Website traffic is always a priority for online solopreneurs – without some type of web traffic people won’t know your business exists. So just what is the right formula for more website traffic?

Here are our top tips:

1. Write and distribute articles. This may seem like a simple strategy on the surface but it can be very powerful. Just writing one or two articles a week will quickly add to a lot of incoming one-way links (the type of links the search engines love most) for your business.

Once you write the articles distribute them to a few top ranking directories, but don’t stop there. Think about distributing a few articles to large online traffic websites directly. Give them exclusive use of the article in exchange for the incoming link. This is a great strategy you can easily apply.

2. Make your pages search engine and reader friendly. Striking the balance between writing for your human visitors as well as the search engines is simple if you stick to this rule – write for the reader first and then naturally insert your keyword phrases into your copy.

It’s also a good idea to include all the appropriate SEO tags on all your pages. These tags help the search engines find you.

3. Set up a search-engine friendly navigation structure. For the search engines (and your human visitors) to find the content on your website, you need a clear navigation structure. This structure should consist of your top topics which are also your keywords and then for each of those main pages you’ll have sub pages including extensions of that main keyword.

By having the main keywords as your top topics on your navigation structure, your readers and the search engines will easily find your deeper pages of content. It’s also a good idea to include a back link to your home page on each page of your website. A clear and well-defined site map is a great addition as well.

These three key steps are the starting point to your traffic success. Apply them regularly and ensure that your content is fresh and up-to-date and you can’t help but to win over both the search engines and your human visitors too.

It’s time for the January Easy Biz Teleseminar call for coaches and we’ve convinced Kim Clausen to join us once again – this time to share behind the scenes ideas that lead to success.  It’s the time of year to make plans about how your coaching business will grow in 2012 and highly successful coaches know that having a solid plan is absolutely required to reach your dreams.

Here’s what Kim says:

“ Too many business owners
haphazardly invest their time, energy
and money without planning and forethought
and often end up feeling frustrated because
they see only marginal success for their efforts.
Then they get frustrated, overwhelmed
and start to think that maybe they don’t have
what it takes to be a successful business owner.

But it’s not your fault.  All you really need is a plan.”

Join global marketing expert Kim Clausen for this free call.  Kim will show you how to create a powerful plan for your coaching business, and make it so simple that you’ll have a new level of confidence, energy and excitement moving forward into 2012.

Here are the details:

Date:      January 12, 2011

Time:    1-2 pm ET (10am pacific, 11 mountain, 12 central)

Registration:  http://easybiztelesummit.com

The Easy Biz Teleseminar is a monthly series that I host in order to help coaches succeed.  My expereince is that planning is one of the keys that can turn a business from survival to flourishing.  If you’re not planning for the future and your business growth – it probably won’t happen.  As I tell my clients, enthusiasm and hope are not business strategies.

Join Kiim and I for this powerful call.  We will make time for questions and answers at the end of the call so try to be there in person if you can.  Of course the call will be recorded and will be available at no charge for one week only.   Be sure to register at http://easybiztelesummit.com in order to get access to the recording.

Hope to see you on the call!

Today everyone is saying, “Take me to the cloud.” But what does that mean? And, is it a good thing for your business to get involved in?

What and Where Is the Cloud?

We are talking about cyberspace. You know it exists and you can see the results of it, but touching it is as elusive as putting your hands on a real cloud. Nevertheless, it is a revolutionary idea in network sharing and storage.

So, what is the cloud exactly? Well, if you are using the internet right now to read this article, you are a part of the cloud network. Companies used to set up IT networks on their own, installing, running and testing software applications. Whenever there was a problem, everyone turned to the IT expert to fix it. This took money and time which could cost the business money in man hours and lost productivity.

Cloud computing offers a break to companies both large and small with an easier way to store information. Instead of each company managing their own applications, third-party vendors offer access to a virtual network that they manage. Each company only pays for the amount of usage that they need.

This one area houses hundreds of apps that each company can customize for its own uses. It’s like having one central location for housing all business but with the ability to function according to the specific needs of each.

