It never fails, you know.

You wake up one morning, bound set and determined to create the most glorious of soul-searingly beautiful posts on your blog (or perhaps in your product)…

… fling yourself out of bed, stride confidently to your computer, pull up your New Post blank slate and…..

… and ….

… and (cue the cricket chirps that sound oddly like a bazillion mini-Godzillas who are lacking their daily dietary fill of smooshed cities)…

and, well, your mind suddenly is terrifyingly….

Blank.

Blanker than blank!

Why, if there was a 4-H competition for the blankest of slates written in the stars of destiny, alas, you would NOT win (stars? I mean really, stars?) BUT…

The fact still remains.

Your mind is blank.

What can you write about?

Oh, sure, you could write about how many suburbs Godzilla should consume to maintain a healthy diet, but chances are, your blog (or product) is NOT about the Care and Feeding of Random Kaiju NOT named Kevin!

No indeed.

Instead, you discover that you are faced with the dreaded (insert ominous music tone here) Writers Block.

Luckily for you, you live in the Age of the Internet, which you can tarzan-swing your way to Google and find goodies like:

www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/20-ways-to-kill-your-writers-block-forever.html

This rather interesting post contains gems like:

Do a mind map. Get off the computer and make a visual drawing of your topic’s ideas and how they relate to each other. Soon, you’ll not just have ideas for your current post, but ideas on how that one might lead to related, future posts.

Turn off the Internet. Do you find yourself playing Bejeweled or checking Twitter when it’s writing time? Write on a pad of paper instead, or use programs such as Anti-Social or Freedom to disable social media or Internet access until you’re done writing. (yes yes yes!)

Try a writing prompt. If you can’t get the juices flowing, do a writing exercise — writing prompts are available on sites such as Creative Copy Challenge.

and other ideas as well.

Fact is, writer’s block can hit just about anyone and cause you to run scampering back to hiding under your comforter, hoping that tomorrow would dawn along with 928 fresh exciting ideas.

Fact is part 2 – that never happens, alas. Oh sure the hiding part is very enjoyable (especially if you either a.) can hide with someone or b.) bring your laptop under your comforter except that gets real old real fast.

But I digress.

Make no mistake about it – you CAN break writers block! Heck, you could even create a 1 page cheatsheet about the topic too like so:

Step 1.) Pull yourself away from the computer

Step 2.) Read your fav stories and allow your subconscious mind to work uninterrupted and see what might materialize

Step 3.) Check out other resources for Hulkizing your Writers Block

Resources for the above include:

galadarling.com/article/100-things-to-do-instead-of-procrastinating-on-the-internet/

www.hongkiat.com/blog/challenge-to-disconnect/

interestingliterature.com/2017/07/05/the-best-david-gemmell-novels-everyone-should-read/ (And the order is wrong. By FAR the best novel is Legend – The main character – Druss the Legend.
Druss is a living legend – the best Drenai warrior ever, but he is 60 years old. He suffers from a bad knee and a bad shoulder, but he tries to overcome his age to inspire young soldiers facing a terrible enemy.

After that, go straight to Midnight Falcon. And then read everything else in between.

Oh my look at that. I digressed again. Where was I? Ah yes!

leesavino.com/101-ways-to-break-writers-block/

Your takeaway?

Writer’s block happens but it does NOT have to stop you!

Instead, step back, take a breather, watch Godzilla King of the Monsters and realize that Gidorah’s 3rd head is Kevin :

and realize…

This too, shall pass.

Enjoy!

Standing out on the web seems like an impossible feat these days, with new blogs springing up by the minute and everyone and their mother touting new ways to make money online. While there are plenty of steps you can take to stand out and improve your online reputation, there is one area of consideration that is continually overlooked: how you appear offline.

Offline indicators are referenced more often than we think and taking the time to improve them can give you an easy leg up on the competition, especially when they haven�t even stopped to consider what their offline profile even looks like.� Although the following areas can cost a little bit of money to get established, they go along away in terms of improving your brand and will definitely provide a healthy return on investment in the long run.

Register your business

You can operate a blog and accept payments via PayPal in your own name, but forming an LLC or corporation gives you the opportunity to operate under a formal corporate identity. This formal registration will come in handy in numerous different situations, from shielding your personal identity to getting listed in directories to making customers more comfortable doing business with you. Most people feel more comfortable sending money to or contracting with an actual business, so you should definitely take the leap and register your company today.

Registering a Limited Liability Company (LLC) is probably the route best suited for online businesses and blogs, and registering one is as simple as filing a few pieces of paper with your state. LegalZoom is a good place to get this taken care of.

List a mailing address

A physical location where you can be found is best, but most online businesses don�t have a formal office and thus can�t list their address. This is fine. A P.O. Box from your local post office will do the trick, and it costs less than $100 per year (in most areas).

With a P.O. Box, you gain a mailing address in your locality that you can list as your business address and utilize to accept business related correspondence. It goes great on your �Contact Us� page and can be set up in the name of your business (if you�ve gone through the previous step already). Obviously more dubious operations can obtain a P.O. Box as well, so having one isn�t your ticket to legitimacy, but having a mailing address in combination with the other items listed here will work wonders.

