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Hey Folks,

The last 2 post about Goals and Dreams had generated a fair amount of discussion, which is good and I am very happy about it. If you would like to read about them, Click here and here.

In this post I would like to establish the fact that everyone has goals and dreams based on my observations of people around me. The only difference is whether they know it consciously or not and if they know how to achieve it or not. I categorize them into 4 types of people and here’s the matrix and their relative state of consciousness (about their goals) and their competency in achieving them:

Day Dreamers
Majority of the working class belongs here, unfortunately. They have a general goal in life, probably defined as “I need to work for a living, raise a family, enjoy while I can while staying out of trouble, hope my boss don’t fire me before I reach sixty, hope I am not too sick by then to tour the world while still have enough money to finance my retirement“.

Their goals/dreams are somewhere in their head, never written down, never shared but it’s there. Even if you manage to convince them that they have a goal, they will have no idea how to properly plan, execute and achieve it. Their idea of planning and execution following the trend of work hard and work even harder. Rings a bell?

The Dreamers
Like in the show, The Matrix, these group of people have taken the pill and has waken to the idea of what a goal is and how useful and helpful to have one written down and to focus on. They have taken the first leap towards achieving great things in life with a focus on the goals they set.

Most new entrepreneurs falls in this category.

The Motivated
This group of people are a positive and determined lot. They normally follow their guts or higher calling and they take actions to get what they want. Your working class high fliers who seemed to achieve greatness out of no where commonly falls into this class.

Generally, they will progress to become an Achiever halfway through their career once “take the pill”. It is an easy step for them as they are a motivated lot to start with.

The Achievers
All successful people falls into this lot! Believe it or not.

They know their goals/dreams.

They plan for it and take massive actions to achieve it.

They are unwavering in their determination.

That is why they are successful.

What Shall It Be
So which group do you belong to? It’s your chance to talk again.

Cheers
James

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Hey Folks,

In our last post, “What Are Goals and Goal Setting?“, I invited you to share with me your opinions and I am very happy that I got a warm response offering different opinions. I love every single one of those comment and I thank you for sharing with me. Keep them coming.

Goals Need to Be Real?
One of the comments in the last post was this:

I disagree with Napoleon Hill’s definition.
Goals are too reality-based to be dreams.

It is a perfectly normal perspective and I was, for the better part of my adult life, thinking the same way. In my ex-profession as an engineer, I had to have goals that stick to reality. No doubt that whatever I plan for was “on solid ground” but the goals always lacks inspiration and excitement. Hence, I never really found anything worth pursuing on a long term basis.

Can Dreams Be A Goal?
Since I embraced the idea that I should set goals that I can dream about, I have found excitement in setting goals again. The excitement drives me forward, drives me to take action and I have found myself in place and situations that I would never otherwise have thought possible. Such as being a full time blogger, such as being able to share my experience and share positive thoughts reaching out to hundreds and thousands of people.

Would all this be possible if I had a reality-based dream? I think not.

Are Dreamy Goals Natural?
In fact, it is my belief that it is a natural thing for us to dream and dream big. Children’s dream a lot. They never really understood the difficulties of achieving what they want but it doesn’t stop them from dreaming. Here are some examples:

- They dream about being famous actors or actresses when they can’t even read a script
- They dream about being doctors even when they are scared stiff at the sight of a nurse with a syringe.
- They dream about being teachers but hate the spelling test they are getting from them

They are not afraid to dream and some of them do become what they dream they would be one day.

So What’s Missing

“If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.”
- Henry David Thoreau

So, can dreams become good goals? Absolutely, as dreams are typically inspirational and motivating by nature. You just need to have a direction and a plan to achieve it (that’s the foundation). Does that make sense to you? Now is your turn to talk.

Cheers
James

Don’t Miss This: Need a tool to plan your dreams? Subscribe For The Ladder Of Dreams on the left side bar.

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Hey Folks,

For the next couple of posts, I’ll be writing on Goals, Goal Setting and related topics.

I know most of you, my dear friends and readers, are familiar with what a goal is and you have probably done some goal settings at one point or another in your life. But for the benefit of those who might be new to the topic, let’s have a recap on what a goal is and what goal setting is about.

