Think back on some of the things you have been passionate about throughout the years. What hobbies have you had in the past that you really loved? Are you still actively pursuing those passions? Which of those passions have you lost interest in or have otherwise let fall to the wayside?

It can be very important to understand why you lost interest in previous passions. If you can determine the factors involved in letting go of your passions, you will better understand how to stay passionate about something for a longer period of time (or why you may not stay passionate about something as you look a little way down the road).

As we’ve discussed before, you will want to spend more time on things you have a passion for. Your desire will keep you motivated and it will be obvious in your work whether it is in your internet business, family life, hobbies, or just about anything else.

On the same thought, if you recognize the reasons you stuck with certain passions that you have had for longer periods of time, you can better understand what factors are involved in consistently sticking with those passions.

Identify your passions and use them to create happiness and potentially a successful business. Just think about the things you love to do. What would you do if time was not an issue? What would you do if money was not an issue? Those things are the very things that just may give you the time and money freedoms you desire.

- Hill Robertson

The big news today has been the presidential election primaries. Everyone wants their candidate to win for many different reasons. The issues cover just about the entire spectrum including religious beliefs, taxes, health care, illegal immigration, the war in Iraq, the economy, education, and the list goes on and on. When you boil it all down, people tend to vote for the candidate they believe will give them what they want.

What motivates the way you vote or who you want to win? Do you want the candidate that says they will give you everything for free (usually at the expense of others) or do you want the candidate that best enables you to build a successful business of your own? The lines often get blurred as to which side each candidate falls in these areas. Regardless of how you plan to vote (or if you are going to vote at all), you have a choice of how successful you will be.

If you put all of your hope and dreams in what someone else will do for you, whether it be the president of the country or your boss at work, you will end up disappointed. You are the only one that can control the path of your future. While other outside forces may change the terrain of your path and may cause little bumps, pot holes, and maybe even detours along the way, you are still in control of where you drive and how fast you get there.

It really just takes a decision on your part and then consistent action. You can choose to be successful and you can shape your future based on your actions today. Start on your journey of success today. It is YOUR decision. No matter who wins in the primaries or general election, your future is in your control - if you decide to take control. If you take control of your future and take action, the real winner is YOU.

- Hill Robertson

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- Hill Robertson

If you read this blog, you will see how important taking action is. In fact, it is the one very thing that separates those that are successful and those that are not. If you take action toward your goals you will get there. Other factors such like testing can help you get to your goals faster. But the main thing I am talking about here is taking action. If you don’t take action, you will not be successful. You can think about it all you want to or study all you want to but until you take action you are going no where.

So, we’ve established the fact that you must take action. Now, you need to add a sense of urgency to it. If you don’t have anything driving you to continuously take action day after day, it is very easy to start slacking off and lose any momentum that you may have had. You must take diligent action every day. It will seem extremely slow and tedious at first. However, after a while, you will start to develop a routine (a positive one) and you will get better and better at what you are doing.

Don’t get discouraged when you only see three or four visitors to your site in the beginning. It will get better. You must keep moving forward. You need to have a sense of urgency driving you to improve all areas of your business. Let’s say you were going to get laid off from your job in six months. What would you do? You already know that you won’t gain financial freedom at a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke as many entrepreneurs like to call it). You don’t want to just find another JOB to replace your current one. You want to have the freedom to run your own successful business that can lead you to financial freedom.

Have a sense of urgency in building your business. Don’t just play the internet business game and think you are going to wake up one day and magically be a millionaire. It requires action. Take the action. Even if you don’t do it right the first few times, just do it. It is more important to take action and make some mistakes than not taking action at all. Don’t you learn better from your mistakes anyway?

- Hill Robertson

Did you just have a fleeting thought that you should blog about? If you did, stop reading this right now and blog it or at least write it down so you won’t forget it. Don’t just write down the topic. You need to go ahead and write down all of your thoughts while they are flowing and fresh in your mind. During this time you are “in the moment” and your emotion and passion are actively engaged.

