FamousAshleyGrant

Everyone wants to make more money, but sometimes, you get to a point where you feel like you’re working so much, you’re not sure how to do that without more hours in the day.

As an online entrepreneur, the goal is not to work more, but to work smarter. You want to scale your business to profit more without having to spend more in time or money than you’ll earn back.

The process of scaling your business is not something that happens overnight. In fact, there are many simple steps you can take to start seeing your profit margins rise. You will find thirty days’ worth of scalable opportunities listed below.

Take one at a time and implement it into your business to see how it affects it. Then, move on to the next one. You may find that some are more lucrative than others, but some free up more time, allowing you to spend those hours on other profit-generating tasks.

Day 1: Start with a Strong Time Management Plan

You’ve probably heard the saying time is money, but when you’re trying to scale your business, it’s even more important. There are likely many hours being absorbed by wasteful time management and you don’t even realize it.

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. Some use their time more wisely than others. Whether you’re engaged in a lively conversation on Facebook, or taking one too many breaks to check the news or binge watch a show, this is time that could be spent on scaling your business to the next level.

Before you can do anything, you need to get a true accounting of how many hours you are spending on actual work, and where you can free up time to grow your business. There are tracking tools that can prevent you from allowing distractions to keep your business stagnant.

Day 2: Pick a Skill You Need to Learn or Perfect

Today, you need to look at your skillset and figure out what skill you have that needs to be improved, or what skill you need to learn in order to scale your business into something bigger and better.

Skills can not only add additional revenue to your profit margin, but it can also help you speed things up. On the profit side, when you have a business model where talent is imperative, such as graphic design, there’s a big difference between what you can charge for using Canva templates and what you can charge for creating something original in Photoshop.

With improvements in skills, you can go from something taking an hour to complete, to something taking ten minutes. Freeing up time can be beneficial in allowing you to scale up your profits by focusing on other things.

Day 3: Set Aside Funds for Outsourcing and Delegating

Many people forget the importance of reinvesting in their business. This is one of the easiest ways you can scale your business. Set aside small amounts each month to outsource tasks to others so that you can either free up your own time to work on something more lucrative or to double the production of your deliverables.

You can be twice as productive with another person onboard, whether it’s a freelancer or someone you bring on as an hourly or salaried employee than you could if you try to do everything yourself.

Day 4: Repurpose What You’ve Already Created

Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to? One way to grow your business is to repurpose things you’ve already done into other things. For example, you can take your own blog posts, emails, and courses and sell private label rights to them.

This brings an additional income stream into your business with no extra work. Just make sure you’re upfront and honest about it being existing (not new) content. You can also turn your work into other media formats for a wider reach and more profits.

You can turn a blog post into a YouTube video or a podcast episode. You can distill the important points in the article down into an infographic and put it on Pinterest. This helps scale your content into something massive.

If you sell an eBook, take that and create a video info product course out of it. You can break up each chapter of the eBook into a video module. Or, you can create a membership where each month, your subscribers get access to a new report (chapter).

Day 5: Create Exclusivity and a Sense of Urgency

You’re already producing product on your own, but you can take it to the next level by adding two things – a sense of urgency and a bit of exclusivity. False urgency is never a good idea, and instead of helping you scale your business, it can sabotage it.

But if you put time restrictions or other consumer limitations on your products, like a limited number available, it can elevate you to the status of an in-demand vendor. This way, whenever you come out with something new, people will hurry to buy it before it’s gone (or before the price bumps up).

Day 6: Add High Ticket Products to Your Offers

Whenever you make plans to scale your business, consider adding a high ticket product to your line. Many marketers are afraid of launching a high ticket product because they worry about the buyer finding enough value in it.

But all you have to do is figure out what you could add strategically to what you’re currently offering to make it worth the extra money. For example, selling a course is one way to earn money.

But offering to do something for them – like creating a blog and filling it with product reviews – is another. You could also offer to take them by the hand and coach them through a process, which could be priced at a top tier level.

Day 7: Work Strategically on Affiliate Recruitment

Many marketers, when they start launching products, focus on the product creation and launch steps primarily. Then they go straight into catering to their new subscribers and creating the next product.

What you should be doing, if you want to scale your business, is focus on recruiting the kind of affiliates that can help scale your profits without you having to do more work. The kinds of affiliates you need to recruit are those who routinely top leaderboards for the kinds of products you’re launching.

You’ll need to go about it strategically, because these individually can not only bring the sales, but they’re going to be ultimately sharing their list of subscribers with you, because those buyers will get added to your own list for future sales.

First, make sure you’re connected to all of the people you consider to be prime affiliate targets. Be networking with them before you hit them up for a launch. When the time comes, reach out to them personally and let them know about your product, why they’re going to love presenting it to their list, and what perks (if any) you’re offering them for a promo.

You might include a bigger commission on the front end, a spot on your download page, or something else – like a readymade bonus they can use. Be sure to send them the link to your JV (joint venture) page as well as a full review copy.

Day 8: Create an Incredible Tripwire Offer

A tripwire is a no brainer, irresistible offer that is easily taken up by your prospect. Some people use free gifts as a tripwire, while others create extremely low cost products that can’t be passed up.

If you haven’t used tripwires before, this is a great way to scale your profits because you don’t have to put a lot of effort into their creation, but they can help you build a database of potential buyers on your email list with ease.

Once you have them on your list, you’ll be able to email them with offers that grow incrementally, after you prove your worth and value as a product creator (or affiliate, if you’re promoting other peoples’ products).

Day 9: Start Targeting Better with Paid Ads

Strategically growing your reach organically can be a big burden of time and effort. If you can take time today and once a month or more to learn the art of mastering paid ads, you’ll be able to create a shortcut to sales and list building.

Paid ads on social networks and search platforms allow you to pinpoint exactly who it is you’re targeting and have a message tailored to that demographic. So if you want to reach women over the age of 50 for a specific weight loss program, you can.

Don’t go over your budget. It may take a bit of time to figure out what you’re doing, and there are plenty of courses for paid ad strategies on platforms like Facebook. Test the waters and see how quickly you’re able to scale your profits with paid ads versus the effort it takes to secure an organic reach.

Day 10: Add More Items in Your Funnels

Sometimes, you just need to present more to your buyer in order to scale your profits. When someone is in buying mode, they’ll often say yes to add-ons and upgrades. But just because you don’t like upgrade offers yourself, you may have avoided using them.

This is a big mistake. You can take products you’ve done in the past, products you turn into your own from private label rights, or ones you create from scratch and add them to your funnel as upsells or downsells.

Of course, you don’t want a consumer stuck in a funnel for what seems like forever. If you gain a reputation for someone who has a dozen upgrade offers they have to click through, it may make people not want to consider your offer at all.

But you can go from a front end only (single product) strategy to one where you have a couple of upgrades and downsells and add an incredible amount of income to your launches.

This doesn’t just please the customer (because they’re getting the opportunity to get another great deal), but it also pleases your affiliates. They’d always rather promote a funnel with multiple opportunities to earn than a single product.

Day 11: Give Customers More Payment Options

Sometimes, the opportunity for more profits is right under your nose and you didn’t even know it. Payment options can be a big factor in whether or not someone spends money with you or walks away.

The first thing you want to do is look at the different payment options you have available. For example, you might only have PayPal. Some people don’t know that they can use a credit card to pay through PayPal, so they just leave.

You might have the option to add Stripe or a number of other payment processors to your sales to encourage more people to buy. This isn’t the only way payments can help scale your business.

If you tend to create products that cost more than the usual low-priced items, such as memberships, then you may want to scale your profits by allowing a variation of payment plans.

For example, give those who pay for a full year upfront a larger discount, and those who pay quarterly a smaller one. For the ones who pay monthly, make it afford for them since they often can’t (or don’t want to) spend a large amount on your products all at once.

Day 12: Dig Into Your Analytics and Use the Data Strategically

Analytics are a great way to figure out exactly where you should be putting more effort into growing your profits. It will tell you what demographic is showing up and converting into sales, and even what time of day.

You should go through your analytics – whether it’s through cPanel or another tool, and study the information carefully. You’ll see what products are performing, what keywords bring in the best customers, and many more details that you can strategically use to your advantage.

Day 13: Start Networking with People Who Can Grow Your Brand

Networking is something that can be used to help you increase profits with ease. Just as you’d networking with prospective affiliates, you want to find competitors and influencers in your niche who have a wide reach.

Start engaging with their content, tagging them in posts you make about their own leadership, and starting direct conversations with them about how you can mutually help one another increase your brand and reach.

You might simply be helping share each other’s social content, promoting one another’s products – or even collaborating on a joint venture product together and ultimately share the subscribers, profits and branding.

Day 14: Take Time to Create Something Unique and Innovative

It’s kind of sad, but if you look at the various online marketplaces, what you’ll usually see are a bunch of knockoffs. One marketer comes up with something unique, and dozens act as copycats to do the same thing.

Have you ever seen the online marketing persona and product called Rich Jerk? When that was released, the floodgates opened with all kinds of cookie cutter launches nicknamed something similar.

Instead of following in the footsteps of everyone else, scale your profits by really taking some time to think of what the marketplace is missing. What is it consumers need help with, where no one is serving their needs (or at least not well enough)?

Sometimes, it’s a matter of taking a simple step newbies are often told to do (like “build a list”) and mapping it out for them in the easiest to understand manner so they can finally implement the instructions.

Day 15: Wield the Power of Multimedia Social Networks

One way to scale your profits is to leverage the power of social media sites. There are so many places where consumers spend a great deal of time – whether it’s Facebook, TikTok, YouTube or elsewhere.

Your audience is there absorbing content. You don’t want to just wait for them to type in a search term and land on your blog. You want to show up in their social feeds where they can consume, engage with and share your content, automatically helping you expand your reach (and your profits) without paying for it.

Take time today to search for your target audience on multimedia social platforms. See if they’re on primarily text-based ones like Facebook, if they’re finding what they need on video socials like YouTube or TikTok, using image-socials like Instagram and Pinterest or even engaging on audio socials like Clubhouse.

Day 16: Start Monetizing Every Email and Post

Some marketers forget that they have multiple opportunities each and every day to monetize their content. They focus so much on idea brainstorming and content creation that when they’re ready to publish it, they forget about adding links or a call to action that helps them get paid.

Go back and look at your past emails and blog posts, social media content and even products. In each of these, you can add links to your own products or recommendations for other peoples’ products.

