How Best to Spend Your Time Online

 As everyone presently knows, the Internet is a credible gateway to infinite possibilities and opportunities. The exact replica of a wonderland easily accessible in almost every corner of the world today! Many people use it to improve their personalities and their lives, while others in less meaningful activities. It is available for fun seekers and serious minded business persons. While there is nothing wrong with having some fun online, using internet service for something productive is about the best way to spend your time online.

To make the time you spend online count, here are some ways you can be productive.

Acquire New Skills

Most people always want to learn something new to improve and better their lives. The internet offers very diverse opportunities for that. Online, you can acquire blogging skills, digital marketing, graphic design, SEO, visual marketing skills and so many other skills depending on what you prefer. After mastering some of these skills, you can actually earn some online income from some of the skills. 


 
Distance Learning/Education

Many educational institutions now offer diverse courses online up the award of many degrees including even PhDs. For that reason, online learning and teaching are becoming more and more common. The internet helps to remove most of the constraints that exist with traditional institutes through self-paced education. You learn in the comfort of your home at your own chosen time and pace which is very useful in today’s fast paced world where everyone is always in a hurry. It is thus very smart to use the time you spend online to study for a new qualification to better your life.

Gain Knowledge

If you blog online, you must be writing about something very interesting. Writing about a particular niche on a regular basis somehow helps to increase your knowledge and eventually make you an expert in the field. No doubt, such writing skill most certainly readily comes in handy down the road, no matter what kind of professional life you are keen on living going forward.

Go Blogging

If you have something useful to share, it’s fairly easy to launch a blog. Presently, blogging has become a popular pastime around the world particularly among marketers and business owners. For many people, it’s also a serious means of income. If you too love to write or are interested in writing about a particular niche, then you can create your own blog and enjoy all the benefits that come with blogging.

Earn Passive income
Once launched, whether you are online or not, your blog earns money for you 24/7. If your blog is able to attract a large volume of traffic, and it is monetized with digital ads or embedded affiliate links in its content, it earns a passive income which usually grows with the growth in its traffic.

Play Online Games

Here is the fun part of it. Playing games on the Internet may seem like a waste of time. But, many of the games are highly educating and may actually help to hone many skills for people who play the games. Playing games online helps to kill idle time and prevents boredom. Games like combat wars, crossword puzzle, blackjack, poker etc, etc, can help you to improve your decision-making and risk-taking qualities which you can apply to many other aspects of your life.


 
Participate in Online Auctions

You can participate in auctions and win very many good quality prizes online. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind before you get started. These things have to do with due diligence. First, you should pick the platform wisely. You must endeavor to check its track record for authenticity, goods delivery options, customer service quality, etc. Second, you should ensure that the business you are participating in its auctions is legal in your country and supports its local currency. Thirdly, be sure any physical goods you win can be delivered to your door step where ever you live in the world.

News and Information

For current news and information no matter the subject matter internet is the place to go. Search Engines like Google are a powerhouse of information. No matter what you are looking for, a bit of patience and search skill will dig out the information for you. It is a great way to spend time online by searching for current news and updating yourself with information from Internet Search Engines.

6 Ways to Convert Your Website Visitors to Customers

  The first significant aim of any online marketer is to drive traffic to his/her website. Bearing in mind that your website visitors are just getting to know you the first time they land on your website, it’s not enough to simply drive traffic. You must ensure that their first impression is a good one, and that what you offer is attractive enough to keep bringing them back. If visitors simply come to your site without taking any further action on your website and indeed making a purchase, what you have are mere visitors instead of customers which you really need. What you can do is some quick optimization on your website to transform visitors into repeat buying customers. That takes some efforts which you must be ready to make to put your website in the right shape to convert visitors to customers. Note carefully that none of these ways must stand alone if you want good results. To be effective, they need to be used strategically together to match your customer journey from introduction to sale. That requires some marketing skills because in reality, it takes dedication and time to build worthwhile, long-term relationships.

