Just a couple months back I started creating a business audit every single month, and today I sat down and really looked at all of my business audits for the past couple months.

 And you know what I did, I eliminated a lot of places where I was spending so much money on.  Now you might be sitting back and saying why would I even do that?

  Well the reason is we’re always being sold something that will help us take our business to the next level.  You just have to turn on the TV or go on any web site and there’s millions of products trying to sell you how to improve your business.

Now, I felt trap to half of them, and I bought a lot of them.  And today I sat down and I canceled half my memberships and the reason is:

 Number One, I must tell you that I thought these memberships were really valuable.  The owners really cared about their products and I really loved the content.

 But there was a problem.  When I was setting up business audits it became clear that the investment I was putting in these memberships did not really bring me back any return or significant return compared to some of my other tools that I was investing in.

 And that is why I deleted my membership.  And I really think that everyone who is doing business online needs to sit back and think about it.

 If you’re spending money anywhere in your business, do an audit.

 Even if it’s renting a space.

Try to find out if that huge space is really bringing you any return.  If it’s not, downsize.  You really need to know where your business is going.

 You really need to have a pulse on the most important factor which (in the simplest measurable terms) is cash.  You need to know if your cash is being spent wisely.

 So do a business audit.  Just sit down every month and calculate all your expenses and calculate all the returns from every single expense.

Now, not all returns will be cash.  For example, some returns will be leads, and that’s all right.  But you really need to look at what’s bringing you what return because if you’re spending a lot of money and it’s not getting you any returns, you really need to stop right now.  Ask yourself, is your money being spent wisely?

Go Ahead..do an audit and see what you come up with. If you’re someone who spends way too much money online, it may surprise you!

BTW, if you want to know what “memberships” survived my audit here’s a list:

Aweber: Of course!

Private Box: A little uncomfy with freely giving away my home address to everyone on the internet. But, honestly, if I can have my privacy for ~ $3 a month…I’m in!

Standing Start Profits: It’s nice to talk to people who’re doing the same thing as you, who’ve been there, made the mistakes you’re about to make and care about helping you. If you don’t know what I’m talking about..you maybe missing out on something.

Copytalk I Love Copytalk! In fact, this blog post was done through them. I was on my way home, had an idea for a post, I picked up the phone, dialed the number, said what I wanted to say, hung up, 4 hours later..the post is typed up and in my gmail account. It’s good…well, I did have to make one edit but a 400+ word blog post for a minute of my time…why not?

Look them up and if you don’t want to pay $79.95 a month, try my discount link instead. Sorry, but, I don’t think they offer discounts otherwise.

I took the day off, well, after a couple emails….. and headed Downtown. I sat at a coffee shop watching the world outside as I sipped my coffee. I watched people run to catch the trains..busy on their cell phones without a time to breathe..

We, as a culture seem to have arrived at the perfect speed optimization there is..Or, have we? Think about it….A person can make 20 burgers/min, take 5 orders in a minute…we can have a meal in less than 30 seconds..it’s pretty mindblowing.

And, especially with the internet..you want something..click a button and within a minute you have it in your hands…

And, when you think about that..it makes all the sense why the get rich quick books sell so much. Why we buy so many ebooks to get traffic right now, to improve conversion right now. We all look for quick fixes and that includes myself BTW..

But, when you try to draw parallels, it just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, we believe it is easy to make a million dollars in 7 days on the internet and then we know it takes 4 years of studying and many years of work experience and hardwork to get to a million dollar level in our careers. We think an ebook can teach us all about traffic..it’s kinda like hoping a 7 page book will teach us all about quantum mechanics..isn’t it?

And then we get frustrated with our lack of success just because we’ve had an offer for 2 days and no one buys it..Then, we go around buy another book and it doesn’t work..so we get depressed again..buy another book and another and another. It’s pretty much a never ending cycle..

But, do we ever sit back to take a look at our strategies? Do we take a breath and THINK about what’s going on? Not really, And  Hey, that includes myself half the time..

And, that reminds me of my first year Physics professor who once said..”Reading books or looking at 100 problems won’t tell you how to solve it. What you really need is to sit back and FEEL the problem”

And, that’s true..Physics is probably one of the most complex courses I have ever taken. There’s a few principles and 100 ways of applying it. It’s pretty interesting.

Similarly, My Mechanics Professor used to say “Before you start solving the problem…THINK..” She thinks most students do poorly in the course because they just don’t think..they jump in and try to find a solution without stepping back and looking at the big picture and Then finding a course of action. They pull out a random course of action and cross their fingers hoping they get what they want.

