Monthly Archives: October 2017

Ways To Become The Healthy, Upbeat Person You Want To Be

Being a healthy, upbeat person takes work. Maintaining a positive outlook on life requires healthy habits and plenty of persistence. Here are a few habits you can use to improve your emotional, physical, and mental health.

Alter Your Internal Voice

If the voice inside your head is perpetually negative, you need to shift your way of thinking. When your internal voice gets too harsh, sit back, take a deep breath, and disengage from the negative thought spiral. Notice when your self-image takes a turn for the worse, and gently steer your internal compass towards positive thought. If you’re angry with yourself for making a mistake at work, don’t stay mired in a cycle of negative thoughts. Instead, start brainstorming solutions to your problem. Counter negative thoughts with productive ideas, and you’ll soon find that your headspace is a lot more positive.

Sleep

Sleep and happiness are definitely linked. When we don’t get a solid 8 hours a night, we’re more at risk for depression, weight gain, and diabetes. To stay healthy at any age, you need to practice healthy sleep habits. Having a well-rested brain is definitely worth hitting the pillow a few hours earlier.

Start Meditating

A cluttered mind is often an unhappy mind. Meditation is one of the most effective pathways towards positive thinking. It can help clear away the levels of negativity afflicting your subconscious, ranging from everyday worries to depression and anxiety. Guided meditation is a great way for newcomers to start their meditation journey. If you meditate a few minutes a day, you’ll soon notice a wide array of benefits. Meditation can improve concentration, minimize stress, and boost happiness.

Get Some Exercise

Exercise isn’t just good for your body; it’s also good for your soul. When you exercise, your brain produces more dopamine, a neurotransmitter that boosts feelings of happiness and pleasure. Regular exercise can also lower anxiety levels. Every time you get your blood pumping, you’re throwing your body into a state of minor stress. Over time, your body acclimates to stress, and is better prepared to deal with the stresses of everyday life. Exercise can also help you sleep at night, improve your confidence levels, and give you energy. If you haven’t found a type of exercise you enjoy, keep looking! If you don’t love running, try Yoga. If Pilates makes you ache, hit the elliptical. Once you find an exercise that works for you, you can reap all the rewards of physical fitness.

Eat Right

It’s hard to have a positive outlook on the world if you aren’t filling your body with healthy, nutritious fuel. There are many healthy diet plans to try, from Paleo to the DASH diet. If you want to get a fast start on weight loss, however, try the 3 day military diet. This diet advises three days of calorie restriction, followed by four days of relative freedom. It focuses on healthy foods and ingredients; many military diet meals are made of bananas, tuna, vegetables, and whole grain toast. If fast weight loss is key to your emotional wellbeing, the military diet offers a simple gameplan for success.

Don’t Let Fear Control Your Life

Fear is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it stop you from making healthy, positive choices. Don’t let anxiety stop you from learning a new skill, and don’t let misgivings stop you from taking a risk at work. Instead of getting bogged down in worst-case scenarios, simply push through the fear and start working towards a better you. Real life is never as bad as the nightmare scenarios your imagination conjures up. Next time you feel the unmistakable creep of fear, push through, take a risk, and live a more positive life.

9 Online Business Ideas You Can Start Tomorrow

Everyone today wants to become an entrepreneur; the autonomy that comes with it is quite seductive just to brush off. Unfortunately, most people are not sure of what it is they want to do or if they want it online or offline. Starting a business online is simple and does not involve tedious processes as it would for an offline business. To help you get started, here are some ideas you can start tomorrow.

SEO consultant 

You might be skilled in Search Engine Analytics; lucky for you most small business owners do not know the importance of optimizing their content. You can come in to fill the gap. Establish yourself as a guru in the area and offer informed consultation on the importance of optimizable content, regular posting, and keyword structuring. If you are a skilled writer, you can also offer to write content for them.

