As a hobby Standup comedian I know about this fear. Every time I get a new spot in a local comedy club I get this feeling inside me. “What if they don’t laugh?”, “Will my new material work in this town?” and so on. Sometimes it’s so bad that I’m on a point of calling in sick. But then this other voice inside my head starts telling me how good it will be and there is another voice saying “Remember that you’ll get paid sick loads of money for being funny on stage for just 10 minutes”. And I get my act together and just put myself out there. I just need to get over that afraid part. The – what if not everyone like me part.

And it’s used to be the same when working on my business. I learned different strategies that the marketers behind the products I bought talked so warm about. And for the reason of being afraid of what people where thinking I waited way to long before I created my own product in any niche. Now I know that after I have tested a market and see that it works, I can just make my own product and earn much more with better marketing. I’m not afraid to put myself out there and telling you what I think.

There will always be someone that is better then you in marketing, in product creating, in making videos online, in being funny on a stage. But for many people you are also an expert in the same parts. That’s why it’s so important that you just get started.

So why does this happen? Why don’t we do the things we should?
First of all you are to comfortable with the situation you are in. You never want to be in your comfort zone. Step out of this zone and jump over to the Progress or Pain zone. They are the best motivators. That’s why you here of people that are in thousands of dollars in dept suddenly gets enormous success in whatever they achieve.  They was in the pain zone and for some reasons you are better in finding solutions. The same with progress zone. When you first get started to earn the first few dollars online and you see that a certain strategy work, you keep on doing more.

Another reason is Distractions. It’s easy to get distracted doing this type of marketing work. Just think about all the email offers you receive everyday. All the Facebook and Twitter messages you want to read and click on. All the other blogs you need to read. The solution is to find things that fulfill you and cut out the rest.

Excuses are another reason you don’t do things you should do. That’s why it’s a good idea to partner up with someone. Get a mentor or be part of a mastermind group.

The last think I believe is a factor for not doing what you should is the Lack of Ambition. You maybe have some ideas about your ambitions, but you need to be setting goals that are ambitious. There is a bigger chance on taking action on those goals.

Hope this helps you to start doing the things you need to do. And if you have other reasons I would love to hear about them in the comments under.

While waiting for my good stuff, I want to take some time to give you some great books about Blogging that I have read and that I recommend. They are all free and can be downloaded right away from the writers website.

• Deep Secrets of Successful Bloggers – By Chitika
• Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web – By Seth Godin
• How to Start Blogging: A Guide for Business Bloggers – By Icrossing UK
• How to Start a Business Blog – By Remarkablogger
• Blogging Blueprint – By Glen Allsopp
• Blogging On My Mind – By Enkay
• The Zen of Blogging – By Hunter Nuttall

This great collection of Blogging e-books have the same topics but are different in so many ways. Everybody has their own story just like real life. Many people got successful but in their own way. Hopefully you will find one of the authors you can relate to and that will be the guide for you to succeed in the blogging world.

The best of luck and happy reading!

Get a Good Start
Eben Pagan says that productivity begins with a good morning. With a few easy steps and some good will you can begin your work with great energy and your mind in totally focus.

With only two days of testing this I’m getting some really good and interesting results. I feel much better when I start work and together with less multitasking I have some kind of calm and focus starting at the top of my to-do list.

The Routine
So what’s the big secret you have to dedicate yourself to do every morning to bring more energy and focus to your life? The same energy that will help you out throughout your day and if you take further steps, help you with your productivity?

1. Start your morning by drinking 0,5 liters of water.
   Your body has been sleeping for 7-10 hours and is dehydrated. Starting your day with a drinking a lot of water will get your body back on track.
2. Get your heart beat up.
   This is actually the hardest task of them all but at the same time I found it the most rewarding. All that is needed is 30 min of some kind of exercise. Eben Pagan uses a good example by just running down his staircase in the building he lives in and walk up again. I don’t live in a large building so I get my heart beat up from running around in my neighborhood.  Getting your heart beat up resets your emotions and gets you ready for a new day. You also get some time to think and may find that you will get your best ideas while exercising.
3. 5 Minute Meditation
   After a good 30 minute of exercise you need to calm down and relax. A 5 minute mediation stimulates. It doesn’t need to be weird in anyway. Just sit down and relax and breath for 5 minutes. I found this clip on youtube helping me out to get the right settings and I just sit back in my sofa and plug out from the world.
   
