278: Make More Money PLUS Get Your Life Back… Using WordPress & WP Import?

Everyone is guilty of this at one time or another, even me sometimes...

• Getting too carried away and biting off more than you can chew...
• Filling up the "to-do list" (yuck) with way too much "stuff"
• Then, it's a huge distraction and that big long list becomes a thing you're scared to look at, or maybe even you feel bad when you do...

I can also relate to my mindset ten years ago when even five minutes of money-making activities per day seemed like "too much work" for me...

Send a quick email in the morning? I can't do that every day...

People tell me to blog or post a daily video? How will I have time for anything else?

"Forget about a daily podcast..."
I expected myself to post once a day for maybe 4-5 days and then quit!

Sound familiar? Of course it does... don't pretend it doesn't!

So what changed? This...

Insight #1: Exterminate "Not-Invented-Here" Syndrome and Used the Right Tools

Don't invent from scratch if you can help it.

In this day and age, you don't need to know HTML, CSS, how to edit graphics and upload files. Just use WordPress, grab whatever beautiful theme you want to use for your design (most look like you paid thousands of dollars), and you can grab whatever plugins you want to add pop-ups, social share links, and so on.

Just grab what gets it done now instead of delaying yourself months or even years for no reason...

Insight #2: Stop Switching Gears and "Chunk" Instead

Speaking of WordPress, use its scheduling feature. Scheduling is one of the few hidden "Easter eggs" hidden in WordPress and I'm constantly amazed at how few people know that this is a thing...

Here's how it works: let's say you create a WordPress blog and you decide that once per day, you want to post a new video reviewing the latest iPhone or Android app...

That's a huge time commitment. Literally every day, you're going to have to login and research that latest app. There's no guarantee that you'll find something good. Maybe you won't be motivated that day. Maybe you'll have something better to do or a huge emergency will come up and stop you...

And then... you might miss a day, two days, a week, and then think to yourself... it's been three months since I posted a video about the latest app. It wasn't a priority then, so why should it be a priority now?

Posting one or two videos didn't seem to get me much traction, and maybe if I'd posted 50 to 100 videos I'd see real results, but who has that sort of patience?

Solution: Schedule several posts every time. With WordPress, you can add a new "post" (journal entry) and Publish it, or set it to go live instantly. Or, you can change the date to go live tomorrow, in a week, or two weeks.

WordPress has built-in drip content (just set the date and time of your posts into the future) without any special plugins.

Just imagine, on a Monday, grabbing five YouTube videos from various sources reviewing the latest apps (with your link at the bottom) and you'll set those posts to go live on Tuesday morning, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Or, how about this: on April 1st, schedule two weekly posts in advance. That means that on April 1st, you just scheduled posts on your blog for April 1st and April 8th...

Then, on April 8th, you already had that day scheduled. You schedule your two videos to go live on April 15th and April 22nd...

Keep this up for 10 weeks (three to five minutes per day) and by June 3rd, you're already scheduled ahead to mid-August. And by August, you're scheduled ahead until the following year.

Just by posting more than what you need, the website (WordPress) will work on autopilot for you, even after you've put it out of your mind. Constantly switching gears and putting out fires is a MASSIVE time waster. Avoid it by chunking up your tasks and scheduling things out on autopilot for many weeks to come.

Insight #3: Imagine a Clear CONCRETE Vision of What the Future LOOKS Like

It sounds super hokey, but most self-help (Napoleon Hill type of stuff) revolves around you using your imagination to imagine a clear picture of your goals...

That way, not only will you know you're headed in the right direction, but you'll also get that perspective to deal with life's small setbacks, and you'll have the motivation (and enthusiasm) you need to complete consistent daily actions every single day.

As they say:

"Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right!" -- Henry Ford

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right." -- Napoleon Hill

"Successful people look for problems to resolve, whereas unsuccessful people make every attempt to avoid them." -- Grant Cardone

"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." -- Harry Truman

Again, as cheesy as it sounds, it's important that you let in a consistent flow of self-help information. That means that even if all you can manage is a 10 minute morning walk every day...

• Search YouTube, iTunes and Audible for anything relating to: self-help, self-improvement, productivity, motivation, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Wayne Dyer, Les Brown and listen to just a few minutes every day
• Speaking of Audible (Amazon's audio book marketplace), install the app on your phone so that you can listen while driving or taking walks, even just a few minutes a day (just 5 minutes a day is 30 hours per year)
• If you're really stuck, search YouTube for things like "guided meditation focus" or "NLP anxiety" or even "negative self talk" or "procrastination" to solve whatever mental problem you're working through (and we're all working through things... if you're not, then you should be)
• Take a few minutes to write down (or speak out) your thoughts and feelings to reduce your raw uncontrollable emotions into words that you can work through (we offer the Four Daily Tasks bullet journal for this)

