In my third series on business, I will be sharing the ways that you could grow your business exponentially. Business can make someone rich, provided you can grow it quick enough. Having just a small business all the time will not take you anywhere. You need to figure out ways which you could keep doubling your income. I will share some of the tips you could employ to get the results you wanted, but it will still depend on your enthusiasm. You need the passion AND the hard work to make your business work even harder for you.

First, you need to work for the business for the first 2 years and build up a strong foundation, train enthusiastic staffs, and more importantly you need to learn how to delegate jobs. Doing the business alone will not make it a success because each of us has only 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You can never ask for more. So, you need to train up some competent employees and get them to commit themselves in the business as much as you.

I did say that we only have 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week, so how to make sure that your business keeps growing? You need a lot of hands to make this work, and it is not as easy as it sounds. The tricky part here is to try to DUPLICATE yourself. Of course you can't just photocopy yourself. So, you need to TRAIN up your employees and give them some perks for jobs well done. We always say that 2 brains are better than 1.

We want to make use of 1% from 100 people rather than 100% from 1 person. You do this by LEVERAGING. Be a leader and get your employees to copy what you do. You don't tell them what to do, but you show them by example. Imagine if you have 100 employees doing the same job as you everyday, you would have 2400 hours a day and 700 days a week. So, if you can get the revenue of $30,000 per month by yourself, putting this leveraging into place would bring you a revenue of $3,000,000 per month. Is this not what we want to achieve?

You must never save on marketing or advertising expenses. These are good expenses for your business. You need to let the whole world knows what you are doing. Start your marketing small if you only have a small budget, and when this brings you increased result, start growing your advertising budget. Sponsor or run some events in your local business area to attract more attention. There are lots and lots of events which you could sponsor, and the good part is, even a small amount is good enough.

Doing these would ensure a stable growth of your small business and of course, your income! In times to come, I will add more tips and tricks you could do with your business. So stay tuned.

My previous post already highlighted the 10 proven steps to start earning money from Adsense. In this post, I will be discussing on the 3 ways you could increase your Adsense income even MORE. What we want to achieve from this is to increase the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of your Adsense ads. So, we need to work a little on the technical part of it. Here goes :-

What you need to know before you proceed?
To increase your Adsense income, all you must do is to increase the number of click throughs you receive. There are two ways for you to increase your Click-Through-Rates. You can either increase your website traffic or you can make your Adsense ads stand out. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on making your Adsense ads stand out instead.

Blend your Adsense ads with your website
You want your Adsense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your Adsense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your Adsense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the Adsense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.

For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue, then you will want to remove the border from your Adsense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yeah, you guessed it alright. Make the Adsense links BLUE!

Plan your ads placements
Where you place your Adsense ads is just as important as how they will look. Fortunately, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your Click-Through-Rate:

• The more white space around your ads the better
• The closer to the top of the page the better
• The closer the left of the page the better

Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will notice an increase in your Adsense Click-Through-Rate. It really is that SIMPLE!

Add a Google Search function
Very few people utilize this function or even realize its potential. With this function, visitors to your website/forum/blog would be able to search for other websites through yours. Wondering how does this work? Well, it is simple. When a visitor wants to look up for a website, he will type the keyword and search through your website. Whenever your visitor does that, your Adsense ID will be imbedded in all of the searches. That said, how are you going to gain from it? If your visitor clicks ANY of the sponsored links through your website, YOU will be making money from that. So, if he clicks the back button to look for another link, you make another round of money. The potential of this is huge. So what is the moral of this? ADD a Google Search function to your website.

This is my second of a series of Adsense posts that I will be adding from time to time. Please revisit my blog to get the latest updates. I'm sorry because the RSS feature is still unavailable at the moment, but I promise I will add one soon so that ALL my visitors will benefit from it. That said, I end my post here. You can share your success stories with me as well by posting in my comments box. Happy earning with Adsense!