Here are some 6 tested and proven ways to convert visitors with relative ease.

01. Making Your Website Attractive

First, be sure your website is easy to use and user-friendly thereby making it very attractive to users. You must therefore invest in its design and deployment. Since quality design starts with the user experience, you’ve got to make sure your website is easy to navigate and user-friendly. You can add smart search functionality, streamlining the checkout process, and optimizing the mobile experience to make it attractive to all classes of users. That is the main reason you need quality website design because it generally takes a few seconds for users to form an opinion about your website. The design plays some role in helping them to decide whether or not they are staying or leaving. 


 
02. Improving Your Website Loading Speed

 Loading speed is also very important. Having settled for a good design, you can then boost the performance of the site. The faster the site loads, the better it is at increasing your sales. A professional website developer can help increase the loading speed of your site if you are unable to do it yourself by working on reducing the sizes of the images on the site, porting to a good Web Host and tinkering with your CDN, Content Delivery Network.

03. Improving Your Customer Support

This is rather obvious. The better you treat your customers, the more patronage you get from them. Quick and timely response to customer concerns helps keep customers. The use of auto-responders on your website can be very helpful for your customer support efforts. Anytime your site visitors have questions and concerns, it somehow gets in the way of their buying decisions. The quicker and faster you address these concerns, the faster they make their buying decisions. If it habitually takes you too long to address customer concerns, many simply move elsewhere in search of their needs.

04. Having a Captivating Landing Page

What your site needs is not just a landing page, but a “call-to-action” landing page. That is what helps in the conversion process. No doubt you are aware that Landing Pages are single, direct pages that encourage users to take a specific action. They help provide the “bait” and when the visitor “bites”, you simply get yourself a new customer. Landing pages are really useful to increase email lists, signups, social sharing, giving out gifts and eBooks, discount coupons and so many other token items which help to arrest the attention of visitors getting them to act in a predictable way.

05. Working on Your Click-Through-Rates, CTR

A CTR is a very smart way to measure your site users’ activities on your website. It usually results from a very clear invitation to some form of benefit or reward tucked away somewhere in your website. An effective CTR occurs when users know what exactly is in it for them if they honour your Call-To-Action, CTA. If they know before hand, they are more likely to take real action to get it. Hyper-specific Call-To-Actions, CTAs like “Click here for your discount code” have been known to work wonders in landing pages and even blog posts to generate high CTRs.

06. Integrating a Blog

These days, nearly every online marketer is into content marketing or direct blogging. Everyone out there online is looking for information and people get attracted to where they get information which helps them to take informed decisions. Integrating a blog in your website can serve that purpose. When people trust and respect the information your blog provides, that helps to convey some form of authority. That is the attraction which keeps people coming back for more. That way, with a smart call to action, CTA, you can convert such visitors to customers.

 

Most Important Thing You Should be Doing as a New Team Leader

On lighter mood, the single most important thing you should be doing as a new Team Leader is LEADING. Ump!!! Well, it is you who asked for “the single most important thing.” There it is, just LEAD, that’s all. Talking seriously, to LEAD requires a lot of responsibilities. First and foremost you must endeavor to be a friend as well as a mentor. All these require a lot of leadership skills.

In this business, it is SFI's job to provide the infrastructure for building your own business. Your own job as a sponsor (or a co-sponsor) to those individuals in your team, is to provide the personal, one-on-one relationships so vital to your home-business success. That is why you must be ready to LEAD.

You lead by making sure every Affiliate in your team has checked out the actions outlined in the To-Do List at their SFI homepage. Assist them as they proceed through these steps. Make sure their questions are answered correctly and promptly. Getting started is the hardest part of the journey. Guide your team members through that journey skillfully and diligently. Your job as a sponsor or a co-sponsor is to be available to your team members. Make sure that you are there to offer friendly guidance and support in a timely manner for all Affiliates in your team to start out and make progress in their SFI business. It takes good leadership skills to be able to do all these.