Pretty interesting eh? And then, we somehow think we can ignore this when it comes to business. Speed without thought is a recipe for failure. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if you get 99% of the process right..As long as you haven’t thought about it properly..it’s probably going to end up in a disaster. Thinking is a process that just cannot be substituted by anything. Period.

Sometimes things will just go wrong and everything will fall apart, it’s inevitable even if you believe you’ve got everything in place. What a positive note, eh?

I got up this morning to change my squeeze page, well I did that and when I went to put it in with my tracker, guess what?

My english somehow got translated into Hebrew! Yep, that’s right and I spent an hour trying to figure out what the H*** was going on..

Then later on, all my sites disappeared from the face of the world because hostgator was updating to PHP5 and lucky me had totally forgotten about that. So, I rushed in and changed things..so far so good but after the update was over…i was still having some problems. No big deal..everyone is allowed to make mistakes at times…Yes, even my host, even that tracking program I spent hundreds of dollars for and most importantly even I am  allowed to make mistakes once in a while..

And, that’s not it. Want to know about my real embarrasing moment of the day?

Well, since I was changing around my squeeze pages, I also went around to make some minor changes to the saved messages and guess what?

On my very first message, I was giving them the WRONG link to download a bonus I promised…ooops..But, I bet they liked that Bonus as well…

Not just that…guess what else I’ve done this past week?

While I was changing my thank you page, I forgot to put the customer’s codes in properly so they weren’t really getting their products there it just said scroll down to download…Another BIG ooops!

So, lesson of the day…take it easy baby. It’s scary out there…everyone *thinks* IM and business should be cut throat…well you can do that if you wish but take time to unwind and take time off when you start destroying things around (like I did). And, above all, don’t expect perfection..it only leads to stress..

But, if you absolutely need to get something done..push through it….snow or rain…Hebrew or Latin…no matter what your web browser throws at you, no matter where your sites disappear..Keep going..don’t stop

I took the Gregorc style delineator test a couple weeks ago and found it pretty interesting. There are a million others out there but the reason Im taking about this one is..it’s the first that’s managed to get my attention. Can you guess by now..what my personality type is?

The beauty of this test is in it’s simplicity. There’s 2 categories perceptual and organizing, It’s mostly a learning style test but you know what? I personally think your learning style says a lot about you..but then again..I could be wrong

So, the four loose categories in this test are

a. concrete sequential

b. abstract sequential

c. concrete random

d. abstract random..

I happen to be a B) abstract sequential and their description surprisingly matches me very well. And, of all my friends who took the test with me…a lot of us thought it was very accurate..but then again, my friends aren’t very different from me. We are all a bunch of either concrete or abstract sequentials.

So, what does this have to do with your or my success?

Well…it gives an indication of how we like to approach and organize things and wouldn’t it make much more sense to do it like that. For example..one thing I have definitely thought about over and over is..should you have a business plan or not or should it be a ready, fire, aim approach. I think  there’s no right or wrong answer..just a more appropriate answer based on your organizing style. For example…I struggle with the concept of ready, fire, aim approach..that can’t be me! Being an abstract sequential person, I definitely like to do tons and tons of research before trying something..

And I think looking at your personality type and how you’re approaching your situation if you are stuck is a good way to go.

P.S. If you are an abstract sequential learner, you have to read this.. Because, here’s what I’ve learned about abstract sequentials..we have serious problems repeating things..even though they maybe of our highest benefit!

Your resources…

Gregorc Style Delineator

FREE Mini Test

http://yotophoto.com/

Search various sources for free stock photos.

enjoy

So, i took this test
www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/perfectionism/

And..Let’s just say I think their test isn’t very accurate. C’mon, I’m not THAT much a perfectionist..

But who knows you may finally find a reason as to why

. you haven’t created your own product yet

. haven’t found a niche yet

. haven’t started a business yet

Breakthrough happens when you keep trying, when you keep pushing..when you keep trying different combinations..

Very much like how the first lightbulb was made. To a lot of people, the idea is the breakthrough and then they stop….that’s it…We all have great ideas but often breakthroughs happen when people run with the ideas, work on it (give speeches and inspire others), come up with new experiments and devices…that is breakthrough..

A lot of us have the notion that breakthrough is when we get things right the first time. That’s not true! Breakthrough is when you keep pushing, you keep pushing yourself to the edge, slowly and gradually, you keep trying, you give it everything you got…

And, somewhere in that process…occurs a breakthrough and it’s often easy to tell…and sometimes you may not even recognize it..

thats the nature of breakthrough and success..

keep going till you get it. If it is your dream and YOU have decided its worth pursuing, nothing’s going to stop you (unless you let it)…keep pushing..keep on going..