I am starting a series on online business opportunities, and the first on my list is Adsense. I chose this theme because of the growing interests people have with Adsense, with its easy to use program and possibly easy passive income that does not require a lot of capital. Anyone with access to a computer and Internet can start earning with Adsense. All you need is to have an account registered with Adsense (http://adsense.google.com), and start implementing the codes to your websites or blogs. Adsense is a very good opportunity for beginners and it can be used in almost every website/forum/blog that you can think of. So, now I am going to reveal the 10 easy steps one can take to make money with Adsense. This steps were proven by Graham Bowall, who as an Internet Marketer, reviews online money making opportunities and publishes newsletters.

So, what are the 10 steps one can start making money with Adsense?

1. Keywords. You should understand that Google 'crawls' through websites/forums/blogs to search for keywords to update their database. This is not only applicable to Google though, as all search engines work this way. So, having good and unique keywords that are very sought after helps your website to stand out among the BILLIONS of websites out there with possibly the same keywords. For example, when a person types "Adsense" into Google, it will search for websites with the keyword "Adsense" and displays the result. The more of this keyword you have, the higher your chances of being listed at the top. Competition for this keyword is also very tensed, so you need to look for UNIQUE keywords that not many people use, but still sought after by users. This requires a lot of thinking, so you should do it wisely.
2. Domain name. Your domain name is another factor that helps you to pull in more visitors. A simple search for "Adsense" will display results like "adsense.google.com", "www.adsense.com" or "adsense.blogspot.com" will be displayed. So, having the keywords as your domain is also helpful as the possibility of your URL being listed is higher. So when making a website, choose your domain wisely and think thoroughly.
3. Interesting contents. You should not bore your first-time visitors, as it will leave a bad impression. First-time visitors are bound to return for more if your contents are interesting and freuqently updated. This will be your first step in creating a successful income stream online using Adsense or any other pay-per-click programs. Do some research to see which topics interest readers, and think of how to make them interesting.
4. Good layout. Your website should not be too simple, unless your contents are excellent. One of the first impressions would be your layout. If visitors find it hard to navigate around your website, then they might not return again. Do not make a website that a 5 year-old kid can make. Use templates that are widely available online to help you.
5. Optimize your pages. Use meta tags in your coding if possible to make your page rank higher. Aim for a keyword density of between 3% - 5%, and include your keywords in topics and descriptions to improve your chances. It helps too by using your keywords as links throughout your website. This requires more technical skills though.
   
6. Placement of ads. You should place the ads provided by Adsense at strategic places, for example at the header of your page or within the body of your page. Adding the ads between links helps too as it will be more visible. If your ads blend into your contents, chances are visitors would click on them. So, plan your layout and placements wisely to make more money.
7. Create a blog. Blogs are making waves currently, and you should utilize this tool to help with getting more traffic. Blogs that are updated regularly will be ranked higher and faster than the others, so link it with your website to divert traffic to your website. Millions of people have created blogs and have earned good money monthly from Adsense, so there is no excuse saying "it doesn't work". You should MAKE it work.
8. Google site map. Getting indexed fast will make you more Adsense money. Create a Google site map and send it to them and your site will get indexed fast.
9. Write articles. Few noticed the power articles can do to get you traffic. You should write articles that are meaningful and informative to your targetted visitors and update frequently to keep them coming back for more. You should try to write one article a day, or 2-3 articles per week at least to get your visitors coming back.
10. Using external links. Nothing will improve your search engine rankings more than having quality one way links to your site. Good links will also give you more traffic to make even more money from your Adsense ads.

This proven ten step Adsense system works. Applying the system manually is hard work and takes a lot of time. Many new tools that automate most of the system has emerged, enabling production of a large number of sites in very little time – the key to make big money with Adsense. In the following articles, I will add more information and details on how you can increase your traffic further to make even more money for Adsense. This first coverage on Adsense is for those beginning the babysteps in online advertising and marketing. Happy earning with Adsense!