How Can Your Business Benefit?

Because the cloud is in cyberspace, you are not limited to one area when using it. In fact, the cloud was made for mobility. No matter where you or any of your associates are, you can upload information to the cloud that can then be viewed by others who also have access to the network. They can make changes to the document and then send it back to you in a flash.

Want to hold a meeting? You can do that too. Sharing ideas across the miles but within the same company has never been more accessible. What may have taken precious time through emails, faxes or phone calls can now be handled all at once via cloud computing.

And, your business can lower the cost of overheads by utilizing the cloud. With a third-party vendor managing the operation, they handle upgrades to software, technical questions and support for you. If there are problems, you will be up and running again as quickly as they can help. That also means that anyone accessing your applications is also back on the grid.

But, do your homework first. Make sure that the cloud is what your business needs and that it can meet your specific criteria for security and ease of operation. You decide if the cloud can move you forward.

You probably already know that there are different steps involved in writing and creating a good business plan. A proper business plan is a valuable tool for your business or company and can help lead you on a path to great success. The more you know about the different components that go into creating one, the better your business plan will be.

One important part of the business plan is your Statement of Purpose. The statement of purpose shows you know what you want and you are willing to do what it takes to get it. These are qualities that are important to a successful business and it shows you are serious about your company and its success.

What is the statement of purpose?

Your statement of purpose is how you communicate with potential lenders or investors, business partners or even future employees. This is an important part of the business plan and should be taken seriously. You need to be direct, concise and to the point. Don’t waste words or will it up with “fluff” here.

The statement of purpose should include exactly what you want without “beating around the bush” or taking a long time to get there. You should be able to get your complete statement of purpose into about a page of your business plan. If your original is longer, keep revising and cutting until you can get it down to about one full page that describes what you want.

What should be included in the statement of purpose?

So what exactly do you say in your statement of purpose? Your statement of purpose should include a brief description of your company or business, your objectives, your company mission and your keys to success. You should describe the primary service or goods provided and your plan to provide those to the consumer as well as the rate at which you will provide it.

You should then include the current local market for your goods or services and where you predict the majority of your profit to come from. You will also include major achievements of the company or details that show why your business has the ability to thrive in the market and be successful.

Do you want to spruce up your business plan or create a simple, easy to use plan for your business in 2012? Join me for the Business Planning Work Day on Monday, January 2nd. Find out more information by going to:

www.solopreneur.biz/planning/

Do you have a new business? Are you revamping your existing business? Whether your business is old or new, you can greatly benefit from a proper business plan. Many people think that a business plan is only beneficial if you are trying to raise money for your company and while this is one reason to write a business plan, it is certainly not the only one.

Creating and writing a business plan for your company is a great idea to ensure the success of your business. Your business plan will greatly increase your chances of being organized and successful with your business. When you have a plan with set goals, it is easier to achieve those goals. This is a much better business practice than leaving things to chance or being so unorganized that you can not track your progress.

What is included in a business plan?

So what does your business plan need to include in order for it to be sure it is successful and complete? You will need to have a description of your business, details of what it is and how it will operate, some information regarding ownership, a start up summary as well as market research and target market information.

You want to walk through the business and the function of your business from the beginning all the way through. What is the purpose of your company? Do you sell a product? Do you provide a service? What are you offering to customers? How much experience do you have and how are you qualified to perform the job duties? Ask the same questions of your employees or business partners.

Why Create your Business Plan?

So why is it worth your time to write and create a great business plan? There are different reasons, as we mentioned before. One popular reason why people choose to create a business plan is to try to convince potential investors and lenders to fund money to your business.

Most of all a good business plan will help you determine whether or not your business has a good chance of producing profit. If results show that you will not make a good profit, you might need to adjust your business plans and goals somewhat. It can also serve as a great way to estimate your start up costs and needed investments to start or continue the business.

