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2 ways on How to set up affiliate marketing website

Becoming an affiliate marketer is an awesome way to earn extra money. It can soon become your full-time income if you work hard enough.

If you are here, you are probably thinking about setting up your affiliate marketing business. This post is only going to deal with the website itself. Before you do this step, it is important that you have your strategy in place. This includes:

  • Select your niche. This might be kites or knitting or fashion
  • Doing your product and services research so you know what to market
  • Your Marketing Strategy. SEO or ADs or SOCIAL, or some combination
  • Domain name

Once you have decided this, you can find out how to set up an affiliate marketing website. These are the options you have.

The almost free route

If you have no money you have to learn how to make an affiliate website for free. You need to get googling. But basically, you are going to:

  • Find hosting for your site (Cheap) (Bluehost offers cheap options to get started)
  • Build the site from watching videos and reading blogs (Free)
  • Start building the content and affiliate links into your site (Your time)
  • Build an email list through capture on a landing page (Your time)

Learn How to start affiliate marketing with no money?

The Outsourced Route


You have some money. Get a professional to build the site for you. This will give you time to work on the business. You can focus all your time on the money-making part. Product research, marketing material, and possibly Paid Ads.

Learn How to Start an Online Business Doing What Your Love?

Conclusion

Getting your creativity on and building an affiliate site can be mentally and financially rewarding.

You’ll learn a lot about your selected niche, business in general, and how online business works. You’ll find there are so many aspects, that once you start making money, you’ll pay someone else to do the parts that are hard.

Find out more on How Social Media Can Accelerate the Growth of Your Business?

Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!

With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.

Your Business. Your Terms. Online. Anywhere.

The Best Ways to Learn Digital Marketing Online?

Often we don’t have the knowledge, skills, or experience to execute what we want to achieve. When it comes to starting an online business this is more often than not a reason many shy away from even starting. The digital world requires a unique set of skills and this can be a hurdle to overcome. We look at how you can learn digital marketing skills online, and why a mentorship program can save you time and money.

Here are four approaches to learning Digital Marketing?

1. Google It!

The simple way to learn anything these days is using Google to search for topics you are interested in. You will no doubt find a plethora of information at your fingertips. YouTube also can be a fantastic resource for learning about any subject in a visual way.

Disadvantages

One of the biggest challenges most people find when researching a broad topic is the accuracy and credibility of the information. One has to do thorough research and double or triple-check that everything people are sharing is true.

Another is fragmentation. The internet may be a library of information at your fingertips but it’s not organized. That means you will find yourself doing a lot of duplicate reading and watching to extract all the information you need. This can waste a lot of time and be very frustrating especially when learning new topics.

2. eBooks

Books are a great way to learn, they can present information in a way that is both organized and practical. In contrast to researching online, books can present information in a format that is more organized than researching online.

Disadvantages

Although books are a great way to learn, they are not for everyone and can be difficult to grasp concepts that are more technical. If you’ve ever tried to study a new subject and get to sections that you really struggle to understand it can be frustrating which often leads you to abandon your learning.

3. Online Courses

There are many online learning platforms that can help you get started in any subject. There are some platforms aimed at specific industries and many courses by people within certain professions selling courses based on their real world experience.

Disadvantages

An online course will give you a good foundation of knowledge but might not give you all the tools and steps to start building your own online business.

4. A Mentorship Program

A mentorship program is a consolidation of the above strategies into one organized system. It takes sound knowledge and presents it in a step-by-step way to help you through a preset learning path. This makes learning easier, structured and saves you time in figuring out what to do next. It also offers resources to expand your knowledge on subjects. On top of this, it offers a community of people that you can learn from and share with.

Disadvantages

A mentorship program will require commitment from your side to gain the maximum value and best results. Nothing is achieved without effort, and that is not actually a disadvantage but rather a requirement for learning any skill.

Do you feel stuck and need guidance in what to learn? Or do you want to find a better way to start on your path to digital freedom with a step-by-step guide to help you through the process?

Take a look at Six Figure Mentor’s program to see how they are helping people start and run an online business.

Are you ready to Launch into the Digital Space?

How to be More Productive at Work?

Work, is well, work, and no matter what you do for a living, you going to have days you going to feel like it’s a struggle to be productive at work. We spend, on average, forty hours a week at work, and if we don’t find ways to enjoy our work there is a good chance you won’t have the energy to maintain your productivity daily

For most of us, our pay depends on productivity so this is a key leverage point for success, and having a job that you don’t enjoy can increase stress, anxiety and lead to depression in the long term.

So, if you’re not having fun at work, it can be bad for your wallet and your health, thankfully there are ways to improve your productivity at work, here are eight things you can do today.

1. Take a Time Out

One of the best ways to improve your productivity and reduce stress is by taking a break. If you working at a desk all day, it can do wonders if you get up and take a walk around and breathe some fresh air and move your body. Why not take a walk during your break, not only is it good for your health, but it is a great way to clear your mind which improves your focus.

Whatever you chooce to spent your break doing whether walking, snacking or just getting some time away, taking regular breaks can help you disengage from your work long enough to feel ready for the next challenge. If your work involves looking at a screen all day, then it is even more important for you to spend some time some time away.

2. Brighten Up Your Workspace

If you have a desk or designated working area, then you should focus on making that space as comfortable and fun as possible. Being surrounded by things that make you happy will help elevate your mood and energy. A picture of a furry friend looking at you when you look up from your work can be enough to brighten your day?

