Top 10 Tips To Increase Your Blogging Productivity

I have been working from home for just over three months now, in the beginning I found it hard to focus and my productivity dropped, especially in the summer months when the sun was shining and beckoning me to go out. Today I’m going to share a few tips that I have put in to practise…

1. Write down special goals – If you work from home, you have to do this – There are just too many distractions and no boss watching over your back every minute of the day. On my table I have a small card that I write down 2 mission critical tasks for the day. That way I focus on the most important tasks and outsource the rest.
2. Wake up at the same time everyday – Set a time to get up each day and stick to it. I get up at 7.30am to exercise, then have my breakfast and start work around 10am. I stick to 4 hours of work a day.
3. Turn off phone and instant email notifications – Having constant interrupts makes it harder to stay focus. I make sure there are no interruptions when I am writing a blog post because my readers want the best from me. Don’t you?
4. Exercise – I find doing exercise in the morning gives me so much more energy and motivation for the day, if you don’t regularly do exercise, try it for one week and see how you feel. Your mind will be clearer for the day and you might shed a few kilos along the way!
5. Tidy office – Keep your office clean by filing away piles of paper. If you have notes written down, transfer them to your computer and put a reminder to complete them. That way you will have less clutter and paper lying around.
6. Music – Not for everyone but I find music really helps me work during the day. Put something light and soothing on in the background.
7. Daily schedule – Even though you are working from home and don’t have to follow the usual office rules, try and set out a daily plan for yourself – start at the same time, have lunch at a set time etc – I find it helps to have a daily routine.
8. Just do it – If you are like me you have certain jobs that you try and put off because they’re dull or take ages, make sure it gets done first thing in the morning when you are fresh and motivated.
9. Outsource – Even though you can do a job doesn’t always mean you should do it – why not outsource that boring coding job which will leave you free to concentrate on more important jobs or jobs that you enjoy doing more.
10. Close your door – If there are distractions at home, like people calling round or noisy kids, make it a rule to not be disturbed when your door is shut.

All of these are pretty obvious things to do but if you don’t do any of them, give it a go and see if your productivity improves.

Tyrone Shum
Increasing Blogging Productivity

Internet Businesses Can Yield The Best Return

Yesterday I had lunch with a group leader from my church and we discussed about how the “financial crisis” had affected most businesses around the world. He worked in a leading Telecommunications company and told me there were a few people being made redundant and their overall company sales had dropped. I gave my point of view and partially disagreed as some businesses were not affected as such. Some businesses that I believe are not affected are general medical professions, such as doctors, dentists, optometrists, etc, supermarket chains, such as Woolworths, Coles and IGA. I believe these businesses were least affected because they sell and offer services that people all need to stay alive and keep well. And here’s the but, Internet businesses continue to thrive as well. I believe there are a few reasons why they continue to grow and buck the trend:

Low Overheads Keeps The Bottom Line Healthy
The beauty of running an Internet business is not having overhead costs which may include an office, staff, and other expenses when running a brick and mortar business. You can run your Internet business from almost anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable Internet connection. For the last 3 years I’ve been running my Internet business from home and the costs I normal incur are mostly from my electricity and internet bills. I do hire contractors from time to time to help with administration tasks but they are done virtually and not at my home. When you compare the cost of having a lease for an office to working from a room in your own home, you can save yourself at least a couple of hundred dollars in rent per week. This can amount to $10,000 a year which could be ploughed back into building your Internet business or even paying for a business trip overseas. Bottom line is, an Internet businesses will keep you healthy and less stressed when you see more money coming in than going out.

Money Is Created And Not Tied Up In Inventory
A majority of Internet businesses are information product based. They sell advertising, eBooks, membership sites and much more. Now the secret behind all this is, it doesn’t even cost them a cent to hold any stock. Could you can imagine an Internet business that generates positive cash flow from the interaction of an online community? It happens every minute as we speak. An example is when an Internet marketer has an idea to share. He or she will publish an eBook and sell it online to a hungry list of buyers, which generates instant cash profits. This is a very simple idea and there are many other ways to create money using information products. Even for a worse case scenario the book doesn’t sell, what have they lost? Nothing except for a bit of time they used to write the book and it doesn’t affect their business.

Can Receive Money In Different Currencies From Around The World
An Internet business starts to become a foreign exchange bank when they receive money from buyers across the globe. By having the ability to receive foreign currency using services such as Paypal, you open your Internet business to broader markets allowing you to trade in different countries all from your website. For example, if you live in Australia and charge your services and products in US dollars, you can be making quite a nice profit in these current economic conditions and also have your expenses paid in Australian dollars.

Overall, I see Internet businesses to be one of the best ways to yield a higher return rather than leaving your money in the bank or having it sit in the current share market. Have you considered investing your time into running an Internet business? If not I recommend looking into Internet business opportunities that will help you achieve great financial freedom.

Tyrone Shum
Internet Business Owner

Mindset Of An Entrepreneur

I remember in 2001 when I first read a book about entrepreneurship, it changed my mindset and became the turning point in my life. Once I started to embrace new ideas and have an open mind to business opportunities, I started attracting more of it. It was a phenomenal change for me and I started to notice the different mindsets of people around me.

What Is The mindset Of An Entrepreneur?
An Entrepreneur sees the world differently and applies different principles to the environment they are in. They are a great strategist and a master at leveraging their skills and time to grow their business through people, money and technology. There are two different approaches that I see, the employee mindset and the business owner mindset.

Employee Mindset
Previously when I was working in a real estate agency as an employee my day was set and I had to be at work between the hours of 8am to 5pm. I was given work to complete by my boss and told when to have lunch. Basically I was told what to do during my time at work and getting paid for it. Unfortunately a majority of the population has been trained this way and it stems from the days of schooling. We were taught and given homework at school, which meant if we didn’t complete it we would get some sort of punishment or if we did complete it, we would get graded with a number. This way we were trained to complete a task because we were told to, not because we thought how will this benefit others or make a difference to the world and my life? The employee mindset is what I call “lazy” thinking because we are spoon fed what to do and how to do it. We get paid for just getting up and going to work.

Business Owner Mindset
As a business owner I take complete ownership of what I do everyday within my business. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I do everything in the business. What it means is that as a business owner I see the world’s opportunities differently.

An Employee Mindset Vs. A Business Owner Mindset
An employee’s mentality is to follow commands.