Post-It Productivity

Color code Post-Its to help organize your life.

We all have ways of keeping ourselves organized and staying productive. Some of us keep a planner and keep nice detailed notes about what we have to get done. Others use Tasks in their email client of choice and keep track of what they do that way.

I’m the type that needs visual reminders in front of me or I’ll forget or leave notes lying around.

I have devised a method that I call Post-It Productivity that has helped me stay organized and give me a visual picture of what I have to do while giving certain items priority.

I know some people may disagree with the paper that I am using, but it keeps me organized and on task. At this point, I’d rather waste paper than time.

I’m going to outline my method for staying productive using post-it notes.

Pretty Colors

I categorize my life using different colored Post-Its. I use lavender for any work-related action that needs to be taken care of. Green is used for any writing idea that I have. Blue represents personal projects that need to get done like getting a tire fixed, or organizing an outing for my son’s scout troop.

Power In Order

Now that the categories are defined by color I use a vertical ordering system that lends importance to the top of the list. I love the flexibility of this system as I can move things around if need be.

Power In Pulling

There’s no better feeling than crossing a to-do item off of your list! Well, that’s not entirely true. To be able to pull a completed item off of a wall and crumble it up or rip apart makes me feel ferociously accomplished!

Post-Its For Projects

I also use Post-Its to keep track of complex projects. If I am developing a new website there are hundreds of steps in doing so including purchasing a domain, setting up hosting, finalizing design, deciding on site structure, developing seo’ed content, etc.

How do you stay organized and make sure nothing falls through the cracks? I’d love to hear!

Please comment below and be sure to subscribe to receive future posts.

Why Photographers Should Avoid All Flash Websites

All Flash sites can blind your customers

Want to know a great way to blind your customers and keep them from EVER viewing your amazing photography?

Create an all Flash website!

Don’t get me wrong… I’m a HUGE fan of Flash. I used to develop all Flash sites for my clients. I agree that Flash definitely has its place on the web.

I want to arm you with 5 reasons why you should presenting your best work using an all Flash format.

1) Mobile compatibility

It’s hard for many old-school photographers to grasp this thought, but it’s true: Your prospective clients are using their cell phones to view your work. Many cell phones do not come pre-equipped with Flash players and are next to impossible to get a Flash player installed.

Guess what.

Your prospective client just hit back on their cell phone browser and went to the next available photographer.

2) Attention span

Enough said? Good. Move on.

3) Directional URL’s

Email from Prospective Client:  “Hi, I would like to get more information on your studio portrait services.”

Reply from Hopeful Photographer:   “Sure. Go to AllFlashPhotosite.com and roll over About, then roll over Services when that appears, then click on Portraits when that appears, but make sure you wait for it to appear.”

Let’s see how a photographer without an all Flash site would handle it.

Email from Email from Prospective Client:  “Hi, I would like to get more information on your studio portrait services.”

Reply from Smart Photographer without all flash site: “Hi, no problem. Just click this link. http://SweetNotAllFlashSite.com/services/portraits

See the difference there?

4) Accessibility

Again, not all people have Flash players installed on their computers and it’s irresponsible to say, “If they don’t have Flash, then the shouldn’t be on the web.”

Additionally, some people use screen readers to access web information. I feel a barrage of rude comments coming for this one, but seriously…

5) Search Engine Unoptimization

Do you like when people can easily find you on the web by searching for photographers in your area? If not, get an all flash website.

I am discouraging photographers from building all Flash websites for the above reasons.

So, what’s the alternative?

I encourage photographers to use a mix of XHTML and Flash or Flash not at all. Obviously, XHTML and accessibility go hand-in-hand and many more people are using their mobile phones to peruse the web and make purchasing decisions.

In the next week I will be rolling out a design for a remarkable photographer that uses XHTML and Flash together.

What are your thoughts on all Flash websites? Do you have one? Do you run into the troubles that I have mentioned above?

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photo credit: jgs4309976

Is Your Website Worthless / Part 1

The web is littered with millions of web pages with many more thousands being added daily. So my question for you today is:

Is your website worthless?

How do we define worthless?

In Part 1 of  a series let’s answer that question by determining why people decide to create websites in the first place.

Most commonly, business owners decide to put up a website to give a little background and information about their company.

The business owner is typically highly motivated and wants to publish information as soon as possible.  In most cases, the business owner does no research about his competition and doesn’t truly consider what types of information his consumers would be searching for.

This is the most important part of the process when establishing a web presence. If you don’t do research and develop content that will #1:  please your visitors and prompt them to take action or plan to revisit your site and #2:  get indexed by search engines so consumers that search for your products will be able to find it.

Why are most websites worthless? They have crap content will never draw in the right visitors or once the visitors arrive, the content is not engaging and doesn’t hook the visitors.

This is Part 1 in a series that will help you reevaluate your web strategy and help you decide what steps you need to take to get the right people to your website using the right content. Here is a list of future posts that will enable you to turn your worthless website around!

• Is your website properly search engine optimized?
• What purpose does your website serve? Is it an information repository?
• Do you have clients that visit your website to gain value information or insight?
• Has your website sat there untouched for many years with the same old content?
• What is your website’s purpose?
• Are you actively keeping your website up-to-date with new and interesting content?
• What is your goal with your website?
• Do you have marketing objectives?
• Do you have a mechanism to allow people to subscribe to your content?
• Do you have a way to notify interested parties of new content or products on your site?
• Is your website easy to navigate? When your visitors get there can they find the information they need easily?

Is your website worthless? I’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have about your own website! Please comment below and be sure to subscribe to receive future posts.

How to generate passive income from a website: Part 1

I’ve been developing websites utilizing Flash, PHP, .asp, MySQL and other important technology and software for the last 8 years. I got into the affiliate marketing game in July of 2008. For the past 6 1/2 months, I’ve been learning a great deal about affiliate marketing, blogs, social media, seo and a host of other technologies and theories.

I am beginning a series of posts now that will walk through my process for establishing a website that earns me money passively. This simply means that people can be visiting the website and clicking links while I am doing other things and I earn a commission while they do that.

When I started, this seemed like a foolproof, easy way to make money. I believe that many people start out thinking they can easily earn thousands of dollars doing this with little effort. I’m here to tell you 1) It’s not easy, and 2) you can earn money if you are diligent and you focus.

Ahhhh, focus.

That word pops up again. Focus is essential in this business. I learned the hard way and probably cost myself thousands of dollars during my learning process.

I’m going to take you through the process I have developed for creating a website that will get a great amount of organic search traffic and will earn passive money.

I will be featuring one of my websites, http://GetYourCellPhones.com. In the beginning(July 08) I got crazy and made a bunch of different sites and this was one of them. If I had focused soley on this site, I would have been much better off. Please read my previous post about focus to understand what I mean.

This will be a work-in-progress as I am nowhere near done with the site. In the end, you’ll know EXACTLY how to create the same kind of product and earn passive income.

I am going to cover the following topics extensively through blog posts and video:

1. How to choose a niche
2. Researching your niche
3. Choosing a domain name and hosting
4. Building your website
5. Choosing and signing up for affiliate programs
6. Targeting certain keyphrases for great traffic
7. Making posts to your website
8. How to utilize social media
9. How to maintain your site
10. How to analyze your traffic for better results

Please sign up for my blog post updates via my feed. Feel free to leave comments or questions below.

This series of tutorials will teach you to be a better marketer, search engine optimizer, social media maven, web developer and all around good person.