase the likelihood that you’ll reach the other person.
5.    Group your calls together.
6.    Be prepared to leave a message (and even practice it before you dial) so that you’re not caught off guard and end up leaving a cryptic or unhelpful message.

Done! Five and a half minutes. I have time to spare!

Hit post. You’ve just written a helpful blog and you’ve done it in less than ten minutes.

BONUS TIP: If you like writing these, why not sit down on a weekend, brainstorm a dozen of these blog posts, write them, and schedule them to be published over the next two or three months.

Ten Minute Blog Post Method #3: Opinion

While people like to read tips and guidance posts, like what I showed you above, one of the things that make blogs enjoyable (and more compelling than a newspaper) is the lack of balance: People want to read opinions. They want to see polarizing viewpoints. They’re drawn to it. And you’re going to give it to them in this ten minute blog post.

It starts in a similar way to the previous ten minute blog post writing method.

Step 1: Decide on the main viewpoint or opinion you have. (Duration: 1 minute. Again, this won’t take very long because they are already your opinions!)

Step 2: Write down the first sentences and the last sentences. Again, they will be similar and that’s okay. (Duration: 1 minute).

Step 3: Write one paragraph describing the dissenting view and one paragraph describing your opinion. You might want to add a source if you have time or if you need to back up your viewpoint. Remember, the purpose of your blog is not to lay out all the facts and debate it cleanly to sew up the argument. The rest of the web is for that. You’ve got commenters in your audience who will want to voice their opinion in your comments and on their blogs. You’ve got Twitter followers who might have an opinion, too. The purpose of your blog is to start the discussion and stake your claim in the argument. (Duration: 8 minutes).

So here’s an example.

Let’s say the main opinion I want to have is that a little procrastination is healthy. Having an opinion is easy for most of us so that took about 2 seconds of my time to come up with an opinion-topic. The stronger your opinions are and the less worried you are about criticism from others, the easier and more rewarding this kind of blog posting will be.

Now I want to write the first and last sentences. I might write something like this:

[First sentences] We try to fight procrastination at every turn and while we don’t want to procrastinate 24/7, I believe that a little procrastination is actually good for us.

[Last sentences] So, while the world speaks out against procrastination, and I agree for the most part, I’m not going to do anything about it until tomorrow… or the day after.

Easy! That took about a minute.

Now we write two paragraphs about the dissenting position and our own position. (I suggest writing your own position second since it’s usually going to be your stronger and more passionate paragraph). And again, these two paragraphs get sandwiched between the first set of sentences and the last set of sentences. So I might write something like this:

Ask most efficiency experts and productivity gurus about their opinion on procrastination and they will tell you that it needs to be eradicated from our lives. Their position is that procrastination is laziness and avoidance, and it’s only action that will lead to success.

I believe, however, that a little procrastination can sometimes be helpful. If we spend too much time in action, we wear out faster, we don’t leave ourselves any margin for creativity, and we lose focus. But, by procrastinating within reason, we can find the rest that will lead to creativity and we’ll be a little more motivated and focused when we get around to working.

And then I hit “post” and the blog is done. As you can see from this topic, it’s not a full argument but that’s okay. It’s not meant to be. You can spend much longer on full arguments, cultivating your viewpoint, handling objections, and writing what is essentially an essay. Sometimes it’s good to blog like that. But I also know that most of us can avoid blogging because it seems to take too much time, yet it doesn’t have to. A ten minute blog like the one above can just start the conversation (and you’ll have more material to talk about in a later blog when you want to expand on the opinion you started here).

There! You now have three ways to blog in ten minutes. Mix them up, add some variety to your blog, and blog prolifically. And it only takes ten minutes a day!

