So, when Google+ introduced their business pages, you likely grabbed one because, well, you are in this social media thing for business. And if you haven’t set up your business page, you’re likely feeling some guilt about it. It’s probably on your “to do” list.

I may be able to take a load off of you today. Because there’s a good chance that you don’t need a Google+ business page.

A few months ago, in the midst of some social media overwhelm, I began wondering why I had two pages on Google+. It seemed silly to publish the same content to both. And I couldn’t see that I was using my personal page and my business page for different purposes. So I did a little research. And I looked at what others in my shoes were doing. And I quit using my business page.

Clearly, there are many small businesses that benefit from having a Google+ business page. A personal page doesn’t make sense for a lot of businesses. But, if you meet these 3 criteria, don’t bother with a business page.

1.  You are using Google+ mainly for business

When Google+ first introduced business pages, we all thought “Facebook pages.” Gotta have one. But, there are two differences in Facebook and Google+ that make a big difference as to whether you need a business page.

First, you were probably having a lot of interaction with your friends on Facebook when you decided to get a business page. Having a page is much easier than having to divide your Facebook friends into lists, and making sure only your personal friends hear about your 2-year-old’s latest adventures on the toilet.

On Google+, chances are you aren’t doing a lot of chit chatting with your friends. You may be posting personal stuff there, but it’s stuff that’s appropriate for your business friends too. In short, your personal page is likely suitable for business use.

Second, you can only have 5000 friends on Facebook. So sending your excess to your page is a great way to make sure you can engage with new people even after you’ve passed the 5000 mark.

With Google+, you can only have 5000 people in your circles, but just because you’re in my circle doesn’t mean I have to be in your circle. I can’t friend you on Facebook without you accepting. So I’m your friend and you’re mine.

With Google+, people can keep circling you after you’ve passed the 5000 mark in your circles. You don’t need to ask them to go somewhere else to see your content.  And seriously, are you interacting with 5000 people? If someone circles you and you want to circle them back, just un-circle one of your inactive connections.

2.  YOU are your business

If you are branding yourself in your business, why have a separate page? Yes, I have a name for my business for legal reasons, but both my Google+ personal and business page are “Jennifer Herndon.” It was often hard for me to figure out if I was posting as me or as my business.

If you are your business – meaning if you are responsible for doing or delegating everything that happens in your business – use your personal page for your business. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever share personal stuff there. In the world of relationship marketing, people want to know a little about you outside of your business life.

3.  You use content to attract your market to your business

You’re probably thinking “who doesn’t?” and that’s a good question. You write articles for your blog. You share them on social media. You share smaller nuggets of wisdom across social media platforms on a daily basis.  No matter what you’re selling, you are in the business of content creation.

And, with Google+’s new emphasis on Social Search, you’ve got to be found in the search results. Google+ has a very cool feature that helps make this happen. It allows you to claim authorship of your blog. Once you’ve done this, your picture shows up next to all of your articles in the search results. And, a link comes up allowing the reader to click and see more articles written by you.

I wrote an article about this “rel=author” feature that you can read for the whole story. But, the bottom line is, you can’t connect your Google+ business page to your blog. It has to be your personal page. So, when people find you in the search results and click on your pretty face, they are going to be taken to your personal page.

For today . . .

Maybe some day Google+ will make changes that provide some advantage to the solo entrepreneur having a business page. If you have a page, fill out your profile information for those who stumble across it. If you don’t have a page and want to make sure you snag the name of your business for your vanity url, go for it.

But don’t worry about managing a business and a personal page. Just relax and enjoy the feeling of taking one social media task off of your “to do” list.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing on Google+ ~ even if you disagree with me! Please let me know in the comments below.

Have you ever read a blog and thought, “my writing is better than that!” “And my blog is prettier than that.”  And yet the blog you are reading has dozens of comments, is full of paid advertising, and enjoys an Alexa ranking of under 100,000.  While yours sits lonely and neglected with an occasional lone comment from your mom.

How do they do it?  What limits your business to being seen on your blog by 11 people, while someone who by all appearances has blogging skills that equal yours (at best), makes a living from the traffic she generates to hers?

The fact is, there is a surprisingly small difference between you and her.  And the easy answer is, more people read her blog than read yours.

Obviously, there are several factors that go into building a successful blog.  And by successful, I mean one that makes money ~ either through paid advertising, or more likely, through the products and services you offer there.