So, decorate that workspace as much as you can, and surround yourself with pictures of people you love and improve your mood at work.

3. Develop Positive Relationships

I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this, but we all have to stop sweating the small stuff. There are only 40 hours in a work week and sometimes that means that some projects don’t get done right away. So, that email that you sent to the team that has a typo in it should not drag you down. We often beat ourselves up over the smallest mistakes and add stress to our lives unnecessarily.

So, let go of what is outside of your control and stop being so hard on yourself, focus on what you can do and watch your energy and attitude improve.

My previous job was very stressful, but you know what kept me coming in every day with a smile on my face? My co-worker Lauren did. We developed a positive relationship and supported each other during stressful work periods that helped keep me motivated to get through the day.

Also, having good relationships with your work colleagues is also helpful when discussing questions you may have but may not want to go to your boss about.

Co-workers make great friends because you see them every day, and they know exactly what you’re going through at work because they are going through the same thing.

5. Leave Your Work At The Door

This is probably the most challenging to do, and it is simultaneously the most effective to reduce your stress levels. When you come home from work, make sure you turn off your laptop and stop answering your phone.

Sometimes this isn’t possible if your job is on-call, but make sure you find time away from work to decompress without stressing about what tomorrow will bring. With more people working from home these days, leaving work at work isn’t all that easy. To combat this, set up a designated workspace in your home and only work in that area. Then, when the workday is done, walk away.

If you want some pointers to help you declutter your brain from a hard day at work, read our article 6 Tips: How do I declutter my brain?

6. Get In The Groove

Not all employers will allow their employees to listen to music, and with some jobs it’s not possible. If your employer will allow you to, then take advantage of the opportunity to create a positive work environment.

Listening to your favourite songs while working can definitely change your mood which can increase your energy and ultimately your productivity, a little music can go a long way to elevating your workspace.

Anyone that’s had a long list of chores to do at home knows that listening to your favourite tunes can lighten the task at hand, the benefits are easy to recognize. Find out more about music in the workplace in this BBC article : Does Music Help Us Work Better? – It Depends

So, put that power playlist on and watch your workday fly by.

7. Start A Competition

Sometimes to be more productive at work all we need is a little motivation, and a workplace competition can do exactly that. No matter how your work is tracked, it is always possible to find ways to create a competition. It might be that the office competes to complete specific predefined criteria:

  • Project by a Specific Date
  • Number Units Sales
  • Service Response Time
  • Services Delivered
  • Positive Customer Feedback
  • Territory Coverage

Honestly, it doesn’t matter how you choose to measure the competition, as long as it is fair and offers a prize and recognition, it will motivate people to do their best.

8. Get Active at Work

Taking time to exercise during your workday is great for your physical and mental health. If you have already eaten, then don’t be afraid to exercise during your lunch break. Whether it’s a walk around the building or something more intense, exercise can help elevate your energy level and give you the drive to get through the day.

Most people tend to leave exercise before or after work, but you should really do it when you have the most energy. For a lot of us, that’s the middle of our workday. Use your lunch break for a cardio workout and see how good you feel. It is always important to listen to your body and not to exercise when you feel unwell or fatigued, it might be a sign you need rest.

9. Remember to Rest

When it comes to improving how you feel at work, rest is by far the most underrated and ignored strategy. No one’s a ray of sunshine when they stressed out and short of sleep, it’s a combination for a disaster, and can seriously compromise your focus and increase the accuracy of your work.

Rest is also critical for recovery from exercise and to assist in your balancing all your body systems.So now you have a good excuse to give yourself a break, see taking time to rest and recover as a necessity to maintain long-term health and productivity.

Make The Choice!

As human beings, our energy and focus constantly ebb and flow and maintaining a positive mindet is a daily challenge! If you have strategies as outlined above, you can make your work experience a more enjoyable one.

Remember the choice is yours, you can’t change other people choices, but you can choose how you respond. No matter what the situation, there is always something you can do to improve things at work.

Do you want to be more focused?


We all want to achieve more in life and business, but to achieve more you need focus, and to be focused you need to know what prioritize when! If you want to learn how to do exactly that, follow the link below to get the low down no getting things done:

What is Focus Time – 5 Ways on How to Achieve More

5 Ways on How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure

how to overcome your fear of failure

Recognizing Fear of Failure

Whether you’re looking to earn respect, affection, or tangible rewards, the fear of failure can spoil your chances of success before you even get started. To be clear, it’s not a problem to consider the risks of pursuing a new goal. Risk analysis may even help you to succeed. However, a hyper-focus on these negatives represents a fear of failure, and the results are crippling. How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure is something all humans have to do.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

– Paulo Coelho

How Fear of Failure Holds you Back

It can stagnate your career and ground would-be relationships. Playing through one dismal outcome after another, the fear of failure discourages risk-taking and innovation. As you ruminate over negative outcomes, you drain your mental energy, leaving nothing to focus on how you could be successful. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where you fail because you simply feared that you would. The good news is, there are several concrete steps you can take to dispel the fear holding you back.

1. Get to the Bottom of Your Fears


Sometimes a fear is ambiguous. Maybe you just have a gut feeling that things will not go well. In order to address and resolve the fear of failure, it’s helpful to understand the true source. What exactly do you think could go wrong? It can be useful to write out the specific fears if you have more than one.

