9 Ways To Stay Productive While Working From Home

43% of employees said they worked at home at least some in the past year. With more people working from home, it is important to know how to stay productive while doing so. Continue reading to learn 9 ways to stay productive while working from home.

Working from home is about as amazing as it gets. You are your own boss, and you can do what you want when you want. Who doesn’t love that? I love the days that I work from home and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

One of the biggest things that come with working from home and being your own boss is that you are 100 percent accountable for everything that you do.

It is all you, girl!

While this thought makes me smile from ear to ear, it also reminds me that I need to be on top of my A game.

Staying productive and efficient at home can be tough at times, but these little things that I have started doing have made a world of difference for me.

If you are wondering how you can work from home and still be productive, then look no further than these 9 helpful tips and tricks!

1. Get An Organizer / Planner

Minimize forgetfulness by getting yourself a planner to write down tasks that need to be accomplished each day. Make a habit of writing things down right when you think of them instead of trying to remember.

2. Set An Early Bed Time

You need to treat working from home the same way you would as if you were going into the office. That means going to bed at a certain time and waking up at a certain time. Working from home is a luxury we don’t want to use and abuse.

3. Shut of Social Media

This is one of the biggest distractions out there for anyone, and it can totally eat up your time. By simply logging out of all social media accounts you get rid of a major distraction and allow yourself a break from the chaos that is social media.

4. Have A Designated Work Space

One of the most important things that you need while working from home is a designated workspace. Another thing you need is a fun and exciting workspace. Put up some pictures, decorate it with cute decor, and get yourself a comfy chair. Anything that makes you happy is great when it comes to boosting productivity.

5. Allow Work Breaks

Give yourself 10-15 minute breaks every few hours to stretch your legs and refresh your mind.

6. Have an Away From Home Office

Pack up your things once a week and make a journey to a local coffee shop, bakery, or library. A little bit of human interaction is good for morale and helps with your mental state.

7) Complete Chores On The Weekends

The thought of Chores can actually clutter the mind and cause your productivity levels to drop. Who wants that weighing on them? By completing your chores over the weekend, you are clearing the way to a fulfilling and happy work week.

8) Time To Get Dressed

When you don’t have to go into the office, it is so easy to just throw on some sweats. Did you know that the way you are dressed determines your mood and mindset for the day? When I am dressed in a nice outfit and have some makeup on I feel happy and get a lot more done.

9) Prep Your Meals

Have you ever noticed how much time it takes to cook a meal? Cooking takes a lot of time out of your day when you could be spending it getting work done. All you need is an hour of time on Sundays so that you are able to prep your meals for the week and clear this activity off the table.

There we have it; these 9 tips will help you on your journey to a happy and productive work from home life.

The above post is a guest post by Tessa from My Hint On Life

Tessa works full time and on the side enjoys blogging about life and relationship tips and tricks. In her free time, Tessa enjoys cooking, traveling, and spending time with her husband.

How Educating Your Website Visitors Can Bring You More Sales

Jessica Lauren Vine

The average small business spends $400/mo on marketing efforts. As businesses grow, their marketing budgets grow. You may be in a position where you want to expand your marketing efforts because your business is growing.

If you are considering inbound marketing strategies, you might not be sure how educating your website visitors is going to bring in more sales.

You may be thinking about writing sales letters and promotions to increase your bottom line. Continue reading this article as we talk about how educating your website visitors can bring you more sales.

1. Builds Trust

If you present yourself as a knowledgeable source, people are more likely to trust that you know what you are talking about. While you can’t get on the phone with everyone and show them how educated you are on the topic, you can write blog posts where people can see how awesome you are.

2. Shows You As an Authority

Similar to point number one, showing you are an authority will allow people to trust you more. Beyond that, you want people to think about you as a thought leader/authority. Offering valuable information through your website and blog is the best way to do position yourself as an authority.