Howdy visitors, the Part 1 of this post has been gaining attention since it was posted, so I thought this is a good time for me to continue with Part 2. Just a brief review, I discussed on the 3 basic ways to get you started on your journey to success and getting rich. We have to break ourselves free, think rich to be rich and most importantly is not just to sit there but act upon it. A lot of us have a lot of ideas, but do we have the strategies to work on them? How did people like Donald Trump and Richard Brenson do it? Most of the richest people in Forbes 500 rich list were ordinary people like us. But how did they get so rich in such a short time, or better yet, what are their SECRETS? Well, to tell you the truth, there are no secrets these people are hiding. There are a few strategies that they employed during their humble beginnings to work their way up, and they will be discussed in this part :-

1. Read, read and read more books. It may sound boring, and you may tell me that "education or certification has nothing to do with getting rich". I am here to tell you that you are right! I do not feel that what we have been taught were relevant in the business world. While that is a valid statement, but we need the basic knowledge of the business overview, how businesses work and also knowing how economic cycles affect our businesses. I would suggest that you read a few books on Management, a few books on Economics, and a few books on Taxation. Having that basic knowledge of taxation in your respective country does help. You need to know how you could save on taxes running your business! So, spend at least 1-2 years prior to starting up your business is sufficient enough.
2. When starting up, do not depend on your employees to run your business. You need to be your OWN employee after your have started your business. You need to work in order for your business to work! No rich man in the world would tell you to start employing people to run your business on auto-mode. As the owner of the business, you need to oversee your operations and work out ways to overcome problems as they occur. No business is fool-proof at the beginning, and you cannot afford those problems. The best person to mend these "wounds" is no one but yourself. So work the way you expect your employees to work for you.
3. Start your networking early. Do not wait until a time when you think your business is growing to network, as it would be a little late by then. Time is money, so by wasting time, you are incuring opportunity costs. The best people you could start networking with are those within your business cycle. You may start by getting to know your competitors. As you are still just a start up, they wouldn't mind chatting with you, and from those conversations, you would get to notice how they run their businesses and then compare it with yours. It would only benefit you in the beginning stage because they are not afraid of telling you more about the business you are running. Like I said, you are just a start up at this point, so you do not pose any threats to them, YET.
4. When you think you are ready to grow your business, get around to look for the best deals in a little advertising. You need the publicity for more people to know your existance, and it wouldn't hurt to spend some money for this purpose. You could start by distributing flyers to those around your neighbourhood, then if you think the traffic is building, start giving your best services to them. Words of mouth is your best tool. If your products and services are good, people will eventually talk about them to their peers. You get free advertising. There is no use going to newspapers for advertising at this stage as you will incur more expenditure, but your business is out of reach to most of the readers. You could try smaller community circulars though, as they are more concentrated in your area.
5. Having done your publicity, you will notice a greater demand for your products or services. Now, you can think about employing more people to help you around the business. You should choose those that are competent though, but most importantly, your future employees should possess good characteristics and attitudes. You don't want them to start ruining your business now do you? Start learning to delegate the jobs around and get them used to the environment. Lead them as how you would be running the business. They will learn from your actions and follow your footprints eventually.

These 5 steps will have your business up and running. I will not go into much details now as then the post would look as long as a business proposal. So, I will stop here and allow your some time to ponder upon. If you have started your business and if it is still in its infancy, you could employ these strategies to get your started. There are other ways that you may think of, and you can try them. After all, business is about trial and error. As I said, no business is fool-proof, but as long as you are able to make up for the errors, you are alright. Next on my list for this series are ways you can start growing your businesses exponentially.

In this post, I will focus on the first aspect of all small businesses, the "Start up". Starting up is always the hardest for any budding entrepreneur. The first hurdle that you have to put up with is thinking of a perfect business idea. This is the first step in business planning. While it may sound easy to come up with hundreds of ideas and putting them down on paper, most of them are hard to be executed. I have personally been approached by a few youngsters to comment on their ideas that they "think" would make them successful and rich. Well, I should be frank. Some of them do have GREAT business ideas, but you are always limited by your capacity. So, I would like to share some of my knowledge on how you can overcome your first hurdle.