And, rather than stopping at a general fear of rejection, dig deeper. What specifically do you think would get you rejected? Are you afraid you’re lacking experience in a certain area? Are you nervous that you’ll stumble over your words? Many times, these areas that you identify are things you can act on. You can take an extra class, plan to practice the pitch or prepare a defence. These risk mitigation strategies will increase your chances for success and boost your confidence.

2. Develop a Growth Mindset and Redefine Failure

Perhaps you fear you will fail due to some personal attribute that you feel can’t be fixed or changed. If this is the case, you may be suffering from a fixed mindset. Fixed mindsets trap people into thinking that their current conditions and abilities cannot be changed. You can escape your fixed mindset by cultivating a growth mindset instead.

With a growth mindset, you focus your efforts not on the current state, but on the process, you’re working through to improve. You recognise that where you are right now is not where you will always be. Young children have this mindset mastered! A toddler will fall a thousand times in their effort to walk, but they will continue to pull themselves up and try again. With careful consideration, we can develop a growth mindset again.

To foster a growth mindset, you need to watch your inner dialogue. If you hear yourself saying you can’t do something. Try adding the word “yet” to the end of your thought. Perfectionist thinking must also be discarded. It’s better to embrace imperfection, and recognise that the progress you’re making, even if it is very small at first. As the name implies, a growth mindset is focused on learning and growth rather than obsessing over the current state of your ability.

If you are successful in switching to a growth mindset, you will be able to redefine failure. True failure is refusing to try. Any attempt, however successful it may or may not be, will teach you something. And learning is progress, which will improve your chance for future success.

Start a side hustle? Read this blog on active vs passive income

3. Make a Plan to Build Exposure

As with any fear, exposure therapy can help eliminate the fear. Make a plan to slowly build up to more and more exposure to the task you fear. For example, if you fear failing at a speech or pitch, practice in a low stakes’ environment first. You could start in front of a mirror or camera, by yourself. Then you can practice in front of a friend. Having success with smaller risks will build your confidence to tackle the bigger issue.

As you develop these exposure steps, be sure to set positive goals. For example, try not to pick a goal of not looking nervous. Instead, your goal could be to do the pitch while maintaining eye contact and calm breathing. Having a positive frame for what you’re trying to accomplish helps your mind focus on what you should be doing. Negatively framed goals based on what you don’t want to do may inadvertently lead you to ruminate on fears.

plan how to overcome your fear of failure

4. Evaluate All the Possible Outcomes

Many times we’re afraid of failure, but we haven’t thought through what would actually happen if we do fail. Or perhaps we imagine a worst-case scenario and stop there. Instead, it can be useful to think of the whole spectrum of outcomes that could happen. This helps us see that the worst possible scenario is not the only one. After listing out the outcomes, you can further assign likelihoods to each one. What are the realistic chances of each outcome? Chances are, your life is not at stake, and even the worst-case scenario is not as likely as you first imagined.

5. Have a Back-up Plan

By taking each negative outcome from the previous exercise, it can help to think through what your next steps would be in each case. There are always other jobs to apply for or relationships to develop. The comfort of knowing how you would proceed may take the sting off, should the worst-case scenario happen. One specific strategy to help you reframe the impact of a negative outcome is to consider how you will feel about the event in 3 days, 3 months, 3 years, and 30 years from now. Chances are that over time, a single failure will mean less and less to you, and that helps you keep the bigger picture in perspective.

Don’t forget to plan for the future – Planning for the future

Overcoming Fear of Failure


Fear of failure can hold you back. But with these five tips, you can pursue your goals. Hone in on exactly what you’re afraid of so that you can address the risk and develop a growth mindset in your abilities. By making small goals and focusing on your incremental progress rather than the outcomes, you will move in the right direction. Even if the worst-case scenario you can imagine comes true, you will have a plan to keep moving your life in the direction you want to take it.

Are you ready to Launch into the Digital Space?

7 Ways to Maintain Self-Discipline

How to maintain self-discipline

Maybe you’re trying to lose weight. Maybe you’re thinking about a promotion, a career change or a bigger bank account. But why learn how to maintain self-discipline?

Self-discipline can help with all of these goals. It’s one of the pillars of a productive lifestyle, and like a real pillar, it can support much bigger architecture for health, wealth and happiness.

What is self-discipline? How can you build it and channel it for a better life? Not everyone can do it, but if you think that you might be an exception, read on.

What is self-discipline?

Self-discipline is basically self-control. It means that you have enough control over your thoughts and actions to identity good behaviours, resist bad ones and work towards whatever aims that you have for the future.

How can self-discipline improve my life?

Self-discipline can improve everything from your eating habits to your efficiency at the office. It can help you sleep better, work harder, run farther and accomplish greater things. It’s one of the foundational skills involved with setting goals and seeing them through.

Three Cs of Self-Discipline

The best way to look at self-discipline is to memorize the three Cs:

  • Commitment: not giving up even when things get hard
  • Conscientiousness: accomplishing tasks thoroughly and competently
  • Confidence: believing that you can do anything that you set your mind to

Without all three of these cornerstones, self-discipline will fail. For example, if you don’t have conscientiousness, you might take shortcuts on your work or have lots of cheat days with your diet. If this is the case, can you really say that you’re a self-disciplined person?