White label SEO reseller 

Perhaps unknown to you is there is a huge market in affiliate marketing. It is one of the online businesses that are doing well. You can sign up as a white label SEO reseller from one of the companies offering it. As a reseller, you link your clients to companies who will do website audit, on-page optimization, keyword research, organic link acquisition, lead tracking, project management, and analytics tracking among others. As a reseller, you will not have to do much all you do is refer your clients to the business offering these services.

Web designing

A good percentage of people online are looking for someone to improve how their websites look like or even redesign them from scratch. If you have these skills, this is a lucrative place to start. The good news is web design often pays well. You can create your website and start to look for clients alternatively you can sign up for websites that offer freelancing services in this area.

Social media consultant 

Big brands today are looking for someone else or an agency to handle their social media promotions and impressions. Their social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are important in the lead creation and reaching to their customer base. To get started you just have to place yourself as an authority, and you will make tons of money.

Blogging

Blogs are trending a lot these days. Look for something you are passionate about and start blogging about it. Good niches attract a lot of readerships, and once you have good impressions, then you can monetize it. Successful bloggers today are earning more than people working in white collar jobs. Creating a blog is simple and almost free.

Business coaching

If you have some good insights, expert knowledge as well as experience, then you can come up with a business that coaches other entrepreneurs on how to gain success. You can create a coaching website, and you can do your life and business coaching there. People are searching the web for motivation, life coaching, business success strategies. Establish yourself as an authority, and you will make tons of money.

App development

If you are a skilled programmer, then you can tap into the mobile app development. This is still a green area since smartphone technology is still evolving. Ones you develop your apps you can list them on Playstore, Window store or Appstore. The smartphone industry is growing exponentially, and people are looking for apps to make their lives easy. Identify a problem and create an app to solve it.

Freelancing

The gig economy is taking the world by storm. There is too much to do as a freelancer; logo making, content writing, academic writing, transcription, data entry, survey taking among others. All you have to do is identify a platform that you can sign up with and start working. Then create a brand on that platform, and you will be on your way to riches.

YouTube channel 

If you have some good content you can put on your channel, skits, funny videos, professional videos; then this is the best platform to make money. Use effective marketing strategies, and once your videos get views, you will stand to make lots of money from it. Popular YouTubers today are earning more than one million dollars annually.

What Is Spam and How to Reduce It

Spam is a form of advertising that attempts to force a message through to people who wouldn’t choose to receive it by flooding the Internet with copies of that particular message. Email spam and Usenet spam are the main types of spam. Though spam is one of the most cost-effective advertising channels, its effectiveness can vary. If a fraction of those who receive a spam message decide to buy the product being advertised, the spammer would make a lot of money, perpetuating the spam problem.

Email spammers usually get recipient addresses by scanning publicly accessible sources, using programs to search the internet for addresses, and stealing internet mailing lists. Spamming has been legislated in several countries with varying results.

By forging or concealing the origin of a message, spammers can circumvent service provider regulations, anti-spam laws and the lists used by anti-spam applications. It’s believed that at least 95 percent of the email messages sent worldwide might be spam. Anti-spam tools are, therefore, much more important. Today, email users can use reverse phone lookup to identify people who contact them via email or phone. Many of us would like to know whether there is a way to stop spam. Unless we cut ourselves off from the internet, we cannot eliminate spam entirely. The most we can do is reduce spam. Here’s how:

1. Check your email service

Although it can have some unfortunate consequences, you should filter out most of the spam. Make sure you’re using an email service that has a good filter. If your email client does not filter spam, find one that does.

Today, most email services filter spam automatically, moving every suspicious message to a separate folder. Though it can save you plenty of time, the process is not perfect. Legitimate messages, known as false positives, are sometimes sent to the spam folder while some spam can trick the junk mail filter and end up in your inbox.

2. Train your filter

Before you delete spam from your inbox, select it and inform your email service that the message is spam. Every email client has a different way of doing this. For instance, Gmail has a “Report Spam” button located in the toolbar.

