The Diary Of An Internet Marketer

Do you ever feel like you are missing a lot of your life because you just spend all your time on you computer?

It’s time to Stop And Smell The Roses!

I often find myself spending way too much time working on my computer and not enough time with my family and enjoying all the little important things in life.

After all isn’t the reason we want to earn an income online so that we can work less hours and spend more time with our families.  So it really is important to make sure that you do because it really doesn’t take long before you realise that a year has gone by and you feel like you haven’t done too much with your family.

Last year we took six months off and travelled around Australia.  Well, half of Australia, we started where we live in Adelaide and went up the centre of Australia up to Darwin stopping at Ayers Rock and Alice Springs on the way.  We spent a couple of months in Darwin and then headed over to North Queensland where we spent about 10 weeks in Cairns and then headed down the East coast before coming back to Adelaide.

Anyway what has all this got to do with ’stopping to smell the roses’?  When we were away we didn’t have anyone stay in our house but our neighbour, my Mum and my husbands parents all kept an eye on the place.  Every time we spoke to them on the phone or received emails they would always rave on about how nice our roses are looking.  We have a pathway that goes through the centre of our front garden and it is lined on both sides with red standard roses (Sir Donald Bradman Rose - that is one of our roses in the picture).  We constantly heard about how our roses were in full bloom and have never looked so good.  Of course when we come home my Mum had pruned all the roses so there were none for us too see.

We have been home for about seven weeks now and yesterday I noticed a rose and today there are three.  Our roses are starting to bloom again and they look lovely.  On the way home this morning after taking the kids to school I walked right past the roses and got to the front door and I stopped and turned around.  That’s when I thought, I really never take time to really stop and smell the roses.  So I went back and I did and they smell beautiful.

I know the saying is not necessarily to literally smell roses but to just take the time and do the little special things in life is so important.  And if you do have roses, make sure you do smell them every now and then.

You will be amazed at how much more you will achieve with your work when you come back to it after taking a little break and getting away from it for a while.  So don’t get too wrapped up in your internet marketing and always take the time to smell the roses.

Thanks for reading
Sheryl

Melissa Ingold sent me a message yesterday about a cool new widget called ScratchBack. It’s a great concept for the WordPress tip jar that allows your readers to get a “top spot” link on your blog when they leave you a tip.

I had been using the Buy Me A Beer Plugin here on ClickNewz, but after 6+ months had recently decided to deactivate the plugin. Its a great script, and works flawlessly, but it didnt prove to be a profitable use of the space in my opinion…

It earned $5 this month, $3 in January, and $10 in December. I deactivated this morning and replaced it with the new ScratchBack widget, which you’ll see in the sidebar over to the right.

What’s cool about the ScratchBack Widget? First, its super easy to set up. It’s also free, so you can have it up and running on your blog in less than 5 minutes for zero cost upfront.

You get to keep 90% of the tips, with the other 10% going to ScratchBack. That’s more than fair in exchange for use of the Widget and total automation of your Top Spots links.

You can choose to offer text links or image links in your Top Spots widget. The links use the no-follow tag, so they are completely google-friendly. There wont be any concern about losing PageRank for selling text links .

Post courtesy of Lynn Terry. You can read the rest of this post here

You can get a link in my Top Spots for just $1.50

Now I know this is a good tip because I did actually try it once

When you are disorganised you just have no idea what you are doing from one minute to the next ane your life will generally be quite stressful.  Trust me I know, this is a big problem that I have and that is one of my big goals - to get organised.

On the few occasions that I have been organised I was really quite surprised at how much I actually managed to achieve.  I worked so much more efficiently because I knew what I was doing and I could see clearly.

Maintaining that organisation is my problem and I’m sure if I stuck with being organised long enough it would become habit. 

When talking about being organised I am talking about:

• having a plan for your day
• having tidy surroundings
• in particular having a tidy desk and office
• having a structure in place that enables you to juggle your internet marketing as well as your home life
• having good time management skills

My desk and office is so messy that I’ve moved my laptop out to the dining room table.  Now that is messy too and at dinner time we eat with our plates on our lap sitting on the sofa.  My husband is forever complaining that he wants the table back.  I know that this is not the ideal situation and I know if I tidied up a bit that I would actually get more achieved every day.  I’m actually sharing the table with an extremely pregnant mouse that is about to go into labour any minute - which is quite distracting actually.

One of my biggest problems is getting stuck into a task.  I spend more time thinking about what I have got to do than actually doing it.  My time management skills are non-existant and my house is just full of clutter.

So these tips even though I am sharing them with you, are aimed at myself also.  Perhaps if I write all this it might make me get off my butt and do something about it.

I have goals though and I’ve gone out and bought myself a diary - A4 size with a day to a page.  My plan is that each morning I will open my diary and write a list of what I need to achieve for the day.  A bit of a ‘To Do’ list I guess.  I have done the ‘To Do’ list thing before and it does work.  The main thing with doing a list is to be realistic with what you can achieve in a day otherwise you will end up being disappointed if you are never getting everything achieved.

So that is my tip for today.  If you are already an organised person then I admire you and keep it up.  If you are not then join me in my quest to be organised and to put in place some good time management skills.

Don’t forget to fill in the box on the right to get your free ebooks.
Take Care
Sheryl

But seriously…….. not that I’m saying that it’s not serious that you should be good to your mother - always be good to your mother, but seriously…..

This is our new category called “Tips of the Day”

Now I just have to come up with some tips on a regular basis

My IM Tips for today:

STOP CHECKING YOUR STATS

That’s right, I know you are doing it.  So many people do, they run a new campaign or launch a product and then spend the next few days just checking their stats.  Checking your stats every hour isn’t going to make them grow any and all it is doing is wasting your time.

So spend less time checking your stats and more time doing something constructive.

Take care - come back later for my daily diary post.
Sheryl
PS Don’t forget to grab your free reports