7 Ways to Maintain Self Discipline

Now that you’ve learned about self-discipline and what it can do for you, it’s time to work on developing and maintaining it. Like anything else, self-discipline is a skill, and it needs to be sustained to keep it strong. Think of it like a muscle that will atrophy if it isn’t used regularly.

While there are many, many ways to cultivate self-discipline, here are just a few tried-and-true techniques.

1. Set Goals

The first step of any self-improvement routine is to establish what you actually want to get out of it. Is it health, happiness, money, friendship, confidence or something else entirely?

Once you’ve figured out the end goal, the next step is creating smaller goals to help you get there. Something that’s often used in professional project management is the SMART method:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Assignable
  • Realistic
  • Time-related

Under the SMART system, rather than just saying “I want to lose weight,” you would say “I want to lose five pounds by next month, so I’m going to exercise at least three days per week and cut back my calories by 500 per day.”

2. Establish a Routine

Your brain loves routine. In fact, if you don’t give it routines, it will create its own, and these might be unhealthy, unproductive or just plain gluttonous.

Change your habits by changing your routines. For example, if you want to improve your sleep schedule, start waking up and going to bed at the same time every day. Do this consistently every single day of the week until your body starts to anticipate your routine. When you start naturally waking up a few minutes before your alarm goes off, you’ll know that the routine has taken effect.

Read this blog on how I maintain my Daily Routine. (DMO)


3. Remove Temptations

With enough self-discipline, temptations aren’t a problem. You’ll have the willpower to ignore them even when they appear.

If you’re just starting out on your self-improvement journey, however, you might not have the physical and emotional strength to resist temptations just yet. They might manifest as cravings, distractions or general enticements that prove too much for you.

There’s no reason to make self-discipline any harder than it has to be, especially when you’re just starting out. Take the chips and sodas out of the kitchen. Remove the television from your workspace. Install browser extensions so that you can’t access social media from 9 – 5. If the temptations aren’t there, you can’t indulge in them.



4. Know Thyself

Retro instagram style image businesswoman hands holding white card sign with it starts with you! text message isolated on grey wall office background

What are your weaknesses?

This isn’t a job interview. You don’t have to dance around the subject or try to spin negatives into positives. Be honest: What bad habits do you have, and how will they impact your quest for self-discipline?

Once you’ve identified your weaknesses, it’ll be much easier to counter them. For example, if you’re on the disorganized side, you can invest in a good daily planner to manage all your tasks and projects. If you tend to lose track of time while working or taking breaks, you can start setting alarms for better time management.

There’s a way to conquer every bad habit. You just have to find it.

If you have a fear of failure you are welcome to check out 5 Ways on How to Overcome Your Fear Of Failure.

5. Track Your Progress

Tracking your progress is a great way to stay motivated, especially if your goal is something slow or not easily seen with the naked eye. It’ll be a real, tangible record of your efforts, and it’ll serve as physical proof that you are moving towards whatever finish line that you’ve set for yourself.

Here are just a few ways to track your progress:

  • Notebooks and journals. These are nice and private, and you can also customize them with colors, doodles, stickers and more.
  • Apps. Apps like “Stride” and “Way of Life” are multipurpose goal-setting programs that will allow you to make notes, generate graphs and give yourself rewards for a job well done.
  • Calendars. These can be hung on the wall for daily, visible motivation as well as a reminder of how far that you’ve come.

6. Have an Accountability Partner

This is a trick that’s often touted by weight loss gurus, but it can also be applied to work, school and anything else that requires self-discipline. The premise is simple: Have someone that you report to about your progress.

It could be a trainer or a lifestyle coach. It could be a friend who has the same goals as you. If your ambitions are work-related, it could even be a boss.

The psychology behind this trick is that it’s easy to underperform when no one knows that you’re performing at all. Once you put actual expectations on your performance, however, you might be motivated to perform well.

7. Refresh Your Motivation Regularly

Motivation isn’t a magical, inexhaustible resource. Like anything else, it can fade or get less effective over time, so it’s important to replenish it just like you’d replenish oil in a car.

Maybe this means finding new affirmations to post around your mirror. Maybe it means changing up your diet and fitness routines so that they stay fresh and invigorating. You can always find new clothes to buy, new food to try, new celebrities to admire and new goals to set.

The important thing is not to backslide into old habits when you realize that you’ve lost motivation. This is a completely normal part of the process, and it isn’t a sign of failure, weakness or a lack of willpower. It isn’t a sign that you should give up. It just means that you need to find new motivation to keep you going.

Bonus Tip

Being able to focus on one thing for a well-defined period produces better work. It also helps get the work done quicker. With less noise, you also tend to have less stress and worry. If your mind is in a stress-free environment your creativity booms.

To be focused means you need to have goals and objectives defined. Once you know where you are going you can organise your time around achieving the goal in short, focused bursts. Learn more about Focus Time Here.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to have self-discipline. There’s no getting around that. If it were easy, everyone on the planet would look like a supermodel and have a million dollars in the bank.

It takes time and effort to have self-discipline, especially in the pursuit of specific goals. It takes inner strength. It takes a person who is really, genuinely seeking self-improvement.

Is that you?

Practise makes perfect, Positive Phycology lays out some Simple Exercises to Build Your Self-Control Muscle

If you like this article, you may want to learn the 5 Secrets to Ending Perfection Paralysis

Are you ready to Launch into the Digital Space?