But what is becoming one of the biggest challenges these days is the amount of “noise” there is on the internet.  By that I mean the number of people who are trying to make money online and trying to promote their business through blogging.

You’ve got to do everything you can to be found online if want to have any hope of actually being successful online.  And it’s this fact that makes the tip I share with you in the above video so valuable.  It’s a 10 minute tweak that will ensure that the permalink structure of your blog post is optimized to get you found by the search engines.

Will this one tip alone make you millions?  No.  But it is essential, considering the odds of being found by the search engines that you currently face.  And this tip, combined with every other small step you take to “perfect” your blog will add up to be the difference between the stuggles others face and the wild success you enjoy!

I hope the video is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

Today’s (kinda) super simple yet super effective tip is to make sure the permalink structure for your blog posts is set to “post name.”

This setting will improve your performance in the search engines, which is something we could all use, right?

Have no idea what a “permalink” is? Each post you make on your blog has a permanent link that it is connected to. This link appears in your address bar when you are viewing the post.

Here’s an example of the permalink for my recent post:

Until recently, my permalinks included the date of my post, and looked like this:

(This is my friend Lorii’s blog, she gives great advice if you’re looking for love!)  And it used to be, in older WordPress versions, you wanted the date before the post name for SEO purposes.  Not so anymore.

Now, the SEO-friendly permalink includes only the post name. Two steps will correct your dilema if you have any additional information in your current permalinks. The first step is easy.  In the dashboard of your blog, on the left-hand side, click on “Settings” -> “Permalinks.”  You will see this screen:

Make sure you have the button clicked that says “Post name,” as you see above. Then click on “save changes” just below that button.

Simple, yes?  It’s step two of the process that made me procrastinate on making this change until just the other day.

The problem you are creating when you change the permalink structure is this.  The change doesn’t just effect your posts from this day forward.  It effects all of your posts.  Which means when someone clicks a link that has your date included in it, they will get an error.  Because you have a new date-free link.

So — eek — by changing your permalink structure, you’ve broken all of your links.  Which doesn’t help your SEO at all, obviously. Fortunately, I just stumbled upon an easy fix for this.  It comes courtesy of  Joost de Valk at Yoast.com.  His article on this fix is well worth reading.  Besides, you’ll have to go there to complete step two anyway.

Once you get to Yoast.com, and you should land on “How to Change Your WordPress Permalink Structure,” scroll down to the bottom left-hand side of the article and click the blue button that says “Generate Redirects.”  That will bring up this box for you to fill out:

Fill out the box, click the “Generate Redirect” button, and it will create a line of redirect text for you.  Copy that text.

The final step is not hard, but it is possibly unfamiliar. You are going to put the redirect text into your .htaccess file in your blog.

To do this, you will need an FTP client. Have no idea what this is? No worries. Download FileZilla (for free) now. To access your blog, log in by completing the information at the top of the FileZilla window. It looks like this:

You get this login information from your web host provider (Hostgator is one of the most popular). You may not need the “Port,” just use whatever your web hosting company gives you.  Click on “Quickconnect” and it will bring up your files.

Before you go any further, click on “Server” in the FileZilla menu bar and make sure you have “Force showing hidden files” checked:

Now, go to the right hand side of the FileZilla window and find your “public_html” file.  Click on that, find the name of your blog, click on that, and find the .htaccess file. Here’s what the right-hand side of your FileZilla window will look like:

Right click on your .htaccess file and select “view/edit.”  That will bring up a box that looks like this:

The green highlighted portion in the box is the redirect text I received from the Yoast redirect generator. Paste your text in the very top of the .htaccess file just like I did here. FileZilla will prompt you to upload the edited file. Do that, and you’re done!

Now, go back to an old link you’ve posted somewhere and click on it to confirm that you’ve done everything right and your links are in fact still working.

You can do this in 10 minutes, and it will increase the SEO value of your blog, which means more people will be able to find your good stuff.  And the more that find you, the more chances you’ll have to build relationships that lead to clients, friends and partners.

I’ll walk you through this in a video next time. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

Responsibility gives you control over the ultimate outcome of most everything in your business.  Which is nice.  But, what’s even better, is that taking responsibility will help you make friends and money.  And that’s really where the bottom line is in business.