As a new Team Leader, the single most import thing you should be doing is to provide leadership for your team.

How to Handle Prospects and Affiliates Who Expect to Get Rich Quick

In SFI business, handling prospects and affiliates who expect to get rich quick is where your leadership skills come to the fore. These people are human beings who probably have a very wrong notion about what SFI is. Your duty is to let them know what SFI is all about as skillfully as you can. You should be very patient with them while using your leadership skills to educate them to have a change in their mind-set. You must provide leadership while leading by example yourself. If you believe that you too can get rich fast in the business, it is near impossible to teach any other person something different.

Preach patience and skillful diligence to your affiliate team members letting them into your own personal story and experience in the business. If they believe in you and trust you, there are very bright chances that they will act the way you prescribe.

Direct them to study “SFI rules of success” found on this link: https://www.sfimg.com/ROS/ROSBizLikeBiz

Draw their attention specifically to “Rule 20” which preaches patience and perseverance. Emphasize it to them as the rule states that “Building a successful business will require persistence and determination. Though many would like you to believe otherwise, there's simply no such thing as "get rich quick." So it is in SFI business and the founder himself Mr. Gery Carson identifies with that position in no unmistakable terms.
 

How Team Leaders Build Huge Downlines

 Well, I have heard it said that "successful people do not do different things, they simply do things differently." That in a nut-shell may just answer your question.

SFI to the best of my knowledge provides all affiliates equal opportunities in a level playing field. Even the rules are clear and they apply to all affiliates equally. These Team Leaders who happen to have tens of thousands in their down-lines may simply be very good at what they do which in my opinion every affiliate is also allowed by SFI to do anyway. I have no doubt that these Team Leaders do the same things we all do as affiliates but they must have some skills for doing these things differently and better than many of us. That may account for why they are so successful.

 

 

5 Ways to Effectively Gauge Your Productivity

Do you run a small business? Are you as productive as you should be? Do you work very long and hard? I have good news for you my friend. Productivity is not all about working longer and harder. It is about working better and smarter. You must routinely do these 5 things if you want to be sufficiently productive.

01. Avoid Multitasking

Always eliminate any distractions in your work place. Avoid Multitasking because it is a myth even though a much-hyped one by projects managers. Juggling tasks clearly reduces efficiency and productivity. Switching from task to task requires refocusing, and it takes quite some time. What works is to focus on doing one thing at a time. It is always better to move to other things only when you are through with what you have at hand.

  

02. Improve on your Strengths

Yes indeed! Everyone has their area of strengths where they excel very well. That said, not everyone can do everything equally well. It pays therefore to know your strengths and your weaknesses. While working to improve on your strengths, you can as well get someone else to complement you on your weaknesses. That is one great way to be more productive.

03. Document things on Paper

No matter how good your memory is, it can’t be perfect because a perfect memory is only a myth. For that reason, trying to recall things from your memory is a much bigger and difficult task than just picking up a piece of paper and reading them up. Putting more things on paper for later recall and reference better enhances productivity because productive people don’t waste brainpower on remembering stuff.

04. Eliminate Bottlenecks

The bottom-line is to always explore any and every way to avoid frustration when working on your business. When you’re feeling frustrated by your difficulty in accomplishing as much as you’d like, sometimes it helps to take a step back to review your workflow. If there are bottlenecks slowing down your workflow, you must quickly eliminate them or smoothen them out. Once these bottlenecks are out of the way, your productivity will be enhanced. 

05. Don’t Get Bogged Down with Perfection

Attaining perfection is another myth in running a business. Granted, there are times when only flawless work will do, but in most cases, doing a really good job is sufficient. Clearly you will be wasting a lot of time and energy if you insist on polishing absolutely everything to perfection all the time. That time and effort you are wasting could be better spent elsewhere getting other good things done. What matters here is to know exactly when good enough is really good enough. That is what enhances productivity.