How to get Started with Search Engine Optimization?

The internet is an unimaginable library of information and media. It’s a never-ending rabbit hole. An unrelenting landscape of information that can distract us from our lives. But it is also a fantastic resource of knowledge that we can use to grow what we know. Its fragmentation can keep you running in circles at times but it’s a treasure trove of anything and everything. And its here that the search engine is the indispensable tool that helps us find the information we are looking for. Its not only an enormous expanding index of information, but an intelligent tool that uses artificial intelligence to figure out what exactly you looking for and what information best suits your request.

Today our response to most questions is to Google it, and our phones are the primary device we use to search.

You see, search engines have become the interface for us to interact with the web and find what we want. So now lets flip that on its head for a moment and ask the question:

If I want to build my website for my online business so that people can find my content or website, how do you do that? Well, that leads us to Search Engine Optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

In short it is the skill of structuring your website, content and building authority for your website. It includes both content related techniques and technical aspects that can enhance your websites content for search engines and help you rank higher.

Keywords the Sign Posts for Search Engines

One of the starting points for enhancing your SEO relevance is using words called keywords. These specific keywords can help to improve how Google ranks the content on your web pages. But it also helps search engines rank the relevance of your content in order for them to show your web page in the search results when people search for related information.

Keywords are like road signs to search engines. They give them an idea of what the content is about and help build a ranking for your content. Search engine use these keywords to understand your content and to position the content against other content using similar keywords. Google wants to show you the best content for your inquiry.

  • Each keyword has data about the amount of times its searched for monthly, called search volume.
  • Each keyword has a ranking difficulty, for how difficult it is to rank for that keyword in search engines.
  • Each keyword has a paid search ranking, for example how in demand that keyword is in demand to use for advertising.

Also to take keywords a step further, using longer phrase keywords can help rank for more specific search intent and qualify higher quality traffic as not everyone searching using a specific keyword will have the same intentions.

For example:

  • One person will use “dog” in there search query looking for dog related products.
  • Someone else might search to find images of dogs for a wallpaper?
  • Another person will search for dog breeds as they decide what kind of dog breed to buy.

A very important part of using keywords is not just the word, but the reason why they are using that word or phrase to search. This is referred to as “search intent”.

Keywords you can use to better rank your content the more effective your content will be, and the better it will rank. Unfortunately its not just as simple as loading keywords into your content and expecting your website to pop up on the first page of search engines. Keywords are critical part of writing content and is a critical aspect of SEO, but is definitely not where it ends.

There are numerous keyword tools available with a simple search on Google you’ll find many to try out.

One of the things that helps Google rank the importance of pages on your site is the number of internal links to a specific page. By linking internal pages allows for a better user experience and a quicker way to your content. This will improve the ability for visitors to get to your content and will allow Google to find your pages.

Another way to build authority for your site is back-links, they are links that come from other websites and can improve your SEO Ranking if those back-links have high SEO Rankings. You see, if high quality sites link to you then you gain SEO authority as Google will believe that those sites must regard your site as authoritative or trustworthy on some level.

Back-linking can come in various forms, for example:

  • A guest post on a magazine site, industry blog or news site.
  • A business directory you have listed your business on.
  • A suppliers page, or vendor you are registered with.
  • A local news blog.

Depending on your business and industry it might be more or less challenging to achieve some of these, with business listings being the easiest.

Be aware though, that you don’t want to list you business on any directory site, as there are many that have low quality content, SEO ranking and will negatively affect your SEO if they are not good sites.

Quality is always better than quantity. Take a look at the business directory site before diving in and listing your site. Often it is possible to determine a site quality by the layout and type of content, and the number of ads. If there are more ads than you can keep up with, it’s probably not going to do much to promote your business.

Social Media as an SEO Indicator

Social media can also affect your ranking on Google, for example, if you are very active on social media Google will rank your social media page when people search for you or services relating to your keywords.

Social Media will give you exposure and improve the traffic to your website. Sharing content from your website on your social media pages is a way to build visibility and to encourage people to visit your site. The more people share your content the better for your brand, or project. So in a way social media shares and mentions can be an indicator to Google of your popularity.

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization is a highly technical field, but there are basic steps you can take to help improve how search engines see your content. If you want to improve your SEO on a deeper level you will need someone knowledgeable in the field to truly get into the technical aspects of your website. Hopefully, you know a little more about what SEO is and how you can begin to improve your website.

Want to grow your knowledge of Search Engine Optimization and how to grow your business online, I recommend the Six Figure Mentors program for learning and growing your business online. Take a look at what they offer, you can even sign up for free to get an overview of their program before committing to it.

Are you ready to Launch into CyberSpace?

How to Improve the SEO of your Website in 7 Steps?

PageRank is the algorithm developed by Google to rank webpages based on the number of links pointing to them from other pages. The higher the webpage’s ranking in search results, generally means that webpage has more incoming links. If you want to boost your webpage ranking in search results, there are several things you can do:

In this article we will be covering the following:

  1. Optimize Page Titles and Descriptions
  2. Create Link-Worthy Content
  3. Optimize for Keywords
  4. Submit A Sitemap to Google
  5. Add Social Media Buttons
  6. Link to other Webpages
  7. Use SEO Plugins

How to improve the SEO on your webpages:

1) Optimize Page Titles and Descriptions

Both of these should include words you want to rank for in search engines. Google analyses keywords of webpage titles and meta-descriptions to determine how relevant they are to the search intent of the user. The more relevant the keyword you’re trying to rank for, the better.

