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Introduction: Why Self-Confidence Changes Everything

If you could enhance a single trait about yourself with the objective of improving your success, your happiness and your effectiveness, what would it be?

Your intelligence?

Your empathy?

Your height?

I‘m here to tell you that 99% of the time, you‘d get the best results by enhancing your confidence.

In other words, all those self-help books that tell you to take supplements to make yourself smarter, to work out more, or to stick a lump of butter in your coffee are barking up the wrong tree. With self-confidence, you can genuinely accomplish anything.

No, Really

This might seem like the kind of advice you get from a poster with someone punching their fist into the air in front of a sunset. It might sound like the sort of thing that your mother would say to you but which you suspect she may not really mean.

But it‘s true. Self-confidence really does change the way you approach every situation, the way that others see you and the way that you come out of every interaction.

How?

Well, let‘s start with a little bit of evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary psychology and theory in general, essentially tells us that all of our behavior and all of our traits have been ?selected‘. In other words, your ancestors all managed to survive in order to pass on their DNA and create you because they had traits that helped them to survive. Your great, great, great, great, great Uncle Jimmy though died out because he had traits that didn‘t help him survive. And those did not get passed on to you.

What does this have to do with confidence?

Well, it comes down to the crucial importance of social interactions. That is to say that human beings are naturally social animals. We are pack animals just like dogs or wolves, although a human ?pack‘ is actually known as a tribe.

Being a member of a tribe would have helped us to survive by giving us strength in numbers, access to potential mates, greater resources etc. Those members of the tribe that would get ostracized and left out in the cold would end up dying out as a result of less access to food and resources and less protection from predators.
So maybe Uncle Jimmy died out because he was unsocial and he got evicted from his group. Survival at least partly comes down to a popularity contest. Think of it a little bit like Big Brother!

But social success is not just a binary matter. It is not a case of being accepted into the group or not being accepted. It‘s also true that you can exist within that group at different levels. So, you have your alphas and your queens. These are the individuals that rise to the top of the ladder and which command the most respect. They are generally physically more intimidating, they are generally more intelligent and they are generally ?wealthier in terms of what they have access to.

These alphas get their choice of mate, they get first pickings when it comes to food and they get to sleep on the most comfortable pile of hay in the cave.

Point is, that being alpha means you are more likely than anyone else to survive and to thrive even more so. If you are an omega, if you are the jester of the group, then you don‘t get fed as well and you become much more likely to get killed when you go out hunting and gathering.

So, how do you ensure that this doesn‘t happen to you?

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The Power Of Focus

Introduction

There is plenty of advice available on how to increase your performance. One of the least talked about is the need for improved focus. You could call focus the secret ingredient to success. We face distractions every day. Our environment is filled with abundant stimuli, all vying for our attention and ensuring that we will lose focus and have difficulty in concentrating. These distractions make it difficult for us to perform at our optimal level.

Mental focus is the deliberate and conscious effort of keeping a mental spotlight on what we are doing. We block out distractions and hone in on what is important. However, that is not always easy. The problem with not focusing properly is not only that we feel out-of-control, but we experience a constant high level of stress, which can affect our health.

For many, trying to maintain concentration is a daily chore with which they struggle. If we want to succeed, we need to improve our focus, and luckily, that is skill that can be learned and enhanced. The fact is, we have only so much mental energy to spare. It’s a finite commodity. As that energy gets scattered in many directions, our brain simply rebels, as our body does when we expend too much physical energy.

The ability to focus on one task becomes lost. That’s when we become stressed. Frequently, our ability to focus is directly related to our emotions. If a task – at work or at home – makes us nervous or anxious, we actively seek distractions. If a report the boss is waiting for fills us with panic, it’s easier to divert our attention to checking email, making phone calls or chatting with someone at the water cooler than to concentrate on the report.

At home, when a serious discussion with a spouse is necessary, we may welcome the distraction of Facebook, Twitter and ESPN rather than face the unpleasantness ahead. We may not do this consciously, but there are times we certainly choose to invite distractions to keep us from focusing on something that is important. And as a consequence, our work and relationships suffer.

