Requires a lot of self-control

Can sometimes get lonely working with no co-workers

But it never gets dull and is totally worth it

- Lewis

My laptop is turned off, my wifi is left floundering around bouncing from wall to wall, and I’m hunched over my desk, pen in hand, feeling very much like Bob Cratchit.

But my productivity has increased tenfold!

I used to mess about online it seems, doing things I THOUGHT were productive, like checking stats and conducting research and searches. But my writing output has been painfully low.

Only when I was on a trip to Edinburgh without my laptop, and with my iPhone battery dead, did I grab the pad and get scribbling.

My handwriting is apalling, but I only need to read it for about a day until I type it up, and that is super quick [like 4 minutes for 1 article].

If you haven’t already, grab some lined paper, a pen, and your keyword list, and get going!

If the same happens to you, with productivity shooting through the roof, let me know!

– Lewis

lewis@yournicheblog.com

1) A good understanding of why and how people buy things.
2) The ability to make a big, tempting promise.
3) The skill to show that promise as a picture, to advance it with propositions
and to support those propositions with proof.
4) The ability to distinguish between features and benefits.

What would you add to the list? I’d add 2.5) The ability to follow up on your big, tempting promise…

I think #1 is the most important

Lewis

In Todoodlist Nick teaches a very simple concept. Ditch complex systems if they’re no more effective than simple systems.

The To Do list is his main example, and one I now use every day.

Old Way: Sure it’s excellent to have a to do list on your iPhone which syncs back to RememberTheMilk on your desktop which syncs to Google Calendar which displays in the side of your gmail inbox and sends you an alert via Instant Messenger or email or SMS when a task is due…

But MAN IS THAT COMPLICATED!

Yes… this was my system until last week…

Certainly for putting off tasks until some point in the future a reminder system is great, but for the day to day, what’s wrong with a little bit of paper?

I was lost in the unproductive world of the over-productive tools.

With a few basics twists on the concept of the to do list / mind map you can make yourself more productive and able to focus better on the task at hand.

This is how it’s worked for me, and I love it so far.

Plus – Nick is a very funny guy. I dream of being that funny, witty, and smart. Literally, I dream.

The book is about 100 pages long, and entertains and teaches with interesting stories and essays.

You need to read it. You will probably like it as much as I do.

- Lewis

Yesterday I mentioned Productivity Tricks. So today and tomorrow I’m posting 2 of my favourites.

“Don’t break the chain!”

This technique is credited to Jerry Seinfeld, and you can read about it at lifehacker.

First, you get a calendar (a physical one is better – you don’t want to use something like Google Calendar for this), and you define your Daily Action.

For example: Do you need to write 1 article every day for your website? Do you need to lose weight and so ride your exercise bike every day?

The concept is simple. Day 1, you do your task, and you put a big fat juicy red cross through the day on the calendar. Day 2, you repeat, and your chain has begun!

You now have to keep up your chain of red crosses as long as you can.

This works well because the idea of breaking your chain will grow more painful than the thought of doing your daily task. Woo!

This is an excellent way to form new (positive) habits.

I use it to get myself to write at least 1 article every day, even if I don’t feel like writing.

Do you use “The Chain”?

- Lewis

When you don’t have a boss looking over your shoulder, tutting every time you take a break, it becomes rather hard to stay on task.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of all ages,

Gather round,

Let Me Tell You a Secret…

Motivating yourself every day, when you’re in your house surrounded by lots of books and films and food, is HARD!

Have you found this?

What ways have you discovered of getting around this?

- Lewis

There is no better motto…

Not to worry though, because blogging has no strict rule book.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my building an empire of articles and lenses and blogs online, to sell mine and other’s products.

I have been hard at work building up my own niche sites, on topics that interest me, and building a bunch of supporting lenses and articles for backlinks too.

It’s hard work, but it’s fun to see the results. I’ve learned lots about article marketing and SEO too.

My next post is about The Most Important Thing In Article Marketing.

…BACKLINKS!

Lewis

I have now taken to writing articles on my iPhone. Yep – writing articles on a piece of glass!

What I like about it is that I can sit wherever I like and write, like on a park bench, or on a sofa, or on the back of an elephant.

The application I use for writing is called ‘WriteRoom’ and it let’s you customise the font size and colour, and the background colour. I use it because you can pinch and zoom to go full screen, and it doesn’t suck like the defauly Notes app – I hate that font and clutter.

Do you do any Mobile Writing? What tools do you use?

My iPhone has a whole bunch of great SEO and Blogging apps too, which makes it a productivity tool to rival my laptop!

Trouble is it’s also a time wasting tool…

BACK TO WORK!

You’re now subscribed to future updates of LewisSmile.com

You’ll get a quick email when I publish something new, and you can easily come here to see what’s new.

Thanks for coming out to play

If you want to contact me just click on the link on the right.

I’m coming up with many ideas, like normal really, for different things, and it’s quite difficult to focus on my new business model (which is writing writing writing).

Nobody, apart from Tiffany Dow perhaps, actually enjoys writing. Even professional writers still feel like they’re bleeding words onto the page.

Staring at a blank page is hard.

But so is not actually earning any money because you spent all day staring.