2) Create Link-Worthy Content

The more backlinks your webpage can get from high page rank websites, the higher your page rank will be. Content that is interesting and informative will inspire people to share it on social media and in blog posts, generating links and thus boosting up your page rank.

3) Optimize for Keywords

While you can’t easily boost your webpage ranking in search results, you can optimize it to make search engines find it easier. Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to find out what keywords people are using to reach your webpage, and use those keywords throughout your content so that your webpage ranks better for those important searches.

4) Submit A Sitemap to Google

A sitemap is a list of pages on your website, submitted to search engines. This tells search engines where all the important content they should be indexing is located on your page, making it easier for them to crawl and rank your site.

Find out more about : A Blueprint to Start Your Online Business Faster

5) Add Social Media Buttons

The more people share your amazing content on social media, the higher it will rank in Google’s image results. Social signals are considered a ranking factor by search engines, although they have never been confirmed as such by Google or Bing.

6) Link to other Webpages

When you reference another webpage in your content, Google sees that as a sign of relevancy and will give your webpage a higher rank. Obviously, random links to sites just to create links will only be seen in a negative light, so use them naturally and appropriately.

7) Use SEO Plugins

You can also use SEO plugins like tools like All-In-One SEO to help optimize your webpage for relevant keywords and create meta-descriptions and titles that will help you rank for those terms.

Conclusion

While there is no guaranteed way to increase your site rank, the methods listed above can be very helpful in improving how search engines rank your webpages. SEO takes time and is a long-term strategy rather than a quick way to get traffic. The time that it will take to improve your rankings in search engines are influenced by many variables.

The key is to take time regularly to see how you are ranking in Google, using analytic tools to monitor and pick up opportunities to improve your site ranking. Start today and see how things improve over time.

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What are the Downsides of Being a Software Developer?

Software is what makes the world go around. Apps and software manage almost every aspect of our digital lives and even our physical lives. But behind these amazing apps are software developers who spend hours and hours designing, coding, and fixing bugs. And although developing apps can be a rewarding career, it also has many frustrating aspects that can challenge even the most dedicated developer.

I will list six frustrations that I have experienced as a software developer in the course of my job, so let’s dive in.

  1. Keeping Up with Technological Changes
  2. Unexpected Technical Issues
  3. Unrealistic Client Expectations
  4. Poor Documentation
  5. Spending More Time Fixing Bugs
  6. Developing Unnecessary Features

Keeping Up with Technological Changes

Technology by definition is about change and advancement. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Technology can improve what is possible or what can be done. But technology can also create massive uncertainty because things are changing so fast.

This constant change puts pressure on developers to constantly stay up to date with the latest technologies. This requires constant learning. But also can be incredibly frustrating as often things change without knowing that they have changed.

It is probably far better to specialize in specific fields of technology, or languages in order to keep up with the rapid changes and developments that are happening. It is just impossible to know everything and keep up to date with every piece of technology that is changing.

Unexpected Technical Issues

When developing solutions for customers its is possible to run into software development challenges. These technical issues may not have been expected because of various reasons.

The more diverse the development environment the more chances there are that you may stumble onto various technical issues. Especially when integrating different technologies that you are not familiar with or when applying new technologies.

Facing this kind of challenge needs to be expected, and is one of the reasons that careful planning is needed to coordinate different aspects of a project. Technical input from experienced team members can help highlight possible hurdles that the team may face.

Software is never perfect. It is never fixed and there are always unexpected surprises waiting for developers when tackling a project. It will always be part of the development territory, and part of the job.

If you don’t enjoy the constant hurdling over technical problems, you could be in for a nightmare!

Tired of the corporate rat race, then why not start building an online income? How to Start an Online Business Doing What Your Love?

Unrealistic Client Expectations

One frustrating part of being a developer is when clients want you to make little changes that seem to take forever.

These are usually small things that they see or want to add, but they don’t understand that these small changes can have a big impact on the development process.

Often when trying to communicate the complexities of the changes that the client may suggest, they question your ability. They feel that the changes should be possible, but don’t understand the technical complications of that one change.

If the customer had communicated their needs better and been more forthcoming you could have included the feature in the original project outline.

Poor Documentation

Software development is a complicated process and it can be pretty challenging. Developers have to make sure everything works the way it should. This means following procedures to ensure development is done in a structured and orderly manner. This is why documentation is so important.

Changes need to be tracked and good documentation is there to help developers fix issues down the road. This is especially important for those that are new to an organization. It allows them to go back and see why pieces of code were written, and what problems were encountered.

The problem is, proper documentation is not always available. This means developers have to spend time figuring out why sections of code were included. If you have ever been in a situation where you were working on a project and had no idea why the previous developer wrote code, you know what I’m talking about.

Spending More Time Fixing Bugs

Probably one of the most frustrating aspects of software development is bug fixing. This can be a time-consuming exercise. And what can make it even more frustrating is when the combination of bad planning, incomplete documentation, mixed with demanding clients.

Unfortunately due to the fact that technology is ever changing and environments vary, there will always be bugs that pop up when you least expect it.