We will discuss how to keep a better balance between positive and negative thoughts and how to creative habits that help us develop a better focus on a daily basis. The good news is, focusing is not only a skill we can learn, it is also a choice we can make. This book is designed to help us make better choices to enable us to focus better.

Why We Need To Focus

Being in focus is a purposeful direction and control of our awareness to the present moment, where it is most needed. Never has this been more important than today, when there is such an abundance of ready distractions competing for our attention. So many of us feel anxious if we aren’t checking Facebook updates, Twitter notifications and emails every few minutes. Unfortunately, this has turned into a chosen lifestyle for many. Our smartphone has become our lifeline.

We’re on the phone while driving and posting on Instagram while grabbing a meal. Instead of focusing on what we are doing, we take pride in “multitasking.” The problem with multitasking is that it doesn’t allow us to do more, it merely dilutes and diminishes what we are already doing.

The good news is, our brain, like our body, can be enhanced and developed. And like our bodies, this takes patience, time and effort. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Building our muscles is the results of daily habits, and the brain is a muscle. We can train ourselves to improve our focusing power and perform better until it becomes natural and second nature. The better we become at focusing, the better we are able to control our thoughts and our actions.

Does mental chaos seem natural to you, like a car battling heavy traffic every day? Do you wonder how some people manage to get more done and do it quicker and better? These people face the same focusing obstacles we all do. Everyone does. They have merely trained themselves to overcome it instead of remaining a victim to information and anxiety overload.

Computers allow information to be processed at a speed that would have been unimaginable just decades ago. They have changed our lives. Unfortunately, our brains are still working at the same pace. That’s why we are suffering from circuit overload. In effect, some of us exist in a perpetual mental traffic jam.

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The Complete IM Strategy

The Future-Proof SEO and Internet Marketing Plan

Good SEO means understanding what Google is looking for and making sure that your websites and your clients’ websites meet those criteria. But great SEO means preempting what Google is going to look like in the future and where it is heading. This way, you can ‘future proof’ your SEO against changes to the algorithm, or Google’s overall direction.

This is a lesson that SEOs have learned hard in the past. The original version of Google worked purely by looking at the number of links pointing at a website and by looking at the number of times the keywords were repeated in the text. If you wanted to get to the top of Google back then, all you had to do was to post hundreds of articles, each with keywords stuffed into it, and likewise buy lots of links, swap lots of links and upload your site to link directories.

But then Google did a U-turn. Suddenly, Google didn’t want people gaming its system any more. Suddenly Google didn’t want people creating poor quality content by ‘keyword stuffing’ any more.

And let’s be honest: it was obvious this would happen. The current system meant that anyone could get to the top of Google with a low quality site, without caring at all about the user. Google would not want to support that, because it would ultimately result in Google losing traffic.

Anyway, Google made its updates: it introduced Google Panda and Google Penguin and suddenly, thousands-if-not-millions of sites were massively downgraded. Businesses closed their doors. Entrepreneurs had to get real jobs. It was chaos!

People ranted and raved at Google for not giving warning, for not telling people what it wanted.

But Google was doing what it always did: serving the customer.

And a few clever SEOs who saw this coming were ready. They had built sites using smarter strategies and their sites were aimed at the visitors more than simply being designed to serve Google.

That is what great SEO means now. SEO is in perma flux. The algorithms are never changing. In fact, the whole point of the ‘Hummingbird algorithm’, is that it allows Google to update its index constantly and in real-time.

So you need to do better. You need to get inside the mind of Google to create a future proof SEO and internet marketing plan…

Google’s Master Plan

The Pixel 2 is Google’s second serious foray into the hardware game and represents another step in the company's grand plan to be an 'AI first' company. This may sound a little strange to those who still think of Google as a ‘search first’ company. But the truth is that these are one and the same thing. Google’s focus is still on indexing the web and on providing users with an easy way to find the information that they need. 

Remember, Google’s mission statement starting out was to:

“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

And that’s also the way that Google makes most of its money thanks to advertising. Other ventures, such as YouTube, are famously still not profitable!

