When you work for yourself you recognize that there is a lot to do. You also know that it’s a challenge getting it all done, whether you’re full-time or part-time in your business.

That’s why doing things in the most efficient manner possible so important. Here are three tools to help you work faster.

Procedures - You probably thought immediately of a big Procedures Manual. But a procedure can be as simple as 3 steps jotted on a yellow sticky.

Of course, I don’t recommend the yellow sticky approach! Instead take the extra five minutes it will take to type those steps.

Then either file it in a Procedures folder on your hard drive or print it and put it in a notebook on your shelf. It will be ready to use the next time you want to repeat that task.

Checklists - While a procedure is the step-by-step instructions, a checklist gives you a way to track that you completed that task. So where a procedure may have 10 steps, that entire task will be one check box on your checklist.

Checklists are helpful for daily tasks as well as large projects. It’s easiest if you start with an out-of-the-box checklist and adapt it for your use. But you can also build a checklist from scratch, based on the tasks you do.

Templates - When you do the same task over and over, you end up with the same outcome. So why not just start with the end result? That’s exactly what you do with a template.

Just as with a checklist, it’s much easier to modify an existing format than to start from scratch. So use your existing optin pages, sales letters, special reports and articles to create templates that you can modify and reuse.

The important thing with each of these tools is to test it and update it each time you use it. This process of continuous refinement is what makes all the difference in how long it take you to get it all done!

Jeanette shares more tips and a full organization system in her Online Business Organization System.

Whether you’re setting a value on your time for a sales letter – or trying to figure out how much a personal project is “costing you” it’s important to know what your time is worth.

Now we’d all like to just plug our name into a magic calculator, along with our related experience and education, and have the machine tell us “Your Time is worth this amount.” But since that’s not going to happen, let’s consider alternatives.

Method 1: What You’re Paid

If you’re still working a job, it’s a fairly easy calculation to see what you’re paid per hour. Just take your annual salary and divide by 2000. That’s the average work hours per year.

Sure, that’s not really what you’re worth, because you’re being underpaid. But it will give you something to work with.

Method 2: Annual Income

If you’re self-employed, take your gross income for the year and divide by 2000. That’s your hourly earnings.

You can also rely on your “billing rate” for consulting. But for every hour you are paid a consulting fee, you also have preparation, marketing, and background hours. So it sounds good, but isn’t realistic, unless you’re paid that rate for 2000 hours per year.

Method 3: Market Comparison

If you’re new to your business and don’t have a track record, look around at your competition. What do they charge for an hour of consulting? What do their sales letters refer to when talking about their time value?

But you have to be careful with this approach. Just because your competitor or your mentor is charging a particular amount does not mean that your time is worth that amount. There’s the experience and education factor you have to consider before you can match their value.

A word of caution: You never want to put a value on your time that is more than you have actually gotten paid. Unless you’ve been paid that amount, you can’t say you charge that amount. This is particularly true in sales letters where you are subject to governmental regulations. It is better to understate, than to over-inflate your rates.

Method 4: Internal Rate

Finally, there is the internal number. This is the amount you pay yourself – in your head. Twenty years ago when I started consulting, I read that if you got paid $50 per hour you would make a hundred thousand per year. That sounded good to me at the time, so I decided to consider my time worth $50 per hour.

So if it took me 30 hours to create a product, it “cost” me $1500. If it took me 5 hours to write a sales letter it cost me $250. And so on.

As my actual worth has increased I’ve also increased my internal number. At the same time I’ve gained expertise and speed. So a product that used to take 30 hours to create can now be finished and ready for sale in 15. It still “costs” me more because my rate has more than doubled – but I can create more of them in the same amount of time.

Start applying your new “time value” to the things you’re doing in your business. For example, if you spend an hour surfing the net, how much did that cost? If you spend an hour playing a game in Facebook – what was that worth to you?

And a final word of caution, from personal experience. I have tried using my real billing rate, currently set at $450 per hour, for personal costs. It doesn’t work. “I’ll fix dinner but it will cost you $450″ doesn’t fly here at our house. Around here my rate is about $5 per hour. It just keeps you humble!

You have a product for sale – and now you’re anxious to launch your affiliate program. After all, affiliates send traffic your way. They refer new prospects who become customers – and then affiliates.

But are you ready to offer an affiliate program?

Here are three signs that that you’re ready.