Related posts:

1. Blogging in 10 Minutes a Day
2. Keyword Research in 10 Minutes a Day
3. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2

But getting comments is only part of the story. Commenting on other people’s blogs is also an important part of the conversation. You can’t expect people to comment on your blogs if you’re not commenting on other people’s blogs. (That’s not to say that the people whose blogs you’re commenting on will specifically be the ones to comment on yours, but the whole idea of getting people to comment on your blogs requires people to be commenting! So you should contribute to that, too).

So in article issue of Tips In Ten I’m going to show you how to easily comment on other blogs in just ten minutes a day and build up some valuable marketing “currency” while you’re doing it.

Leaving comments on other blogs

Commenting tools

In the last issue I mentioned CommentLuv and Disqus as commenting tools for your own site. However, they are also useful for you when you comment on other people’s sites. With a CommentLuv account your picture will show up when you post elsewhere, and with a Disqus Profile you can manage your comments across several sites really easily. Consider at least one of these tools, maybe both, since they are common commenting systems.

Commenting often

You should consider commenting on a couple of blogs each day. This gets you actively out there reading what other people are writing and it helps to get your name out there. But if you don’t do it right, you could end up spending your time searching for blogs to comment on and you’ll blow that ten minute target easily. (Trust me, I speak from experience). While browsing the web is fun, it can also be time consuming. So here’s what I would suggest:

Find 5 blogs that you love to read that fit the following parameters:

• They need to be relevant to your subject matter
• You need to have something valuable to contribute
• It should be something read by your target market
• They post a blog at least once a week (or perhaps more frequently).

Once you’ve chosen 5, bookmark them in a folder named: “Commenting” and rename them as follows:

If you use an alphanumeric sorting bookmark system, like Delicious’ Firefox plug-in, you’ll want to name them something like 1 – Monday – [blogname]; 2 – Tuesday – [blogname], etc.

Also, you’ll want to bookmark another site like Alltop.com or Technorati, which are a source for many blogs.

Now here’s what you do:

On Monday, click to your Monday blog and read one of the posts that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source like Alltop or Technorati and pick a blog and read and comment. There, you’ve commented on two blogs and you’ve likely done it ten minutes; maybe less.

On Tuesday, do the same thing: Go to your Tuesday blog, read one of the blogs that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source and pick a blog and read and comment. Another ten minutes.

Do the same thing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Heck, why not take ten minutes each day on the weekend and do it Saturday an Sunday, too)

Depending on how fast of a reader you are and how long the blog posts are, you might even be able to pick 2 blogs from your multi-blog-source and comment on them. But don’t push yourself. Start with 2 a day and go from there.

At the end of the week, you’ll have at least 10 and possibly up to 15 blogs you’ve commented on. Five of them will be your regular community and another 5 to 10 will be new communities. By the end of the year, you’ll have commented on between 520 and 780 blogs by just spending 10 minutes a day from Monday to Friday. If you comment on 2 a day every day of the year, you’ll have commented on 730 by the end of the year, and 1,095 if you comment on 3 a day. That’s some significant contribution to the blogosphere.

Those comments not only give you good backlinks but also can mean potential traffic to your site. The likelihood of getting traffic to your site based on your comments is enhanced by…

Insightful comments

Not enough people leave comments and of those that do, many don’t leave insightful enough comments!

I would encourage you not to rush through the commenting process. You can do it well in ten minutes but don’t try to do it in less time than that! My recommendation here isn’t for you to hit a dozen blogs in a week with “Great post, Bob” or “I enjoyed your blog, Mary”. That’s not helpful. As a blogger, I love hearing that stuff, sure, but I enjoy it far more when I hear something that is more insightful, constructive, and participatory. If you want to compliment them on how good their post was, that’s fine, but be sure to follow it up with something else. Interact with what the post was about. You can talk a bit about yourself and what you do, just be careful not to overly promote yourself. A good blog comment might look like this:

Something simple like that compliments the blogger, interacts with what they’ve just written about, and also helps to align you with them in some way or position you as someone who thinks along those lines, too.

It doesn’t have to take long but it should be more than just “thanks” or self-promotion. Add something to the conversation!