If you find spending hours troubleshooting why code is doing what it’s doing, maybe software development isn’t the career for you.

But if you are an analytical mind and enjoy being constantly challenged to solve complex problems, then software development may be a career to consider.

For many developers constantly fixing development environment issues, and project issues can get exhausting over time. It’s not so much the coding, but the associated challenges and troubleshooting that can be very frustrating.

Developing Unnecessary Features

Sometimes you might spend time developing a feature that isn’t used. Perhaps the client asked for a feature that was developed but not needed.

This can be frustrating as it’s time wasted that could have been spent on doing more productive activities. Maybe you could have been focused on other issues that needed attention.

Either way this can happen and is usually due to a lack of communication and clarifying exactly what the client needs. This is another reason why taking enough time for planning software development projects is crucial.

This planning needs to go hand in hand with client discussions. It is critical to ensure that time isn’t wasted on developing software features that are not needed or leaving out features that are needed.

Read about : Affiliate Marketing as a Passive Income Source?

Whould you consider Software Development as a Career?

Software development is a challenging field. It is highly technical and requires a strong desire to learn constantly to keep your skills relevant.

If you don’t enjoy the constantly evolving environment of technologies, or spending hours problem solving, then I’d highly suggest a more stable field.

Long-term the challenges of keeping up with software development technologies can become exhausting, even for the most enthusiastic of developers.

If you’ve reached a point where you are ready to walk away from your developer role, I’d suggest looking into starting a side hustle building an online income stream. This way you can create a new challenge and build a way out of a frustrating position.

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5 Easy and Profitable Online Business Ideas for the Software Developers

Are you a software developer looking to start your own profitable online business? Let me start by stating first: Business is always going to have its challenges. And it will be hard to continue at times. But once you have looked at all profitable online business ideas, picked one and pushed hard at it for several years, you’ll look back with pride at what you have achieved.

Maybe you have already tried to develop code for a friend’s business in your spare time. (Probably for little money) And it can be tough. Developing 8+ hours a day at your full-time job, then having to do it nights and weekends too. That can be taxing for anyone and will put undue pressure on your family and social life.

Although you might be in a very specific discipline, like Java, there are many alternatives to making money online other than coding. Your skills are very adaptable to many types of online business. There are many profitable online business ideas, but here are the ones I like. I’ve even made money from a few of them. After coding each day, it can be refreshing to focus on a different type of venture.

5 lucrative online business ideas

Web Development\Design Services

You can create Websites using classic programming languages like Java, Python or c#, but most of the time this is overkill. Many clients out there just want a website, landing page and maybe a sales funnel. All these components already exist in many free, or cheap, content management systems (CMS)

Solutions like WordPress have taken all the hard work out of creating a website, online store (WooCommerce) and blogging. The hardest thing to get your head around using these products is that there is minimal code. Most of the time you a building pages using a page builder and installing plugins.

It’s so easy these days, even non-technical persons can get into it with a bit of effort.

Thrive Themes is a plugin for WordPress that provided you with templates to build your websites. If you want to learn to build with Thrive Themes click HERE.

Online Software Development Course

If you are good at teaching what you know, create a course, and sell it. You can use WordPress Technologies like Thrive Apprentice (another one of those WordPress plugins) to house your online course. There is a yearly cost for Thrive Apprentice, but you can use it over and over and it does it all for you.

Here are a couple of my favourite online authors. Courses I have bought and used in the last few years of my software dev journey.

Josh Moroney, Ionic Expert, and independent creator. He leverages online technologies to showcase how to use Ionic. He has a blog with many posts on specific aspects of Ionic, and a full paid-for course on how to create solid, secure mobile applications using the Ionic Framework.

Another favourite of mine, Marco Behler utilises online technology to share his expert knowledge on Java and specifically Spring Boot Framework. With a free chapter or 2 in his course, I bought the rest because it helped me understand the framework and how it was built.

SEO Consulting Business

SEO is one of my favourite topics right now. I’ve been learning and implementing this in my business for the last couple of years now. But I have also been able to apply my knowledge to other businesses and gain them a competitive advantage, bringing them customers.

SEO is a long-term project for your website that will bring organic internet traffic to your site over time. Long-term means anywhere for 6 months to 2 years depending on your business type and competition in it. Consistency up to that point and beyond is key to SEO success.

SEO Requires:

  • Links – Relevant Links to both external and internal pages. They help Search engines like Google to qualify your authority. Site owners are only likely to link to reputable sources. So, you need to build your clients reputation with other sites too so they link back to your site.
  • Content – Search engines crawl your web pages to find relevant information that they can provide to a user doing a search. The closer the wording of your content is to a search, the more likely the search engine will rank you. The more people visit your site, the more the search engine will see you as an authority and push you higher in the search. Your aim is to be Number 1 in popular searches.
  • Page structure – The third component of SEO is page structure. Pages are written in HTML. So, when Google crawls your pages, it sees the HTML Tags. In HTML 5, the tags were enhanced to indicate much more information to the search engines. So, if you structure correctly, and embed the correct metadata, Google can index more correctly. This will in turn help you when being ranked. WordPress has plugins that allow you to set this data without ever looking at the code!

And of course, there is no contest when it comes to quality content. The more users use your information and the longer they stay on your page, the more authority you will gain over time. i.e. Higher up on the Google Search.

How to Improve the SEO of your Website in 7 Steps

Online Technology Writer

So, you have all the tech jargon and savvy, and no one to share it with?