Publish a phone number

Not many thieves of conmen make it easy to reach them on the phone, which is why publishing a phone number associated with your business is a great way to improve your legitimacy. Thanks to Google Voice, establishing a dedicated phone number is amazingly easy to do, and free.

You can keep this step free by simply recording your own formal voicemail greeting and asking callers to leave the message. To step things up to the next level, you may consider forwarding calls to your cell phone and answering in the name of your business, or hiring a small business answering service to answer calls on your behalf.

For a monthly fee, an answering service will answer in the name of your firm and follow specific instructions that you lay out for them, including scripting for specific types of calls and methods for delivering your messages. This step is probably overkill for most small businesses, but it does add a level of professionalism that isn�t easily found on the web. If people can travel to your website, find a phone number, and then actually dial that number to reach a live person, it says a lot about your operation.

Conclusion

These are just a few things you can do offline that will ultimately help you stand out on the web. Each will allow you to expand the information available on your business, help people research and contact you, and clearly distinguish you from other websites that aren�t as formally established.

Do you have your own tips for improving your legitimacy and standing out from the competition? Please share them and help add to this list!

Standing Out Online By Improving Your Offline Legitimacy from Myblog2day

I used to try Google Adwords at least once per year to see if I could get it to work for us, but I just couldn’t get it to be cost effective. We even hired highly rated Adwords professionals to try to get it going with a decent return on investment, and even they failed to do so. The reason I kept coming back for more every year was for one reason. Our competitors’ ads never went away. Why would they keep advertising year after year if all they were doing was losing money?

In 2015 we hired yet another company to setup and test a variety of campaigns (search, display, dynamic retargeting and shopping ads), and once again, they were unable to make them profitable, despite all of the initial promises. So we canned the company, and put all of the campaigns on pause, and once again went back to working on other areas of our businesses.

In 2016 we concentrated primarily on improving our product ranges, setting up proper email campaigns (popups, abandoned cart sequences, after sales sequences) and improving on-site conversion elements (adding product videos etc.). The combined effect of which significantly improved our conversion rate and average order value. Out of curiosity, I unpaused all of our adwords campaigns, and lo and behold, the majority of them were now profitable.

Doh.

It seems so obvious in hindsight, but we never had a cost-per-click problem, we had a sales funnel problem. From that point on, we look at PPC very differently. Now we do what it takes to get our ad to a top position in adwords, and then if it’s not profitable, instead of pausing the ad, we try to figure out how to make it profitable. Think about it. If your goal is to dominate your niche, you need to figure out how to be profitable at #1 everywhere you can be. If you sell headphones for example, and you are losing money when you bid for related keywords, instead of giving up on adwords, try to figure out why you aren’t converting enough (or making enough) to make it profitable. Are your profit margins too low? Do you have an adequately converting website or email sequence? Maybe you need to increase the lifetime value of your customers through a better post purchase email sequence? Maybe you don’t have retargeting setup properly and your adwords competitors do?

So here’s your challenge. Don’t wait for adwords to be profitable – make it profitable. Because if you don’t, your competitor will.

The post Why Your Competition Can Afford Google Adwords And You Can’t appeared first on How To Make Money Online With Niche Ecommerce.

Ever wake up one day with a massive backache…

… on that cries out for:

* 7928 canes (7,927 backup ones, see)

* Unreadable gel that feels like warm cozy liquid lava

* 32 cups of coffee with chili peppers

?

Hmmm?

Well if so, being gentle to yourself is a wondrous idea!

And if not…

What about instead….

Pouncing full force on the greatness of business integrations?

What’s business integrations, I hear you ask?

So glad that question has arisen!

blog.hubspot.com/marketing/integrations

has a great article about it, including:

“Integrations connect your software to third-party applications so they can share information with each other. They share data from one system to the next which provides you with more features and options while using your software.”

Lots of nifty examples are provided, but I myself personally love the integrations available at:

ifttt.com

zapier.com

These allow you to construct:

IF This Then That (ifttt!)

For example, you could create a recipe that states:

If you update your blog, send that blog over to your tumblr automatically!

Or

If your plant soil is too dry, send you a reminder to water your plants.

Good stuff!

You could even create a cool 1 page cheatsheet like so:

Step 1.) Determine where the majority of your content originates (blog posts? FB posts? Linkedin posts? Slack posts?)

Step 2.) Decide where to send that content

Step 3.) Construct the IFTTT or Zap to make it happen!

Resources to assist you include:

www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/best-ifttt-recipes/

www.juicer.io/blog/most-useful-ifttt-recipes-for-small-businesses

workbrighter.co/how-to-use-zapier/

themeisle.com/blog/wordpress-zapier-recipes/

Your takeaway?

You don’t have to do everything by yourself…

Why not take advantage of these free tools already available to help you save time and build profit?

Enjoy!