Whenever you think of a business idea, take a paper and a pen and write it down. I can think of at least 3 business ideas in a day, and I have a list FULL with them. If you do this, soon you will come to see how much your list has grown in a very short time. By doing this, you will not forget the ideas that you thought of earlier. So, what do you do when your list starts to grow? It is time that you do your research on each of them. You may need some time to do this though, but it is so essential that it actually helps you to "filter" out the ones that are out of your reach.

Spend at least a few days to a week to research and analise EACH and every business ideas on your list. You can start doing your research online, discuss them with friends, family or ask those that are doing the business. Do not be afraid to ask, as many of them would be more than happy to help you. Trust me, I have tried asking some business owners the ways they started up their businesses, where to get supplies and how they market their businesses. Most of them even shared their stories with me for hours! By asking the right person, you stand a better chance in succeeding in the business that you intended. You have to first make sure though, that they are successful too themselves.

Here are the few ways you can conduct your analysis :-

1. First, you need to have a basic idea of how much the start up cost would be. Start filtering out those which would cost you a fortune, or those which you have no financial ability to support.
2. Having done that, we move on to the second step which is to analise the demographics for the area which you intend to start the business. The information you should be collecting are your intended audience, the purchasing power of your audience, the population in that area and your potential competitions.
3. When all those information has been collected, you may want to start thinking about the growth prospects of your ideas. You require some thinking skills to make this work though, as you would be looking into some thing in the future. There might be some resources that may help you with this on the internet, so try to look around.
4. Next on the list would be to think of the marketing strategies which you are adopting to promote each of your ideas. Different businesses have different marketing channels, so avoid having only ONE similar marketing strategy for ALL of your ideas. While it may work on some, but it might not work as well for some. Once you are over with this, see if you have the sufficient capacity carry on with the strategies. Cross off those ideas which require strategies that you are unable to support.
5. Surveys help a long way, althought it may seem like an "old" way, but it is still one of the most effective way to search for a workable business idea. Start conducting surveys among your peers, relatives, strangers or by using online survey platforms. You may incur some costs here, but trust me, it is well worth for the amount that you have invested in. You may be able to discover what are the NEEDS of those around you. Setting up a business that is needed is one of the success factors.

When you have done from numbers 1-5, notice that your list have shrunk in size. Well, if it does, then congratulations! It shows that you are have put in serious thoughts into your planning. You would then need to compile all the information and the ideas that suit your situation most. The following articles would cover the other hurdles that would eventually lead you to starting your own small business. My comments box is always open for discussion. If you think this post would help you, please post a comment for this post. I welcome any questions which you may have as well. Questions can be posted in the comments box too.

P.S. If you are leaving a comment, please also include your blog URL in order for me to get back to you. There would be no other way for me to reach you if you do not leave your URL.

Did this title get into you? If it does, then congratulations, as now you are one step closer to getting rich. Mind you though, that I couldn't make you rich overnight, but I could merely just HELP you to be rich. Basically, there are only three, yes 3 ways to get you started on your journey to getting rich, and I am not joking. Read on to see how the one beside you could get really rich, but you couldn't!

Break yourself free
Make a change in your life! You should be realising it by now that you can never get rich just by keeping that 9-to-5 job 0f yours, EVER! Your job could just make you a Millionaire in your lifetime merely, but you will never be as rich as Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Marc Benioff with your job. These people have learned that working for other rich people is not a choice. You need to take the very FIRST step in getting you there, working for yourself. It is not going to be easy though, but you have to stop giving yourself excuses and start getting on it!

Think rich to be rich
It sounds a little weird, but I am sure you have seen books writing about it. The authors did not deceive you, neither do I intend to. Think about the 3 names mentioned above. What do they have that is common within their community, but is different from ours? It is their mindset and their desire to be rich. One's value is not just based on how much money he has, but how much financial knowledge was acquired. You need first to get the right mindset and feed your minds with countless of financial knowledge. Put it bluntly, if you take away ALL of either Richard Benson's or Donald Trump's money and assets, they will still be able to get them back within a matter of years. If you were to take all the money off a person on the streets who have just striked a jackpot, he will never recover the money. This is because if your mind was set to be rich, you will be rich!