So, Google is all about search and AI just so happens to be the best possible tool for doing that better. One example of this is ‘RankBrain’, which is a machine learning algorithm that helps Google to better understand what people are looking for and how that matches the content it has indexed. Instead of just looking for precise word-matches Google now tries to look for content that provides the answers to your questions. Google is starting to understand what you say to it and dish up the best results as a response. Like talking to my sage-like Granddad (by which I do not mean the herb).

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Modern Email Marketing And Segmentation

How many times have you heard “The money is in the list”? You don’t have to be a veteran of countless affiliate marketing forums to run across this saying. Chances are if you are doing any kind of online promotions or affiliate marketing, you have seen this phrase before.

In fact, if you are active online, you probably have seen it many times. It’s too easy to think that you only need to get a list going, and you’ll make bank. This is what many list marketers like you end up doing… and they fail!

Fact: Simply putting up a list is not going to make you an overnight millionaire or a master marketer. Forget about it.

If you keep reading and thinking that the money is in the list, you’re doing it the wrong way. Chances are you’re either in the process of failing or you’ve already failed and you just don’t know about it.

I don’t mean to suggest that list marketing will not work for you. Don’t get me wrong. What I’m getting at is if you go about it the wrong way, you are going to run into the eight common problems that I am going to discuss below.

You need to be aware of these common problems and prepare for them properly. If not, I’m sorry to say it’s only a matter of time until you fail. You put in all this time, effort and money only to end up with very little to show for you. Learn to spot these problems early on, prepare them and actively work around them if you want to succeed.

You’re all excited about this niche that you came up with. You think that this niche is completely new or you think that everybody and their dog would love this niche. Whatever the case may be, you put up a mailing list targeting that niche, and nothing happens.

You put up a nice squeeze page. You’ve set up amazing updates. You’ve even pumped tons of traffic. You’ve even paid for lots of traffic to that list. For the life of you, nothing happens.

Let me clue you in on one central fact: Just because a list niche is hot doesn’t mean it is. The old idea of “build it and they will come” is a surefire way for a list to fail. It doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles you pack into your list business, you’re not going to make it.

I’m sure you’ve come across squeeze pages with all sorts of technology packed into it. I am of course talking about the scrolling videos, the text that seems to read your mind. I’m also referring to squeeze pages promoted by ads that seem to follow you on Facebook. Have you ever had the experience of visiting a website not buying anything and then going on Facebook to see ads for that site?

This is all amazing technology. There’s definitely a lot of sales potential here. You pack all of this into your squeeze page, your sales funnel and your content. Unfortunately, after a tremendous of time, effort, energy and money, very few people sign up.

You can’t, for the life of you, figure out what went wrong. Everything looks right. The squeeze page looks extremely professional. All the technology is working. What happened?

Fact: Squeeze page flash does not necessarily mean it will vacuum up subscribers.

Just because it looks good to you and it has the right technology doesn’t automatically mean people would sign up. People still need to be sold. They still need to be persuaded. You still have to answer that classic question every single one of us constantly asks: “What’s in it for me?”

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Facebook Ads Domination

7 Techniques To Minimize Your Facebook Ad Costs

Promoting your business, product, service or brand on Facebook can be expensive. You’ll see reports of many advertisers spending hundreds or thousands of dollars every single day on Facebook Ads!

These advertisers are literally giving Facebook their entire advertising budget for two reasons:

(1) Facebook Ads work
(2) It is relatively cheaper compared to other advertising platforms.

Facebook Ads work so well that many companies have stopped advertising on other platforms and instead focus all their attention on Facebook. Now, these advertisers have got ad optimization down to a T.

They spend fewer dollars per conversion than other platforms. And because of the amount they get to ‘save’ on Facebook, they’re putting more of those advertising dollars to further expand their reach on Facebook and get more people in their sales funnel.

If you want to know how these successful Facebook advertisers are able to minimize their ad costs, then read on because today I’m going to be sharing with you seven tried-and-tested methods for lowering your Facebook Ad costs.

Let’s begin!