You must also train the email service about your false positives. Check your spam folder for messages that do not belong there. Do this at least once every day. If you find any spam, select it and inform the email service that it erred. Gmail has a “Not Spam” button for this purpose. With training, a good email service provider should learn from these mistakes.

3. Install and maintain a suitable anti-virus solution

Spam is often sent from virus-infected computers. Spammers and virus-developers are working together to compromise as many systems as possible using malicious programs that can spread rapidly. These programs are designed to generate massive amounts of spam that look like they have been sent from legitimate addresses. By installing and maintaining anti-virus software, computer owners can protect their systems against such infections and reduce the likelihood of becoming a source of spam without knowing.

4. Never respond to spam

Don’t open a message if you think it is spam. If by the time you realize it’s spam you’ve already opened it, close it immediately. Don’t download a file or click on a link if you have the slightest of suspicions. In case you open a spam that seemed to be coming from an acquaintance, contact that person as soon as possible and let him/her know their account might have been compromised. Make sure you report the spam.

5. Keep your email address private

The more your email address is known, the more spam you get. Publishing your email address on the internet is ill-advised. Hide your email address whenever you join chat rooms, message boards, and social networking sites. If you must, use an alternative address for such purposes. Displaying your email address to the world increases the chances that someone will add it to a mailing list.

6. Change your email address

Although changing your email address is a drastic option, it might be necessary in some cases. A complete change might be the best option if you unknowingly responded to spam at some point or you did not keep your email address hidden and are now overloaded with spam. Only your legitimate contacts should know about the change. It might take some time to migrate completely. However, your spam count should reduce as soon as you are done with the old address.

Tips for Conquering Clutter in Your Office

No matter where your desk is, home or at work, it’s the center of your productivity, which means that it’s meant to be clutter-free. However, most desks are filled with different momentos, papers, and other personal items, which could be causing you both stress and time. In fact, recent studies have shown that an average worker wastes nearly 150 hours per year looking for lost papers, in which, one in every 20 documents are never found.

To help save you time and energy with your cluttered desk, follow our tips below on how to conquer clutter in your office space.

1. Set a routine

Set up some sort of routine, whether it be day-to-day or week-to-week to clean up your desk and reorganize it after hectic workdays. Remember, every item in your desk should have its own, unique space.

2. Everything Requires a Place

While you clean out your office and workspace, consider the idea that everything you own needs its own space. Keep the mnemonic “RAT” in your mind for every item that you keep in your office. RAT, meaning Retain it, Act on it, or simply Toss it.

However, you can use this ideology for e-files and emails as well. Your computer can become just as junked up as your office space. Once your receive emails, read them, and either store or delete them. There shouldn’t be any lingering around, just waiting to be acted on.

3. Choose an Effective Filing System

If you have piles of documents in your office, it’s important that you can locate a specific document without too much trouble. This is why it’s so important to have some sort of filing system in place, whether it be filing crates, cabinets, or boxes.

However, you should set your filing system close to your desk so you don’t have to travel too far to store a document. That way, you won’t procrastinate storing paperwork, which may end just becoming another cluttered mess. But, if you don’t have the necessary space, file your papers in a common room of your house, such as your living room.

4. Make Sure You Keep Items in Your Office at Appropriate Distances

Make sure that you are keeping items in your office at appropriate distances. For example, if you use something every day, place it on or in your desk. If you use something once a week, make sure you can reach it from your desk chair. If you use an item in your office once a month, keep it somewhere in your work area. However, if you use something less than once a month, you can keep it out of your work area altogether.

5. Organize Your Wires

You never want to be working at a desk that’s covered with wires for your electronics. Try clearing off your desk as much as possible and wrap the remaining wires in Velcro to keep them out of the way. However, you should make sure to use the longest wires in your office, shorter ones may be less effective to arrange them. You can also remove your wires completely where possible, like with your headset, mouse and keyboard.

6. Designate an Office Supply Drawer

In this drawer, only keep the supplies that you use on a regular basis. There is no need to keep 25 unopened boxes of paperclips in your desk. Move your extra supplies to a separate space.