Additional tips

• Sometimes the commenting software gives you the option to subscribe to replies. Because of how much I comment, I generally don’t subscribe to replies. That’s not to say I never do, but my comments are often like those I’ve written above and it’s not likely that someone will add additional comments after refuting my position. However, on a particularly controversial issue or if I’m participating in more of a multi-person discussion in a comment section of a blog, I will subscribe to replies. But if you’re posting a few hundred comments a year, you can fill your inbox pretty quickly with potential replies so I’d advise that you do it sparingly.

• When you’re selecting who you should pick as your 5 main blogs to comment on, consider a blog that is an active blogger and commenter. I am less motivated to post a comment on a blog that has lots of comments but nothing from the owner. I am far more motivated to post a comment on a blog that has slightly fewer comments and active, prompt replies by the blog owner. This tells me that the blog owner is interested in building up a community and not just putting out content and ignoring it after that.

• I like to comment on blogs that have anywhere from zero to 25 comments per post. Of course, if I have something to say, I’ll comment on the blog no matter how many comments there are, but if I’m going to be strategic about positioning myself, I find that I can give some good insight and not get lost in the onslaught of commenters if there are no more than 25 comments on a post. While lots of people are automatically attracted to the blogs with huge followers (and those bloggers obviously have good things to say and it’s okay to comment on those blogs), there are lots of hard-working bloggers who are coming up through the ranks who will likely be more communicative with their commenters. Think of it this way: You will probably make far more of a contribution and receive far higher benefit from commenting on a site that gets 10 comments – and being noticed – than you will by commenting on blogs that can get hundreds of comments. By findin g bloggers with zero to 25 comments per post, you are strategically getting your foot in the door of the successful bloggers of tomorrow rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the insanely popular bloggers of today.

• If you get to the end of a blog post and you think the writer covered it well and you’re not sure what to write, don’t despair! Comb through the comments and find something that a commenter has written and respond to that.

So, now you have the tools and ideas to help you manage comments on your own blog and in this issue you read about how to comment like a pro on other blogs! Get commenting, help to build communities. When you grow other people’s comments, you will grow your own business!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They Can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Mintues) – Part 1
2. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day
3. “What Should I Do?” – Blog Commenting

Squidoo is a site in which users generate content on their pages – called “lenses” – using customizable modules that can be engaging and interactive. They are not quite blogs, which are like constantly updated online journals, and they are not quite like websites which tend to be static. Instead, they are sort of a cross between the two: Good lenses are constantly updated but tend not to have a journalistic format. Squidoo is informative but fresh and gives information from a specific point of view.

Why am I telling you all of this? Lots of people haven’t heard of Squidoo or they chalk Squidoo up as being “just another site”. However, Squidoo has a PageRank of 7 out of 10 (that’s pretty good) and according to Alexa they are one of the 500 most-visited sites in the world (and they are one of the 300 of most visited sites in the US).

So, you might be thinking, “creating a lens means just one more thing to think about in my marketing”. In a way that’s true but this is a project that you can easily outsource or you can do it yourself in just 10 minutes a day.

The first ten minute Squidoo project: Take a look around

So, here’s the first thing you should do. Go to http://squidoo.com and visit some of the lenses. Some will be garbage (just like lots of blogs or websites out there) and some will be great (just like lots of blogs or websites out there). Click through a bunch, search for topics that interest you, and see what people are saying in your industry.

The second ten minute Squidoo project: Brainstorm the possibilities

Next, think about what you want to do on Squidoo. If you want to improve your website’s search engine optimization with great anchor texts pointing to your site from a high PageRank site, this might be one good use for a Squidoo lens (or ten Squidoo lenses). Think about how you can create high quality Squidoo lenses on various topics. Brainstorm all of the topics you can do:

• Create a lens about you
• Create a lens about your business
• Create a lens about each of your products or services
• Create a lens about your industry
• Create a lens about your target market

There you go! I’ve started you off by giving you five types of lenses that should help you create ten or more lenses.