4. Get a really healthy meal
   You have probably heard it before. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! There is a lot of sayings out there and I also know it sometimes can be heard to get something to eat in the morning when you are tiered and just want to sleep more. But believe me, if you have followed step 1 to 3 you will be ready for some food. And here is 10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas.
5. (Read something)
   I set this up because it’s important to get your brain started but it’s optional. I highly believe if you can read for 10-15 minutes, something really inspirational or something that brings you new knowledge that makes you learn something, is very helpful when starting your new day. We learn something new everyday, why don’t start out with it?

If you manage to use 1 hour of your morning, follow this combination of 5 steps, you have a plan that will set your day up for a winning day. You are truly taking care of yourself and you will then start to take good care of other people around you, be it your customers or colleagues.

Hope you share this with many others and tell me what you think in the comments.

I’m getting a lot of email everyday and I have my email notification popping up with new email every now and then. I also have my TweetDeck up and running all day, answering tweets and tweet my own findings when I surf around on the Internets. At the same time I often click on other links from other Twitter users and end up reading a lot of fun and interesting blogposts.

As you probably understand there is a lot of distractions and interruptions in my daily work life. That’s how it is when you multi task but why does it make you dumb? Well all that I got from an article from Discover Magazine.

Multitasking Makes You Dumber Then Pot
A recent study for the company Hewlett-Packard found that British workers’ IQ test scores drop temporarily by an average of 10 points when juggling phones, e-mails, and other electronic messages—more of an IQ drop than occurs after smoking marijuana or losing a night’s sleep.

The solution? Pull the plug. Shut down your email client while you work and open it up only when you need to send a message. Or simply set it to check for new messages only once an hour. It doesn’t matter that right this moment you’ve got mail. You’ve also got something else more important to do than buy Cialis online.

Source: Life Hacker, Discover Magazine

The worlds best job was to be a Island Caretaker and live at Blue Pearl a beautiful three-bedroom home on Hamilton Island and enjoy the private plunge pool/spa, sun lounges, and the traditional Aussie barbeque.

Living above the Great Barrier Reef for six months, he will get a huge salary package of AUD$150.000 for the six-month contract. The job profile involves leisure blogging, snapping photos, feeding the fish. Sounds good to me. Let’s hope the winne feed the fish and not feeds on fish.

Read more for videos of the winner!

Here is the video Queensland Tourism sent out

And here is the Winner Ben Southall from UK

I’m kicking some ass in both offline and online business and will hit the $10.000 a month mark in just a couple of month for sure. How? Well it started out as a side project that got me some money on the side.. and it’s going so fast now that I guess it will be a full time job within a few months.

So what can you do to start earning some money on the side? Well here is over 50 ways for you to get started.

1. Blogging something I tend to do from time to time. It’s my site you are on right now. I have some banners on this site that people tend to click on and makes me some money every month. Try it yourself and let me know if you need some help to get started

2. Cake decorating is something my mom like to do. She loves to bake cake and makes everything from pirates, soccer fields, mobile phones and doll cakes. She now takes $20 for every cake she bakes and she makes a couple every week to friends, family and their friends and family.

3. Exercise teacher is something I would like to have and would pay for. But I don’t want to pay as much as they take in a professional gym. So if you know your stuff and have been working out for some time, maybe you should start up for yourself and get paid for it. Start helping out your friends and then ask them to recommend you.

4. Gardening services for you that have green fingers. If you have a perfect garden and want to help other people getting a perfect garden too then this is for you.