1. Your site is selling well. You have created a sales letter that closes at a dependable rate. You can share that sales conversion rate with your potential affiliates. You can let them know the difference in close rates from pay- per-click traffic and the traffic coming from your list.

This information may not be important to the casual affiliate, who signs up for your program because they like your product. But it is critcially important to super affiliates – those people who have the ability to bring you tons of traffic. And while you may not offer that information when you ask them to help you promote your product, you want to have it ready if they ask. It’s a level of professionalism that sets you apart from the casual affiliate program manager.

2. You have a toolbox of effective advertising media. This toolbox includes graphics, banners, ads, articles, emails – tools your affiliates will be able to use to promote your product.

When you add items to your toolbox, you want to test those items – so that your affiliates can depend on those emails and ads to draw traffic to your site. Yes, it takes time to assemble those items, but it will be a critical tool for your affiliates. Learn how to set up your toolbox quickly and easily.

3. You are prepared to provide an education process for your affiliates. Many people who sign up for your affiliate program have never successfully promoted a product before. It is up to you to teach them how to be good affiliates.

This education process generally takes the form of a sequence of email messages. You’ll introduce them to each of your products, give them ideas on how to promote them, what types of prospects find the products attractive, etc. You’ll want to point them to the affiliate tools appropriate for each product.

And you’ll want to continue to motivate them. It may be through monthly calls, a weekly email, or contests, but affiliates are like anyone else online. Whatever has come across their desk most recently is what they will pay attention to. So you want to gain and remain top-of-mind.

If you have these three processes in place or are willing to formalize them, then you should be ready to run a first- class affiliate program. Best of all, the hard work is already done – with all the logistics in place. Now you just need to announce and promote the program and recruit the best people as your affiliates.

The traffic, sales, and friendships you form as a result make it all worthwhile!

See how you can create and manage your own affiliate program.

In a related article, I talked about why you want to add Google Analytics to your blog. Now you need to know the HOW.

It’s a relatively easy process.

First you need an analytics account.

If you already have an Analytics account or you have an Adwords account, then you’re set to go. (In Adwords, pull down the Reports menu

If you need a new Analytics account, sign up for one.

Next you need to add your blog to your analytics account.

Just log into your account. If you’re using your Adwords account, click on Reporting and choose Google Analytics.

Now click to Add New Profile. Just type in the URL of your blog.

Finally you need to add the “code” that Google Analytics provides to your blog.

Some blog themes provide a space in their settings to add your tracking code. In that case you would copy and paste the code that Analytics provides into that space.

If your theme does not provide that capability, then download, install and active the Google Analytics plugin. Then paste your code into there.

To be sure your code is working, go back to your Analytics account and click to edit that profile. It will tell you whether or not the tracking is working. If it’s not, wait a few minutes, then try again. If it’s still not, then walk through the steps again. Or ask your webmaster for help.

Within 24 hours you’ll be able to see the first reports on your blog and the visitors who are coming. You’ll find Google analytics an invaluable tool in providing feedback on your blog – or any of your websites. Just add each site you want to track and enjoy all of the information flowing in for your analysis.

Google Analytics is a handy tool you can add to your blog absolutely free. It provides information to help you fine-tune your website and your business.

Take a look at some of the information Google Analytics offers and how you can use this information to your advantage.

A Google analytics report breaks down the information into a multiple sections. These sections include:

Site Usage Report which includes:

* Visits – Total number of visits to your site
* Page views – Total number of pages visitors looked at
* Pages/visit – Average number of pages viewed per visit
* Bounce rate – The percentage of users who left after viewing only  one page on your site. Ideally, you want this to be under 50%
* Average time on site – How long a visitor stayed on your website
* New visits – The percentage of people who haven’t visited your site before.

Visitor Overview – this section breaks down the visitor information into more detail including the number of pages viewed overall and the average page view per visit.

This information can be invaluable. However, it takes a bit of analysis to find the noteworthy information. For example, if you notice that there are only three page views per visit that might concern you. It means people aren’t spending much time on your website.

However, if the majority of your visits are not new visitors, meaning people are coming back to your site for information, then the number of page views may not be a concern. It’s likely that the visitors are just reading your new content.

Traffic Source overview – This section tells where your traffic comes from. It lists how many visitors came from organic (or natural unpaid) search engine traffic versus how many came from direct traffic (typing your URL into their brower) versus from referring sites.