That doesn’t mean your content will lose value. You can write a lengthy blog post chock full of value and still include hyperlinks to items that can help someone achieve their goals.

Day 17: Expand Your Brand to Other Platforms and Channels

Have you gotten complacent about your publishing routine for content and info products? Sometimes, we learn one strategy and fail to get our of our comfort zone and expand past that.

First, start looking at other social platforms to publish content on. If you’ve never created audio, then start a podcast on Anchor.fm. If you don’t feel adept at making images, use Canva templates and start your own Pinterest board to amplify your profit potential.

Next, look at how you’re selling your own info products. Are you just using Warrior Plus to sell your courses? Expand into JVZoo and ClickBank, or Udemy and see how that adds to your bottom line.

Day 18: Improve Your Planning and Launch Process

Planning is something everyone can get better at. When you learn how to plan better, you open up the ability to profit more. Plans can be done for your daily routine, for each individual project task list, for how you manage your time, and more.

Sometimes, it helps to have a checklist for your planning process so you can fly through it and not have to stop and think about what comes next. You can tighten your schedule and perfect your launch and project systems with a little planning that ensures you optimize everything for profits.

Day 19: Look Into Other Business Models

There may come a time when you’ve maximized every part of your current business system. You may need to add something on to your online endeavors in order to elevate your income.

For example, if you’re an affiliate for other peoples’ info products, consider creating a course of your own that affiliates promote for you. Or, you may want to get into something that offers residual income, like memberships or selling PLR.

There are so many business options you have to consider in addition to info products and affiliate marketing, such as selling low content products, dropshipping, domain flipping, coaching, etc.

Day 20: Invest in Tools and Products That Improve Your Business

Using tools and products doesn’t always require an investment of money. Sometimes it’s just an investment of time finding and learning how to use them. But today, look at things that are available that can help you scale your profits.

It might be an editing tool like Camtasia (or CamStudio). It could be a course teaching you a strategy you haven’t felt confident implementing yet. Maybe it’s a page builder that creates sleek, professional looking sales pages that will help convert buyers.

Day 21: Look for Ways to Reduce Spending

When it comes to scaling profits, you have to look at wasteful spending, too. Sometimes, you’re the root cause of not seeing a better bottom line. Go ahead and admit it if you’re buying too many courses, tools and products and never using them – allowing them to sit stagnant on your computer.

Sometimes, you’re spending money for monthly fees for things you don’t need or use. Be honest about what bad spending habits you have and rein in your outgoing expenses.

This will not only save you money, but it’ll possibly allow you to redirect those funds into something more effective at helping you make more money, like outsourcing to a freelancer.

Day 22: Reevaluate Your Loyalty to Others

Sometimes, it’s not what you’re not doing that kills profits, but what you are doing. One good example of this is engaging in reciprocal promotions. When you get started online, you often feel a kinship with those who helps you get to where you are.

The people who walked you through a difficult technical task or who helped share your launch links are those who deserve you appreciation. But your loyalty only needs to go so far.

You can thank someone and do something nice for them in return without sacrificing your own reputation or business. The person who helped you may not have good products themselves, and they’ll expect you to promote their product because they promoted yours.

Don’t let yourself blindly promote anyone as a thank you for what they’ve done. Instead, evaluate everything on its true merit, and be ready to protect your subscribers from a bad investment.

Never let a friend talk you into letting them use your PayPal account or Facebook ads account because their own got banned. If they ruined theirs, there’s good chance they’ll ruin yours, too – and then all of your profits might dry up!

Day 23: Go for the Repeat Sale

Getting your first sale from a customer can be exciting. It’s even more of an honor when they confirm their subscription to your list. Don’t let that opportunity go to waste. You want to immediately jump into action proving your worth, while still angling for an addition sale.

You can’t just assume the buyer is going to enjoy your first product so much that they go looking for more. Instead, you want to court them into considering additional purchases.

Present your products to them and show them how it would be beneficial for them to own it. You also want to prevent them from abandoning your list. If you never cater to their needs again, they won’t feel any reason to continue getting emails from you, so don’t be afraid to set yourself up for repeat business.

Day 24: Get Really Good at SEO

Previously, we discussed the benefit of being able to scale profits by targeting your exact audience using paid ads. But there’s a lot to be said for mastering organic traffic, too.

Take time today to start learning SEO (search engine optimization) so you can bring more visitors and prospective buyers to your blog and product offers. You need to learn the basics, such as integrating keywords into your content – but you also need to stay abreast of what Google and other search engines are looking for in the sites they index for the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Day 25: Learn How to Create a Buzz for Your Launches

You can quietly launch a product and see a steady trickle of sales come in throughout the day or week of the launch. Or, you can do what people like John Reese used to do when he launched Traffic Secrets and build such as buzz about your product that it rakes in an exorbitant amount of money at once (in his case, $1 million in 24 hours).

Creating a buzz involves a longer launch process, but you’re able to hit a high demand and ramp up your profits because when launch day arrives, your product shoots to the top of the bestseller list, is seen by more people (including affiliates who want to jump onboard), and discussed by everyone in social circles online.

You’ll be making lots of pre-launch content, including valuable freebies that serve as sneak peeks and teasers. You’ll also be making the rounds networking with affiliates, hosting webinars to field questions about the upcoming product and more.

Day 26: Use a System of Automation Whenever Possible

Automation helps you scale profits by freeing up your time to work on more lucrative areas of your business. Usually, the things you’re automating are the chores that must be done, but that are time hogs.

For example, queueing up emails and blog posts or social content steals minutes out of your day. You can use tools to post these in the right places, at the right times for you. You can even find tools that will automatically create transcripts out of your video or audio content – so look for automation options for everything you do and see if it can help you start earning more.

Day 27: Consider Upping Your Prices

When you first began putting out your own products, chances are you were a bit hesitant to make people pay for something when you were a sheer newbie. But even if you’re still fairly new to the marketing scene, you need to know when it’s time to up your prices.

Increasing your prices is a simple and effective way to scale your income. Instead of working harder, you just charge slightly more and see your income inch up higher and higher.

You always want to keep your product priced according to its value. But it might be worth experimenting with price points to see if your buyers are willing to spend more with you, and once you reach a point to where sales slack off, you’ll know where to correctly settle your pricing structure.

Day 28: Break Big Courses Up Into Smaller Ones

When it comes to repurposing content, you usually think of using blog content, social videos and more. But you can also instantly increase your income by taking one of your main products and chopping it up into miniature ones at a lower cost.

For example, let’s say you have a $47 eBook course with 10 chapters on traffic generation strategies. You could take each of the 10 chapters and split it into its own miniature course with a PDF and maybe even a video to go along with it.

These can be priced lower, and can get more people to take a chance on you if they’re not familiar with you or unable to afford a higher priced product, but wouldn’t mind spending smaller amounts more often.

Day 29: Start Split Testing to Improve Conversions

One strategic thing many marketers fail to do is split test their sales copy. You can scale your income by just seeing what works best to convert your visitors into buyers. It might be length of copy, certain bulletpoints, a specific storyline, or even something as simple as the colors you’re using.

There are tools you can use to split test sales copy, but you can also split test emails that you’re sending out, too. See which one converts best and you can start to improve your messaging for increased profits.

Day 30: Reduce Risk and Set Future Milestones

Lastly, take time today to see how you can reduce risk that seems to sabotage your profits. It might be offering too wide of a refund policy, or promoting products that aren’t solid enough for the consumer.

You also want to set milestones and goals for your marketing and craft a plan that helps you achieve them. It might be a milestone for when you have certain project tasks completed – or it could be a specific goal of getting 10 new affiliates onboard.

Leveling up with your income requires you to stop going through the motions and carefully evaluate where you can make improvements that not only add more revenue to your business, but eliminates anything detracting from it.

When you embark on a career as an online entrepreneur, you’re usually not ready for the sheer volume of tasks you have to handle on your own. Even if you’re just running a single business model, it can get overwhelming trying to master time management and remember to carry out your responsibilities.

It’s imperative that you systemize your business so that you’re able to thrive with a functioning operation that lessens your stress and even allows you to bring in help from time to time when and if you want to step away from your business for some down time.

In the blueprint below, you’ll find a readymade system that you can integrate into your schedule where you’re working five days a week, handling six tasks per day. This will address your blogging routine, email marketing, social marketing, product launches, affiliate marketing and customer service efforts.

You can also switch things around so that you do all of your blogging on day 1, all email tasks on day 2, and so on, if you prefer to knock it out that way rather than have a variety of business aspects to work on daily – it all depends on your personal preferences.

Day 1

Blogging System – Analyze the Traffic and Engagement of Previous Posts

On the first day of each week, you need to see what’s working and what’s not in terms of getting traffic to your blog and having those visitors engage with you. Check traffic stats and log into your dashboard to approve and reply to comments.

You want to stay aware of what is helping you rise in the SERPs (search engine results pages), what gets shared on social media to send traffic your way, and what slants cause people to generate enough emotion that they need to respond with a comment.

When you check analytics, you can also go back to work on blog posts that are underperforming, strengthening their keywords, content and value so they have a fighting chance to get seen.

Email Marketing System – Create the Draft Templates for the Upcoming Week of Emails

On day one, log into your email autoresponder system and create a draft broadcast email for each of the days of the week you plan to email out. In the title, put the day of the week and date, such as Mon 23^rd so you know which day to schedule it later.

In the body, go ahead and enter your greeting, such as Hi {firstname_fix}! and type in the words personal, promo, and value with about two lines between each one. Then, type in your usual sign off, such as, “To your success… John.”

This draft template is going to make it easy for you to quickly log in if something arises during the week that you want to remember to add to an outgoing email. Don’t do anything else to these drafts today.

Social Marketing System – Create Some List-Building Posts and Link to Your Lead Magnet

Day one of your socialization is going to be to log into your favorite social media networks and apps, like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and more – and create a post about something to do with your lead magnet or the value in being on your list.

Make sure you link to the lead magnet page, because you want these particular posts that you create to help build your list. You can pull one specific tip from your lead magnet with a call to action telling them they can learn more about it in your free report, or create a post that makes people think, such as asking a question about who is struggling with an issue – with a call to action that they can find the link to a report that can help in the comments, where you share it.

Product Launch System – Pinpoint the Needs of Your Target Audience

If you want to be a vendor – a product creator who sells digital info products, then you’re going to spend day one researching the needs of your audience so that you can create something they won’t want to miss out on.