Don't just sit there
If you think that by sitting there reading through this post would make you rich, NO! You need to read and then DO something! Action speaks louder than words, and the earlier you act, the more time you have to make up for any mistakes. Whatever you have planned all these while prior to reading this post just needs some immediate actions. Take out your pens and papers, write down all your ideas, and pick the ones you are able to start working on immediately. There is no such thing as a "rich idea" or a "poor idea". No idea would make you rich unless you do them. When you act on them, take note of your business growth. If it is positive, then congratulations, as you are on the way! Keep doing them and think of ways to grow your business bigger.

These are what you should do to start your journey to richness, but it will still boil down to your determination and your commitment. Do nothing and hoping for success is not give you anything. You will just keep seeing more and more people around you striking it rich, while you are not. In the next part, I will discuss the strategies rich people take to stay ahead.

So, you want to be a leader? Well, who doesn't? If you tell me you don't want to be a leader, then you should stop reading now! Otherwise you may go on. In this chapter, I will discuss on what a leader is all about. I have not decided on how many chapters this topic will consists of, as I will be writing continuously until there is nothing else left to discuss on. God's willing, I hope this will be successfully cover all aspects of leadership.

Does a manager make a good leader? Look at the one above you. If you think he is a good leader, ask him what will make you to be as good as him. To me, if you are a good manager, you may not be a good leader. A manager is simply a person who manages people well, but a leader is a person who does not tell others what to do and what not to do. The simple definition of a leader is "someone who leads" others. I know a lot of you are already aware of this, but let others have a chance to learn too.

Leaders lead their followers by example, by their simple actions. Actions speak louder than words! A good leader will provide you with all the tools, but he will never tell you how to use them. He was expecting that you should know how to use them on your own when you really should. Good leaders have very good track records and they are the best in what they do. So who could blame them to expect the best out of you? After all, you should be as good as him, if not better, to strip him off his post. Now do you ever wonder why some could move ahead while the others could not?

A leader is a quick thinker, an "adapter". Great leaders should land on great ideas in a split second, while adapting themselves to changes quick enough. We are living in the world of technology now. Humans were born to think quicker than technology can. How do you think our great inventors can create so many technologies in such a short time then? We were meant to outdo our computers, but sad to say, many of us failed in this context. Our lives have been dependent on these machines. Sooner or later, we might see our world being conquered by machines when all the great leaders are gone.

To get you started, think of a leader that you admire around you. Do you see them doing things differently from you? Why were they different? Could that difference be the reason they are successful when most of us are not? From what I have learned, if you follow the footsteps of a great leader, there is no way you will be far behind. You should find out for yourself if this is true. So start searching for that leader around you!

- To be continued in Chapter 2

Today, I have decided to revive my blog from dying. I have not spent much time blogging for almost 6 months now. I have finished most of my exams as of today, with one more paper to go. So, with my break coming soon, I am now back in action, posting anything from my work, finance, reviews, food, gossips, basically everything under the Sun. Hence, I have decided to name my new blog "Jordy @ Work" to reflect my new life.

For those who know me personally, I do lots of stuffs at the same time. I have a few jobs at the moment, and yes I am also a full-time student. It is not uncommon to see students trying their luck at earning some extra income now don't you think? Well, I am no exception. My case could be different from the other students though, but I don't mind revealing it to you IF you come forward.

Well, I think I should stop here and get on with the more important topics aye? I hope I can get a suitable template for my new blog though. I really want to change the look of it, especially templates that come with the header tabs where people click on! I hate using "Navigation Links" type of thing though. I want my blog to be user-friendly to my visitors, where YOU can click on one of those tabs at the header to navigate around my blog. If any of you have any recommendations, don't hesitate to post it in the comments though. I need one seriously and urgently! Thank you all for coming and have a nice day~

Jordy @ Work