AMVA - Amanda Moore Virtual Assistant

by Louis Bonaventura

Time management is basically about being focused. The Pareto Principle, also known as the ‘80:20 Rule’, states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output.  However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort.

Although the ratio ‘80:20′ is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or gained.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating to do lists and prioritizing.  These are the core basics of managing your time that should be understood to develop an efficient personal management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there are more skills involved than just the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.  Personal management involves everything you do. No matter how big or how small, everything counts.  Every new piece of knowledge you acquire, each new bit of advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the primary goal in maintaining your time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.  Managing your time is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that will be improved in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

1. The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.
2. The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.
3. The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.
4. The career aspect involves school and work.
5. The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.
6. The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of managing your time.

Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.  It also should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning to manage your time and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

• One of them is to review your goals, whether it be immediate or long-term goals, often.   A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.

• Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

• Each and every one of us has a peak time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to distinguish that its time to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.

• Learn to say “No”. You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

• Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective result.

• Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts.

• Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately. Make the main thing, the main thing!

• Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

• Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual. Personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.

From the moment you the integrate skills used to manage your time into your life, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth and create more doors for opportunities to knock upon.

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Lou and Robin Bonaventura have been Professional Network Marketers for 4 years. Visit their Blogfor more information on how personal development can benefit you!

Article Source: Keyword Articles

By: Scott Miscall

Getting traffic to your web site is a time consuming task. If you have a business site, then after you get the visitors to your site, you must convert them into paying customers. This guide by a Kansas City Website Design team will help you achieve these important tasks.

1. Title and Content: The title on your web pages should reflect your theme and also must include the best keywords. A title which includes your best keywords increases favorably the search engine optimization (SEO) process. Content is King! Great content will bring more visitors, create more back-links to your pages, and increase the popularity of the site. Update your content regularly, and provide quality information. Allow your visitors to comment on the content. Visitors love to leave comments and often come back to see the responses. Always filter out unwanted or junk comments.
2. Call To Action: A call to action should be present on each web page. You should make available a free newsletter or provide link to utility products on the page to encourage your visitors to sign up for the information. Put your contact information and phone number or your email address on the page so visitors can easily be in touch with you.
3. Regular Updates: Regular updates, especially if you have a blog site, will induce the search engine spiders to visit your site more frequently. A regularly updated site is good for visitors and the search engines alike, whereas a static site that is not updated for long periods lose their rank and traffic. Always update your web pages and add more interesting content and products. This will boost the traffic and repeat visits. More traffic means a better search engine ranking too.
4. Free Offers and Recommendations: Your visitors will love your web site for the freebies and recommendations they receive. Regularly give away good quality products, information, and recommendations freely. This may just boost your web revenues too, because people are also known to purchase your products along with getting the free items.
5. Convert Visitors To Leads: You should aim to convert the visitors into customers. You should also make the customers and visitors come back to your site often for more purchases. For that, you need a great content, many good items to sell, and more importantly — presence of an opt-in lead capture form on your page. You can increase the conversion rate significantly by testing and making your lead capture form more efficient. Removing the navigation links from the page can also keep the visitor on the sales page for a longer duration. Visitors are afraid to give their email details to strangers, especially online pages that they are visiting for the first time. To win their trust, you can add a link to your privacy policy page. This can do wonders to the confidence of your visitors, and also do wonders to your conversion rate!

You can add customer testimonials on the page to win the visitor’s trust and it might just induce him to buy the product. Any free product or service give-away will add to the overall value of your product or service. Then by following-up with the leads, you’ll be able to keep in touch with those leads and can give them the details of the latest information and sell more products.

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Author Resource:-> Wmoadv.com is a Kansas City Web Site Design company the specializes in web development, creative design solutions and result oriented strategic SEO services.

Article From Niche Article Directory

By: Bob Withers

Online newsletters are used for multiple reasons and in multiple ways. Online newsletters are used to increase sales to current and new customers and generate new leads. They are gaining in popularity and for good reason. They are a great way to build and manage effective relationships with your customers and they are an effective fast and affordable method of communicating to your target audience on a regular basis.

Online newsletters are formatted for your Web site and are usually delivered via email, however, some are sent as HTML pages located on a web site. They are contained within your website and offer a great way of keeping your website fresh and up to date. Online newsletters are a great way to gain instant market feedback either through surveys or by response to articles.

Newsletters are a way to lock in your consumers and remind them on a periodic basis of the value you provide. Newsletters once required expensive printing and mailing costs, but today’s online newsletters have changed the rules of the game. They have four times the readership of a traditional ad and can be instantly delivered to readers throughout the world.

Online newsletters give you reasons to send potential customers emails packed with informative articles and, of course, one or more carefully crafted sales messages. They are great for building trust and relationships online if your newsletter provides regular, quality content which your subscribers can really use. Newsletters allow individuals and groups to control messaging and deliver it with great precision to a target audience.

Online newsletters are often made available free of charge to subscribers who complete a short profile and they produce targeted leads as a result. As the number of Internet surfers using the Web for gathering information and making purchases increased, many businesses began using online newsletters to promote company Web sites, products, and services. Businesses also use them to provide information and as an additional source of revenue through advertising.

As well as being environmentally friendly, online newsletters save the publisher time and cut costs by reducing postage, paper, and other supplies costs. Along with being less expensive and easier to produce, online newsletters can also reach a much larger customer base. While many newsletters exist solely as an information source and do not utilize advertising, many others are published as a source of revenue.

With an increasing number of online newsletters in circulation and online traffic increasing, businesses began viewing the electronic medium as an attractive place to advertise. In fact, advertising in online newsletters is often more effective than placing a banner ad on a Web site. According to Forrester Research, advertisements in email newsletters had an average response rate of 18 percent in 2000, versus a banner ad click through rate of less than one percent.