Wiktionary defines a goal as “A result one is attempting to achieve” but I love Napoleon Hill’s way of defining a goal:

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
- Napoleon Hill

This is the closest definition of Goal Setting which I personally prefer that I found at The Magic of Goal Setting:

“Goal setting in broad terms is the process of
deciding on something you want,
planning how to get it,
and then working towards the objective.”

Do you have a different idea of what a goal is? Or what goal setting should be? Do leave a comment and share it with us.

Cheers
James

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Focus On Market Research
Market Research is usually done at the beginning of a marketing life cycle where you decide which market or industry you would like your business to focus on. Or it could be done when you are identifying new products or sub-niches to add to your current niche or marketing segment.

Keyword researches, analysis of competitors, marketing plans and strategies to penetrate a market should be a focus here. But don’t dwell on it too long as opportunities come and goes. Once you have identified what you want, plan and execute it.

Focus On Site Design
Site Design is usually a focus before you launch a site/blog but it should not stop there. Continuous improvement is a necessity in fine tuning your site/blog to make it easy for readers to subscribe your RSS, comment on your articles and opt in to your mailing list.

A Good site design makes reading visiting your site/blog a pleasant experience where advertisements are merged seamlessly into or around your content and archived articles are easy to find. It will also encourage readers to help you drive your traffic by sharing your articles through Web 2.0 buttons/link and convert readers to clients.

Focus On Content Creation
Every person has a wealth of content to share. You may think that what you know has already been shared but I can promise you that your perspective has not been shared before. It’s yours and it’s unique and that’s what your readers want to know. When they like your style and perspective, that’s when you convert them from visitors to readers.

If you think you have no content to share, then surf the web and read up on contents! Once you find contents related to your niche, track back to that article and give your views on it. Never copy and paste, unless you get express permission to do so.

So who says you have no content? Your views and perspective are your unique content!

Focus On Tracking Results
In order to know if you have done something right and to allow you to focus on what brings you the best results, you will need to test and measure. In Online business terms, it means tracking your traffic source and sales conversion. If you know where you are getting results from, you can tune your marketing activities to drive maximum results with the least effort.

Tracking Results does not take a lot of time, just set things up at the beginning and monitor it once a day follow by an analysis of the results once a week. Fine tune or discard activities that bring little or no results, focus more time and effort on activities that gives the best result or add new activities and track the performance.

Focus On Driving Traffic
Driving Traffic must be the most talk about topic in any online business. Every single site/blog that talks about internet marketing, online business or making money online will have a whole section (if not all the content) on this topic alone. So what I’ll highlight here is this, Driving Traffic is just the beginning. You will also need to focus on the next 2 items below to make driving those traffic worth it’s while.

Focus On Traffic Retention
So you have a good niche, a fantastically designed site, added great content and drove a ton of traffic. What if you did not retain them? You start from ground zero again the next day. Kind of lame right? This is exactly the case where many sites/blogs have stagnant growth - traffic surge at the beginning and then levels off, never to grow again.

What’s lacking here is the lack of a Traffic Retention policy. Offering a weekly/monthly ezine, offering full feed RSS, hosting a forum for discussion, interacting with readers that comment are some strategies to retain your traffic. Focus on these and you will build up your traffic to new heights over time.

Focus On Selling
It does not matter if you are selling a product, service or information. It does not matter if you are canvassing for a cause or charity. It does not matter if you are promoting a way of life or belief. It is all marketing and the end result is that you need to sell something.

Selling a product, service, information requires the same process as selling an idea, belief or donation. And unless you learn how to sell effectively, one of your main objective of your site/blog will not be met. So the focus you need here is a call to action.

Focus On SEO
If you have configured a self hosted wordpress blog properly, you are pretty optimized for SEO already. What you need to focus on is to optimized your headlines and articles with keywords and key phrases to attract more organic traffics. If you are not on a self hosted wordpress, it’s time you think about it.

How To Focus
If you are now suffering from information over load or at a lost about what to focus on, you need some help. On the left side bar, there is a free tool known as The Ladder Of Dreams. It has been proven to help online entrepreneurs set a clear path to their goals and keep them tightly focused on the critical activities they need to take action upon to achieve success.