Responsibility Will Make You Friends

Think about how you feel when you make a mistake.  You feel bad.  And, you want as few people as possible to know about it.  You do what you can to fix it as quickly as possible.

When something goes wrong in your business – a mistake, an oversight, a mishandling, whatever – you are the one who needs to take responsibility.  It’s your business.

At first look, this may not seem fair or right.  Letting the person who has directly caused the error off the hook encourages him to do an inadequate job in the future, doesn’t  it?  Not if you handle it right.

The Small Mistakes

Remember the guy from my last article who announced in an email to everyone “my secretary messed up?”  The responsible way to handle something like that – an easy to correct mistake without long-term consequences – is to simply correct it without assigning any blame.

Acknowledging the mistake with the person who made it, and taking the steps to correct it (or allowing him to do so if appropriate), is all that’s needed most times.  It benefits no one to publicly call the person out who made the error.

The Bigger Mistakes

If it’s a larger scale mistake, that actually inconveniences or upsets your clients in some way, you still have to own it.  You’re remembering it’s your  business, right?

So the email that goes out, or the phone call that’s made, needs to say “I messed up.”  Take responsibility as the business owner, and then work with the source of the error to see how the team can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

These approaches will make you friends because of what I previously said ~ people don’t like to make mistakes, and they’re happy to have them quietly resolved.  And, they will see you as a great example of a strong leader, a good person, and someone they want to work with or for.  We all like people with integrity.

Responsibility Will Make You Money

In a lot of ways, this goes hand-in-hand with making friends.  If you have a reputation for taking responsibility for your business and everything that happens in it, and people like you because of that, you are going to make money.  Because you are the kind of person people want to work for and with.  You are going to attract the top people into your business.

Own Your Actions

If you’ve been around online business for awhile, you’re probably familiar with this scenario.  A marketer announces a huge product launch.  The “early bird” price on the product is good for 3 days only, and then it’s gone forever.

After the great price has supposedly expired, you get another email about how all of the hungry buyers “crashed the server,” and millions were therefore unable to purchase.  So, the “gone forever” price is back – but only for two more days!

Seriously?  None of these millionaire marketers have figured out what system to use that won’t “crash the server?!”  Yet for a couple of years, nearly every launch I watched experienced this devastation.

I haven’t seen this excuse used in a long time.  Probably because people just aren’t buying it anymore, literally.  In the age of relationship marketing, your customers want you to be real with them.  And that’s what taking responsibility is about.

If you’ve decided to extend the “early bird” price because you haven’t made enough sales, or you’ve made so many you want to keep it going, just say so.  Take responsibility for that decision.

Your market likes honesty.  I got an email the other day from the creator of a product I own.  He had been making some upgrades to the product and pushed the wrong button, which caused some of his customers’ work they had done in the system to get messed up.  And that’s exactly what the email said.  There was no blaming it on technology or his “team.”  If he releases another product I could use, I’ll buy it without hesitation.  Because I know he takes responsibility for his business.

Own Your Team’s Actions

If you want to have a profitable business, you are going to have a team.  You can’t do it all by yourself.  Lots of work can and should be outsourced.  You need employees, contractors, partners and/or joint ventures.

But outsource does not equal out of sight.  You bear the ultimate responsibility for seeing that everything is going right.  You will make mistakes.  So will others on your team.  Own them all.  Never leave yourself open to saying “My _________ didn’t get it done right.”  Taking responsibility will show your team and your market that you are human and that you are a confident leader.  They will like you, and want to buy your good stuff!

It may surprise you to know that one of the biggest reasons people don’t succeed in building a profitable online business has nothing to do with their skill.  Or their talent.  Or the fact that they can’t afford the latest information product on how to trick Google.

Most people who decide to start an online business are entrepreneurs at heart.  Which means they are always busy with new ideas, new projects, new businesses.  You don’t see many online business owners laying on the couch a lot.  Or staring at the TV much, if at all.

In short, entrepreneurs are busy people.  You probably know what I mean.  We just can’t help ourselves.

You probably work off of a “to do” list.  And certainly should if you don’t.  It’s the old “fail to plan, plan to fail” thing.  ”To do” lists guarantee focused productivity, if you force yourself to use them.

But, one thing I discovered about my “to do” list recently was that it was never done.  Which can be a little disheartening.  The easy things, like returning emails, got done.  The identifiable things, like scheduling my tweets got done.  But those big projects – you know, the ones that actually make you money in your business – seemed to be written on my “to do” list in permanent marker.