Technique #1: Set a bid cap

Setting a bid cap is important if you want to control how much you want to pay for each bid or per action that your target audience does. If you have a specific budget in mind, and you already have an ideal cost per acquisition or per action, then you can set that as your bid cap.

Here’s an example:

You have a daily budget of $10, and your campaign objective is to get people to click on your ad and go to your website. The landing page on your website is selling a $50 item where you make a $25 profit per item.

You know that based on past customer behavior on your website, you get on average a 10 percent conversion rate which is pretty good because it means 1 out of 10 people who go on your site buys that product.

With such a profit margin, you’re willing to pay $0.50 per click. So you set that as your bid cap. Facebook will then charge your account a maximum of $0.50 every time someone clicks on your ad.

With a $10 budget, you can have at least 20 clickthroughs to your website. This means that with your product’s 10% conversion rate, you’re probably going to make 1-2 sales ($25 to $50 profit) per $10 ad spend.

Knowing the math behind your ad campaigns will help you optimize your ad budget be it on the campaign level, ad set level, or ad level.

Technique #2: Get more people to engage with your advert

Getting people to engage with your ad is probably one of the best ways to minimize your ad costs. However, this is easier said than done. We all would want to get the highest possible conversion rates and have everyone we target to look at our ad. But obviously, this doesn’t happen in real life.

People go on Facebook to socialize with their family and friends. They don’t go on Facebook to look at adverts! To get people to pay attention to your ad, you have to get creative and think outside the box.

Ask yourself if you were your target audience, would you stop scrolling your news feed to look at your advert? Be objective and don’t let your bias come into play.
If you answered, yes, then your ad may be good enough. If you answered no, then you’d have to go back to the drawing board and start again. Alternatively, if you work alone, you can ask somebody else’s opinion on what might work. If you work in a team environment, then that’s better because two or more heads are better than one, so to speak.

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Evergreen Internet Profits

5 Passive Income Businesses You Can Start Today

If there’s a business model entrepreneurs should strive to succeed in, it should be those that generate passive income.

Why? Because with passive income you’re literally earning money with minimal to no effort on your part. Sounds like a dream, right?

Yes, it’s quite the dream life when you get to that point. But obviously getting there is not easy. Otherwise, everyone will be living off of their passive incomes and traveling around the world!

So, how do you find the perfect business that will generate passive income for you?

If this is something you’ve been meaning to ask, then you’re in luck because in this short report, you’re going to learn 5 of the best passive income businesses you can start today!

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is often one of the first methods newbies try out when they first get involved in Internet marketing. The idea behind this business model is very simple and is a proven profitable method. You simply need to promote other people’s products as an affiliate, and you get a commission every time someone buys those products through your affiliate link!

Commissions vary wildly. In some places like JVZoo and Clickbank, you can get commissions as high as 90% or even 100%! If you’re an Amazon affiliate, the maximum commission you’d get would be 10%, but the good thing is you get a commission for all items bought on Amazon (not just the ones you’re promoting on your website).
The key to getting good income with affiliate marketing is by sending plenty of traffic to your website. It’s a numbers game basically so you’d need to look for where your target audience is hanging out and promote your affiliate products to them.

One great advantage of affiliate marketing is that it’s relatively easy to setup. In fact, you can promote products anywhere you want – on your blog, on your guest posts, on forums, on social media, on your emails, and many more places!

All you have to do is just sign up to be an affiliate of a product you like, and then use that special link and promote it. That’s it! Of course, not all affiliate networks and product owners are going to approve your request. Most networks do have standards in place.

Most of them will ask for your website address and ask you questions on where you plan on promoting their products. If they don’t like your answers, then you don’t get approved as an affiliate.

In most cases, product vendors require you at least have some solid online presence before they approve your request. Product vendors do get scammed too, so they tend to be pretty careful when it comes to approving affiliates.

If you find it difficult getting approved on a network, it’s best to establish your online presence first by building your own website or blog, and letting it age for a few months before re-submitting your application.

When your application gets approved, and you create valuable content around the affiliate product, then you can pretty much get passive affiliate marketing income for as long as the affiliate product is available.