5. Online media consultant. Do you know everything about Facebook, Twitter, forums and other online media? Well many of us don’t know it so why don’t you start helping us out. We would gladly pay you for the service. It’s a jungle out there and someone has to make the path.

6. Teaching music. If you know an Instrument why don’t help other people out? I would love to learn how to play my harmonica better but haven’t found anyone that can help me. There is a lot of people teaching guitar but what about the rest of us?

7. Virtual assistant is a new job opportunity that came lately. I outsource a lot of my task to people that I know can do it better then myself. I use virtual assistants to take care of some support issues, take care of my google adwords and to submit my rss feed around every month. There is many forums where you can get jobs like this, both for short and long term jobs.

8. Scrapbook making is another thing my mom is good at. She have days where she gather people and teaches them techniques for good scrapbooking and sells scrapbook stuff that people need. If this is something that is close to your heart you should give it a try.

9. Pet walking is an important niche in today’s busy world. It’s something that every dog needs but their owners almost never have time to. They just let them out in the garden for a few minutes and get them back indoors. If you like the outdoor you should bring a long one or two of your neighbors dogs and get paid for some personal exercises.

10. Housecleaning, the last thing many people want to do. It’s something most people don’t have time to do too. So if you enjoy it you can take a lot of money for helping someone else out. Somehow it feels more fun to clean up other peoples mess then your own. Even more fun to get paid for doing it.

For 50 more great side business projects, visit The Simple Dollar

Around November last year I got an job offer from a big company that want me aboard to help them out with some IT projects. I was really flattered and happily said yes to the job mostly beacuse it ment change in my life. I got a nice paycheck but I had to move to a new town and kind of start over again socially. After 6 months I must say I’m happy with the change and so glad that I moved.

This again got me motivated to work more with my standup comedy hobby that I had. I got 4 great gigs in a short period and made even more money from that and connections that will take me out to other stages and towns. That’s so  motivating so I continue to write more and it seems like new funny things comes to me more easy now.

After living in the new town for 2 months I was tired of walking to and from work everyday in windy and rainy weather so I decided to ask the bank for a car. I have done this before but my new current sittuation brought a smile on the bank and an even bigger smile on me. I could finaly buy my first car, a Mini Cooper S filled with fun and joy. Now I feel freedom to do what ever I want, go wherever I want.  Infact, when writing this blogpost I am visiting a friend for the easter holidays, driving all the way and I felt so good about it. My own car!!

I’ve also started to work out. I’m not the type of guy that you will find in the gym but I want to stay active and I want to get challanged so I started out climbing and boulder (when you climb walls with no rope). The walls are divided into problems that you need to solve. How can you get from the bottom to the top only using a few marked stones? Well three times a week I’m working out and solving problems at the same time. And I see results and it feels so good.

There is tons of other things I could mention from my offline success in life like joining the company’s soccer team and winning matches 7-0, helping out friends and meeting even new friends but let’s talk about my online success.

Two friends of mine, Ole and Marius, wanted to make a marketing system only for the Norwegian market. I got together with them and we did a lot of research and found out that there where no such thing in Norway at the moment. We will be the first if we did it now. So we did.. Marius got on the copywriting, wrote a 100 page product book and a free report. Ole worked on the server side and support part and I put together the funnel and the marketing system so that it would work for the Norwegian market. And we where ready to start.

In the first 2 weeks I used $150 in Google adwords for marketing and I also did a lot of other marketing that I have learned from my coach Alex Jefferys,  it brought me over 100 leads and an $400 profit. More will probably come within the next week. I was amazed.

I’m floating on a cloud of success and today I’m taking my friends out for a Champage party. And for you that are reading this but couldn’t come to my Champagne party I will again update my blog every now and then to help you guys get success.

All you need is to change and one small success. Beacuse with success comes more success.

You really have to work to succeed, and I feel that I have actually worked too. But still I feel that I’m somewhere on the same spot as I was only a few months ago. I don’t see the big change and the work I’ve put in haven’t really given me the results that I was looking for in that time slot.