3. Keeps You Top of Mind

When you have consistent education content going up on your blog, you can keep yourself top of mind by emailing your list about your latest helpful blog post. As long as you are providing valuable information that can help them with what they are trying to achieve, people are often glad to get your emails.

4. Helpful Tips for Engaging Your Readers

Once you’ve got the hang of writing educational content that will help your clients, there are some things you can do to make sure that you’re engaging with your readers.

Add Value Any Time You Can
Engage with Your Visitors
Ask Questions
Answer Questions

If you aren’t engaging your readers, you are missing out on a major relationship building opportunity. Customers like to know that their voice is heard and they want to know with whom they are spending their money.

The more you put these important practices into play, the better opportunity you have to increase your sales and build long-term relationships with your customers.

Some Questions to Ask Yourself:

How can I engage with my customers on a regular basis without being annoying?
How can I add more value to my website visitors?
What is one new educational resource I can make for my website visitors?

Once you answer those questions, you will have some idea about the type of content you can create to start growing your company’s inbound marketing effort.

Share your favorite tips for creating amazing educational content for your customers in the content below.

Are Professional Blog Writers Worth The Cold Hard Cash?

Jessica Lauren Vine

professional blog writer sitting on a plane

Professional copywriters get paid around $69,000 a year when working in corporate. If you’re thinking about hiring someone to write your blog, that number can be pretty scary.

Those of you that have blogs may have thought about hiring professional blog writers. If you’ve priced professional blog writers, you may have found they can be a little on the pricey end.

If you are bootstrapping your business, you might not be sure if paying for writing services is the best use of your money when you want to get more traffic to your blog.

If content marketing is a part of your marketing strategy then having professional content is important. Let’s look at three reasons professional blog writers are worth the money.

1. Frees Up Your Time

As a business owner, your time is very limited, and when you do have time, you want to focus on building your business. Hiring someone else to do your writing can free up the time you would have to use to write. Instead, you can do something else that needs your attention.

2. On Time Blog Posts

When you have professional blog writers submitting work to your blog, you will be able to ensure your blog posts come out on time. Professionals understand the importance of a deadline as well as the importance of quality work.

Having a regular schedule for your blog posts is important. People get used to seeing your content and begin to integrate your content into their routines.

3. Easy to Read & Quality Content

People have many options when it comes to content online. When you have professionals writing your blog content, you can be sure it is easy to read and that the quality of the content is top notch. Having great content means people are going to stay on your site longer and form a deeper bond with you and your brand.

Content is the backbone of your website. If you want to rank on the search engines, you have to have high-quality content of your website. Google has many different factors in its algorithm, but they always note high-quality content as one of them.

Have you hired writers in the past or thought about it? Share your experience in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Reputable Affiliate Networks That Really Pay Out

Jessica Lauren Vine

So, I’ve been in the affiliate marketing game for a while now. The list below is NOT a full list of affiliate networks that are reputable but it is a list of reputable affiliate networks that really payout and I know this because they’ve paid me. lol

Amazon Affiliate Program
ShareASale
ClickBank
MoreNiche
MarketHealth

(Read my ShareASale article)

Finding a good affiliate program is just one part of making cashola with affiliate marketing. I’d highly recommend getting your free account through Wealthy Affiliate and starting your training.

One thing to know is that when you are a member of wealthy affiliate, if you need anything from domains, hosting, training and such – it’s there. Success online can be reached alone, but it’s hard to just take 2 minutes and get your free account. :0)

Enjoy!

Any affiliate programs you’ve gotten paid from? Share it with us in the comments.

Is ShareASale Affiliate Network a Scam?

Jessica Lauren Vine

3.9 million Americans are working from home now, and some of them are affiliate marketers!

Affiliate marketing is a great way to bring in extra cash from home when you find a reputable affiliate program.

If you’re only starting to research affiliate marketing, you may be asking “Is ShareASale affiliate network a scam?”

I’ll just tell you right now that, no it is not a scam. I do need to tell you a couple of other things before you get into promoting the different products there.