These “in the moment” thoughts will be your best blogs because your passion and emotion will shine through every word. It will set you apart from other bloggers and your true personality will be evident. This is what your readers are craving. They want to know more about you. It is all about relationship with your readers, right?

This blog entry itself is one of those thoughts that just hit me. In fact, I was on my way to get a cup of coffee when it came to my mind so I immediately stopped in my tracks and pulled out my phone (Treo 700P) to start blogging right then and there. I am now putting the finishing touches on this post before posting it.

Just let the words flow. Do not take time to correct your spelling and grammar. If you do, your will lose your train of thought. Just keep writing until you write everything that comes to mind while you are in the moment. You can go back later and correct any spelling and grammatical errors.

If you don’t have a phone with blogging or memo capabilities, keep a small notepad with you that you can write on when an idea hits you. Or, you may even want to have an small electronic recording device with you that you can whip out and record yourself talking your thoughts that you can later transcribe to your blog. Another way you can capture your thoughts without buying anything is to call your own phone and leave a voice message to yourself. This is especially handy when you are driving and can’t easily stop to write something down.

The bottom line is, blog it as soon as you think about it. Blog it or forget it.

- Hill Robertson

To get more potential customers to make a purchase, sometimes it is as simple as giving them what they want. Don’t spend all of your time trying to poke, prod, and cram your potential customers into the product you offer. You should mold your product into what they are looking for. If you do this, you will have a happy customer. This holds true for most any business whether it is an internet business or not.

In my website businesses, I use to give the customer what I thought was what they needed. I would try to put myself in their shoes and decide what they needed based on what I knew. The problem with this method is that the customer knew how their business worked. I didn’t. I tried to push them into the mold that I conjured up in my own head.

Don’t tell your customer too much about what they need. First, listen to them. Then, listen a little more. Keep listening. They will tell you exactly what they need. Once you find out what they need, you can tailor your product to meed their specific needs. Even if you can’t give them exactly what they need, you can probably get closer than if you just forced something on them.

Be sure you over deliver. Give them even more than what you promise. They will realize how much value they get with you. Give them great service and support. Once they like you, you will have a customer that will give you repeat business over and over again. They will recommend you to others who eventually will also purchase from you over and over again. After a while, you will build up a very loyal customer base that will keep you successful for many years to come. It all starts with giving your customers what they want.

- Hill Robertson

Your long term goal in having your own internet business is so you can spend less time working and spend more time doing what you want to do, right? You don’t want to just shift from a job working for someone else to your own job that consumes even more of your time, right? Too many times that’s exactly what ends up happening. Sometimes it can be even more of a burden having your own business because you are the head honcho and have to make sure everything is running as smoothly as possible. You could end up being a slave at your own business. You don’t want to end up like that.

In the early years of my internet business, I just wanted customers and would bend over backwards to get them. I would promise them the world on their website and then spend 10 or so hours a week working on their site for a whopping $50 per month. Let’s see, that works out to about $5 per hour. Not even minimum wage….. That’s not a very good business model. After a while, I slowly started picking up more customers and learned how to better value my time and adjusted prices and more importantly my hours accordingly.

The key to being able to spend less time on each customer’s site was setting up a business system. A good business system allows you to accomplish tasks with little or even no time involved (or at least not YOUR time). For my particular case, I wrote software that would create websites automatically based on some simple customer input. You could think of it as an automatic template. I would plug in the customers information into my software and the software would create the website with the customers data, set up their email accounts, update the DNS entries, configure the database, load up the site on the webserver, and turn the site on. Everything would be complete in just a few seconds. This process would have taken several hours to do manually (and it did until I wrote the software). This software and the process of using it became one of my business systems. Business systems are essential to a successful business so you can devote your time to growing your business. I did not set up business systems for some of the processes that were essential to the growth of the business in the beginning and I am still paying the price to some degree for not implementing a business system earlier.