So I sat down and started to think things through. Where did I actually wanted to be from the time I started to where I am now? My answer was a stable 5 figure income on a monthly basis. I then asked myself what action should I have taken to get to the goals I had? And guess what, I couldn’t answer that question.

I felt kind of lost and didn’t know what to do. I know I had a bunch of stuff to do. Many people to talk to, stuff I wanted to do, blog post I had to write but some how I couldn’t get started. So I went back to basic and looked over Alex jeffreys first module about planning and taking actions. It was clearly that I haven’t followed all the steps of what I had learned. I was so ready to get started and earning money that instead of planning I just jumped straight to the profit pulling platform and waited for the money to come to me.

Now I am a man with a plan. I sat down and started on my yearly goal. Where do I want to be this time one year from now. I then divided the year down in 4 containing 3 months each. I then take the first 3 months and go in detail for the first month. Then I took those steps for the first month down to week by week and ended with a daily plan for the first week with a final task everyday to plan tomorrow today.

This gives me tons of time saving and believe it or not better sleep. I was often awake through nights always thinking about what to do the next morning. Then when the morning comes I go to my computer, start reading mails and look over comments and traffic for my blog. Then I surf some news and other fun stuff and believe it or not, when the day was over I haven’t done a single thing productive. But now with the planning skills of Alex Jeffreys I’m back on track where most Internet Marketers would have quit or jumped over to the next thing or product.

I’m glad I got this thing started so early this year and by looking at my plan I have a lot to do so I better wrap this up now with a question. Have you made your business plans for 2009?

That’s not going to happen anymore. In additional to my yearly, monthly and weekly goals and todo-list I’ve started to make small mind maps to get the bigger picture of the end results and where I am in the process. If you haven’t heard of or used mind maps before it’s not that hard to get started. You just put the name of your project in the middle and the various parts of your project like marketing, list building, blogging, video making or what ever you need for your project around it. Then you break them down to the next level and then one or two levels more.

I started this out on paper in the beginning but you soon figure out that that takes a lot of paper. One tiny mistake and you have to throw it away and start over. Frustration!. That’s why I went on a search for a software. I ended up with something even better, an online application named MindMeister.com. This application is totally free for up to 6 mind maps. And if you need more of the cool features you only pay $4 or $6 a month or you can go for the big package and save tons of money for only $15 a year. That gives you a lot of organizing for the money.

I’m in the works now for planning a great new list building coaching program with my mentor Alex Jefferys at the moment. Just some tweaks here and there in my mind map and it will be up and running by this weekend. I’ll let you know. In the mean time.. happy mind mapping!

www.mindmeister.com

Not only in business but in sports as well all the best athletes have good mentors to help them with their careers taking them step by step depending on their goals in life.

But back to business, if you are in Internet Marketing business trying to make it in a niche but are struggling to get to the top, wondering about your next step and so on, you should really be looking at the top income earners in your niche and see what they have done to get where they are today. There is a big chance they have been in the vary same position as you. There is also a big chance they got a mentor to help them step by step on their way to the top.

Larry Denis’s 5 common mistakes made by “newbies”

1. Starting a business without knowing who you should be marketing to. Without knowing how to target your market you can spend hours of wasted time and a lot of wasted dollars.
2. Getting into the wrong business, with too much competition/supply and not enough demand. If you do not get into a specialized market with high demand and less supply you are setting yourself up for failure and you will never make a decent living.
3. Believing that a free program will make you money, these are some of the biggest scams on the Internet.
4. Joining one business opportunity failing after a month and then joining another and another. This is how many beginners loose tons of money and valuable time.
5. Thinking that money can be made in a short time with no work, this is another pitfall too many “newbies” fall into.

So if you are struggling and already have done one or more of the “newbies” mistake you should be looking for a mentor. A person that have a proven record, that have been in the same situation as you and can see your situation and relate to it. A person that can take one look at your business and see what’s missing and then point you in the right direction. This will be the key to your success.