Do you want to spruce up your business plan or create a simple, easy to use plan for your business in 2012? Join me for the Business Planning Work Day on Monday, January 2nd. Find out more information by going to:

www.solopreneur.biz/planning/

Every business owner would like to find a way to save time and increase productivity. Unfortunately, working from home often means that productivity can take a back seat to the million other things competing for our attention.

These three tips will help you work smarter, save time and increase productivity.

1. Set a schedule and stick to it.

It’s tempting to stray from a set schedule when you work from home. After all, working from home means we have the freedom to set our own hours. Unfortunately, however, this can lead to reduced productivity.

One of the best ways to increase your productivity is to set a firm schedule for work hours and stick to it. This means that work time is work time. If you were at the office, friends wouldn’t pop over for coffee and your neighbor wouldn’t call you for a chat. By setting a strict work schedule, not only will you get more done, but people will learn to respect that working from home really does mean you’re working.

2. Work in short bursts.

Research has proven that after a set time of concentrating on a task at hand, we start to lag. Our concentration lessens and we actually get less done. When you work from home, it’s easy to avoid this. Simply set your work schedule to include short bursts of time assigned to each specific project.

The time you allow for each project will depend on you personally, but you can experiment until you find what works best for you. A good rule of thumb is 45 minutes for any intensive task that requires concentration.

For example, if you have work to edit, spend 45 minutes doing that, then move on to answering your emails for another set amount of time. After that you can either go back to editing to tackle another task.

The key is to break your time up into chunks that you dedicate specifically to each individual task. Then you move on to the next task for a specific set amount of time. And don’t forget to take a short 5 or 10 minute break every few hours or so. This will help you clear your mind as well as avoid your body getting stiff from sitting for extended periods of time.

3. Get organized.

There’s a great saying: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Being organized is an important part of being productive. By taking a little time to plan your day or the week ahead means you can dive straight into work without wondering what you’re meant to be doing.

It also helps to keep all your important papers, folders and documents easily labelled and accessible so that you don’t waste time looking for things. While planning ahead does take a little time, it will save you more time in the long run.

These three tips will help you become and remain more productive during your work day. By thinking ahead and planning your day, working in short but concentrated bursts and sticking to a strict work schedule you will get more done in less time.

Teleseminars are a great way to build trust with an audience, make sales on the spot and facilitate a two-way communication. Teleseminars can involve live video of you, on-screen demonstrations as well as presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint.

Before hopping on a teleseminar, you need to make sure you’re prepared from both a presentation perspective and a technical perspective. Here’s a checklist to help you do that.

Make Sure Your Line Can Handle the Volume

If you have over 100 guests, make sure you talk to your teleseminar provider to see if your line can handle the volume.

The kinds of providers you need for a teleseminar with 100 people, 1,000 people and 10,000 people are very different services with different technical requirements.

Prepare the First 60 Seconds

The first 60 seconds of the teleseminar are the most important parts. This is when people will decide either to leave the teleseminar or to stay on.

In the first 60 seconds, clearly spell out what’s going to be covered and what they’ll get by listening to the call.

Practice your first 60 seconds several times before the call.

Invitation & Follow-Up Schedule

At a bare minimum, every teleseminar should have one invitation and one follow-up email before the actual call.

For more important teleseminars, you may want to create a sales process around the call where you use several emails to “sell” them on coming onto the teleseminar.

Make sure to plan out the whole process before you start promoting the teleseminar.

Get Familiar with the Software

If you haven’t used the software for the teleseminar before, get familiar with it before the call. Try running a test seminar with just yourself and a test computer beforehand.

Learn how to switch between screencasts and presentation tools as well as how to turn your webcam on and off. Learn how to mute and unmute visitors and how to take questions.

You don’t want to be trying to figure these things out while on a live call.

Test Your Recording Devices

If you want your call recorded, make sure you test that as well.

Most teleseminar services will offer some kind of recording package you can purchase. However, you’ll often want to also have your own recording going for back-up.