The third ten minute Squidoo project: Think about modules

When I first got into Squidoo, I would go from the brainstorming stage (the previous step) right to the building stage (the next step) and didn’t end up with lenses that I really liked or that really generated a lot of traffic.

Since then, I’ve added another step in between and that has made a world of difference for me. In this step, you should decide what you want to accomplish with your lens:

• Do you want high ad revenue?
• Do you want lots of click-throughs to your website?
• Do you want people to pick up the phone and call you?
• Do you want people to email you?

Be specific and this will help you to create a lens that drives your audience to do what you want them to do.

Then, go check out the modules you can create in Squidoo (there are lots – some will be relevant to you and some won”t be relevant to you) and decide what you want to do with your lens. If you don’t have an account in Squidoo just yet, don’t worry; you can see a big selection of modules here: http://www.squidoo.com/module.

So, take a look at the modules and think about which ones will contribute to your lens goals. Maybe you want to start with some information about your products and finish with a description of your business and somewhere in the middle have a link to your portfolio. If that’s the case, you know that you need 3 text modules. But maybe as you think about it, you realize that you want to position yourself as an expert so you want to reference books from Amazon that you’ve read. So you need an Amazon module as well.

Continue with this process for as long as it takes, but expect to spend about 10 minutes per lens. If you want, write notes to yourself on sticky notes (such as “Text module: Info about business” and “Amazon module: Links to top books”) and rearrange them into a way that makes sense. Squidoo makes it easy to drag and drop them wherever you want on the page but doing it ahead of time on paper helps you to create better lenses faster. You may find that you just don”t have enough content to create a compelling lens so you can drop that one or set it aside for later.

The fourth ten minute Squidoo project: Create a lens

So here’s what to do: You can sign up really fast. Less than ten minutes. More like 30 seconds. During that time you can decide whether you want collect money from ads or donate the ad revenue proceeds to charity. (I have no idea how much people generally make from these as it is not my purpose for using Squidoo. I’ve heard claims that people make hundreds or thousands of dollars but I’m into Squidoo for the marketing benefit.)

Once you’ve signed up, now it’s time to build your lens. Build it the way you’ve designed it, using the really simple drag-and-drop function to move each module where you want it. Add your text, etc. Okay, so this might take longer than ten minutes if you went really crazy with the modules. If you’re pressed for time, break it up over a couple of days.

The fifth ten minute Squidoo project: Stay active

Squidoo lenses are good if the content is relevant and fresh. Spend ten minutes a day (or at the very least, ten minutes a week) tweaking your lens and keeping the content current. If you have lots of lenses, consider rotating the effort so you touch each one at least once a week. At first, it might take you ten minutes to work on one lens but over time you’ll find that the time you spend on each lens will diminish and you might work on a few lenses in just ten minutes.

Wrap-up

There are lots of marketing opportunities out there and Squidoo offers another opportunity for businesses to promote themselves. Use this ten minute program to create compelling and action-oriented lenses to promote your business and generate an audience.

Related posts:

1. Success with Informational Sites – Part 1
2. Success with Informational Sites – Part 2
3. Success with Informational Sites – Part 3

Sometimes that audience is made up of loyal visitors to your blog. They’ve bookmarked your blog and they visit everyday or read your RSS feed to see what you have to say. Sometimes that audience is made up of newsletter subscribers: They’ve left their email address in the hopes that you send them high value content on a regular basis.

There are plenty of tools and resources to help you create the infrastructure to communicate with that audience, whether through blogs or newsletters (or many other ways). In fact, in previous Tips In Ten articles, we’ve talked about those very things: I’ve shown you how to create regular blog content. And, I’ve shown you different autoresponder tools you can use to upload content and distribute it to your audience.

But the question is often asked: How do I get an audience?