Look at emails that have come in, comments people have posted on your blog and in social groups. Look on forums and see what types of books are selling in your niche to see where the biggest demand is and make a list of the problems you see that you can help with.

Affiliate Marketing System – Gather Ideas for a Week’s Worth of Potential Product Promos

Your first day of the week as an affiliate, you want to gather ideas for as many products as you want to promote. If you want to write three reviews per week, then find three products – tangible or digital.

Today, you’re looking for quality products that you’ll enjoy promoting. Look on sites like Warrior Plus, ClickBank, JVZoo, Amazon, Share-a-Sale, and Commission Junction, too. Don’t just aim for commission, but find something that pays well while also benefiting your readers, so you don’t sabotage your reputation.

Customer Service System – Answer All Incoming Support Tickets and Emails

Customer service should never be neglected, so on day one, you’re going to sort through all of the incoming emails you’ve received from your audience – and that includes checking your spam folder to make sure no one fell through the cracks.

If you have a support system in place, make sure each one achieves a resolved status before shutting down for the night, if possible. At the very least, make sure each customer has received communication from you about your efforts to resolve it.

Day 2

Blogging System – Conduct Niche Research and Map Out Your Blog Topics

Day two of blogging will require you to start conducting niche research for next week’s upcoming blog posts. Bloggers typically want a variety of slants to keep their audience coming back.

You might have value-packed pillar posts, shorter tip posts, interviews with other experts, curated information, and more. What you do want to do is make sure of is that your posts are trendy and relevant in that moment.

If there’s breaking news you want to cover in your niche, be aware of it by looking up news and data for your topic. Go ahead and outline some main points for each post if you want to make it easier on yourself.

Email Marketing System – Update Your Promo List for the Next Week

For your second day of email marketing, update the list of items you want to promote in your emails that week. These can be a mix of things you sell or items you promote as an affiliate.

Go to sites like Muncheye and Warrior Plus to see a launch calendar of digital info products that will be releasing in the coming week in your niche. If you want to get a coupon code from another vendor to offer your customers, secure those deals on this day.

Have everything ready to go – such as the JV pages you need to refer to. Don’t promote too many items in each email. You can spread things out a bit. Even if something launches on a Tuesday, you don’t have to promote it until Wednesday if you already have something scheduled for Tuesday.

Social Marketing System – Engage in Some Personal and Direct Networking

Social marketing is a very important part of succeeding as an online marketer. On day two, you want to have one-on-one communications with people you want in your circles. You can do this by private messaging them, emailing them or engaging on their content.

These can be people you want to recruit as an affiliate later, marketers you want to approve you as an affiliate, experts you hope to interview, people you want to learn from and more.

Product Launch System – Brainstorm and Outline a Product

For the second day of your product launch system, you’re going to think of a product that will meet the needs of your customers and outline it in depth. This makes the product creation process quick and easy.

Look at what competitors have launched and think of how you can do something better or different that will be in demand – a product people are willing to pay for. It can be text or video based, and it doesn’t have to be a gigantic product because narrow, targeted products often convert better than broad, comprehensive ones.

Affiliate Marketing System – Jot Down the Features and Benefits of Each One

Day two of your affiliate marketing system will be to go through the products you wanted to promote and make a list of the specifications and benefits of each one. Write down what it is, the price point, what problem it will solve, and how it works.

Don’t be afraid to also make a note of any drawbacks you find with it. This can be a way for you to brainstorm a bonus for any missing information, or to provide helpful tips for anything that is lacking.

Customer Service System – Check Social Media PMs to Address Direct Messages

The second day of customer service will mean you log into social media accounts to check for customer service issues. It might be something someone has direct messaged you, a comment they left on one of your posts, etc.

Many people only use social media to log complaints against vendors and companies. You need to be able to salvage your reputation by handling anything that comes up in a professional manner, without flying into a fit of rage.

Day 3

Blogging System – Create Multimedia Elements to Break Up Text

Midway through your work week, on day three, you’re going to create some images or videos to help break up monotonous text on your blog. This will also help it show up better in social media feeds, because if someone shares a link to your post, it will pull the image or video into the feed with it.

You can make simple images on Canva with a callout of a certain quote from your post. You can create an infographic of the main points of your post – whatever you feel helps give a reader’s eyes a quick break from a large block of text.

If you don’t want to make images yourself, you can also download stock photos to help break up text, too. You can use free ones like Pixabay or paid ones from sites like iStockPhoto or DepositPhoto.

Email Marketing System – Add Personalization, Value, Promos and Links to Each Email

Your third day of email marketing will have you logging in to the autoresponder system and going into the drafts you’ve made for next week’s emails. Start by going to each one and adding a bit of personalization under the greeting.

Then, insert the promos for products you’ve been gathering – with details about the special deal or what’s included, along with the links to the product and any coupon codes you have.

Make sure you end your email with a snippet of value, like a tip or solution to a problem, so that your audience doesn’t feel as if you’re slamming them with constant promotions without giving them anything in return.

Social Marketing System – Create and Share Some Multimedia in Your Feed

On day three, you’ll be bringing different media formats to your social networking accounts. You can share these on your profile, page and group. This can be media you’ve created (ideally) or just something you found relevant and useful that someone else created.

Look for YouTube videos, podcast episode links, images like infographics, and more. Always add some of your own commentary about the media they’re seeing. Why did it resonate with you, what do (or don’t) you like about it? Make sure you create a call to action for them to engage with your post.

Product Launch System – Order or Create the Branding for Your Launch

The third day of product launch systemization is when you either create or order the branding you want for your product. If you create it yourself, you might se a tool you purchased or a site like Canva to make an eCover.

You can use a product like SmartMockups to create a multi-device image if you have something like a video module course you’re creating. You can also outsource this task to someone on Fiverr or Upwork.

Affiliate Marketing System – Apply for Approval and Gather Your Links

The middle day for your affiliate marketing system means you’ll be going to those products you want to promote and applying for and grabbing your affiliate links so they can be included in your upcoming emails, in blog posts, and elsewhere.

If optional, make sure you enter a note to the vendor about why you want to promote so they know you have a genuine interest and aren’t just going to send junk traffic and ruin their conversions.

Customer Service System – Create a Survey to See How You Can Improve and Email It

On day three for customer service, create a survey or question to send to your subscribers and followers to see where you can improve. You can also ask specific questions about what they need help with, or whether they would like something you have in mind.

This kind of solicitation for feedback shows that you go the extra mile to meet the needs of your audience. Be sure to take their comments into consideration. If they took time to respond, then they’re trying to help you succeed, too.

Day 4

Blogging System – Write Your Upcoming Week’s Blog Posts

On the fourth day of your blogging system, you’re going to sit down and write your upcoming blog posts. Whether it’s one or seven, do your best to write a post that’s worthy of rising in the search engine ranks and garnering a lot of organic traffic.

You also want to make sure you end with a call to action. That might be for them to sign up to your list, share the post with others, leave a comment, etc. You want engagement to soar.

Email Marketing System – Queue Up Each Email for the Correct Date and Time

Your emails will be complete now, so today, you can queue each one up. If you have multiple lists, you can pick and choose which ones it goes out to. Pick the correct date you want it to go out as well as the time (be mindful of EST versus CST time).

When each email is queued up, be sure to create a test of each one. This allows you to quickly see it and ensure you’ve entered your links, that it’s free of typos and errors, and that it’s formatted correctly.

Social Marketing System – Curate Some Great Information for Your Followers

On your fourth day of social marketing, be a great curator for your followers. One way to succeed with this is to look through your own feed of the people you are following and share some of their content with your own followers.

This builds good will with the other person (they’ll be more apt to share your posts in the future), and it shows your audience that you are good about finding valuable posts from others to share with them.

Don’t just share anything and everything. Be selective. If you don’t find anything in your feed, then go outside of it to find something from someone else to share, like another expert or blogger with some content you found interesting.

Product Launch System – Create the Product for Your Buyers

For day four of your product launch, you’re going to dive into product creation. Many people can create their product in a day, but it all depends on how fast and knowledgeable you are.

If it takes a bit longer, don’t stress about it. Just take your time and create the product, picking up on your daily tasks whenever it’s complete. Remember, you can also outsource product creation or use private label rights as a readymade product or springboard for your own info product.

Affiliate Marketing System – Write or Record Your Review and Post It to Your Blog

Day four is the day you’ll be creating your affiliate reviews, too. You can write them or record them on video, such as doing an unboxing reveal or creating a screen capture showcasing a case study of your results with a product.

Upload it to your blog when you’re done – ideally with some sort of image or video so that it breaks up text and can be found easier in the feeds on social media if someone shares it.

Customer Service System – Whip Up an Unexpected Gift for Your Subscribers or Blog Readers

For your fourth day of customer service, you can create a simple, yet valuable unexpected gift for your blog readers, subscribers and social media followers. This might be something as simple as a cheat sheet, checklist or template they can use.

If you don’t want to make one, you can purchase the rights to one by looking for low content PLR and rebranding it and editing it to be specifically for your audience as a gift from you.

Day 5

Blogging System – Format and Schedule the Posts to Go Live

On your final blog task for the week, you want to format each of the blog posts you want to go live next week and schedule them for publication. Some people do multiple posts per day, some daily, and some just once or twice a week.

For formatting, make sure you have the font broken up so that it’s not one large swath of text without any broken up paragraphs. You should also have skimmable sub-headings or sections that are in bold.

You can use bulletpoints and make sure your images are aligned properly. You want to make sure you have images tagged with relevant keywords as well. And if possible, bold and underline hyperlinks.

You can do a preview of what the post will look like, and you should always do this to ensure that everything looks good, links are in place, and there are no errors or typos. Make sure you space your posts out and have them categorized and tagged for SEO and human navigation.

Email Marketing System – Check Analytics and Clean Up Your List

The last day of the week, you’ll be looking at last week’s emails to see how they performed with your subscribers. Which subjects got the best open rates? How many people, on average, are opening your emails?

You want to look for any bounced emails and clean those up. You also want to delete the unsubscribes because some systems will charge you based on numbers, and those will include the unsubscribed emails in your database.

Social Marketing System – Share Something You’ll Profit From as a Vendor or Affiliate

Social media is a great place to monetize your online efforts. Today, pick something you can earn money from and post about it with a link on a variety of platforms, making sure to track what worked best.

It might be a course of yours, a print on demand tangible item, a coaching program – or something you’re promoting as an affiliate for someone else. You might create a text post for Facebook, a video for YouTube and TikTok, an image for Pinterest and Instagram, etc.