Sell eCourses and Info Products

If you are an expert in a particular subject, and you want to share your expertise with the world, then you may want to create your own course and info products. However, if you don’t have specialized knowledge in anything, don’t fret.

It’s not the end of the world. You can still sell eCourses and info products even if you don’t have first-hand experience in any subject!

You’ve got two options basically.

First is you take the time to learn the subject, research it thoroughly and then apply what you’ve learned when you create your course.

The second option is to just outsource the content creation to someone who actually knows the subject.

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Entrepreneurial Drive

There are a tiny number of people who wake up every day and say that they are excited to go to their job. There is an even smaller number of people who wake up and declare that they are happy to work for "the man" and listen to a boss. Most people dream of working for themselves and running their own business. They want to be an entrepreneur, and they want to be able to work for themselves. However, not everyone is cut out to lead the life of an entrepreneur.

To be an entrepreneur you have to think differently than everyone else. While most people tend to seek refuge in their daily lives, entrepreneurs like to seek out risks and challenges. They don't want to work at a 9 to 5 job; they want to create jobs and help to better the lives of those around them. Their primary goal is to think outside the box. They don't follow the market; they work to define it. This is what is often referred to as the Entrepreneur Mind. So, the question is how does one develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset?

The belief that successful entrepreneurs are born, not made, is absurd. Contrary to what many think, entrepreneurship can be learned by anyone. Successful entrepreneurs all possess a standard set of characteristics. If you want to begin to develop an entrepreneurial mind, you'll need to make sure that you start to develop some of the same traits if you don't already possess them.

Successful people have certain habits and ways of conducting themselves compared to most people. This allows them to get more done during the day and allows them to have the right mindset that is needed to be more successful. Some people are lucky enough to be born with these characteristics, while others find a way to incorporate them into their daily lives. Here are the seven traits that you need to have if you want to be more successful in your life.

1. Tenacity

The first characteristic that successful people possess is tenacity. What does tenacity mean? When someone has tenacity, it means that they don't take failure personally and they will keep working, sometimes for years, to get the things that they want in their life. When you have tenacity, you will never give up and will always bounce back when things get in your way and not quit when you run into obstacles or experience setbacks. Instead, when you possess tenacity, you always try something that is new, or you try to find another, more straightforward, way to do something.

When others get frustrated, they often just give up and return to their old, comfortable way of doing things. This is not the case with successful entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurs get frustrated or fail, they merely shrug their shoulders and continue to move forward with their plans. You may be thinking that that's because successful people don't fail. However, it's not that successful people don't experience failure in their daily lives; in fact, they are much more likely to have continuous failure because they continue to try and try again, even after experience setbacks and failure. The difference is that those who are successful have an understanding that failure is a fundamental part of the game, and not something to warrant giving up on their dreams.

2. Passion

No matter what you believe or what you’ve been told, you will never be able to find success if you aren’t passionate about what you do. Think about it this way; when you continually show up to a job that you don’t like, what usually happens? Do enjoy the work that you do daily? Are you given raises every year? Are you given the opportunities to advance? Are you given promotions? If you aren't passionate about the work you do, the answer to these questions is usually no. For most people, they don't enjoy their jobs and don't like to spend time at work. This results in them not being able to see any improvements or changes in their situation, keeping them stuck in the same position as before.

Alternatively, when you are more passionate about what you are doing, the chances are higher that you will go the extra mile when performing your work. You will be more excited to go to work every day and be more willing to get things done. You will be much more excited to see what can happen, and nothing will stop you in your pursuit to accomplish your goals.

This is even true if you are stuck working for a company that you aren’t necessarily happy with because the thought that you will one day be somewhere better will help you to stay motivated and keep going. Your coworkers and supervisors will notice your enthusiasm and passion for what you do, which will lead to you either being promoted or allow you to strike out on your own with the skills and training you’ve developed in your job.

Without passion for what you do, your productivity will suffer, and you'll never be happy with where you are in your life. Only when you are genuinely passionate about what you do will you be able to find success.