Is Share a Sale Affiliate Network a Scam – How ShareASale Operates

Ok.

YOU become an affiliate of ShareASale.
Merchants come to ShareASale hoping YOU will sell their stuff
When you sell their stuff – you get paid

Pretty simple, right?

Most of the time it is pretty simple.

When you are deciding what offer to promote through ShareASale, it is most powerful to believe in the product or service you are promoting.

If you don’t use it yourself, it’s pretty difficult to tell other people they should use it. I know there are plenty of people that DO promote products and services they’ve never used, but I’ve never felt good about it. Up to you though.

When you are checking out the different offers you can promote, make sure they have money in their accounts to pay you and that they pay a decent percentage of commission. You don’t want to make peanuts.

If you sell a product and they only pay you $1 for a sale, it’s going to take you quite a bit of work to start making good cashola. Do yourself a favor and find some offers that will pay you more money every time that you make a sale. 😀

The reason I wrote about ShareASale today was that I got an unexpected payment from them. lol I just passively wrote a post about a service that I use because it was helpful to me and I didn’t even realize I had been making sales for the past five months… lol

Now you have your answer to “Is ShareASale affiliate network a scam?” and can see the beauty of making money blogging. 🙂

Wondering where I learned how to create money making websites? Check out my Wealthy Affiliate review and hear my story.

Are there any other affiliate programs you’d like me to review? Let me know in the comments.

Why Are Keywords Important for a Successful Website?

Jessica Lauren Vine

There have been a lot of changes to SEO in the last years, but one thing remains – Google loves quality content. So, what about keywords?

Are keywords important for a successful website and why?

If you’re new to online marketing, there is so much lingo to get used to. One of the terms you are going to hear a lot is “keyword” or “keyphrase.” You may be wondering, “Why are keywords important?”

Before you can understand why keywords would be important to your website, you need to understand more about what keywords are. Keywords are well… keywords that you want people and search engines to know your content is about.

For instance, in this post, my keyword is “why are keywords important,” and that is what I want you and anyone else to know this article is about. When you focus on a keyword, the search engines will also pick up that this is what your blog is about, so that is what makes keywords so important.

Why Are Keywords Important? Here’s Why – Keyword Research

Before writing a blog post, you need to do keyword research. You can do keyword research through keyword tools or through going to search engines like Google and seeing what some related terms are at the bottom of the search page when you type in your niche in the search engine.

You can make keyword research as complicated or simple as you want to make it but I like it somewhere in the middle.

I use a tool called Jaaxy that helps you figure out which keywords are being searched for, how much competition there is and which ones you might want to target for yourself.

You can try it out yourself in the window below if you like:

It is really easy to get lost in the keyword research part of things, but even if you pick a keyword and don’t rank for it, it is still good for your website’s content. The more high-quality content you have on your website, the better your rankings will be.

Inbound Marketing

Keywords are part of the inbound marketing strategy when you want to attract potential clients to your website. Whether you are selling a product or a service, you need to have a strategy in place that is going to allow you to get the results you want without stressing you out.

Inbound marketing with the proper keywords can allow you to set yourself up for passive income and we all know that passive income is like the holy grail! lol

So, have you tried keyword research? Do you understand why keywords are important? Leave a comment and share your experience.

Trade Show Marketing Ideas to Take Your Trade Show Skills to the Next Level

Jessica Lauren Vine

Tradeshows bring in billions of dollars for B2B companies.

When you book your business into a trade show, you need awesome trade show marketing ideas to get attention. There are many vendor options at most trade shows, so your company needs to have a unique selling proposition to get people interested in your service or product.

Continue reading to find out ways to get people engaged with your business through trade show marketing.

1. Engaging Displays

Having an engaging display is more important than you might think. An engaging display is like a beautiful book cover. While we say that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we definitely do judge books by their covers.