Product Launch System – Create Your Copy, List It on a Platform and Notify Affiliates

The last day of your product launch will have you first creating the sales copy that details the benefits of your product for prospective buyers. Your copy should include a storyline, headlines, bulletpoints, a call to action and more.

You then want to create a listing for the item for sale on a platform of your choice, scheduling it ahead of time. You can do this on sites like Warrior Plus, JVZoo, and ClickBank to name a few.

Notify affiliates by creating a listing on Muncheye, emailing your affiliates, reaching out directly to people you want to recruit, and more. Make sure you give them a link to where they can grab their affiliate link to promote for you.

Affiliate Marketing System – Share the Review in Emails and on Social Media

On the final day of your affiliate marketing system for the week, take the link to your product reviews that you’ve created and share them on social media. You can post the links to the blog post reviews on Facebook, create Pins for them on Pinterest, and more.

You want to make sure that wherever you’re sharing the links, your target audience is prevalent on the site. You should be looking for groups and hashtags to see if there’s an audience there.

Customer Service System – Make Note of Any Complaints or Requests and Work on a Solution

Finally, take care of the customers by taking their concerns to heart and actively working on a solution that you can present to them in the coming week. For example, if someone says your blog is hard to read because it has white text on a black background, then see if switching it would work better.

If they approach you saying they really need help with one thing in particular, make a note of it and either use the idea for a product in the upcoming week or as a free gift with a tip sheet to help them.

One great thing you can do to let people know you hear them is to thank the person who submitted the topic (first name only in case they don’t want their full name divulged) and you can even gift them the solution you create in advance with a personalized message that you hope it helps and you appreciate the feedback because you know it’ll help others, too.

Systemizing your online business isn’t just something you can do if you want to. It’s almost a necessity. Along the way, as you gain more experience, you’ll develop systems and processes of your own – but this should get you started with a roadmap to ensure it all gets handled effectively.

Creating a successful business from within the walls of your home is a challenging feat. But facing the many difficulties and endeavors of entrepreneurship as a work at home mom is an even more intense task.

Finding a balance between work and home life is essential for entrepreneurs when it comes to productivity and mental health. With schedules, routines, and goals in mind, you will be able to create a healthy balance in your home.

Routines and the Need for Flexibility

Routines are an efficient way to keep yourself on track, while allowing time for other necessities and priorities. Setting up a routine requires you to look at several different aspects of your work and home life.

Consider your priorities. Of course, your children will always be a high priority in your life. Focus on prioritizing the most important tasks for your business after that. When you can make a list of what needs to be done first, and what you absolutely have to work on, you’ll be able to have main focuses to align with your daily routine.

It’s important to set aside time for your children throughout your work day. Just being in their presence doesn’t mean that you are being present in their lives. The same policy goes for work and meetings as well.

Prepare for sacrifices. You won’t be able to make a perfect dinner every night, or finish every project you desire within a day or week. Being a work at home mom means that you’ll have to sacrifice some of your time for both work and home life.

Once you’ve chosen your priorities, there are some things that you will simply have to let go of. Allow for some flexibility, too. As a mom, you know that no schedule or routine can be set in stone.

With children, unexpected situations will occur, and work can be just as unpredictable. If your kids are showing signs of needing your attention, you may have to take a break from your work to be there for them.

Or, if you’re working on a project for work and there are technological issues for a big multimedia release that has to be fixed immediately, you may have to order takeout and focus on fixing those problems.

Persist with a routine and reward yourself. As you complete goals and follow along with the routine you’ve set for yourself, you deserve to treat yourself. One of the best ways to stay motivated and efficient is to take small breaks and reward yourself for your own hard work.

Maybe you want to get lunch at a place you haven’t been to in awhile, or you could take a break and take the kids to go get ice cream. You are only human, so you have to find ways to keep yourself happy and satisfied.

Keep track of your goals, too. Create a spreadsheet, calendar, or planner that maps out your drafted routine plans. This way, you will have everything solidified in writing, and it will be a creative way to keep yourself on task.

Find the Sweet Spot for Productivity

Working at home as a mom means that you may not be able to follow “normal” work hours. Instead of a typical 9 to 5, you have to search for sweet spots during the day that allow for the most productivity.

If your children take naps during the day or have a show that airs during a certain time, save your most important work for those moments. You will be able to be the most productive with your distractions lessened.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, either. If you are falling behind or feeling frustrated with the multitasking at hand, reach out and ask a friend or spouse to help watch the kids when they have some spare time. Give yourself a break from home life so that you can put in your best work.

Get Good at Saying No

It’s not your job to make everyone happy. People will come to you with their problems and desires because everyone needs help sometimes. But you don’t owe it to anyone to do every favor they ask for.

Your job is to work on your business and be there for your family. You will have to turn down someone’s request eventually, and it will help you realize how relieving it can be. Being a work at home individual means people will try to take advantage of your availability.

Your needs and desires matter as well. Take care of yourself and the things that matter most to you. Even if you have to say “no” to those closest to you at times, it will be worth it for your mental health.

Tell your spouse that you need to focus on a presentation instead of making dinner or doing a chore when they request is valid, as long as you don’t push your responsibilities off onto them every night.

Take turns with responsibilities so that you both have time for other things. Telling someone “no” does not make you a bad person. Some people may act offended that you had the nerve to turn them down, but that’s only because they’re just thinking about themselves.

However, this means that you have to work to understand why others may say “no” to you as well, so that you aren’t being hypocritical. Everyone has the right to take care of themselves and their priorities first.

Sometimes you have to say “no” to yourself, too. You may have to fight off urges to sleep in or skip out on a project because everything feels too overwhelming. But being in control of yourself is important – especially when you are working towards your goals.

Learn How to Tune Out Noise

Working from home as a mom can be challenging when it comes to working with peace and quiet. Children may not understand the impact of the noise they make, and they may be too young to fully grasp that concept.

There are some things you can do to lessen the impact of noise. Get a white noise machine. A white noise machine may help you drown out the sounds your kids are making, while building up your focus.

If you struggle with random sounds distracting you, this method will help you calm down and push past those distractions. It doesn’t drown them out to a level that’s unsafe, but it kind of blurs it all into a background noise.

Try having a separate office space. Whether you add in more insulation or just need to shut a door, a separate office space will give you an area of quiet concentration. Your kids may pick up on the fact that when you enter your office, you need to work hard and be left alone for a little while.

Consider having quiet hours. If your kids are old enough, you can teach them that you need time to work, so they have to be quiet for a certain amount of time. This could also be their time to watch TV or play a video game that they love, as long as they keep the sound at a low volume.

Listen to music while you’re focusing. Although this method does not work with everyone, some people become incredibly efficient when they listen to music. If you have a nicer pair of headphones to block out other noise, you can try listening to classical music, or any genre that works for you.

Sometimes, you can find a video on YouTube with a sound like a crackling fireplace or a running stream or thunderstorm. These sounds can help you focus better and lessen the distracting noise in the home.

Invest in Outside Help If Finances Allow It

Since you are already working on a growing business and raising children, your time is spread pretty thin. If finances allow it, investing in outside help is a good idea. This will help ease the burden of the work, so that you don’t have to shoulder all of it.

There are a few different helpful ideas to consider investing in. Get a weekly cleaning person to come in and help. Hiring a maid will take the task of heavy cleaning off of your shoulders.

Someone who can deep clean your house once a week will keep the larger tasks out of your hands, so that you only have light work to do when the day is done. They can also help you catch up on dishes, laundry, and even meal prep.

Use grocery pickup or delivery. Grocery shopping takes up more time than you may realize. If you are on a time crunch and have a shopping list ready, order your supplies online and have it delivered to your door.

If you are looking to save a little money, order online and pick up the groceries when your order is ready. Both of these methods will save you a lot of time. Get a babysitter sometimes, too.

Keeping children entertained while working on your career isn’t always easy, especially if they are very young. Hiring a babysitter who can spend focused time with them and play with them will give you the space you may need to be efficient.

Even if it’s only for a few hours a day, every busy mother needs a break. An assistant might be a good idea, too. You may worry that you’re missing out on spending more time with your children because of tedious tasks that you have to complete for your business.

Hiring an assistant (virtual or in house) for those tasks will save you time, and allow you to focus on bigger projects as well. Sign up for carpooling if your kids are school aged. If you have a neighbor or friend with kids that lives nearby, you could give them a small amount of money each week for them to pick your kids up along the way to school or other activities.

You can even share in the responsibilities and drive once or twice a week, but it will alleviate the daily burden. Driving takes up a lot of time, and you can’t multitask while taking your children places.

See If Multitasking Helps or Hurts Your Productivity

Multitasking is something commonly recommended to busy people. But what most don’t realize is that it can hurt your work process more than help, if you are the type of person who gets slowed down or overwhelmed by multitasking.

Test out how multitasking works for you by timing your work. Test 1 would include you working on one simple task. Test 2 would include you working on two simple tasks (example: writing and listening at the same time).

Afterwards, reflect on how much information you retained, and how quickly you were able to accomplish things. If you feel like multitasking muddles your clarity or slows down your process, stick to one task at a time.

If you thrive with multitasking, use it to your advantage. Listen to informative podcasts while making your kid’s lunch, or play with the kids while brainstorming for an upcoming project. As long as you feel like it is manageable for you, go for it.

Systemize Your Processes

Developing routines and clear systems for every task at hand will help you fall into the swing of things and work as quickly as possible. Whether you are tackling something for work or for home, systemizing your process will be the most efficient way to go.

Getting the kids ready can be a routine. Sometimes getting your kids ready in the morning can be a burdensome task. If you can teach them how to stick to a morning routine, everyone will be able to do their part.

Have one kid pick out their clothing while the other takes a shower, and give each of them an order of tasks to complete so that mornings run smoothly. Templates for product creation come in handy for systemization.

Whether you’re creating a sales letter for a launch or writing a product review, stick to a template that provides a quick and effective solution, so that you are organized and it becomes second nature.

Automate emails and blog posts. Upload your posts and emails ahead of time and schedule them out, so that you don’t have to worry about making a deadline or being available at a specific time.

This will also help you make the most out of posting at specific hours to optimize engagement. Use pre-planned dinner schedules. Instead of brainstorming what to make for dinner while you should be paying attention to a tutorial, set aside time at the beginning of the week to plan out your dinners, so that you can be prepared and ready.