7. Limit Your Paper Use

Try to cut down on the amount of paper you use. Don’t print anything unless it is absolutely necessary. If you do have paper, make sure you recycle it when you no longer need it.

8. Reduce Junk Mail and Spam

Nobody likes getting junk mail in their mailbox or email inbox. To get rid of regular junk mail, contact the Direct Marketing Association. The same group can also help to reduce unwanted email spam. They offer an Email preference service, which you can use to limit spam.

9. Showcase Your Photos on Your Computer

Though you may love to have photos of your family on display, the frames can take up a lot of space. Instead, use your photos to make a rotating slideshow on your computer and use it as your screensaver or background image.

Ways to Monitor the success of your advertising

Advertising is a fluid process. It never stops and is ever changing. The importance of marketing campaigns cannot be overstated. If you’re not going to put any effort in growing your customer base, your business will never grow in size or revenue. But advertising is not cheap. Therefore, you need to evaluate the effectiveness of each method to save time and money. Besides, evaluating your strategy will enable you to know what is working and what is not and how you can make the necessary adjustments.

Define the channels

You will use multiple advertising channels. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaign as a whole may not give you the desired results. It will not give you specific details on how each particular channel has performed as far as generating leads, conversion rate, customer retention and other parameters of measuring the success of your marketing campaign are concerned. The best way is to deal with each channel separately.

Define your goals

The purpose of any advertising campaign is to foster the overall growth of the business. But this should not be the only basis on which you measure the success of your marketing strategy. Every ad campaign has a unique goal. You will need to be more specific if you intend to monitor the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. If an individual ad was meant to drive traffic to your site, for example, its success will depend on how many leads it generated.

How to measure the success of the campaigns

After defining the goals you hope to achieve with your marketing efforts, it’s time to look at the different ways that you can measure the success of your campaign. Of course, the methods will vary from one channel to another.

Search engine performance

You can measure the amount of traffic that your website generates and other metrics that are directly affected by traffic. Google analytics is one of the best tools that you can use to measure such parameters. They include.

  • Lead conversion – It measures the number of leads who become actual customers after making the initial contact.
  • Content engagement – it measures the quality of your content by determining whether readers followed through up to the actionable task.
  • Click through rate – It measures the number of people who initiated the actionable step after visiting a page.
  • Bounce rate – It measures how many people landed on a page and left without taking any action or visiting other pages.
  • Page views – It measures how many pages a visitor visits and how much time they spend on that particular page.

Social Media Marketing

You can measure Social media marketing in two different ways: Ongoing analytics and campaign focused metrics. Ongoing analytics monitors the activities over time while campaign focused metrics examines the impact of targeted campaigns. Major social media sites have analytic tools that are built into them. These tools will help you monitor the effectiveness of the content you post and the success of the campaigns you create.

Email campaigns

If you want to measure the success of your email campaigns effectively, you will need to focus on the right marketing metrics. Here are some of the most crucial parameters that you need to track to improve the ROI of your campaigns.

  • Open rate – the number of recipients who open the email
  • Click through rate – the number of recipients who clicked the link inside the email
  • Unsubscribe rate – the number of recipients who opted out of your list
  • Bounce rate – emails that didn’t reach the intended recipient successfully
  • Pay-per-click ads

There are many metrics that you can track to measure the success of your PPC marketing campaign. Some of the most important ones include;

  • Quality score – it measures the relevance of your keywords
  • Click through rate – the number of clicks that the ad generates
  • Conversion rate – how many people performed the desired action after clicking the ad
  • Cost per conversion – how much are you paying to gain a customer
  • Wasted spend – how much money you’re losing because of clicks that fail to convert

Conclusion

You don’t need to guess whether an individual marketing campaign is working or not. Many tools can help you measure the different metrics to track results. You need to evaluate the success of your marketing efforts regularly. It will enable you to fine-tune your campaigns to achieve maximum results and save you a lot of time and resources.