Your “cover” or your display should be neat, tidy and eye-catching. There are even technologies that will allow you to set up 3-D displays that don’t need viewers to wear glasses. Imagine being able to have your product popped out in 3-D style without having to give out glasses.

2. Friendly Greeter

People visiting trade shows are more likely to come to your table if there is a friendly greeter. If you are afraid of talking to people and aren’t sure how to engage, you can hire a trade show host that will get people to come over to your table.

These people aren’t inexpensive so make sure that you prepare to pay. If you can develop the skills to talk with anyone, your trade show success rate will skyrocket.

3. Giveaways

Giveaways are always a great draw. Sometimes we miss the mark with our giveaways because we try to get cute or we are cheap. It doesn’t pay to be cute or cheap.

You need to be effective.

Electronics are a good bet when it comes to giveaways. Make sure you have the hottest product on the market if you want to get the most opt-ins.

Put Your Trade Show Marketing Skills Into Action

If you put these things into action, your trade show marketing ideas and results will be much better than if you left these things out.

While it may be a stretch to talk to people and get them to come over or it might be uncomfortable to spend a good amount of money on your giveaway, you have to take a risk to get the reward.

What are some ideas that you have about trade shows? Leave a comment and let us know.

Outbound Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing

Jessica Lauren Vine

As a business owner, you want to spend your marketing budget in the place you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

The SBA has their thoughts on how much you should spend on marketing, but you’ve got to make your own decisions about where to spend and how much.

When you look at outbound marketing vs. inbound marketing, you can be sure that inbound marketing is going to win out in the long run and you’re going to spend less cash getting the audience that you want.

Outbound marketing usually broadcasts ads by marketing to the masses. Inbound marketing is surgical and targets people who are likely to be interested in the products and services that are offered.

A Look Into Inbound Marketing & Outbound Marketing

To fully understand which type of marketing is for you, you need to look into it a little further. While I am a fan of inbound marketing, maybe you like the outbound marketing approach better.

Outbound Marketing Examples

TV/Radio Ads
Telemarketing & Cold Calls
Email Marketing
Trade Shows
Newspaper Ads
Press Releases
Brochures
Postcards
Catalogs

Inbound Marketing Examples

Social Media
Blog Content
Video Marketing
Microsite
Email

When you are choosing your marketing strategy, you need to figure out if you want to attract people to you or if you want to put yourself in people’s faces.

Inbound marketing allows you to be more of a welcome solution to people and can come in contact with people at any given time. You may find people at the beginning stages of the buying process and have to nurture them through the sales process.

On the other hand, you might find them near the end of the sales cycle where they are ready to purchase. This is why it is important to craft your nurturing process carefully.

With outbound marketing, you are blasting the masses in search of people that need your product right away. You aren’t likely to find a large percentage of these people, but you don’t need a lot of people to make money from this group if you know what you are doing.

Many people find it helpful to use inbound strategy and use outbound strategy to promote their business. Figuring out which one is best for you or if you want to do a mix of both inbound marketing and outbound marketing will allow you to get started on your marketing journey.

Marketing Your Product or Service

The best thing you can do to get your product or service out on the market is to continue to spread the word.

You have to get the word out about your product or service on a consistent basis. If you aren’t consistent, you are going to fall behind in your efforts and your competition is going to take the lead.

Having a plan in place or finding a company that will help you market your products and services is a great way to get started on the road to success.

Whether you are focusing on becoming an authority in your niche, creating passive income without caring about whether or not you create a name for your business or if you want to work on your email marketing strategy, you need to have a plan so you can be effective and start creating the results that you want.

Which strategy do you prefer? Inbound marketing or outbound marketing? Share in the comments.

Remote Jobs You Can Work from Anywhere

Jessica Lauren Vine

3.9 million Americans now work remotely.

If you want to live a location independent life, unless you are retired, you need to find remote jobs you can work from anywhere.