Go ahead and download it, it’s FREE.

Cheers
James

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to teach internet marketing or how do you carry out an online business. It does highlight the crucial areas that an online business should focus on and some activities which are commonly neglected by internet marketers and online entrepreneurs.

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Hey Folks,

This post was inspired by a post I read at positiveblog.com about “7 habits of highly ineffective people” and since I just met up with more then 700 hundred internet markets last month. I thought what I am going to be sharing here would help online entrepreneurs hugely.

Addicted To Traffic Statistic
Tracking your traffic is important to any internet marketer. It tells you what works and what don’t. It also tells you what is your traffic, sales and opt-in’s are from. But you just need to check it once a day, maybe twice. If you find yourself checking your statistics every 30 minutes. You are addicted!

Tell you something, it doesn’t matter if you check it 50 times a day or 1 time a day, it won’t increase your sales. Once a day is enough to see a short term trend or if your newly implemented tactic is working. Once a week is good enough to check if your strategy is working well enough for you and which source provides good traffic. Got it?

Addicted To Instant Messaging
I seldom use IM but I know a couple of fellow bloggers who are IM fanatics who cannot get off IM. True, it’s a good way to build relationship online and provide support for friends but there are times where IM is a pain. If you don’t know how to control your IM, it will interrupt your schedules at the most inconvenient time.

The result? At best, you take a longer time to complete your task. At worst, whatever you wanted to do never gets done. You might want to consider setting up a time where you will switch on your IM. Let your online friends and buddies know about the timing and you get to network with them during that window. This way, you get the best of both worlds

Addicted To Email
I guess in some ways, anyone with an email account are in some ways addicted to email. Similar to traffic statistic, we tend to check this all too often. Sometime people get so carried away, they just stare at the screen willing another email to pop in. It is as if you are some kind of pest control guys wanting to get rid of every pest and the emails are the rodents.

Let’s face it, unless you are working as a online tech support, you don’t need to check your email that often. The emails won’t run away and it won’t self destruct. So, just like our solution for traffic statistics, check your email once or twice a day is sufficient. I check mine once in the morning and once at night.

Addicted To Web 2.0 Site
Now the new fave of the internet are Web 2.0 sites or what is commonly known as social networking sites. It’s fun with loads of information, people to meet and interesting stuffs to do. It is actually a marketing haven for Internet Marketers to socialize and get to show off their wares. All Internet Marketers should get involved in Social Networking Sites if they are serious about their online business.

What’s wrong here is that some marketers get too addicted to a particular site and that’s all they do - Stick to one site. Now, it’s good to be focus but you need to move on after you have build up the rapport and credibility to “explore new land”. Sticking to just One or Two sites just don’t cut it. Think about it.

Addicted To Finding The Next New Thing
I know everyone is looking for the latest and greatest in Free Traffic Strategies, Viral Marketing Tool, etc. How I know? I am one of them too.

But what’s important here is when you find one, stick to it, put some time and effort in getting it to work. Once you get it to generate a decent, if not outrageous, kind of traffic then you move on. What many marketers do is to sign up and leave it on it’s own and start looking for the next big thing again.

Do you really think it’s gonna work that way? I don’t.

Addicted To Surfing
Now don’t get me wrong. As part of an internet marketers daily routine, you will have to surf the internet and surf a lot at that. The problem is after sometime, some marketers get addicted to surfing and surf for the sake of surfing! What do I mean by that?

Look, an internet marketer surfs for publicity, knowledge and relationship building. Even if you are not a internet marketer, this applies to you if you wish to promote your charity site, online dairy or share your secret. Wherever you go, leave a trace and by that I mean a comment, a remark on visitors log, a reply on a forum, a note to the author, etc.

You have already hit the site and read the post why not leave a trace? Think about it.

Are they Bad?
The 6 things above are important tools or habits for any internet marketers if used in the right dosage. Going overboard and getting addicted will be counter productive and side track you from your real goal. So take some time to think over and I invite you to share your experience and thoughts about them.

Cheers
James

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