Online newsletters are considered to be the best marketing tool to promote small business over the World Wide Web. They are an internet phenomenon and they can be crucial to the success of your enterprise. Newsletters have been, and continue to be, one of the most efficient marketing and communication tools used by both small and large companies alike.

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Author Resource:-> Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on network marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob or learn more about sales and marketing please visit:

Free Sales and Marketing Advice

Article From Niche Article Directory

Welcome to the June 15, 2008 edition of the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival. We received a ton of entries this week, unfortunately several were unable to be included for various reasons. But, we still have a great carnival for you this week so hopefully you enjoy!

Steve Oliphant presents Free Backlinks! Woo Hoo! posted at Steve Oliphant’s Musings.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger presents How I use Twitter and Utterz posted at Tactical Execution, saying, “This post describes how you can use free micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and Utterz to build a following and push value to your audience, all without leaving home.”

Webmaster_1 presents Avoiding Make Money From Home Scams posted at The Entrepreneurs Online Magazine, saying, “Tips on how to avoid money making schemes”

Diego Norte presents Internet Business 101 posted at Internet Business 101.

Jose DeJesus MD presents Business Startup - Testing Your Idea and Yourself posted at Physician Entrepreneur.

Steve Faber presents The Steps to Starting an Internet Business posted at Home Based Business Success.

Laurie presents Law Practice and Life Balance posted at Halo Secretarial Services.

Fiona Lohrenz presents Why Your Day Care Needs A Website posted at Child Care Only.

Social D presents Social Marketing Traffic Experiment Updated Results Video posted at Social Networking Bookmark Domination.

Jose DeJesus MD presents Business Document Resource posted at Physician Entrepreneur.

Janet Barclay presents Keeping Track of All Those Blogs posted at From the Desk of Janet Barclay.

Tammi Metzler presents My journey from full-time employee to full-time entrepreneur posted at Writeassociate’s Weblog.

Jennifer Naughton presents Day One Of A New Life posted at Jennifer Naughton — Virtual Assistant.

Mary Havlicek presents I’ve Got Spirit, How ‘Bout You? posted at Hours by Design.

Raymond presents Internet Service Is More Important To Me Than Phone or Cable TV posted at Money Blue Book.

Amanda Moore presents 10-Second Must-do SEO for Bloggers posted at AMVA - Amanda Moore Virtual Assistant.

SJ Yee presents On Becoming A Full-Time Blogger/Internet Marketer posted at Personal Development for the Book Smart.

Mark Riffey presents Who has time for marketing? posted at Business is Personal.

Jimmy Sansi presents A Big List For Improving Article Marketing posted at The Kaizen Business.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

In hosting the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival each week, one thing that continually surprises me is the number of bloggers who submit articles that don’t have text-based permalinks and that have titles which are not Search Engine Optimized (SEO). These are also usually the blogs that use a lot of “click here” links on their websites. These three things are so easy to change and will have a huge impact on the ranking of your blog that it makes no sense not to do them.

Titles

As any journalist will tell you, the power is in the title. If your article doesn’t have an eye-catching, interest building title, the odds of someone clicking on your link to read your article are greatly reduced.

For example, which article would you rather read?

1. Resource List
2. 97 SEO Resources That Will Get Your Blog Noticed

If you chose #2, you’re with the majority, but is that how you’re writing your titles? I’ll admit, sometimes it can just be hard to come up with a catchy title, but at least try to use something more descriptive and eye-catching than “Resource List.” The more info you give in the title to get interest the more people will see your post.

Permalinks

Even more important than your title for SEO is the way your link is generated. Using text-based permalinks is crucial for good SEO. This applies mainly to WordPress bloggers, but every blogger should double check their settings.

Which link would you be more likely to click on?

1. http://www.yourblog.com/?p=255
2. http://www.yourblog.com/97-seo-resources-that-will-get-your-blog-noticed

Obviously the answer is #2. Not only is it descriptive for the reader which will give you more clicks, it’s descriptive for the spiders which will help with your page rank.

In WordPress, the default setting is option #1 but it only takes about 10 seconds to change and will do your blog a world of good. Here are the instructions on how to change this setting.

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard
2. Click on the “Settings” link on the right side of your screen
3. Click on “Permalinks”
4. Choose the setting that you want to use (depending on how much info you want displayed)
5. Click the “Save Changes” button

There you go. 10 seconds and you dramatically increased the your blog’s SEO.

Keyword Links

Spiders are constantly crawling our blogs looking for information. One thing they like are links. If something is linked, that indicates that it’s important so you want to give the spider as much information as possible in that one tiny link.

Using key words to link is a great way to tell the spiders more about your site. For example, if I wanted to send someone to my services section, instead of linking “click here” (which is the #1 linked phrase on the net) I could link this phrase “Learn how AMVA can give you more free time.”

This will do a couple things.

1. It gets my company name into a link, and therefore into the search engine info about my page
2. It uses my tag line (which is “Giving you more free time”) which means that when people search for those words, my site is more likely to come up.
3. It’s more interesting to readers than “click here.”

You don’t want to go all nuts and try to cram in 1001 keywords into one link, but be more creative with your link choices so that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.

Implementing these three concepts (but particularly the Permalinks part) doesn’t take very long and will do amazing things for your SEO.

Anyone who wants to participate in this week’s Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival needs to submit their post by Saturday afternoon. You can use this link to submit: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_4185.html. The new Carnival will go up on Sunday.

If you want to participate and ensure a good result it’s *really* helpful if you post a link to the carnival on your blog ASAP after it’s up. The whole point of a carnival is to share traffic with the other participants, so please make sure you’re giving as well as receiving.

Let me know if you have any questions!