I had become pretty good about sticking to my list when it came to maximizing the precious time I have to grow my online business.  But sales letters, opt-in offers, Ebooks . . . . most things that couldn’t be completed in a day, always seemed to be “in the works.”  Until I discovered that I was creating my “to do” list wrong.

In this video, I tell you how a small tweak in how you make your daily list can create big results.  Let me know what you think.  And please share any other tips you have for getting it done in your online business.

If you are an online business owner, your blog is your business.  As much as the building that houses the restaurant is the restaurant owner’s business.

One of the biggest mistakes online business owners make is failing to realize they are no different than any other small business. Because of the advantages of having an online business, and the ease of working from home, many people are fooled into believing the rules don’t apply to them.  

The sooner you realize the rules for online business ownership are the same as the rules for owning an offline business, the sooner you will have your online empire in place.

So what does this have to do with blogging? Everything.

I meet a lot of people through social media who are there for the purpose of making money. They have a Twitter account that brands them to a certain market. And a Facebook page that carries the name of their business. Yet the number of them who are “planning to start their blog” is astonishing to me.

Because until you start your blog, you haven’t started your business.  I say that for 3 reasons.

Your Blog is Your Business

Your blog is the building that houses your online business. You’ve got to start thinking about your blog like this.

Let’s say you decide to open a shoe store. You find your suppliers and order your shoes. You buy a neon sign of your store’s name. You’ve got advertising in place all over the city.

But you haven’t leased a spot for your store.

The delivery trucks dump thousands of shoes on your front lawn. Your sign sits in the box it came in, as there’s nowhere to hang it. And your ads are stunning, but they contain no store address.

Doesn’t make much sense does it? But, this is exactly how you’re running your online gig if you don’t have a blog.  Your blog tells your online market “you can find me here.” Your website’s domain name is your street address.

You’ve Got to Show Up to Work

This is another mistake that’s easy to make if you own an online business. Yes, it’s great that you can get up when you want.  Work when you want. Wear your pajamas if you want.

But, if you want to become the go-to expert in your market (and of course you do), you have to consistently show up to work. Your audience must know what you hours are, so to speak.

Let’s go back to our shoe store. Your customer needs just the right shoe for tonight’s party. This is the first chance she’s had to shop for it. It’s 3:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. She reaches out to pull open your door.  But it’s locked. You didn’t feel like showing up today.

Well, obviously, you aren’t going to be in business for long if this is how you operate.

The beautiful thing about your online business is that you don’t have to be physically present “full time.”  But your audience must learn to know when they will hear from you.

Your blog is your storefront. So, if your hours are going to be that you post on your blog Wednesday and Saturday, and send the article out in your newsletter on Thursday and Monday, that’s fine. But you’ve got to be there at those times. Always.

You Must Be the Expert

The third reason you must have a consistent blog to have a business has to do with establishing expert status in your market. When your audience wants information, they go online to find it. And the ones who are putting that information online, are the ones who become known as the experts.

Imagine walking into Foot Locker and not being able to find the newest Nike Air release. Worse yet, what if the salesperson didn’t know if they were ever getting the shoe in, and in fact hadn’t even heard that Nike had a new shoe! Where would you go next time you wanted a new pair of shoes? Not there.

And your market won’t be coming to you as the expert if you aren’t there (duh!). Your blog is the place you want to train them to come when they want information. And you can only do that by consistently giving them good content.

We’ll talk more about how to monetize your blog another time. For today, make sure you’re treating your online business like a “real” business, not just a hobby. And don’t doubt that your blog is as important to you, as a building is to a restaurant owner. It truly is.

The good news, fortunately, is that you can guarantee your business success.

That’s right, it’s all up to you. Which is cool, because it means you can’t fail unless you make the choice to.

One of the biggest keys to building a profitable business is taking responsibility. Not just usually, or when it’s deserved, or when things go right. But always.  This isn’t something that people think about a lot. But taking 100% responsibility, 100% of the time, is perhaps the best way to guarantee your business success.

Here’s a Bad Example of Taking Responsibility

The leader of a group I’m part of had organized a business happy hour for the group. It was scheduled for a restaurant that has two locations in the city. Yesterday I got an email from him that said, “My secretary messed up. The happy hour is really scheduled for location B, not location A.”