So I’ve written 2 articles today. Just 2. I have lots of emails and other things, but only 2 articles. But when compared to my old business model, 2 articles is more than I would write in a week!

My plan is to build up my ability to write more in a day. I want to write good quality articles and info without even thinking about it. I want 20 pages a day to be a habit for me.

You can write your own paychecks with 20 pages a day.

Literally, earn whatever you like.

I will be a web guy who knows about all the promotion/seo/blog building/website building/adsense/adwords/squidoo/twitter/list building aspects of online marketing, so I can now apply masses of words.

But still. Creating the writing habit is going to be hard!

Today was a day of Set Up. I have been laying good foundations.

I am a great fan of systems, and things happening exactly as they should. So today I was setting up a system.

I have outsourced a couple of data entry tasks in the past, and I have been setting things up again today for Social Bookmarking. My outsource helper will be bookmarking my articles/web pages/lenses on various websites, so after I complete an article and hit Publish I will simply email her the link and she will get it bookmarked and linked to from various places. The bookmarking sites I have chosen are all dofollow, so the links to my pages will help rankings in Google.

It’s all about the system. You don’t want to just write your fingers to the bone, and get pennies per article because of low visitor numbers. Simply having some backlinks will help it get indexed and could be all that’s needed to help it rise to the top for your chosen search terms.

Today:

Setting up the outsource of the bookmarking tasks
Creating some new accounts on bookmarking websites

Writing shall commence tomorrow!

Lewis

P.S. what elements of your online business do you outsource?

Some are more successful than others.


HERE ARE SOME GOOD WAYS:
Email: lewis@smilewebcreations.com
GoogleTalk: smilewebcreations@gmail.com


HERE ARE SOME BAD WAYS:
Twitter [Sending me a DM is super silly and will never work. Ever.]
FaceBook [You can try, but email is simpler]
Post Owl [I'm just a muggle]
Snail Mail [It's the 21st Century...]
Shouting Loudly [I am likely far away]

Thanks for being ever so patient. You are a delight.

“So what do you do for a living exactly?”

If you ask anyone I know what I do for a living they would tell you, after much mumbling and confusion, that it is something to do with the internet. And they’re not wrong!

I build websites and blogs, and pages just like this one, to sell things. I have created a lot of  the things that I sell, and a lot is created by other people. I am an affiliate, then build pages about that product. When sales get made, I get a percentage.

You can see some of my main websites here:www.SmileWebCreations.com

And you can see some of the tools I use to get things done here: www.squidoo.com/tools-i-use

I am a Kiva Loaner

Being a loner is finally a good thing..

Kiva is a charity that will make you rethink your charitable giving.

Instead of just giving a charity some money, say £10 as a one time deal, you can direct it to a promising entrepreneur in a poorer country. When they have used your money to start or grow their business… you get it back! Bit by bit over about a year, but you get it out.

When you have your money back you are then able to lend it out to someone els.  It’s just like recycling money, all around the world.

To get loaning just visit www.kiva.org

To visit my loaner page click here

Do it. You’ll love it. I can tell…

I am a reader of books

I have been reading 1 book a week for the last 2 years, ever since a conversation with my good friend Christopher Scott. It is one of the best decisions I’ve made.

I have discovered that I like crime books, and autobiographies too. The Harry Potter series is of course a masterpiece, and so is Time Traveller’s Wife. Business books are good, and so are books like Predictably Irrational and Blink. Lots of odd discoveries. I try and go for a wide range of books and subjects and topics, because wide reading can only be a good thing.

I am a big fan of the courses available at Teach12.com too. Try a course from them, and follow along with the course pdf guide. It’s a great way to spend 30 minutes a day.

I am a watcher of films

In the UK you will have seen the ads for LoveFilm, in the USA you will know it as Netflix. I am a movie subscriber, and I really love a good film.

The kind of movies I like the best are ones based on a book that I’ve already read.

Favourite films? I’m not really sure. I just like any films really.

Not a whole lot of information in this section, apart from the fact that I’m a film fan.

So there you have it.

I am a vegetarian

“We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites”

Yum.

I am a maker of virtual things

I think this section would be best described as “internet handyman”. A large part of what I do to work online is make wonky things work better. I learn how to fix things. How to change things. How to tweak things.

I am like that old man in a shed, tinkering with things just for fun.

I don’t make things in the real world though, that would be crazy.

I like systems, and automatic actions, and automated marketing, and making things better.

It’s all good fun.

But… I’m not retired yet am I?! And I’ve not been building a business which could easily run by someone else.

Working for yourself on the internet pays very well, but I’m looking for something different. A lot of what was earning me a living was a set of specific skills I have built up over many years. Finding somebody to replace me, with my skills, would have been very tough indeed.

So I have a new plan.

I have been testing this new plan over the past few weeks and it has worked very well so far. So I am now going for it “full steam ahead!”

I am now a writer. I will write about topics that interest me, topics that are profitable, topics that are under-represented in google search results pages, topics related to my own products for sale, and topics related to some key affiliate programs I wish to promote.

So from here on in, follow my journey as I go from Internet Marketer Website Guy to Retired Internet Writer Guy!

There will be LOTS of learning along the way as I share what I’m doing here.

Lewis