I would recommend that you document your processes that you do to run your business. Then, take each process and see if you can create a business system that can do the task for you whether it is a software program that does it or you outsource the task to someone else. Either way, do what needs to be done to get the same tasks completed without you having to spend your time on it. This will allow you to spend your time on other important tasks. If possible, do this with all parts of your business as you grow. You will compound your time and efforts this way. Your business will get closer and closer to running without you. It will begin to take on a life of it’s own so you can have a life of your own.

- Hill Robertson

My favorite time to get things accomplished in my internet businesses is late at night. I am pretty much a night owl anyway. My creative juices really get flowing in the wee hours of the morning. Once the clock hits about 10 or 11 at night, my internet business mind kicks into gear. Even though I usually get up around 7 AM to help get the kids ready for school and have busy days all day long up until the kids are in bed around 8:30 PM, I’m just getting going.

I really like working my internet business at this time of night when everything is quiet and I can really focus on my work. I can quietly browse around the internet researching ways to get more qualified web traffic as I monitor web server logs, analytics, and new subscriptions. I start blogging and writing articles. I also work on coding up the next software product or website idea. It is nice and peaceful and I can really focus on good content, software, and products. Take a look at the time stamp on this post. Right now (as I write this paragraph) it is 2:08 AM. I’ve been working since 10 PM. I haven’t had any interruptions - no telephones ringing and no TV distracting me. It is just nice and quiet.

When is your favorite time to work on your internet business? Do you work at night so you can spend time with your family during the day? Do you work while your kids are at school and spend time with them at night? Everyone has different schedules and different motivations for working at different times. That is one of the big advantages of running your own internet business. You can work it when YOU want to. The internet is there 24/7. It is ready whenever you are.

I can get so much more done during these times of peace and quiet when I can stay focused than when I keep getting interrupted by sweet little voices asking, “Can you play with me, Daddy?” Plus, when my children ask me to play with them, I would rather play with them while they are still little and want to play. I can always work the business while they are sleeping. I know in 20 years from now when they are grown and out of the house, I’ll be glad I did. They are only little boys and girls for a little while. Cherish every moment with your kids.

Do I lose some sleep? Yep. Am I tired all of the time? Pretty much. Is it worth it? Absolutely!

Is it worth it to you? Can you lose a little sleep to build your internet business late at night so you don’t interfere with important family time? You can find the time if it is really important to you. It doesn’t matter when your best time of the day is. Just find the best time for you and take action. Stay focused and be persistent. If you can, work your internet business in peace and quiet. You will get more done when you are not getting distracted.

- Hill Robertson

One way to get traffic to your blog or website is by having visitors “stumble” your blog entries by submitting them to stumbleupon.com. You will probably get quite a few visitors from StumbleUpon if someone submits one of your posts. While the traffic isn’t ideal, you will at least get visitors that have an interest in the topic of your blog. This should at least give you a little better chance of the visitor staying on your site instead of bouncing away.

If you don’t have an account already, you should set up account at StumbleUpon. It is simple to do and you can specify the types of sites you like. You install a toolbar on your browser so you can easily give a review of any site you find interesting and want others to know about. You’ll want to be careful about stumbling your own site. It is frowned upon in the StumbleUpon community. Self promotion in this case is not necessarily a good thing. It might even get you banned if it is abused in this way. However, you can encourage others to stumble your posts.

I just added a StumbleUpon link at the bottom of my blog postings to encourage visitors to click on it and write a short review. You can do the same for your blog or website to hopefully increase your traffic.

You will also have a Stumble button on the toolbar. If you click on it, you will be taken to a randomly selected site that has already been submitted to StumbleUpon that meets the criteria of your selected topics as listed in your profile. You may find some really interesting web sites that you never would have found otherwise. Then, you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down depending if you liked the site or not.

Stumbling around the internet can be very interesting. However, be careful when doing it because it can be a major form of distraction. Before you know it, you will have stumbled away to some really cool and entertaining site and wasted hours of time instead of focusing on building your internet business.

- Hill Robertson