Have a cleaning routine. Cleaning can feel like an overwhelming task. So focus on taking things one room at a time, with a determined path so that cleaning becomes a process, rather than a long, burdensome task that has to be done everywhere at once.

Know When to Be Unavailable

Your work doesn’t have to follow you everywhere you go. Keep your work phone or certain contacts muted when you are devoting time to your family. If it is an emergency, they will reach out to you more than just once.

Giving your children undivided attention is important. They need to know that you prioritize them and want to spend time with them. If you give them that love and effort, they are more likely to be respectful when it’s time for you to work.

Your family will have to learn that you can’t always be there for them at every moment of the day. Although children may not always understand why you have to work, they will have to accept that you can’t always play with them.

This may take time and patience, but it’s something that they will have to learn in order for you to be able to work without an interruption every five minutes. This is also something your spouse will need to learn.

Sometimes, they may have to parent or do tasks on their own without your help because of the work that you do. Don’t let this cause friction, but instead keep a calm demeanor as they find their way.

Learn How to Use Tools of Convenience

Finding products that help you deal with two things at once is a great way to multitask without having to physically do the multitasking. There are thousands of products made to make lives easier, and many are specifically targeted towards those who work at home as parents.

Look for toys and items that will keep your children entertained and safe. For example, for younger children, you could purchase a bouncy jumper and attach it to the doorway of your office.

Your children can amuse themselves while you work, and they will always be within your view, so you know they can’t get into anything crazy. To make things easier on the work front, you could try purchasing technology that helps you out with your business.

Set your phone to read messages aloud, so that you can communicate through text with people while playing with your kids. And if you still have baby cameras from when your children were younger, you can utilize them now so that you always know what your kids are up to in the other room.

Have Clear Daily Goals and Make Sure They’re Reasonable

When you set smaller goals, the key is to motivate rather than overwhelm yourself. These goals may be designed to make you more involved in the family, or be more productive at work.

When creating these goals, focus on what you want from them. There are some ideas for goals to set to get yourself started. Push past procrastination. Write at least one page of what you are working on, or set a word goal.

Set timers for allotted time to work on something, then take breaks. Make one important business call. Doing things like this get the ball rolling, and you end up doing far more than you initially promised yourself.

Spend more time with your spouse. Plan out a short date night. Take the kids and bring them to lunch. Try to break your nightly routine by talking about a certain topic together or watching a show you both enjoy.

Involve your children more. Have the kids help out with dinner. Play a board or video game with them. Plan a family movie night. Being a working mom can make you feel like you’re being pulled in all directions at times.

But if you work on finding a healthy balance and utilize tools like routines, schedules and other strategies, you’ll find that your children grow up with a healthy appreciation for your efforts to parent them while simultaneously growing your business.

Deciding to become an entrepreneur is a career choice that has many benefits but can also come with a heavy workload and lots of stress. Being responsible for an entire business and your finances can quickly become overwhelming and can cause stress.

Managing stress is extremely important when it comes to being an entrepreneur. If you’re not careful about making sure you keep your stress levels down, it could seriously wear on both your physical and mental health and take a toll on your business and personal life, too.

Some entrepreneurs might find stress management to be a difficult habit to start because of the high workload and busy schedules they often have. However, there are options for stress relieving activities that won’t take too much time out of your day.

Make Sure You Exercise Throughout Your Day With a Sedentary Career

Staying active is an extremely important stress relieving activity for everyone to engage in, regardless of how much free time you have on your hands. Exercise has been proven to release endorphins, which lowers stress levels. Professionals recommend at least thirty minutes of exercise per day.

One exercise you could incorporate into your schedule easily is walking. If you’re on a phone call where you don’t need to be sitting at a desk or anywhere in particular, go walk outside or around your house.

This will be an easy way to engage in physical activity without taking time out of work. If you can’t do physical activity while working, set aside planned time to exercise even if you have to break up thirty minutes throughout your day.

For example, you could spend ten minutes in the morning walking or jogging, another ten minutes in the afternoon biking or swimming, and another ten minutes at night dancing or doing yoga.

You can do it while listening to a podcast or even while dictating the content of your lead magnet on your smart phone. Some online entrepreneurs even invest in a treadmill desk, where they can walk while working.

Bring More Joy to Your Day Through Laughter

It may sound too good to be true, but laughter is a great, time efficient way to lower stress levels on a busy schedule. Laughing and smiling releases endorphins and lowers cortisol, therefore relieving stress.

There are many comedy videos and skits on platforms like YouTube. Streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max also have comedy movies on them.

Try watching something funny in the morning or before bed to start or end your day in a better mood and with less stress. If your schedule allows for it, you can also watch shorter comedy clips in between work.

Remember That Your Food Choices Can Have an Effect on Your Stress Levels

Another easy, time efficient way to effectively reduce stress is to change up your diet. Maintaining a healthy diet has been proven to reduce the effect that stress has on your body.

Making healthy, home cooked meals multiple times every day may not be optimal when it comes to running a business and having such a busy schedule. To help reduce time spent on cooking, try meal prepping.

Meal prepping is where you make multiple meals before you need them. So if you have a day off, or a day when you have more free time than usual, spend time preparing food for the upcoming days or week and package it in reusable containers.

Preparing your meals ahead of time is time efficient and can also keep you from caving in and eating unhealthy foods that take no time to prepare, like processed ones packed with calories.

Chicken, rice, and vegetables are common ingredients in meal prepping recipes. You can even set up a crockpot meal to cook throughout the day while you’re working, so that you’re not relying on takeout when your busy workload is complete.

There are also things in your diet that may cause an increase in your cortisol levels. Make sure you make an effort to cut stress-causing foods and drinks out of your diet. These include alcohol, caffeine, processed meats, and foods with high levels of sugar.

Listen to Some Music to Boost Your Mood

Putting on music in the background while you work is a simple, quick, and effective way to reduce stress levels. Music, especially calming music like classical, has been shown to lower stress.

Music can relieve stress by lowering the heart rate and reducing the amount of stress hormones such as cortisol released by the brain. Listening to music also releases endorphins, which improves your mood and decreases stress levels.

Hearing calming tunes and slow tempos can actually cause your muscles and your mind to relax, making you feel soothed and stress free throughout your day. Faster songs can make you feel more focused.

Dancing to music you love is also a great way to relieve stress if you have a busy schedule. Even if it’s just a few songs, the combination of listening to music and exercise will release endorphins and lower cortisol.

How Asking For Help Can Make Your Life Easier

Running a business online, while trying to deal with other responsibilities like cleaning, taking care of your kids if you have any, cooking, and more can be far too overwhelming for many.

Allow yourself to ask your spouse, other family members, or even close friends for help with certain tasks. If you have kids who are old enough, ask them to help with chores like dishes, laundry, picking up clutter, and even yard work.

Asking for help is also useful in terms of your business. There may be a project that you’ve been working on that you’re really struggling with. Don’t be afraid to reach out to some other entrepreneurs for advice that could really benefit your company.

Relax Your Mind and Eliminate Stress Through Meditation

Getting into a meditative state is where you clear your mind from any thoughts and feel the present moment. You’re supposed to focus on your breathing and what you feel around you.

During meditation, you simply cut out any thoughts from your mind. This brings a state of relaxation and can help you relieve stress by not focusing on whatever it is that is stressing you out.

Meditation won’t take too much time out of your day, either. Some people prefer to meditate for half an hour, while some can still get extreme stress relief from only five to ten minutes of meditation between tasks.

Studies have shown that meditation has many benefits to mental health and that it’s an effective technique in relieving stress. Meditation is proven to increase attentiveness and also improve regulation of emotions.

If you struggle with keeping thoughts about your stressors out of your mind, look into guided meditation. Guided meditation is where you are instructed to focus on certain things while in a meditative state.

The instructors who guide the meditation may tell you to imagine yourself in a certain relaxing setting, such as a beach or a forest. They also usually ask you to imagine how this setting would sound, smell, or feel as well.

This method of meditation is just as effective as other methods, and is great for those who struggle to focus on thinking about nothing. You can find many different guided meditations online that will suit your needs for time and topic.

Allow Yourself to Take Breaks to Recover

When running your own business, you may almost always be focusing on or thinking about work. It may seem to you like your company will fail unless you’re spending all of your time working.

Hard work and focus is crucial in terms of running your own business, but constantly being wrapped up in stressful situations will deteriorate your mental health and could possibly cause your business to suffer because of it.

The best thing you can do to avoid becoming mentally overloaded with work is to take breaks. Giving your mind time to rest while you are working will help your stress levels go down, and will help you regenerate energy and focus.

Taking breaks has been shown to improve people’s performance throughout the day. This means you’ll be able to work more efficiently and create quality content for your business.

Studies have also shown that taking breaks throughout your day decreases the amount of time you need to recover at the end of the day. This is great for those who are too busy to get a full good night’s rest.

The Impact Sleep Has on Your Body and Mind

Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the easiest, most beneficial things you can do for your mental health. Staying on a good sleep schedule is a great way to reduce stress and improve your overall well-being.

Being on a sleep schedule has been shown to improve focus, creativity, performance, overall mood, and productivity. It’s also linked to helping physical health by preventing issues like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

A solid good night’s sleep requires about seven hours of rest. This is a pretty attainable goal for most people, but some entrepreneurs with extra busy schedules or high stress levels may struggle to reach this goal.

If you have a lot of work to tackle, you may think that sleeping for a shorter amount of time will benefit your business in the long run. Many people see getting a good night’s sleep as inconvenient because they could be working during the hours that they’re resting.

However, this approach will deteriorate your mental and physical health. Since sleep is important for brain function, it will also take a toll on the quality of the work you are doing and the products you are putting out to your customers.

When you lack proper sleep, your brain won’t function as well, causing you to zone out and get distracted easier than you would if you were properly rested. This is why rest is so crucial in being an entrepreneur.

How Taking Care of an Animal Can Improve Your Life

Owning and being around pets has been shown to be a great way for anyone to reduce stress. Being with animals is proven to reduce cortisol levels and increase oxytocin levels.

If you work at home and are more available to take care of a pet, try looking at cats and dogs to accompany you at home. Petting a dog has been proven to significantly decrease stress levels.

Dogs need lots of physical activity to keep them happy and healthy. Walking your dog would be a great way to incorporate exercise, another form of stress relief, into spending time with your pet.

