One of the great things about being an online entrepreneur is the freedom.  New months should have new goals and in fact, each day should have goals even if that goal might be to get balance and do some resting and relaxing.

Freedom comes at a price and that is the price of buckling down when you need to do so.  When you achieve goals, you need to set new ones and never become complacent.  Here are some tools that can help you with goal setting and getting things done.. Sometimes you need to kick yourself in the rear to get moving when you’re your own boss and these tools can help:

Day Planner:

A good old fashioned day planner can help you keep track of your to-do list and make appointments.  Despite technology, putting pen to paper is often a great way to brainstorm so set aside a section for your ideas even if you can’t work on them straight away.

Google Calendar:

Google has a great calendar feature that you can use to remind you and assign tasks for yourself.  Getting an online reminder can be very helpful.

Email Memo Services

Send yourself an email memo through a site such as Memo To Me or Freeminder.

Whether you want to be reminder to call your Mother-in-Law for her birthday or to make an appointment at the dentist or do your bookkeeping, a gentle nudge from yourself can be helpful.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Ping your blogs, ping your status! Why?  Letting others know you’ve updated or done something specific can bring you new traffic.  A lot of ping services are available. Here’s a list of pinging services but let’s have a look at two: Ping-O-Matic and Ping.Fm.

Ping-O-Matic

Ping-O-Matic gets the detailed URL you want to ‘ping’ and will then tell all the services you ‘check’ that your blog is updated. Why does Ping-O-Matic do what they do for free? They like to play with data. (Shrug.) This is something a lot of people make sure to use when they first start a new blog to get people visiting it sooner which can help speed up the search engine indexing process.

Ping.Fm

Ping.Fm is a new service just out of beta. It pings your status to multiple places esepcially if you’re a prolific microblogger. It works great if you’re doing the micro blogging thing and are tired of stopping by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk and a bunch of other places to post the link to your new site or blog post, to wax lyrical about the cool new pair of shoes you got for half price or shout to the world about the massive ClickBank check that just arrived in the mail.  Instead of visiting all those places, Ping.Fm tells them all for you after you post the update once.

These services are definitely beneficial because not only can you spread the word on something but you can also save time! Time is money in internet marketing so go ahead and start pinging and you just might make more of it!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

The more links you have pointing at your money making websites, the better.  Why not utilise some free services to give yourself some link love and positively impact your SEO?  There are loads of ways to use free services to your advantage and today’s post will give you some great linking strategy ideas.

Write blog posts or articles with appropriately anchored keywords and long tail phrases on free sites. These sites that get human and internet traffic and can be very beneficial to you. Here are some examples of tools you can use:

1. Open a MySpace account and use the blog on it.  You could even open two if you have more than one e-mail account.
2. Open a Blogger account
3. Open a Wordpress account
4. Write HubPages and Squidoo Lenses
5. Try Tumblr and post regular updates with links to your work and articles
6. Add websites to community forum signature lines and free online profiles

Ping and social bookmark your posts on all the above sites!

Not only can you anchor keywords to your other sites within these free services but don’t forget to put your many sites (free and paid sites) on all the blogrolls.  Consider making a list of links to your free sites, hubs and other online pages so you can use the same blogroll wherever you go. This way, you create a big network of your own work which can positively impact your search engine optimisation and if people like what they see one of your blogs, chances are they’ll visit other blogs too so if you work in multiple niches you can refer people to your other sites ,especially where services are complimentary.   Happy linking!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Time management is an essential skill for entrepreneurs who find themselves being pulled in many directions at once. Besides using a task management timer as we recently suggested here at SeanSEO.com, there are other things you can do as well in order to increase your productivity. Problogger talks about how batch processing helps him and that’s something you can do with your various tasks to stay on target and reach your goals.

Here are a few time management tips:

• Emailing is something most people do throughout the day but instead of checking email every minute or two and giving it a chance to take you away from the task you’re working on, turn off your auto-notification sound or alert and check it hourly instead. When you’re in the middle of a task, don’t be tempted to check it in the middle.

• Sometimes it’s better to be invisible for a bit! Instant messaging and Skype are great but can be very disruptive. Turn them off or stay invisible other than in short periods of time per day so you aren’t constantly interrupted by those who want to chat you up.

Here’s a big one:

Use Social Networking as a Reward

If you use microblogging tools like Plurk and Twitter, only stop in periodically during the day. Save socializing (even if it’s productive socializing) for after you’ve completed a task to reward yourself. For instance, if you’ve submitted to article directories, go on Twitter and Plurk to buzz your articles after you’ve done them and take that time to spend a few minutes surfing the blogosphere or chatting with your friends.

Having a productive lifestyle does take discipline and you occasionally need to hide from online friends and force yourself to work before you can play.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

How are your time management skills? Are you someone who gets lost in cyberspace sometimes and needs help staying on task? Do you have the equivalent of Internet ADHD? A timer might be in order.  The internet is a vast playground that can detract you from work and as someone who wants to earn an income online, you need to stay on focus.

Beware of Productivity Traps!

If you’re apt to go off to read a blog post or update your MySpace, Facebook or Twitter status and suddenly realise time has slipped away and you’ve been playing in cyberspace for the last hour and a half instead of working, a timer can help you. Set up a little egg timer by your computer and allocate time for tasks.  Here are a few tasks you might choose to do it for:

• Social bookmarking
• Link Building
• Bum Marketing
• Blog comments
• Social networking
• Keyword research
• Chatting

As an entrepreneur you are your own boss and as such, sometimes you need to crack a whip and make yourself get back to work! Feel free to dig through our archives here at www.seanseo.com for a few more minutes before you do so, though

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008