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Dominate Your Year

5 Secrets to Getting More Done Without Burning Out

Whether you have a lot on your plate at the moment or are an overachiever, working 24/7 can be detrimental to your overall health. Before you know it, you're feeling tired, cranky, and downright awful. These are some of the classic signs of burnout. In today's 24/7 society, it can be hard to resist working around the clock, especially if you are trying to get ahead in your career. However, if you want to avoid completely burning out, you need to make sure to take mental breaks now and again to help keep you feeling refreshed.

While not everyone can take a six-month-long sabbatical from their job to destress and refresh their minds, there are several things that you can do to help you get more done without burning out. The following five techniques will help you maintain your energy throughout the day and avoid the all too common condition of burnout. To help you avoid becoming overwhelmed, try adding one of these techniques to your daily routine at a time until you can make a habit out of it. Incorporating each of these methods into your life will dramatically increase your energy and focus and help you avoid burning out.

What Are the Signs of Burnout

Burnout is, unfortunately, a road hazard in life that most high-achievers often face. Due to the passion, they have for what they do high performers tend to ignore the fact that they are working long hours, taking on heavy workloads, and placing an enormous about of pressure on themselves to excel. All of this makes them susceptible to burnout.

Burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, and feeling of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. To give yourself the best chance of avoiding burnout, it is crucial that you are able to recognize the signs and symptoms. Here are some of the signs that you should look for to avoid burnout in your life.

Chronic fatigue
Insomnia
Forgetfulness
Increased sickness
Loss of appetite
Anxiety
Depression
Anger
Pessimism
Isolation
Detachment
Feelings of hopelessness
Increased irritability
Poor performance at work

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, it's time to make a change. The following techniques can help you to make the right changes in life and hopefully avoid the destructive nature of burnout.

Choose Work That Boosts Your Energy

One of the easiest ways to avoid burning out is to choose work that boosts your energy, instead of taxing it. The difference between working yourself into a grave and making your life fuller is to select projects that boost your morale.

If you wake up every day and dread having to go to work, it's a sure sign that you are working yourself into an early grave. When you commit your time to completing activities that make you tired rather than excited, and still do it compulsively, you're a workaholic that has probably already experienced burnout at least once in their life. If the prospect of going to work brings a smile to your face, then you've found a job that enhances your quality of life, and it's much easier to continue working on things that make you happy.

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10K Blueprint

Introduction

The majority of people that are really making it big online every month are using passive income models to do this. They are not trading their time for money and they know that a small amount of time invested in their business will make a big difference every day. They are making money while they sleep.

There are many passive income models that you can choose from and we have selected the top 5 for you in this report. These are all fairly straight forward to implement and they have unlimited potential.

We want you to use this report to your advantage. We have provided the main reason and the biggest drawback of each model so you can make the decision which way you want to go. You will be on your way to making big paydays every month if you take the appropriate action.

You will need to give consideration to the amount of money that you are prepared to invest into your passive income model. It is possible to do some of them for free but if you can invest money into your project then things will happen faster for you.

So choose your passive income model wisely and we wish you every success!

Email Marketing

This is one of the most popular passive income models because it works really well and has been for many years. It is fairly low risk and if you do it right you can build a large list and make several thousand dollars per month.

A lot of people are put off from list building and email marketing because they think it is too much work. There is certainly some work involved in the beginning to set everything up but this can be outsourced.

There are several advantages to building a list and participating in email marketing:

It’s fun and exciting to watch your list and income grow
You will be building a valuable asset
List building and email marketing are not difficult
You can make money on demand
You have an immediate traffic source
Live the Internet dream

Let’s take a look at all of these benefits. The first is that it is fun and exciting. This is very true. Once you get going with list building you will get a real buzz every time a new subscriber is added. The size of your list defines the potential that you have to make money. Doing something that is fun and exciting will keep you motivated.

There are many other passive income models out there that do not involve capturing email addresses for list building. These models rely on driving traffic to CPA offers or something similar and there is no asset building taking place.

If your CPA marketing business stops then the money stops. If you have a good list of subscribers then you can stop working on your email marketing for a while and the money can still be coming in. The larger your list the more valuable it will be.