Prep for Most Common Questions

Before the teleseminar begins, try to predict what kind of questions people will ask you. You can do this by going through past emails your customers have sent you or by browsing related forums on the internet.

By having an idea of what to expect before going into the seminar, you’ll be able to answer questions in a more informative, authoritative way. You’ll also be able to research any questions that you might have trouble with.

These are some of the most important things to cover before you launch a teleseminar. Make sure your line can handle the volume, check your recording equipment, test the software, prepare your first 60 seconds, have a solid invitation and follow-up system and prep your Q&A beforehand.

If you want to succeed as a solopreneur, there are a few core skills you need to have. The majority of these skills aren’t things that are taught in business school, but skills that need to be honed in the real world. Fortunately, once you develop these skills, they can be applied to just about any venture you embark on.

These are the skills every solopreneur should have.

Leadership (Not Management)

John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Fund, the largest mutual fund in the world, defines leadership as knowing what’s worth doing. Management is knowing how to do it.

A leader needs to be able to decide what’s important and what will actually impact the company’s bottom line. They need to be able to make moral decisions about when to go for profit and when to sacrifice profits for long-term values.

They need to be able to identify what’s really best for everyone involved, including clients, employees and shareholders, and make business decisions for the greater good.

A manager is someone who understands things like time management, project flow, tracking employee performance and such. But they aren’t necessarily the right people to steer a company.

A good solopreneur needs to be a great leader. It also helps if they’re a good manager.

Persistence and Patience

In “Good to Great,” one of the most highly acclaimed business books of the century, Jim Collins studies eleven public companies whose performance consistently beat the market average for 15 years in a row.

One of the key factors he found was persistence and patience. He likened it to a giant spinning metallic flywheel.

If you had to take this giant metallic wheel and make it spin, in the very beginning it won’t budge at all. You can put in immense amounts of effort, only to find it still not moving.

Yet once it does start moving, slow at first then getting faster and faster, it’ll build up momentum until it starts to move on its own. At that point, it would actually be harder to stop the flywheel than to push it faster.

Building a business is like that. In the beginning, you’ll be swimming upstream. But as momentum builds, it’ll get easier and easier. The trick is to have the persistence and patience to stick it through.

Team and People Focus

“Take my 20 best people and, virtually overnight, Microsoft becomes a mediocre company.” — Bill Gates

Whether it’s Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, one thing is consistently clear across the most successful companies: a relentless drive to hire the best people.

More than anything else, the success of your company is going to be based on the kind of people you hire.

Aim to hire people who are smarter and more competent than you. Don’t try to hire a team that you can lead, but a team that can lead your company and you to better results than you alone could create.

These are just a few of the key skills every solopreneur needs. These skills aren’t developed overnight, but they’re absolutely skills that anyone who’s committed can learn.

Don’t you just love technology? A few short years ago it really wasn’t possible to run your business from your phone. Now you can do almost anything with the help of applications for your iPhone.

Writing/Editing

There are a number of apps that let you view and edit documents directly from your smartphone. One of the most popular is called Documents to Go. It lets you view and edit documents right on your phone.

You can also find text-based writing tools like PlainText and iA Writer that are inexpensive and easy to use.

Desktop Communication

You can use the GoToMyPC app to connect to your work computer. This makes it easy to access your work files directly. No need to plan ahead. You can also use Apps like Dropbox and CloudTalk to share and store information that is accessible both from your computer and your smartphone.

Communication

With Skype you can have voice chats (and video chats if your device has a camera) with customers and contractors.

You can also use dictation applications like Dragon and QuickVoice to record your thoughts or create business content or documents.

Payment and Invoicing

PayPal offers an easy to use payment application that lets you send invoices and manage your account from your smartphone. Many banks also offer applications that let you manage your account from your phone. Intuit, the makers of Quicken and QuickBooks also have a payment processing application called GoPayment that you can use on your smartphone.

Blogging

Like to blog on the go? Check out the WordPress application that makes it easy to write, edit and publish blogs from your smartphone.