Classic failure to take responsibility. As the leader, it’s his responsibility to get us the right information. Several scenarios may be going through your head right now that are making you say, “but what if it really was her fault?” What if he did everything right and she was distracted by the phone, or forgot, or wrote it down wrong, or a thousand other things?

It doesn’t matter. It’s still his responsibility. And it would have been so easy for him to take the appropriate responsibility. There was zero need to say “my secretary messed up.”  Zero. Wouldn’t “sorry for the confusion, the happy hour is actually at . . .” have done the job? Then there’s no needless blaming. And he’s taking the responsibility for getting the correct information out.

This is a pretty easy example. There are really no dire or long term consequences for the mistake.

But what I have found is that how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Here’s How You Take Responsibility

We have a 35 minute drive to school in the morning. Getting 3 young kids in the car and there on time is a daily challenge. I use to find myself saying “you’re going to make us late.” And always thinking that we were late because of some action, or inaction, by a child.

The reality is, I’m responsible for getting them there on time. So whatever tweak in the schedule or routine that needs to be made is my responsibility. It’s on me.

Around the same time I came to terms with this, I had a similar realization as to my business success, or lack thereof. I would notoriously have trouble meeting deadlines because of a computer problem, or childcare problem, or unscheduled issue with another client, or whatever.

Again, the reality was that I was responsible for organizing my universe so that I could get the project completed on time. And if I had made a realistic map of what the project required, and started working on it earlier, all of these easy-to-blame interferences wouldn’t have been there.

Take a look at your life and your business.  If you are blaming anyone but yourself when things go wrong in one situation, I guarantee you’re doing it all the time.

What Difference Will it Make if You Take Responsibility?

What will taking responsibility for everything in your life do for you, other than make you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?

This is where you might surprise yourself. Because taking responsibility actually frees you.

Think about it. If you have responsibility to get a project done, then you have complete control over it. No one can stop it from happening. Just like no one can stop me from getting my kids to school on time if I take responsibility for it. Yes, there has been that occasional massive accident that makes it impossible, but I’m talking about in the normal course of your world.

If you think, “I can’t get this done because of outside influence A, B and C,” you are left completely powerless. Failure is an option.

But if you think, “I can’t get this done unless I get A, B, and C right,” you have 100% control over the outcome. And I know failure is not an option for you.

Now it may take you a minute to get it all right. But if your project was late because the graphics guy didn’t get you his stuff on time, it’s not his fault. You either hired the wrong person or didn’t make your expectations clear enough. But you can get that right next time. You have the power.

Take some time this week to think about how taking 100% responsibility could make a difference in your business success. Do you think there’s a situation in which you can’t take responsibility? If so, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what we can do to change that.

Next week, I’ll show you how taking responsibility can help you win friends and make money in your business.

You may remember that a couple of months ago I advised you against posting to Facebook through Hootsuite (the most popular third party app).  My point was that Facebook collapses photos posted from Hootsuite, meaning your audience will never see your post unless they click on a link that says “see more.”

I wrote that post without doing any research.  It was just based on my personal experience.

I then learned about a study done by EdgeRank Checker that revealed that posting through a Third Party App decreased the likelihood of engagement per fan by 80%, on average.  The significance of this finding obviously caused a lot of dismay among those who regularly schedule their posts through a third party API, such as Hootsuite.

In response, Facebook adjusted its EdgeRank algorithm to stop punishing those using third party apps by limiting the visibility of their posts.

On December 1, 2011 EdgeRank Checker updated the above study based on the adjustments.  The conclusion was – ”At a preliminary glance, it appears that from an Impressions perspective, 3rd Party APIs may have regained equal value.”  It appeared that all was well.  Maybe.

But, concerns remain that you should be aware of when choosing how to post to your Facebook Profile or Page.  We all know that maintaining engagement with people on your Page is a constant work in progress.  You don’t need anything working against you.  If posting through a third party app makes engagement even just a little harder, you need to find a way to avoid it.

A recent study from Hubspot suggests that since the new Timeline rolled out, you are again being punished heavily for posting from a third party API rather than directly from Facebook.

The Hubspot study looked at two weeks of posts by Hubspot.  The results showed that posts made through a third party app received 67% fewer “likes” than those made from Facebook.  There was also a 60% decrease in the number of clicks a post received if it was made through a third party API rather than from Facebook.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook responds with a denial, or another algorithm adjustment as it did following the EdgeRank Checker study.