Why not hone your skills as a writer, and deliver difficult to communicate information with a diverse audience of people?

You can write anything from Software manuals, API documentation, support documentation for systems. People buy these skills. It’s often easier to outsource to maintain quality.

You can check out Upwork if you are looking for a contract of any length. And you will never run out of new technology, so it’s an endless business (what you want!)

Digital Marketing Business

Digital Marketing is a broad term for helping your client, or yourself, sell your products or services online. It is focused on getting you to stand out from the crowd.

But in essence, you need a:

  • Platform Where can you find your prospects? Where are they likely to be hanging out online? It can be Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or any other social platform. Here you can either run paid ads or simply post relevant content to your audience. If they like it, you need a call to action. Usually, a link to your landing page (fancy word for sales funnel/website)
  • Landing Page The landing page has a more detailed sales copy. It will highlight your product or service benefits and perhaps you’ll give away a gift to capture their name and email.
  • Ongoing Marketing Strategy This part is the key. You are unlikely to make a sale just because they gave you an email address. Once you have an email, you can market to them weekly. (Just don’t spam) You must manage your email list and provide the prospects with value every week. You also must keep offering your products or services. When they are ready, they’ll buy.

The Best Ways to Learn Digital Marketing Online?

With that…

Software Development is a great career to be in. It often allows you to work from home, and with a team worldwide. And the pay is great.

But not everyone wants to program forever, like me. Some of us want to learn new skills in writing, client management, online authority and managing a business.

All these skills mentioned can be self-taught, you just need to apply yourself and learn.

Happy decision making!

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Is Thrive Themes Suite the Best Website Builder?

Thrive Themes Suite is Your All-in-One Toolbox. Create a WordPress Website That Converts Visitors into Leads and Customers. But is Thrive Themes Suite really the best tool out there? Hard to answer as there are many tools available to WordPress, but it’s the one I choose to build client sites, funnels, and much much more.

I will dissect each of the different tools out there starting with the Web Builder

Thrive Themes Websites

With WordPress and building your site, there are a couple of routes you can take.

Free Route

Get your site hosted (Bluehost offers affordable and fast hosting for your WordPress Site), find a free theme that you like, find a whole lot of plugins that work together to give you what you need. The risk of doing it this way is that you have no customer support and limited functionality. It will be hard to customize the site (Unless you are a good PHP developer)

Buy a Theme Route

Find a theme that you like, and you have to pay for it. Buy a number of plugins that offer you premium features and 3rd party tools to build your email list. The costs can rack up as you continue to add functionality

Thrive Themes Suite Route

All in one tool. Thrive Themes Suite allows you to build quality websites with tons of functionality that you can drag and drop as you need. It’s conversion-focused and allows you to focus on your core business

Thrive caters to all your needs. Easy to brand for your business, with many design choices. There’s no other platform in the WordPress world that gives you the design freedom of Thrive Suite. You can build e-commerce sites for physical and digital products. With deep WooCommerce integration and access to 9 tools built by marketers to build conversion-focused websites, building sites that convert is easy.

Create Landing Pages and Funnels

Now you get to create the money-making machine. Your conversion-focused Landing page and funnel. Thrive Architect provides you with 290+ landing page templates. They all focus on specific needs you might have. One will be geared to lead generation, another to webinars, and even one focusing on getting you coaching clients. If there is a need out there, there is probably a funnel for you. And if you don’t like any, customize and create your own.

For a more complete look at digital marketing, visit this blog to see the 8 components of digital marketing.

Build an Email List

Building your email list is probably the most important feature of any online business. You need to build your list so you can give great offers to more and more people. With Thrive you can simply pull in opt-in pages and customize them quickly to your needs. There is also an option to create A/B testing to find out which designs work better.

There are 20+ API connections to popular marketing tools including Aweber, one email autoresponder software.

If you want to learn more about email marketing, have a look at this blog on how to get started. An Introduction to Email Marketing

Create Quizzes

Thrive Quiz Builder helps you create professional-looking questionnaires that help you find out more about your audience. Find out what your customers want, and create it for them!

Create and Sell Online Courses

When you need to take your business to the next level and start to teach what you know, Thrive has you covered. Free and Paid courses allow you to build trust in your network.

Thrive takes away

  • Expensive 3rd Party Course Software
  • Complicated Learning Management Systems (LMS)
  • Lack of control over how you display your course material

Thrive Suite and Thrive Themes Apprentice give you all the control you need.

Thrive Themes Cost

As you can see, Thrive Themes Suite has a LOT to offer. So what are the costs involved? And do the costs outweigh the benefits.

You have to decide that yourself. But from where I am standing, Thrive Themes Suite is the perfect investment if you want conversion-focused sites.

The Packages

It’s a rather low cost of $19 a month, which is nothing if you need quickly create pages, quizzes, and offers. You can also buy different components separately.

Memberships

This will give you access to everything immediately. No need to keep purchasing as you need. And you always get the latest updates.

The is a huge cost benefit if you do eventually use most of the cool tools.

Individual Plan

If you are sure you are only going to use 1 or 2 features, then buy them individually.

Conclusion

Thrive will give you a neat, easy way to help convert those leads into customers.

As you start to use Thrive Themes Suite, you will continue to find new things you didn’t know existed.

And that keeps your business growing.

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