You might have great information on your website. And you might have the audience-capturing and audience-communicating infrastructure already set up. But you need eyeballs! You need email addresses. You need people reading your content and thinking about you as the expert.

So how do you get that audience?

Well, as you can tell by the title of this issue, I think you need more than an audience. I think you need a fanbase. I’ve seen people generate an audience: I’m sure we’ve all received email and snail mail that seemed unsolicited and turned out that our email address or postal address were sold to someone. In other words, we were an audience but an unwilling one.

I think you need a fanbase: Where every audience member (whether they click to your blog or they read your content in an RSS feeder or they see your newsletter in their inbox) is a fan. Someone who has sought you out.

These fans are the most loyal of audiences because they appreciate what you have to say and they respond with purchases or referrals.

So, how can you create a fanbase in 10 minutes a day? It IS possible. And before I tell you, I want to reference someone who has a similar idea: Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never heard of him, I’ll give you a short bio: Gary Vaynerchuk owned a wine store in New Jersey. He wanted to build his brand so he started creating video blogs showing his unconventional wine tasting. They are compelling, and if you ever get a chance to view one or two, you should. You can see them at http://tv.winelibrary.com.

Using a very similar method to what I’m about to describe here, he built up his reputation and now is a noted author, speaker, and a go-to authority on branding and on wine.

To build up a fanbase, here’s what you do:

First, find relevant sites. Relevant sites include blogs, forums, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter accounts that are somehow connected to your business or industry. So, for example, when I do this, I would look for blogs, forums, fan pages, or twitter users who were in the small business, entrepreneur, coach, and freelancer segments. When Gary Vaynerchuk does this, he looks for blogs, forums, and fan pages on wine.

Second, I would go there and leave comments, participate in discussion, follow, friend, tweet, talk, converse. I would say things that were relevant (and NOT self-promotional). For example, if I found a blog post that talked about productivity, I would comment with something like “that’s great. I’m going to implement that suggestion” or “you’re exactly right with your idea, I’ve been doing something similar for years” or “Thanks for the tip. I’d also recommend…”

Vaynerchuk says (in a video that I will link to shortly) that he would go to a Facebook fan page about merlot and comment with something like the name of his favorite merlot.

The idea here is not to blatantly self-promote but rather to engage the writer and his or her audience and participate with them. You can sign your name and leave your website address but don’t overload your comment with self-promoting content.

Third, I would repeat this process. I would do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that. Ten minutes a day, each and every day. I would keep finding relevant sites and I would keep commenting and participating.

Here’s what will happen: Occasionally, someone will click on your link. They’ll read what you have to say. They’ll become a fan. Then someone else will do the same. And so on. Those occasional people will build up. Over time, you’ll pick up a following; a fanbase.

I love how Vaynerchuk says it in this video, so check it out for yourself: It takes 2 cents to GROW a wine show. (Note: I’m not sure why he’s filming this one from his bathroom, but the content is good even if the setting is weirdly irrelevant).

In one area where I don’t necessarily agree with Vaynerchuk is in the time this takes. He suggests hours. I think that’s a great idea but I don’t know many businesses where that kind of time is feasible to spend. Quite simply, we need to grow our business but we don’t have hours to spend doing what I’m about to describe. Unless you outsource some of it, you need to find the time to do it and I believe you can do it in ten minutes. Of course, if you have hours to accomplish what I and Vaynerchuk are suggesting, by all means spend the time. But if you only have ten minutes (as most of us do), then use those ten minutes wisely.

That’s it! That’s all you need to do. And it works. I can attest to its success and certainly the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk can as well. If you have hours to spend leaving your two cents on related sites around the web, then by all means do so. But if you are busy (as many of us are) and you only have ten minutes a day, start there. That should give you enough time to read and comment on 2 or 3 blogs or Facebook fan pages. And if you only do 2 a day from Monday to Friday, you’ll have commented on 10 by the end of the week and about 5,200 by the end of the year! That will have a big impact! If even 1% of those people become fans, that’s 52 more people by the end of the year.