For now, what you can take from the Hubspot study is that if you are using a third party app to post, it is essential for you to test your own results.  If you don’t know the best way to do that, sorry, we’ll have to cover that another day.

Even better, just start posting everything directly from Facebook.  I told you in my last article on this subject how that’s a doable thing, no matter how busy you are.

Is Your Third Party App Allowing You to Share?

Let me give you one more tip if you are posting with a third party API.  Post photos and links directly from Facebook.  Here’s why.

If you post a link directly from Facebook, the “Like,” “Comment,” and “Share” buttons appear in a line just below the post.  Of course, everyone’s use to this.  That’s how it’s always been done.  Here’s an example:

If you post a link through a third party API, Facebook does not include a “Share” button.  I’ve been experimenting with Post Planner, a third party app.  Here’s what my link post looks like:

You can see that Facebook includes the “Like” and “Comment” buttons, but not a “Share” button.  Post Planner has integrated a “Share” button into its app, so the reader can still share if her eyes travel up a little.  Does this hurt the number of shares you will get?  Maybe.  If you are going to use this method, you better test it and know the answer.

I say, post your links from Facebook.  At the very least, make sure your third party app has integrated a “Share” button.  If they haven’t, your audience won’t have an opportunity to share your great work.

Pinterest is a good example of why you always need to be aware of where you are posting from.  If you have your Pinterest account set up to post your activity on Facebook, you aren’t giving your readers an opportunity to share.  Here’s an example:

My friend Susan Preston sponsored a great Pin-it-to-Win-it contest on Pinterest.  I commented on it at Pinterest, and it then posted to my Timeline.  But, you’ll see no “Share” button anywhere to be found.  Which means none of my readers could easily pass this contest on to their audience.  To make that happen, I would have had to post the Pinterest link directly from my Timeline.

Your takeaway today is (1) to post directly from Facebook whenever possible, especially when sharing links and photos, and (2) if you are posting from any third party app, make sure they are including a “Share” button within your post.

I’d love to hear what your experiences and practices are when it comes to posting on Facebook.  Please share with me in the comments below.

Yet every day, technology seems to add one more tool specifically designed for distraction.

As an online business owner, focus can be your best friend.  More likely, it is your biggest enemy.

If you were an artist, striving to complete a canvas, it would be relatively easy.  Lock yourself in a room with the canvas and your paints.  Turn off your computer and cell phone.  Leave them in the other room.

Nothing is going to pop up on your canvas and pull you away from your focus on covering it with paint.

As an online business owner, your computer is your canvas.  The things that make your computer so awesome are the same things that provide you non-stop distraction from the focus that could otherwise be doubling your profits.

Email, instant messaging and Skype allow you to instantly communicate with anyone, anywhere at any time.  They even come with convenient little noises that alert you when you’ve received a new message.  In about 2 seconds, you can be drawn away from completing your canvas, and into a completely different direction.

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and the list goes on . . . are great tools for building relationships.  And relationships translate into business deals, partnerships, new clients.  But the attractive little icons that sit on your desktop are often too much to resist.  And again, in 2 seconds your focus is headed in a completely different direction than where it should be.

As an online business owner, one of your biggest jobs is creating content.  It’s one of the most time-consuming, and often one of the most difficult.  And, it doesn’t require you to be online at all.  I often write with a pencil on a piece of paper (gasp!).  Even if you prefer to pound it out on your computer, the creation of the content does not require you to be online.

Unless you have ninja-like focus, you could likely benefit from some tools to help make your online experience a little less distracting.  The 5 tools I’m going to share with you here either help your computer being partially offline, or help you focus even though you are online.

1.  Freedom and Anti-Social

Freedom is available for both Mac and Windows.  It’s a simple app that allows you to lock yourself away from the computer for up to 8 hours.  You choose the interval of time.  And, in the event of a national internet emergency, you can escape the program by rebooting your computer.  There is a free trial, and then it costs $10 (a one time fee).  It’s well worth it if you have self-diagnosed ADD like I do.

Anti-Social is only available for Mac right now.  I love this one.  It locks you away from the social media sites you specify.  Again, you can choose to block yourself for up to 8 hours.  There’s a long list of sites you can choose to block, but I don’t think they’ve added Pinterest yet (yikes!).