Getting a fish is a great alternative to those who may be too busy for a higher-maintenance pet like a cat or a dog since they don’t require as much attention and playtime as other animals do.

If you do decide to get a pet, make sure you will have enough time and energy to properly take care of it. The last thing you would want to do is get an animal that would only cause you more stress on top of everything else.

Even if getting a pet is way out of your comfort zone, you can still benefit from interacting with animals. For example, in your free time, try volunteering at an animal shelter.

How You Can Use Aromatherapy to Relieve Both Physical and Mental Stress

Aromatherapy is a stress-relieving practice where you use products that contain essential oils to improve your physical and mental health, as well as your overall well-being.

There are many different types of aromatherapy products you can choose from such as lotions, diffusers, candles, and room mists. You can find these products in a wide variety of scents.

Essential oils are the key components in aromatherapy. Each type of oil has a different effect and benefit. Oils like lavender, chamomile, lemon, and rose have been shown to help you physically and mentally relax, boost your mood, and even reduce headaches.

This form of stress relief is great for busy entrepreneurs because it doesn’t require much time or effort. Lighting a candle in the morning or turning on your diffuser will allow you to relieve stress throughout your day without having to waste time away from work.

While being a work at home entrepreneur brings on a lot of burdens that can make you feel stressed, it also allows you a wonderful opportunity to be able to alleviate that stress in unique ways that you wouldn’t be capable of doing if you were in a corporate office workspace.

For example, in an office, you might have coworkers complaining if you used a scent in your aromatherapy they didn’t like, or if they could hear your music. Your boss may not appreciate you taking breaks he or she didn’t authorize whenever you felt like it.

In a world full of entrepreneurs and big dreamers, it is challenging to set yourself apart from the crowd. You may have interesting and unique ideas, but struggle with utilizing them to push you to the top.

Even if you’re the smartest person in the room, it’s easy to be flushed out by the louder voices who can articulate their thoughts and ideas better. In order to detach from the group and showcase the true leader you were meant to be, you’ll have to become more strategic with your methods.

The best strategy you can use to cultivate your niche leadership skills is learning how to enhance your creative intelligence. This is a talent that can be learned and practiced, and once you unleash it on the competition, there’ll be no stopping your success.

What Is Creative Intelligence and Why Is It Important for Success?

Creative intelligence is about your ability to come up with unique and innovative solutions to problems faced both daily and rarely. It’s all about how you can create and manage ideas in the marketplace.

When you completely make use of your creative intelligence, you’ll be able to combine your creativity and knowledge for every problem you face, and every idea you can come up with.

Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur, looking for a business opportunity. Every other entrepreneur is simply doing the same thing as their competitors. What you need is a creative edge, with abilities that make you stand out.

When you can harness your creative intelligence to the fullest, you will have the competitive edge that you need to become successful and develop a loyal following in your niche.

Learning how to innovate is essential to being successful in any business. Problems will always arise, and you will need to be quick with creative solutions that may fall outside of the box from your frequent way thinking.

When a customer has a problem, you should be the one who can think of the best solution for both the customer and the business. When others can depend on you for your problem solving in the marketplace, it will be noticed.

When you are pitching ideas or creating copy for products, you always want to have that unique idea that also ends up being the best one for the customer. Competition can be ruthless, and everyone wants the same things as you.

In order to push past your competitors and land at the top, you’ll need to be more inventive with your thinking. Building up your creative intelligence will assist you in your brainstorming process, so that you have the best idea at every turn and the competition struggles to keep up with you.

Become a Good Learner to Increase Your Creative Intelligence

Becoming a better learner is the beginning of increasing your creative intelligence. The easier it becomes for you to learn things, the more flexible you will be able to be in your creativity process.

Here are a few different methods to try to become better at learning:

Try different media formats.

When you take in information, there are plenty of different media formats to utilize. Try learning from each media format (reading, videos, audiobooks, etc.) to see which one works best for you.

The goal is to see which format allows you to retain the most information and it may be a matter of what you find most enjoyable. There may be several that work for you, so make sure you give them all equal focus when searching for a method to take in information.

Apply different learning styles.

Whether you are best with auditory, visual (or sometimes a combination of those), there is a learning style that works best for you. Try learning some information using these styles, and decide which one feels the easiest for you.

Once you’ve managed to figure out what style(s) help you learn the most, try to focus on that style when you take in information. You can find a variety of leaders and courses that will likely have resources on topics you want to learn in a style that best suits you.

Teach what you’ve learned to someone else.

In order to completely process information and have confidence that you know what you’re talking about, try explaining an idea or topic to someone who knows nothing about it.

If you can successfully get them to understand what you want to convey, then you’re increasing your ability to learn by learning how to teach others as well. And if you can teach something to someone, then you can present that topic to the world, and remain fully confident that you are a capable leader or expert.

Test yourself.

You will never be able to increase your learning skills if you don’t test the ones you have. Whether you test yourself on a specific topic, or a general idea, it’s good to discover where you are in your understanding of a topic.

This will help you know how far along you are on your path to embracing your creative intelligence. Some people find it helpful to create charts and graphs where they test different skills they have, and keep track of it over time. This will give you a physical view of your improvements in learning.

Ask for feedback from others.

Pride may tend to get in the way of asking for feedback, but it is essential if you want to grow as a learner. Critiques and opinions will only help you grow, and you will be able to learn from your mistakes, rather than never even knowing that you were making them.

Some feedback may be difficult to hear, but it will only make you and your methods stronger. You want to find people who offer constructive criticism and have appreciation for their thoughts when they share them with you.

Create time to reflect on your process.

If your learning skills don’t seem to be improving, it may be time to take a moment and reflect. Think about how you’ve been trying to improve, and decide what’s working, and what’s not.

It’s important to give yourself periods of reflection so that you can check yourself, and change direction if needed. Creative intelligence includes being able to reflect on your own methods, and come up with inventive ways to improve on them.

Always ask questions.

Those who learn the most are often those who ask the most questions. But try not to get caught up in asking questions just to ask them, because that won’t get you anywhere. Don’t be afraid to clarify things and ask specifically about what you don’t understand.

Being fearless with your curiosity will bring out your creative intelligence. If you want to learn the most you possibly can, you have to ask questions of other people. Whether their opinions or thoughts are correct, they will provide you with points of view that you had yet to encounter, which may give you an edge in your marketing or product creation.

Don’t back down from a challenge – find them, instead.

Learning is not supposed to be easy. That’s why you have to get creative with your thinking, and innovative with your ideas. If you feel like everything you do on a daily basis is easy, or comfortable, then it’s time to challenge yourself.

Take the time to learn something new, or try a new approach on a project you’ve started. Try timing your reading, and work towards a faster pace. Learning is all about the challenges you face, and how you overcome or learn from them.

Work on your communication style.

One of the best ways to learn from others is to learn from the conversations you have with them. If you can surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, or at a similar intelligence level, you are bound to have fruitful conversations that will elevate your creativity and lead to big ideas.

You don’t have to work alone to succeed. Most people have some help along the way – they just tend to choose carefully about who the help is from. If you can learn how to be a master communicator, you’ll be able to learn many things from plenty of people who all have unique ideas, opinions, and thoughts of their own.

Embrace the Freedom to Veer Off the Beaten Path

If you are someone with many goals and dreams in life, you probably look up to several successful people. One of the biggest keys to their success was their ability to be different from the rest.

You can’t be afraid of taking risks if you want to stand out. You have to embrace the fact that you can be different and unique all on your own. You may want to follow in your idol’s footsteps, but you won’t make it to the end goal if you try to emulate someone else completely.

Accessing your creative intelligence is all about forging a new path – one made up of your own ideas, insights, innovations, and dreams. It is your life and your career, so you have to take the reins and steer in a new direction.

Being unique is an opportunity that a lot of creators don’t comprehend. Success comes from making the most of the cards you have been dealt in life, not avoiding them. There are plenty of different ways to get the same thing done.

If you can come up with a completely new way, it will not go unnoticed. The way in which you’re different from other people and their products is what will put you in the lead.

When it comes to product optimization and completely utilizing your skills, you’ll have to step out of your comfort zone, and into the bright lights. Even if it means taking a risk and a leap of faith, it’s the only way you’ll be able to harness your creative intelligence and succeed against your competitors.

Use Tools at Your Disposal to Highlight Your Creative Intelligence

As you embark on the journey of merging your creativity and your intelligence together, you should try different tools and techniques that will bring out the best of both. These tools should be utilized when you want to spice up your creative methods, and need a way to plan and organize all of your thoughts and ideas.

Mind Maps

Creating a mind map will help you make the connections between different ideas, and draw everything out in a way that makes sense in your brain. Since you are literally mapping out your brainstorming process, it may just lead you to the solution or product you’ve been searching for.

Storyboards

Storyboards are excellent if you need to organize a certain process into steps. You can even draw out your ideas, so that they fill up a picture, instead of just the far corner of your imagination.

You’ll be able to give numbers to each step of a process, and have a clear and cohesive path to follow when moving forward with your ideas. You can even rearrange the storyboard so that the ideas flow in a more logical method if you want to.

Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is the perfect release that your brain may need. By giving up the control factor and allowing your mind to be put at ease, you may have a completely new set of thoughts and ideas that come to you.

In order for the meditation to work, you have to be willing and able to let go, and find a place in your mind that is calm. You can find guided meditation apps and videos online that can help you find this creative release.

Reverse Thinking

A great way to change your perspective on your stagnant situation is to try the method of reverse thinking. When you ask yourself a question or have a problem to solve, think about the opposite way to phrase your problem, and try to solve that.

Taking your idea and reversing it will show you a completely new way to view the idea or problem, which could lead to new ideas and solutions. This is a simple, yet productive way to shake things up.

Riddles

Looking up different riddles and trying to solve them is a great way to get your brain working, and practicing your abilities to think creatively. But trying to create your own is a completely different puzzle to solve.

You have to be extremely creative if you can come up with your own special riddles that you made from scratch. It’s a great exercise to do when you want to challenge your mind.

Picture Association

Find different images, and try to draw connections between them. Or generate random images and create a story about them all. If you are looking for certain words or ideas, look at a picture and pick the first word that comes to mind.

Instead of turning the images in your mind to words, you are doing the opposite, which will help you create new perspectives. It doesn’t matter if it ties into the project you’re working on – the process itself will help your brain learn how to use this strategy when it needs to.

Checklists

Checklists are a great way to organize your brain and make a plan of everything you need to do. Whether they’re large tasks that will take time, or even small tasks, they will help you write out your thoughts on what you need to do.