A couple other things to note:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few other important elements: I believe you need two other things here in order for this to be successful:

• First, you need good content to drive people to. If you’re going to entice people to your site/blog/whatever, you need to deliver with good content. This might mean hiring a writer if you don’t have the time or skill to create the content yourself, or hiring an editor if you have the time to put something together but you don’t have the time to polish it.

• Second, you need to have the infrastructure set up to “lock in” your fanbase. This might mean regular posts on your blog. Or, it might mean that you have some RSS functionality. Or it might mean that you have a subscription newsletter. Whatever you do to engage your audience, you need to be able to deliver on that engagement consistently.

Ten minutes a day for a fanbase? It IS possible. Start today and build your fanbase!

Related posts:

1. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
2. The Power of a List: Part 1
3. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2

Time is one of those elusive factors that we’re all desperately trying to get more of. We understand we only have 24 hours in a day and can’t actually add more time to it (except for the one day a year when we “fall back” an hour, but that single added hour doesn’t have much of an impact in the big picture).

So we focus on productivity, we talk about efficiency, we desperately search for more time. Blogs like the one by Meryl K Evans called “12 Ways to Find More Time” are widely read and tweeted enthusiastically. And that’s okay. It’s a good list with some great common sense time-finding tips that you can use: Things like “control your phone time”, “review your meetings”, and “save time in your calendar”. There aren’t any surprises on this list. That’s not an indictment against the post’s author. Rather, it’s an indictment against most of us!

There’s a reason why these “time-finding tips” blog posts are so popular. People want to find more time and they actively search for ideas to help them. But all of these ideas (not just Meryl’s great list but also the many productivity tools and resources available) are completely wasted if we don’t act. Action is the key to business success. It’s what separates the winners from the losers.

Many people search for more time but the reality is, they frequently squander the time the have. Rather than taking action to sell their products or services, promote their company, or serve a client, they end up on Facebook, or returning emails, or browsing the web. It feels productive, but at the end of their new-found time they have nothing to show for it. And so they go off in search of more “find more time” tips to help them.

Stop looking for new ways to find more time. Just for a moment. First, master the time that you have already.

• Eliminate wasted time by only watching specific TV shows (and turning off the TV after) rather than lazing in front of the television and watching whatever is on.

• Make better use of time at your desk by restricting your own access to sites that aren’t specifically geared to productivity. (For example, pull back a bit on Facebook if it is part of your social life but not part of your business plan).

• Closely review the work you do on other sites to make sure that it is not work that feels productive but really isn’t. (I’ve got a blog post about this which I’ll be posting in a week or two – stay tuned).

• Set hourly goals for yourself that stretch your productivity and help you to stay focused against the distractions.

• Before you invest in another time management system or project management system to replace the one you’ve got, consider what it is that you need to do to be more efficient and to use those current investments better.

Once you’ve done all these things, fine tune your time to do the following work:

1.    Position your company to generate more prospective customers
2.    Sell your services to those customers
3.    Serve all of your customers with great service

That’s it! Spend your time doing that critical work and you’ll have a super-strong, amazingly profitable business.

Then, after you’ve started to efficiently use the time you have, start looking for tips and ideas to help you find more time.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. Saving Time with One Small Addition to Your Website
2. It’s December… Now is NOT the time to slow down
3. 7 Time Management Tips To Enhance Your Business

Why Pushing Through Is Not Always The Way To Get Ahead – Sometimes, knowing when to quit something is the smart move to make. On occasion we do need to walk away from something and revisit it with a fresh pair of eyes at a later date.

Top 10 Funny Dog Videos on YouTube – Funny videos of dogs – what else can I say? The sleep walking dog is my fav!! Dogs and video cameras; you can never go wrong with that combo!