I find Anti-Social especially useful because there are times I need to do research online while I’m writing.  Just now, I went over to Anti-Social and grabbed the link for you.  I wouldn’t have been able to do this if I had Freedom running.

There is a free trial for Anti-Social, and the paid version is $15.  You can get both Freedom and Anti-Social together for $20.

2.  SelfControl (for Mac)

SelfControl is a free app for Macs.  It works much like Freedom and Anti-Social in that it allows you to block specific websites for a period of time you choose.  The downside may be that even re-booting your computer does not allow you to escape the block.  You’re stuck until your time is up.

I haven’t used this one, but have been told that it works well.  For free, it’s worth trying out.

3.  StopDistractions (for Windows)

StopDistractions is basically a Windows version of Anti-Social.  It provides a list of websites you can block (which doesn’t include Pinterest, yet!) for the number of minutes you specify.

The cost is a one-time fee of $7.  Again, I haven’t used it, but have been told by a user that it does what it says it will do.

4.  WriteRoom and Dark Room

WriteRoom is an application for Macs.  You can download it for free.  It turns your entire computer screen black. All you can see is a cursor and your writing, which appears green.  Like this:

WriteRoom is a great focus booster, especially for those with a better ability to resist the sound of an incoming message, or the unfounded fear that the end of the world is being announced on Facebook.

Dark Room is for PCs.  I have not used it, but user reviews on the website are positive.  Dark Room purports to be ”a clone of the original WriteRoom.”  The screen shot provided shows the same black screen with green writing.  If you have a PC then, this is your answer.

I find WriteRoom to be helpful, but if I’m trying to focus for a longer period of time, Freedom or Anti-Social is necessary for my severe condition!  Try them out and see what works for you.

5.  OmmWriter

I just started using OmmWriter and I love it.  It’s very Zen (hence the “omm” I suppose).  Depending on your personality, it may be a better fit for you than WriteRoom or Dark Room.  It’s available for Macs and PCs.

It provides you with a soft full screen background and light music ~ chosen to enhance your writing experience.  There is a free version, or a paid version.  The paid version offers you more background and music options.

How much does it cost?  This is one of the things that makes me love it even more.  The suggested price is $4.11, but you can pay more or less if you want.  However, because “monetary gifts ending with a 1 are considered auspicious in certain cultures,” they would like for your payment to end with a “1.”

You can save your work as a .pdf or .txt file.  Saving as a .pdf makes printing easy.  Saving as a .txt makes inserting it into any word processing program easy.

I feel good when I use this program.  I also believe in the power of specific music to help your creative thoughts flow and your concentration improve.  You should give it a try.

Doubling Your Profits

In the title of this article I told you these tools would double your profits.  And they will do that, and probably more depending on where your profits are right now.  If they are at zero, they will kickstart you into the profit zone.

How?  When you focus, you create more.  When you create more, you reach more people, more often.  When you are connected to more people, you have more customers.  That’s really all I can say about it.

The most powerful way to show you how to double your profits is to tell you to go out and use these tools and see what happens.  I look forward to hearing about it!

I explained why when I first introduced the Anthologize WordPress plugin to you. But, it’s hard to say it too many times.

The best way to establish yourself as an expert in your market, to become the respected authority people turn to for information, is to create a lot of content.  In other words, write a lot of good stuff that your market wants to read.

A lot of what you do is free content for your blog and newsletter.  But, you are running a business here.  And you do have knowledge your market is willing to pay for.  Which means you are going to need to create a product.

In today’s video, I will walk you through the process of creating an Ebook using the Anthologize WordPress plugin.  Anthologize is an easy plugin to use.  In the video I will make it even easier for you by showing you some of the features it took me a few minutes to get exactly right.  Enjoy!

As I told you in the video, the Anthologize plugin takes the major pain out of creating a product ~ coming up with the content.  While the drag and drop feature makes creation of your Ebook easy, resist the urge to put less time into this than you know you must to create a good product.

Make sure your Ebook flows.  It should sound like a book, not a collection of blog posts.  Make sure you edit out words and phrases that don’t make sense in an Ebook.  Like “in this post.”

If you’ll take the time to do proper editing, Anthologize will take many hours off the creation of your next product, giveaway, or  opt-in offer.  I look forward to seeing what you create!