Whether you decide that you want to RV full-time, become a housesitter or any other lifestyle that requires you to be mobile, you have to find a way to support your lifestyle. Let’s look at some remote jobs you can work from anywhere.

1. Copywriting

The need for copywriters is everywhere. Look around, and you are going to see words on signs, promotional papers and more. Someone had to write them. Why not you?

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you sell someone else’s product, and you get a cut of the commission. You are not a sales rep for the company. You simply refer people to the link and make money for sending them.

3. Online Language Teacher

If you know multiple languages, you can make money teaching online.

4. Customer Service Rep

There are many companies that no longer want to require their customer service to come to a specific location. Many companies are happy to have their reps operating from home.

5. Reference Librarian

You can help people find the information they need through the online library.

6. Coordinator

You can coordinate just about anything online. Find a company that needs a coordinator and see if they will let you work remotely.

7. Sales Associate

Many sales can be performed online. Look for a company that will let you work in their phone sales or live chat sales department.

8. Interpreter

There is a serious shortage of interpreters. If you can help people understand each other, you will be busy all of the time.

9. Graphic Designer

You don’t have to be a major artist to start your graphic design business. Many programs will help you take your semi-good talent to the next level.

10. SEO Consultant

Every business wants to rank at the top of the search engines. If you can help them get noticed on the search engines, you won’t hurt for business.

11. Social Media Manager

Managing social media can be done all online. You may be required to post updates, or you might be asked to reply to comments and requests as well.

12. Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants can do a variety of different things from checking email, setting appointments and more.

13. Transcriptionist

Many people like their meetings, webinars or other conversations to be transcribed. If you have a high WPM typing rate, you are going to make more money.

Start Living Your Dreams Today

With more jobs offering the options to work remotely, there is no reason you have to stay in one place. These remote jobs you can work from anywhere are just the tip of the iceberg.

Try researching jobs in your current field to see if there are remote work opportunities so you can work remotely from anywhere.

Have you worked any remote jobs? Feel free to share with us in the comments section.

The Surefire Way to Become an Authority In Your Field

Jessica Lauren Vine

You want to become an authority in your field. There is no doubt about the benefits of being seen as an authority and thought leader in your chosen industry.

When people see you as an authority in your industry, it is easier to open doors. Whether you are landing a new client, job, appearance or speaking gig if people already know who you are and know that you know your stuff they are much more open to what you have to say.

You already know the benefits, but how do you become an authority in your field? How do you get your target market’s ear in a noisy world?

Tips for Becoming an Authority In Your Industry

1. Develop a Leadership Mindset

If you don’t have a leadership mindset, it is impossible to become an authority in your industry. You have to think about the industry as a whole vs. only you and your business if you want to lead the entire industry.

Attending leadership events in your industry, looking for new developments and innovations is a must. You also have to be willing to share what you’ve learned.

2. Put a Plan Into Place

Before you start moving forward with your authority marketing efforts, you need to have a sound plan in place.

The shotgun approach rarely works and is going to lead you to burn out and less than impressive results.

Figure out which social media platforms you are going to frequent as well as how many times per week you are going to blog. Some people blog once a month, some people once a day and some people still aren’t sure that blogging is a good use of their resources.

The standard is once per week and should keep you in the good graces of the fresh content part of the Google search algorithm.

3. Publically Address Changes in Your Industry

Keeping quiet when major changes happen in your industry is a sure sign that you are not an authority.

You need to be up on what is happening, and you need to share your opinions and best practices. If you remain quiet in these times, this is a great opportunity for other people to jump ahead of you and proclaim their own authority on the topic.

4. Always Be Learning

If you aren’t growing, you are shrinking, and you always want your knowledge and intuition to grow and develop. Even if you learn one new thing a day, week or a month, you will be well in front of most people that don’t take the time to learn.

The more you learn, the more you will be able to share. The more people learn from you, the more they see you as a leader and authority in the industry.

What are you going to do to show yourself as an authority in your industry? Leave your comments below and let us know.

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