Google Isn’t God – Have you ever been told that when you blog you should only focus on those in the same forum, type, or genre as our own blog? That by doing so it would create more chances for people to share your information, creating exposure for you and your site? While those things are true, only focusing on blogs of your own niche can get old fast. Barbara shares how reading posts outside you niche is fun and a great way to meet other bloggers.

“No” Your Way to Increased Productivity – Do you find yourself saying yes to things out of guilt? Are you buying things you really can’t afford? Do you take on tasks that interfere with your ability to spend time with your family? These are all things that bring us down, and can be avoided by saying “NO” to. Kudos to Marelisa for talking about this subject and reinforcing that it is ok to say NO.

How To Use The Turning Of The Seasons To Support Your Development – Great idea! It’s kind of like spring cleaning of the mind and soul. Christine talks about what she plans to do this weekend that is influenced by spring. Described in her article as “self-coaching”, Christine shares the process of writing down some thinking questions. This is a quick read with a very helpful and easy self improvement task takeaway.

Check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a great Easter weekend!

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 8/6/10
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/26/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/19/10

Some disclaimers:

• I will change the name of anyone I am discussing (or just not use names at all).
• I will not speak regarding clients with whom I am working and bound by confidentiality.
• Almost all blog posts that I write go through my editor prior to being posted. Some of these will not, as some of my best written blogs are written on the fly and without editing. So excuse any typos etc.
• There are exceptions to every rule (or, in this case, “legend”), so when I speak, I am not saying something is impossible or can’t be done. I am speaking about the majority of the time or about my own experiences.

So,  in a nutshell, you will not be a millionaire eating bon-bons (or doing nothing). This is an all too common misconception. I hear people saying this or telling me all the time:”I just need a product or two that can create a passive income stream and then I will have time to travel or time to spend with the kids.”

Uh… FALSE!

I don’t mean to be rude, but there are so many problems with that statement it is not even funny.

1. Products do not ‘create’ a passive income stream: YOU create the passive income stream, whether creating the product, doing the marketing, or both.

2. 1 or 2 products is not (normally) going to create enough of an income stream to pay for lots of travel or all of your expenses so you don’t have to do anything. (Again there are exceptions: You could be the inventor of the light bulb!!!)

3. There are other things that exist besides “having” the products. How are you going to sell these products? How are you going to provide service, support, or help on the products? Who is going to do your bookkeeping, marketing, copywriting, patenting? There are overhead costs or work associated with anything you do or sell. Keep that in mind.

I know people that make millions. They do not have 1 or 2 products and spend all their time lounging on the beach. If you are rich or independently wealthy, maybe you can pay enough people to do everything for you so that you don’t actually have to do anything. But from the get go there will probably be a loss, so the statement still won’t hold true.

I know people who make millions… and they all work. Whether it be by writing their web pages, or thinking up copy/content, or networking, or speaking, or just thinking up and researching ideas. They ALL work.

I told this to someone today and they responded: “I know this one person, [name removed to protect her privacy] and she sells a package of ebooks for $19.95 and she makes millions!”

Well, I happen to know this person, and I happen to know she does not make “millions”. She makes about a million in a year, but not “millions”, and her primary source of income is not from that package. Her primary source of income is in her consulting and she charges thousands of dollars an hour for her consulting service. That $19.95 ebook package is just a marketing ploy to get you “in the door” – to get you to purchase something not too costly, so that she shows off her stuff enough to you so that you will maybe hire her later at $3k per hour (and she consistently markets to you her other products and packages through her email marketing campaigns).

In addition to this, she speaks at about 50 events a year (that’s about 1 a week) so that she can be known as the “expert” in her niche market. (If speaking at an event a week is not work, I don’t know what is).

On TOP of all that – she HAS a niche market. What she is teaching and consulting on is very very specific and she knows her stuff. Being an “Internet Marketer” is not a niche market. Being a [changing her expertise here to again protect privacy] specialist in squeeze pages would be the “niche” market.