Just imagine if you scheduled 20, 100, or even 200 daily or weekly blog posts into the future. That not only frees up time for you to focus on more important things, but it'll also encourage you with the progress you've made AND it'll toughen you up and build that "productivity muscle" so that the effort that it used to take you to schedule a quick blog post (find a YouTube video online and schedule it)... could now be applied to:

• you hiring a writer on Fiverr to crank out a pack of ten articles... schedule them
• you could write up your own articles, dictate your own podcast episodes or record your own YouTube videos to post to your blog
• scheduling ahead of time as far as you want

I used to think that posting to a site even THREE times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) was work. But think about it. There are "roughly" four weeks in every month. Three times per week is only 12 pieces of content -- grab a couple interesting YouTube videos, news items or blog posts to report about...

Insight #4: Consistent Daily Action & Small Wins

Let me sneak in one more of those dreadful "motivational" quotes: "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar

1. Here's an analogy for you: let's say you've been exercising and dieting diligently, and one day, you decide to eat two extra-large pepperoni pizzas in the space of 10 minutes. Will you instantly gain weight and become a huge fat slob? Of course not.
2. Let's say you've been eating fast food five times a day and ballooned up to 300 pounds or more. If you suddenly ate a salad for one single meal and went back to fast food, it wouldn't make much difference, would it?
3. Moving back to entrepreneurship and making money: what if you spent every day caught in that typical pattern of "work-TV-sleep?" And maybe once a month, you "dabbled" in internet marketing, just a little bit? No progress...
4. What if you woke up just one hour earlier and dedicated that one hour to: creating a product, writing sales copy, building a list, running ads, and sending emails? HUGE results added up over time...

Unfortunately, way too many internet marketers and work-at-home entrepreneurs have the wrong mindset. They think that if they just "put in the time" or "wait out their problem" then eventually... someone will see it their way... not gonna happen.

• Imagine if Apple had stopped innovating with the Macintosh and there was no iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple Watch, MacBook, or iMac. Just Macintosh version 10.0 with a "faster" processor and floppy disk drive... BORING!
• What if Amazon only sold books? What if you couldn't buy almost any item online from them? What if they didn't sell groceries? What if they never created services like S3 which power Netflix and Dropbox?
• What if Google never experimented with AdWords (their main money maker) and stayed with organic search only? They would have gone the way of Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista, Dogpile, DMOZ, and the rest
• Do you remember when MySpace was "the" top website people logged into? Maybe Facebook would have followed suit if they hadn't bought Instagram, adopted "sharing" and absorbed the live streaming stuff from Periscope and SnapChat?

Now look -- I think we both know that looking at Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook give you EXTREME examples of what to do and what not to do:

• Banish "not-invented-here" syndrome and use what already exists. If you want to reinvent a website from scratch, you're basically starting over at the beginning of the internet (the 1990's, and you remember how those websites looked) -- why not start at 2017 with tools like WordPress?
• Chunk your tasks to avoid switching gears: instead of psyching yourself up to write a single blog post (or record a podcast, film a vlog, post to Facebook, email your list), why not use that same time to crank or two or three, or even ten? So that you have a machine that continues to produce money for you weeks from now on automatic pilot, even when you're not thinking about it?
• Use your imagination for good instead of for evil. The average person gravitates to what "could" go wrong if you took a risk and moved outside of your comfort zone. It's easy, and it only takes a moment, to think -- What if I'd created that product? Contacted some affiliates? Finished that sales letter and added a buy button? It's hard to do in real life, but EASY to imagine "if" you'd tried it and failed... then you could say, it's a good thing I didn't play with that internet marketing thing. It's a good thing I didn't listen to any self-help stuff. What a waste "that" would have been. Be better. Instead of worrying about what COULD go wrong, ask yourself, what COULD go right?
• Keep up the process daily!

That doesn't mean you should just phone in it, wait your turn, put in the hours, or "hold out" until your idea makes money. Self-awareness and course-correction are HUGE in our line of work (being in business for yourself).

Even if you're pressed for time with a day job, being old and dealing with health issues, dealing with family, divorce, kids... you're not the first human being in history to deal with such things. I honestly believe that no matter what your situation, you can carve out an hour (maybe two) per day to grow your internet business.

"If you really want to do something you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse." -- Jim Rohn

Start with our WP Import plugin. With it, you'll be able to schedule out a bunch of blog posts in advance: buy private label rights articles, hire a freelance writer on Fiverr, or write them yourself.

Grab any of the 28,000 articles we include as a bonus to our plugin. Or find 10-20 YouTube videos and use our bulk post feature to schedule all that content on one page:

Claim the "WP Import" Plugin: Just $7

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Filed in: Archive 2: 2017 • Mindset • Podcast • Productivity • WordPress