This way, you can focus more time on creative thinking and product creation instead of getting bogged down in minute details that should be easily addressed with a checklist instead.

Doodling

Even if you aren’t very artistic, doodling is a creative way to get your thoughts flowing. It may seem meaningless, but allowing your mind to create lines and drawings is like turning a faucet on, and letting the first few jobs flow out.

Once you get some doodling out of the way, you’ll be ready to dive into the deeper things your mind has been holding onto, such as how to create an in-demand product or the best way to step up and serve your audience.

Explore Both Structured and Unstructured Options

When you’re learning something, coming up with new ideas, or working on product development, there are two paths you can take. You can go the structured route, which is more of a textbook way to go.

Using this method, you choose to learn from books, a class, a video, or something that directly teaches you what you should do or understand. This form of learning won’t challenge your mind as much, but it’s a necessary part of improving as a niche leader.

With structured ideas, you won’t be doing as much exploring of the mind. Structural ideas come from a more logical part of your brain – like creating a pros and cons list, where every idea is either one or the other.

This method will keep things more black and white in your mind, and may be more useful when it comes to making decisions. When you have a specific product, problem, or idea in mind, structural methods will help you stay on task.

If you go for the unstructured methods, the world of creativity tends to be more free. When you’re learning using this strategy, you’re teaching yourself by learning from your all possibilities – even the wrong ones.

Without structure, there is room for you to explore each lesson learned, and push yourself with challenges. When you’re foregoing structure when you brainstorm, you will find that your ideas can take flight in more colorful ways.

For example, you could sit down and brainstorm an idea by getting out an empty piece of paper and your favorite colorful pen. You could write down every thought that comes to mind, until there is an idea that you love.

The only worry with unstructured methods is the fact that you could end up with thirty different good ideas, instead of sticking to just one. The best method for your learning and brainstorming process is to combine both structured and unstructured methods.

Give yourself the creative freedom to brainstorm and let loose, while also creating a structural plan that keeps you on task and still helps you learn in the way that works best for you.

With a little bit of structure, you could plan on utilizing the tools and techniques mentioned earlier to completely embrace your creative intelligence. This is a strategy that most top leaders use, whether they label it as creative intelligence or not.

Only those who refuse to try new things stay stuck in a cycle of frustration having to watch as the competition outdoes them at every turn. You want more for yourself, and training your mind to tap into and cultivate creative intelligence is an easy and effective way to achieve that.

When doing most of the things you do in life, you do them because you have some kind of motivation occurring. There’s a reward delivered by the actions you take. The motivations that you have can be either intrinsic or extrinsic.

Sometimes only one will be present, but at times, both can be as well – and that’s a good thing. You can use these motivations to gain the ability to succeed in whatever you’re attempting to accomplish.

Some people fight their automatic motivation to rebel against completing a task or to help them avoid something they may have a fear of, or uncertainty. But if you learn how to wield the power of this force, you’ll be empowered to put your efforts to things that provide better opportunities and more personal satisfaction in your life.

Defining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the type of motivation that comes from within you. What you gain from this type of motivation is usually a feeling of satisfaction from your actions. You’re led by what you feel.

Those who act based on an intrinsic motivation typically like the journey better than the outcome. For example, there are people who work a job, not because they make plenty of money as their motivation, but because of their passion for the type of work they do.

Sometimes an intrinsic motivation can be linked to a cause or a purpose. For example, someone who grew up with a family member who struggled with a disease may grow up to become a doctor, not for the prestige or pay, but because they want to help others in the same situation, and it makes them feel good to do so.

On the opposite end, extrinsic motivation doesn’t rely on what a person feels or is necessarily passionate about. This can be a motivation that looks for what they gain from doing something.

Instead of becoming a doctor because they want to help someone, they might choose to become a doctor because they want the money or because they want others to think highly of them – maybe even because of parental pressure to go that route.

Instead of being motivated by what’s going on within themselves, they get their motivation from what’s going on outside of themselves. One of the issues that can make it more difficult to reach success based solely on extrinsic motivation is that, because it’s an external motivation, your motivation can change based on the outside situation and there may be nothing you can do to prevent that.

An example would be someone who wanted to become a doctor for the money or for the praise of others. If you found out that you were going to need to work in a setting where there was little or no recognition and the pay wasn’t that great, then your motivation to succeed would be affected and dwindle.

Because what motivated you is gone, you wouldn’t have the same drive to succeed as you would if the motivation was coming directly from within you. You’re less likely to continue to stay in a situation where your motivation isn’t being fed.

If you’re someone who decides to be an entrepreneur because you want to be your own boss to have more time off to spend with your family, you’re more likely to stick with it and see your tasks through to a successful end.

But if you’re someone who wants to be an entrepreneur just because you want to make a lot of money, when times are hard and little or no money is coming in, you won’t have the motivation needed to keep going.

How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Impact Success

Because both of these are motivations, you might think that intrinsic and extrinsic can be used the same way to help you succeed. They can’t. They’re different because the reward system each one brings differs.

But the good thing is that, even though they aren’t the same and don’t work the same way, they can be used in turn to boost the other motivation. For example, what you want outwardly can be used to boost an inward motivation.

It’s the same with intrinsic. What you want within you can be strengthened or more deeply motivated by what goes on externally. People who find their motivation from within often feel more complete with their success goals.

They believe that they can remain motivated for the long haul because they’re not affected by what happens outside of their inner drive. But you can take any extrinsic motivation and allow that to boost your inward motivation.

For example, you might be someone who has a strong desire to help others financially. You’re always giving money or items that others need. Maybe you’re involved in your community and you’re consistently donating to food banks or helping volunteer at an organization that helps the less fortunate.

All of that come from within you. You could have an extrinsic motivation to make more money at your job. So you take steps to level up so you bring home extra in your paycheck solely because you want that additional money to go toward helping others.

That is a way of using both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation jointly to gain inner satisfaction and find the success that you want to have. There is a strong overlap in certain areas of these motivations.

They can work together to help your success, but they can also work together and become an obstacle. The doctor that lives using intrinsic motivation who gets public recognition for helping a patient or saving a life can reach the point where the extrinsic motivation becomes more desirable.

So he begins to change his core beliefs, desires and motivation. Sometimes the two motivations can work in tandem to help you create success and give you a stronger motivation than if you were relying on one or the other.

But often, the extrinsic motivation can start to overshadow intrinsic motivation. That doesn’t mean that you should stick with just one type of motivation and never try to use both at once.

Because if they are used in the right way, together, they can strengthen your will to achieve and do whatever it is you’re trying to do. The key is to know which times you should rely on intrinsic motivation and which times you need to defer to extrinsic motivation.

Which Motivation Is Best for Success?

The answer is that it depends on you. Do you go out to spend time exercising because it makes you feel happy (intrinsic) or because you want to lose weight because you worry about what others think (extrinsic)?

The reason why you want to do something can help you understand which motivation is best for your success. Sometimes, combining the two is clear. You can want to exercise because it makes you happy and because you want to lose weight.

You can want to show up at work because you love your job and because you want the money. Doing what you want to do because you’re basing your actions on an intrinsic motivation satisfies the inner person.

If you gain something external, that’s good. If you don’t, you’re still okay with that.

Extrinsic usually has a “what’s in it for me” at the end of the journey. An example of how intrinsic and extrinsic can differ in daily life is that some people lie because their intrinsic motivation is not to hurt the other person’s feelings.

It makes them happy not to cause someone pain. An extrinsic motivation to lie could be because you don’t want to get in trouble for something you did or didn’t do. People who rely on intrinsic motivation are usually the ones who find success because they have an inner “why” that they rely on to do things.

When times get tough or obstacles crop up, they look within at their why and find the will to keep on going. Those using extrinsic motivation don’t have an inner “why” to fall back on.

It’s up to you to know when and how to use either or both of these types of motivations.

You’ll find that there will be times when your success comes easier because of the intrinsic motivation that you have.

No one can take this away from you. You’re the only one who can lose the inner will to succeed. For example, you join a mastermind group because you love learning about your niche.

However, you’ll also experience days when having an extrinsic motivation makes it easier to succeed. Those who rely on intrinsic motivation can have times where they just don’t feel like doing what needs to get done.

They may have set a goal to finish by a certain time, but then end up being too tired to accomplish a task. Because they don’t rely on the same reward factors that extrinsic motivation does, it’s easier for them to let go of doing something when they don’t feel up to it.

If you’re motivated extrinsically, then you can often see or touch the motivating factor once it’s accomplished. Like smaller clothes with the lost pounds, more money in the paycheck, etc.

Combining Your Motivations for Success

You can choose to let your motivations be either intrinsic or extrinsic. But if you look at a history of successful people, they relied on both. Finding a way to bring both motivations onboard so that they help you work toward your goals is the best way to succeed.

Some people swear that intrinsic motivation is the only way to gain success. Having an inner motivation or intrinsic one pushes you to achieve. You’re not going to give up just because the circumstances or the people change.

It’s true that relying on this type of motivation allows you to be satisfied through the ups and the downs. You’re often grateful for what you have and see the good even when things aren’t going well because you look inward.

But you don’t have to be an either/or person when it comes to how you use motivation. Having an extrinsic motivation can push you to achieve because, at the end of the goal, the reason you were striving bears fruit.

You get the promotion, you get the money, you get the diploma, you buy the car, you purchase the home, etc. Though you can rely on one motivation or the other, learning how to harness the power of both can make you more successful.

The key is to find the underlying strength in both types at the same time or through the same situation and put them to work for you. If you’re someone who wants to go to college because you want to embrace learning and grow your knowledge, that’s intrinsic.

But wanting to do that because it means you can level up in your career is extrinsic. You can mesh the two together and it gives more strength to the motivation to succeed. Though some people say it’s best to focus on one or the other type of motivation, it’s not – because everyone has some type of inner motivation just like they have an external one.

It’s not important that you choose only one way of motivating yourself and stick with that. What’s important is that you know how much to let either type of motivation drive you.

You can easily get out of balance by relying solely on one or the other just like you can get out of balance if you use both but let one have more weight on the decisions that you make.

For example, if you’re someone who relies only intrinsic motivation, you might be on salary and love your job and support the business to the point that you take on too much work and spend too many hours without receiving any reward for doing so.