You can use this information to fine tune your traffic generation strategies. For example, if you find that 60% of your visitors are coming from Google Organic, that’s good. However, if only 15% are coming from referring sites, you may want to increase your link building strategy.

Likewise, if you find you have low Google organic numbers, you would then know it’s time to work on your keyword placement and optimizing your content and your site.

The traffic source overview also tells you what top keywords people used to find your content. This is of course extremely helpful when creating your content plan and learning what keywords people use and what they’re looking for on your website.

Content Overview – This section of the report lists the top content and the page views for each piece. This is ideal information for building and creating your content strategy. It’s more beneficial however, if you compare the information over time and look for trends.

Is your top article always a tips sheet? Is it always on the same basic topic?

Google Analytics compares your present week to the prior week. However it’s more advantageous to look at your content overview information over a longer period of time.

Google analytics provides valuable information for you to fine tune your keyword strategy. It helps you learn what content people prefer on your site. And it helps you learn where your visitors are coming from so you can adjust your traffic generation strategies as needed.

It’s not a crystal ball that can put you inside the minds of your prospects and visitors. However, the information Google Analytics provides is extremely useful to build your business and your business website.

Have you ever noticed that products in your niche are priced at varying levels – from $7 to $2,000?

If you are selling the $7 product, you may be asking yourself how anyone could sell a $2,000 product.  On the other hand, if you are selling the $2,000 product, you are probably asking how anyone can afford to sell a $7 product.

There is no magic formula that says “if you have 6 videos and 3 PDFs, charge this amount.” Instead you need to set your price based on the value you deliver. And to judge that value, you need to look at it from your point of view, as well as your customer’s perspective.

Pricing is a matter of comfort and expectations.  If you are selling at the lower end of the price range, you probably also buy in that same price range.  It is what you are used to.  You have a hard time convincing yourself that any product could be worth $2,000.  As long as you continue to buy less expensive products, you will have a difficult time raising your prices beyond your personal comfort level.

Price is about perception.  In our society, higher prices indicate better quality, more value, more expertise.

Does price guarantee any of these things?  Not necessarily.  You can buy a car for $8,000 or $80,000.  Will both of them get you to your destination?  Yes.  Do both of them sell?  Yes.  Is there 10 times the quality, the value, and the expertise in the higher priced car?  Maybe.

The point is price doesn’t guarantee anything, other than that you will pay more. But most people assume a higher price means a better product.

One other factor that you want to consider in raising your prices is customer service.  When asked, virtually all information publishers agree that the higher the price point on your product, the fewer complaints and customer support issues you have.  That single consideration is a strong recommendation for raising prices.

So, how do you raise your prices?  Just do it.  Announce the price increase if you want a flurry of last minute sales and give a specific deadline. Or just raise the price.

As you raise your prices you need to start raising your expectations as well. It is hard to sell someone a $197 product if you are not willing to pay that much for product yourself.

Raising prices is both a smart move and one that involves a change in your personal habits.  If you cannot believe your product or any product is worth that amount, you will not be able to sell it at the higher price regardless of the sales copy that you write.

Change your personal buying habits and raise your price.

So what do YOU think? Can you sell a higher priced-product when you aren’t willing to pay the higher price yourself? Let me hear your opinion in the comments below.

Q: I’m a writer and struggling with finding my online niche. Do you have any suggestions on how to do this?

A: The world is wide open to you as a writer! You don’t need to find a niche – you have one already. Writing. You can sell your services at writing sites, you can freelance. You can write a set of articles in a specific niche that fascinates you (and that you want to learn more about) and sell those articles as “PLR articles.”

If you DO want to find a niche you have a couple of choices. You can choose a niche you want to learn about and write articles, ebooks, reports, etc on that topic.

OR you can choose to write for people within a specific niche. For example, if you love gardening, you can specialize in writing articles for marketers in the gardening niche. Again, you can do these on a custom basis – or write generic articles that you sell to people in that niche. 

You could create a “do it yourself” ready-made newsletter. So each month you would create a set of 15 articles. Then each subscriber to your service could choose the 10 articles they want in their newsletter and you could assemble and deliver it to them, ready to distribute. It would be customized for them and their business.

As I said, with writing skills you have unlimited possibilities. Just get your mind working – and forget that you “need a niche.” You just need to figure out what you enjoy doing – and make money with that!

And if you can’t decide, then at least put up a website advertising your writing – and make money while you’re waiting for inspiration.