Social Networking

There are myriad applications to manage your social networking for both Facebook and Twitter. You can post pictures, comments, and stay in touch with your friends from just about any mobile device. Check out Friendly and the iTunes Facebook app for Facebook. Check out the HootSuite application for Twitter.

Organization

Last but definitely not least are the wide number of organization and brainstorming applications that you can find to not only grow your business but also to manage it from your phone. Check out MindNode for mind mapping applications. Evernote and One Note are both fantastic note taking, clipping, and organizational tools.

And don’t forget the basics. You can access your Google accounts with Google applications which means you can check your AdSense earnings, analytics and of course you can check your email too.

Smartphone applications make owning and operating a business easier than it has ever been before. You can network, invoice, pay bills, brainstorm, publish content and launch new products – all from your phone.

Guest post by: Kirstin O´Donovan – TOP Results Coaching

Whether you are just starting out or you have been an entrepreneur for a few years, wherever you are in your career, ensuring you have the right mindset is essential for your success. It is said that 80% of the reasons holding us back from being successful are inside ourselves and only 20% are on the outside – so we must always start by looking at ourselves. Don’t let yourself be your worst enemy.

So how can we ensure we have a mindset geared for success…there are a few qualities we need to work on to be geared for success.

CAUSE: EFFECT – There are only two sides of the equation that we can be on. If you are on the cause side, you accept and know that you are responsible for everything that happens to you and your company. You know that your business is a reflection of your actions and you take responsibility for your results. If you are on the effect side, you feel like a victim, you have excuses for why this doesn’t work, why you can´t succeed in that and you live by these stories. To succeed, you must always take responsibility for what happens. Decide to be in charge of your business success, and not at the mercy of what happens to you.

We also need to look at our attitude towards events. In business, we must use failure as feedback and respond positively to feedback. Our attitude determines how we look at setbacks, events, and situations. If we have a positive attitude we could look at the same situation very differently from someone who has a negative attitude. A failure in business could be very daunting for some people or it could be positive feedback to others. The feedback that they need to alter their course a little, change what they are doing to get a better result. Failure is guidance, helping us to find the best way to succeed, so cultivate the habit of using failure as feedback.

Know where your focus is – you need to focus on what you can change and do and not on what you can´t. Some of us spend a whole day, focusing on the negative, how bad the situation is and how unfair, how could this be happening, instead of moving on and changing what we can. Our focus determines our reality so keep focusing on succeeding and not on what we can´t control.

You have to be committed and persevere in what you want – don´t give up! Perseverance is the key in reaching any goal. You must focus on what you want and you must dedicate yourself to achieving it. You must be committed throughout the journey and it will pay off. Being an entrepreneur is not always easy, the journey may have setbacks, mistakes, but successful people are the ones who have the ability to overcome these, use them as feedback and keep moving forward.

Your mind must be organized, you must be very clear about where you are going, the vision you have for your business and the certainty that you will have it! If your mind is full of doubt, uncertainty and you are not clear about what you actually want or what solution you provide, this will have a very negative effect on you. You need to manage your mind and be clear about what you want, what you offer and to whom, etc – if your mind is disorganized, this will reflect directly on your outside world.

You also need to break old habits if they are not serving you or helping you to succeed. Bad habits will only hold you back and have a negative impact on your life. You must recognize your bad habits and find the strength to change them.

Lastly, you must have a high self esteem and believe in yourself and other people too. The beliefs you have about people, your abilities and business in general will determine the results you get in business. Identify your beliefs and if they are holding you back, change them! This also refers to your negative thoughts, if they don´t serve you, they only make you feel bad and bring you down. Anchor positive feelings and be your own success coach.

“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success!” – Henry Ford

About the Author
Kirstin O´Donovan is a Personal Growth and Success Coach, helping entrepreneurs who struggle with time-management, organization and goal setting to achieve their goals, improve organization and gain control over their time. She helps entrepreneurs to alleviate stress and to be more productive, empowered and fulfilled. Find out more about Kirstin and TOP Results Coaching here.