There is nothing difficult about email marketing. Sure there are some things that you need to avoid but if you take a common sense approach then it will all be straight forward for you. You do not need any technical skills to set up your sales funnel or set up your autoresponder. You can get started with email marketing very quickly.

Making money on demand is a very good reason to get involved with email marketing. You need to take care of your email subscribers and provide quality emails to build trust. You can make related offers to your list and there will be a percentage of them that will make a purchase and generate revenue for you. You can do this at any time.

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Beat Information Overload

Information overload has become more prominent in the past several decades since the invention of the Internet. Between the texts, tweets, emails, and the endless stream of news feeds on Facebook, the viral videos we can't help but watch, the numerous photos and videos we take and the multiple phone numbers we collect, we've become overwhelmed and overloaded with, mostly, unnecessary and irrelevant information. With 24/7 information that is available to us with a simple click of a mouse, we are creating and digesting ten times more information than we did just ten years ago. With all this information we can quickly succumb to information overload and the fall to the adverse effects it has on our health and mental well-being.

Unfortunately, our minds aren’t designed to handle this much information, and can quickly become overwhelmed as it tries to process all the information we’re exposed to on a daily basis. Information overload can not only hamper our productivity, but it can leave us feeling stressed, depressed, and fatigued. Our conscious minds are designed to pay attention to no more than four things simultaneously, according to Daniel J. Levitin, author of The Organized Mind. If we go much more beyond this, we begin to exercise poorer judgment, lose our focus, and lose track of important things.

To reduce the effects of information overload on our mental well-being and health, we have to make a conscious effort to reduce the flood of information we consume and clear our minds of all the unnecessary information we accumulate on a daily basis. Here are five secrets to learning how to think straight again, overcome procrastination, and spend less time getting more done so we can move forward and better manage the information we’re exposed to in the future.

Secret #1 – Get Things Out of Your Head

The more information we try to cram into our minds, the less our brains are able to accurately process the information, ultimately leading to damaging your short-term memories. This is because our minds were designed with a limited amount of space and ability to handle information. In fact, over the last ten years, we have created more information than in all of human history before that. The best way to deal with this issue is to completely clear your mind of all the clutter and noise by performing a brain dump.

Doing a brain dump means creating an extensive list of everything that you have floating around in your head, whether it's essential or not. Take the time to write down any thought that interrupts your workflow immediately. The simple process of writing these thoughts down helps to get them out of your head. Performing a brain dump allows you to quickly clear your mind of the irrelevant information that is interfering with your ability to focus on the task in front of you. Clearing your mind in this way also gives your brain permission to relax its neural circuits so that you can focus your attention on something else.

Once you’ve gotten your thoughts down on paper, you need to spend some time prioritizing each of the items into separate groups. You should have a category for things that you have to get done today, things that you can delegate, things that you can do this week, and things that you can drop. Productivity guru, David Allen calls these categories: do it, delegate it, defer it, and drop it.

If there is an item on your list that you simply can’t get crossed off, it may be because it’s ill-defined and not actionable. Take a closer look at these items and further break it down into subcategories and create actionable steps that you can take to complete each item.

Secret #2 – Stop Multitasking

For too long, people have considered multitasking as a great way to increase productivity. However, recent studies have shown the opposite effect happens when you multitask. Unfortunately, these studies have discovered that when you engage in multitasking, your productivity in fact decreases. Multitasking costs you by forcing you to decide between whether or not to answer a text, how you should respond, how you should file an email, whether you should stick with what you’re currently working on or move onto the interruption.

All of the little decision that you have to make when you multitask, use the finite amount of oxygenated glucose that your brain contains. The oxygenated glucose is the fuel that your mind needs to focus on a task. Continually switching between tasks, quickly uses up your limited amount of oxygenated glucose, which will lead you feeling exhausted, anxious, and disoriented. When we focus on one task at a time, we use less of this glucose and spend less energy than if we would have engaged in multitasking. Focusing on a single task at a time also reduces our brain’s need for the oxygenated glucose to function.