Or, you might have trouble saying no to a coworker who wants you to do some of their tasks, too. By balancing the intrinsic with the external, you can still love your job, but because the payoff of not earning more for spending more time isn’t there, you won’t stick around for all those extra hours because there’s nothing in it for you.

Boosting Your Motivations

There are different ways that these two types of motivation are boosted to give you maximum ability to achieve success. You’ll want to look at these ways and pick the ones that can help you the most.

Intrinsic relies more heavily on internal happiness or satisfaction. Gaining better work or relationship skills can boost your intrinsic motivation. The areas where you might find these would be in taking a class or course, going to a meeting, networking with others in your field or with others who also find satisfaction in their job or relationship.

Many intrinsic motivations are intangible. You can’t touch it, but you can feel it. That’s why it’s important for people who rely on intrinsic motivation to practice positive self-talk. Because much of their action taking is associated with the feelings they get from the tasks they accomplish.

This motivation often requires more introspect than extrinsic motivation. People who use intrinsic motivation need to be able to look within themselves and be able to acknowledge truthfully what they want.

Not being truthful causes them to get discouraged because their “why” isn’t authentic. Those who want to boost their intrinsic motivation can find success by following what feels right to them.

It may go against what everyone else is saying or what’s always been done in a traditional way. The things that can boost your extrinsic motivation are the things that matter to you as far as your life goals.

These people want to achieve for a specific purpose that usually doesn’t relate to feelings. Though some say that an extrinsic motivation is more self-centered, the truth is that it’s human nature to want rewards and recognition for what you gain or do and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Your extrinsic motivation is boosted every time you receive something related to your efforts. When you perform well at your job and get a raise, that strengthens your extrinsic motivation to push yourself to continue succeeding.

Connections with people you admire is another way that extrinsic motivation gets boosted. An example of this would be if your hard work earns you a lot of focus from others and it comes to the attention of those you consider your role models.

The reward of connecting with someone you admire solidifies your motivation. Giving yourself the rewards, intrinsically or extrinsically, that you need will help you not only to feel satisfied with your efforts but will lead to a greater chance that you’ll achieve all your goals and reach success in whatever area you’re striving in.

When you’re working to build an online empire as a marketer, you have many skills to learn – from technical steps to strategic ones. When it comes to technical issues, there’s little, if any wriggle room on how to do things.

But with strategy, you’ll find a wide range of views on what works best to do things like build a list, get someone to click a buy button, or follow through on some other call to action you desire.

One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that you need to master the art of persuasion. Whether you’re trying to convince someone to hand over their contact information in exchange for a free gift – or urging a consumer to buy your product before the price goes up, persuasion is what will make the endeavor a success or failure.

There are five primary things you need to understand when working on your ability to persuade your audience. Once you’re capable of grasping these issues, you’ll be able to put forth a formidable campaign that easily and quickly helps you convert your visitor with a specific action step.

Persuasion Starts with Credibility of the Source

The foundation of your ability to convince a stranger to do something with your online business lies in their opinion of the presence you have established on the Internet. If you have failed to create a brand, your visitor may not want to take the risk of spending money or investing in any way with you – even spending their time with you or giving their contact information to you.

If you have done the bare minimum to convince people of your niche expertise, they may decide to go with another leader who shows more commitment and dedication to their needs.

But if you have laid a strong foundation where you have showcased your knowledge, it will be easier for you to persuade your audience in whatever you want them to do. Consumers are always looking for credibility when they are considering spending money with someone.

Your credibility will be built with the things that you share in terms of content. But it’s also made up of other criteria. For example, the accuracy of the information you put out has to be high.

If you are guessing about things or slapping up content that is erroneous, your visitors will flee to another site because they won’t be able to trust your recommendations and advice.

Another thing they will be looking for is whether or not you are honest with them. There are many online marketers who engage in everything from telling little white lies to those who turn out to be complete scammers.

If you are creating a product or working as an affiliate marketer, it’s imperative that you learn how to persuade people without having to lie. Consumers can see through most lies and hype, and it will almost always backfire on you in the long run to be anything less than honest and ethical.

Another thing they will be looking for when trying to determine whether or not you are a credible resource is how well liked you are in the community. While it’s not a popularity contest, social proof gives consumers the peace of mind they need to go through with an action step that supports you.

Convert Visitors with a Targeted Message

One way you can connect with your visitors and persuade them to take action is to have a clear and concise message. Most of you who are reading this report have landed on a website or blog that was confusing, disorganized, and left you bewildered as to what you were supposed to do next.

Whether you are selling your own product or promoting something as an affiliate, you always want to start by conveying the benefits of the product or strategy before you cover the features.

People are almost always in a mindset of, “What’s in it for me?” They are focused on their own needs, and there is nothing wrong with that. So you want to paint the picture of how their life will improve if they take your advice.

When you get to the facts and key points to be made, you want to list them in order of importance to your prospective audience – like an inverted pyramid, with the biggest ones first.

You may even need to casually repeat certain main points that you want them to absorb to make sure the point gets across. If you’re writing sales copy, don’t focus on how long it needs to be, but rather what information your audience needs to know, which will be a mixture of details about a product and the emotional impact it will have on their life.

You always want to tap into the emotional response they will be focused on from the past, present, or future. You can convey empathy with them based on the emotions they have experienced that may include anger, frustration, sadness, confusion, fear, etc., but also where they are right in that moment – the split in the road where they get to possibly carve out a better future

When you are painting a picture for your audience, you want to ensure that you have a mixture of showcasing the pain you know they’re going through and what they will gain if they take your advice and follow through on the next step.

Keep in mind that many consumers can pick up on the tone that you are using in your content, whether it’s a blog post or sales copy. Make sure that your tone matches the goal that you have to persuade them to do something.

For example, if you want them to trust you and feel comfortable enough handing over their contact details to get on your list and be nurtured in their niche, then you don’t want to have a harsh and brutal tone that intimidates them.

There are some instances where a brutal and blunt tone of voice does work well. There are many people who want someone to not coddle them and instead push them toward their goals, such as weight loss.

You always want your content to come across as if you are writing to a friend, the reader. They should never feel that the content is for everyone, even though logically they know that it is.

Consumers Are Often Swayed By One Type of Medium

Persuasion is a strategic tool you can use in a variety of ways. In order to reach your audience, you have to be able to speak their language. In this case, it means conveying your message in a media format that they feel most comfortable with.

Different niche markets and demographics have different preferences, as do individuals within those groups. For example, people who have a short attention span often prefer to watch videos that are under three or 10 minutes in length.

There are some people who hate video, and instead prefer to read text so that they can skim at their own pace. You will also have those who prefer to see messages distilled in a single image, such as an infographic.

And others will turn to audio, such as a podcast or audiobook to hear the message without having to be focused on it visually at that time. Many people like to use audio to absorb information if they are multitasking, such as exercising, cleaning, commuting, or even relaxing in a bath.

Make sure that you take time to investigate the most common media formats for your niche. Not only will the niche itself often reflect a particular preference for video, text, images or audio, but you may find these preferences depend on where they are being placed.

For example, you may find that your target audience prefers and is more easily persuaded by text based content on your blog or on social media, but on sales pages, they convert higher with a video sales letter, or at least a hybrid version that includes text.

You’re going to need to analyze more than just the media format itself. For example, don’t just automatically assume that you can make a 20 minute video sales letter and have it convert as well as a text based sales letter.

It may turn out that your audience only responds positively to the persuasive efforts when the video is no more than 3 minutes total. If you are using text, many things can affect those conversions as well, including the font style that’s used, the size of the font and spacing, the length of your sentences and paragraphs, and more.

Positioning of Your Content Is Key to Conversions

The ability that you have to persuade people may depend on where you are trying to do it. For example, many people don’t like being persuaded to buy something directly in their email inbox.

They see it as spam in some cases. However, they may respond more positively if your email to them directs them to your blog, which is then shown to be a valuable piece of content that ultimately directs them to something for sale.

You’ll want to test the waters and see how your audience responds to your efforts of persuasion in many different places. For example, you’ll want to start by determining which social networking sites house your target audience.

You may find that you are able to create a thriving group on Facebook, and easily convince people on that site to take action on your advice. But when you go to Instagram and try to get the same reaction, it falls flat.

Persuasive content is used everywhere that you will be communicating with your audience online. You can start by practicing on your blog posts. Get in the habit of making sure you have generated a targeted message, as we previously discussed, and end each post with a call to action.

That doesn’t mean you have to be selling something in every blog post. But consumers like it when they walk away with a purpose after reading content that has inspired and motivated them to make changes.

Another place you can go to persuade your audience is on social sites and forums. Both of these platforms allow you to use relevant wording and connect with the audience in an emotional and factual manner.

It also allows you to enjoy what’s known as social proof. If you’re strictly trying to persuade people via email, there is no social proof that they can see that tells them others are following your leadership.

But on social media platforms, you will see like buttons, share buttons, and comments that all work to prove to your audience that others are taking your insight and advice seriously.

Leveling Up with an Analysis of Your Persuasive Efforts

As you begin methodically investing in your ability to persuade your target audience to take action, you want to make sure that you don’t ignore the results or assume you know the outcome.

You want to consistently tweak and alter what you are doing to see if you can improve your persuasion abilities. You may find that initially, everything you tried had a lackluster response.

But by split testing certain styles and strategies, you are able to begin gaining traction and getting the results that you want. You can do this with every aspect of your online communication.

From where you post to the tone of your content, the media format you choose and your own ability to grow your brand as a credible source – all of it will have a direct impact on whether your visitor walks away unimpressed or takes a leap of faith and engages with you as you requested.

You will find some things didn’t work at all, while others had a small, positive effect. You may have to abandon certain strategies, and take those that performed a little and tweak them until they are hitting it out of the ballpark for you.

You will have to track a variety of statistics, including bounce rates or heat maps of where your visitors are exiting your content so that you know what part of your sales copy or site is causing readers to abandon you.

Make sure you are always keeping an eye out for what your competitors are doing in the niche. You may find that some of them are utilizing a strategy, tone or slant that you had not considered yet.

That doesn’t mean you go and copy them. But it does give you insight into understanding what it is your target audience responds better to so that you can craft your own approach that is competitive in the marketplace.

Learning how to persuade people is something that may feel intimidating to newer online marketers. You may feel like an impostor trying to present yourself as a leading expert if you are just getting started.

However, unless you can muster up the confidence to put yourself out there as a competitive brand, and take the action steps needed to strategically improve your efforts, you will be unable to get the results that you want and need.