Last, but not least, she is just not “telling you” she has done it, she has helped hundreds of people do it who are also experts in their niche markets. This proves she is good at what she does if she has helped them and they are successful.

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but unless you are the CEO of a large corporation and have enough employees to handle every aspect of your business (and even then this is far-fetched) the chances that you will never have to work again is slim to none.

There are exceptions, of course: Inventors, people who have such a grand idea that it is a big success and they are able to hire the staff needed to man it, etc. But the average entrepreneur who wants to get started or grow their business is not going to be making big bucks off an ebook or two when that is their whole product offering and they don’t want to work.

My advice:

Passive income IS important, but until you build up a reputation or client base to market these products to, it will generate peanuts. To build up a reputation or client base takes work – lots of work – or lots of money to pay the right people to do it for you.

Try to work passive streams of income into your billable activities (or whatever it is that you do) so that one day you will reach a level where your passive income is large enough to tone down the actual work you do have to do so that all of your work can be related to creating and brainstorming up new passive income ideas.

Related posts:

1. Make Money from Your Informational Site!
2. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
3. How Much Does A Small Business Owner Really Make?

So far, I’ve talked about out-of-control business growth that costs so much up-front, the business cannot keep up. And, I’ve talked about business growth that spikes (increasing then decreasing) so that the business is stuck with a high bill from the brief burst of business.

And in this blog, I want to talk about yet another problem of business growth that I’ve seen:

Problem 3: The lack of control over the business. When a business grows – whether it’s a sustained increase or a spike, the business owner/director/manager tends to lose control over that business. In some cases, customers “take over” in the sense that they might demand additional efforts which might not normally be granted but which are added because the money is there. In other cases, business partners “take over” because they see the money coming in from a certain market and they want to follow those dollars. In other cases, resellers “take over” because they feel that they are bringing in enough money for the business to make demands on the business. One example I’ve seen is a consultant who was asked by a client to design his website. Business was busy and the consultant should have said no, but the client was generating so much revenue that the consultant couldn’t say no. It didn’t go well and the consultant lost a client and the revenue. And another example I’ve seen is a reseller who earned so much money for a manufacturer that the reseller started demanding price cuts and excessive promotional considerations.

Solution 3: The best thing to do is stick to the business plan. (Uhhh…you have a business plan, right? MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN…then stick to it). If you’ve done your research and you start the business with the confidence that the plan is going to work then you should be okay (assuming that your research led you in the right direction). Yes, you may need to shift with the market, but that needs to happen carefully and thoughtfully and not “on the fly” based on whoever is sending the most money right now. Your business plan should be your North Star that guides your business. And when you need to change your business plan, you take time to do it carefully.

There are certainly other problems that result from too-fast, unmanaged business growth, but these are three common ones that I see from time to time.

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 2
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible

Here are some ways to manage that situation for your business:

• Know your numbers! How many prospects do you need to have, on average, to get one client? While the number is not a fixed number, there is probably a good average to work from.
• Know how long it takes for the average prospect to become a client… and then for that client to pay.
• Don’t stop doing what you’re doing! Continue working with current clients, continue marketing your services.
• Do what it takes to go the extra mile. It might mean late nights or running the assembly line through the weekend from time to time, but those steps are necessary to keep clients happy, especially when there are unpredictable changes.
• Automate. If possible, automate some of your processes so you are no longer working on the mundane details that might distract you from your focus. Over at IAC-EZ, that’s what kind of help we give to businesses.
• Hire out. You might or might not want to outsource your core competencies, but you should probably consider hiring out your non-core efforts so you can spend more time on the work that earns your income. Over at IAC Professionals, we helps all kinds of businesses do that all the time.
• Plan for it. As a consultant, I see these challenges in businesses all the time, particularly as we work at increasing a business or bringing a new product to market and then facing the demand it generates.

Best,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 2
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 1