You WILL get there

YOU know you can do it

so what are you waiting for?

1. Choose something well targeted, (long tail) for example, if you had an affiliate site for apple iphone, it’s probably not a good idea to go for iphone because your chances of being seen in that crowd is almost non existent unless you want to spend thousands of dollars and many years.

Instead you can use services like tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php (free) or www.nichebot.com (paid) to find the highly targeted words. The free tool isn’t as detailed and since overture keyword suggestion has been shut, wordtracker free is the only free source of Keyword info currently.

So, you can find other keywords related to iphone and choose one that has low competition and high search count. Ex: buy iphone has an estimated search of 123 per day and competition of 255,000 when you go to google and type “buy iphone” (keeping the quotes).

That may still not be worth our time..too much competition but it’s better than iphone
SOmething like buy refurbished iphone has 9 searches a day and only 8 competing pages. It could be worth your time since the keyword contains BUY so it’s probably someone who’s ready to spend the money already, isn’t looking for news about iphone or iphone tips but wants to buy it clearly.

To find out if it’s worth your time.

1. How easy is it to rank high?

Which involves analyzing how the top sites rank. For out keyword, the top site with the quote search is notebookreview.info/buy-refurbished-iphone-cheap-refurbished-iphone-4gb-8gb/2007/11/05/ -

Notice how they have buy refurbished iphone on their url?

That’s good seo.

Now, let’s check their keyword density
go to www.keyworddensity.com/ and type in their url and our phrase “buy refurbished iphone”, it breaks down the number of times the phrase appears along with an overall density of 2.41

Questions to ask yourself:

Can you achieve the same density? You probably can.

Do it again with the site ranking second and third.

Next, check out the links they have

go to www.yahoo.com and type linkdomain:notebookreview.info -site:notebookreview.info

it shows all the sites linking to the main domain

Also check out link:http://notebookreview.info/buy-refurbished-iphone-cheap-refurbished-iphone-4gb-8gb/2007/11/05/ -site:notebookreview.info

link:http://www.doughroller.net/2007/09/08/how-to-buy-a-refurbished-iphone/ -site:www.doughroller.net
Which has about 89 links..You may need to use either ezinearticles or squidoo to beat that one.

So, it’s going to take about 20 minutes to write that article and another 5 to submit it or apply basic seo and get some links from your network. Say 1 hour for the thing..

But, is it worth it?

Let’s say you get 50% of that traffic from the search engines, so you have
0.5*9*30 = 135 people visiting your page every month. Say about 40% visit your affiliate site and then 5% of them buy it, that’s 2.7 buyers..(or, 2 buyers) and say you make an average of $12/sale (because I got no clue), that’s $24/month for about 60 minutes of work. That too most likely a one time sale..Probably not worth it.

I know most of you sell your own products so this example won’t relate well but just wanted to share it to make sure that when you do try some seo and rank high, the result is rewarding given your time and effort.

Problem: It’s boring being alone..You’re going to be excited about your ideas for 5 days then you’ll get lonely working on it alone. (Ok, there are exceptions when you reach a different level of passion for it but when you do..you also realize the importance of having other brains around you..that can help you) And the song by Akon - Mr. Lonely will start becoming the theme song for a long time.

“ Lonely I’m Mr Lonely,
I have nobody,
For my owwnnn
I’m so lonely, I’m Mr. Lonely
I have nobody,
For my owwnnn
I’m so lonely,”

Over and Over and Over..

Sharing your brilliant ideas with the right people does something great. They get excited about it and your own excitement multiplies, you start working together - solving a problem, when things go down others will (hopefully) help you see the new opportunities.

How did I learn this?

- Personal experience in other areas

- Looking at successful people.

Just try it! My philosophy is…The more you share the more you get.

I usually have world changing ideas and they never get executed. It’s so easy to get an inspired idea and so darn hard to get the inspiration to do the work! (Can we say Friction?)

Have you ever had an inspiration to move something? Well, when you start, you have to put in a lot of force (without any result) don’t you? And, then something magical happens, it reaches a critical point where you don’t need that much effort to move the object anymore.

I think the idea vs execution scale has a similar critical point. And, I have definitely experienced it in the last 2 weeks. You start off with “I have to get to work because I have a world changing idea” to “somethings happening” to “YES! I can’t stop working because I have the best idea ever and I LOVE what I am doing”

I think it’s definitely hard getting to that some thing’s happening point but when you cross it..you really get to see  things differently and you get to experience your inspiration once again…just stronger.