Marc's Blog

10 Signs That You Need To Be More Productive

August 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

We are all very busy people. We get swamped by the workload, have to put in hours of work every day, have family commitments, and other types of commitments as well. Many people make the common mistake of believing that being busy also means being productive. There is a difference. As a result of the mistakes people make, productivity dips. Before you decide whether you need to increase your productivity, go through these 10 signs that will allow you to know whether you’re in trouble or not.

You complain about being so busy. Being busy means going to the grocery store, doing chores, and a plethora of other things unrelated to your work. If you always complain about being too busy, you are not getting the important work done.
You watch too much TV. I define watching 10 hours of TV every week as too much. Some people will nod their heads in agreement while others will get overwhelmed considering that the average American watches 32 hours of TV every week.
You always fall behind. Everyone falls behind on their work at a certain point in their lives. I have fallen behind, and chances are you have fallen behind too. However, if you are always falling behind in your work and it is becoming a trend, you need to increase your productivity. If you keep on falling behind, you will spend the rest of your life catching up instead of expanding.
You live in the 365 day mindset/trap. New Years resolutions. Did you forget about them? Over 80% of people never get their New Year’s resolutions accomplished because they believe they have an incredible amount of time to get the job done. Let’s say your New Year’s resolution is to gain 10,000 Twitter followers. That means you would have to gain an average of 28 followers every day. That’s not impossible at all. People think that if they wait a month and start on February, they can get the same goal accomplished by gaining 30 followers every day from now through the entire year. However, some people with this goal may wait to start on the first day of September because they realize they have a lot of time left. Now, there’s only 122 days to get the task accomplished which means someone would have to gain 82 followers every day from September 1st to the end of the year. It’s so much easier to start early and stick with it.
You Google it too often. If you Google anything related to “how to,” it means you want to be able to do that. The person who Googles “how to make money online” 100 times wants to make money online. If you are Googling “how to be more productive” numerous times, then you need to boost your productivity. Instead of constantly searching for more ways to be productive, stick with the methods in this blog post and you will be fine. I’m a 16 year old in high school and the school’s track team. I think I’m qualified to talk about productivity.
You would never think of waking up early in the morning. I’m a night owl and early bird at the same time. I get to bed past midnight and get up before 8 am. Waking up early in the morning allows you to be more productive because you have a greater chance of starting the day off with a positive attitude.
You wing the first hour you wake up. The first hour of waking up dictates how the rest of your day is going to go. If you wake up and hold grudges for the first hour, you are going to hold those grudges and have a bad day. If you read a motivational book, do a workout, or do what you love, you will have a day filled with motivation and empowerment. The first hour controls how productive you will be for the rest of the day, and if you don’t know what you do then, you need to create a schedule for what you will do for that first hour.
Do have too much on your plate. I had a score card overload, and I am not proud of it to this day. I wrote down 19 different goals on the score card that each took up a significant amount of time. I thought I would be able to write 20 blog posts, proofread an entire book, write a completely different book (and finish that book), do 10 YouTube videos, write 20 scripts, and prepare for the summer bootcamp my brother and I did at Fordham University (among plenty of other high level tasks) was an impossibility. I had too much on my plate and ended up being very unproductive for the entire week. Less is more because you get to focus more of your attention on fewer things.
You are striving for the wrong types of goals. If your goals are having a house and being rich, that’s a problem. You need to set more specific goals so you are able to be productive. Instead of saying how rich you want to be, throw in a number. Do you want to make $100,000 by the end of the year? In addition, ask yourself what kind of a house you want and when you will get it. Do you want to move into a three floor house this year and live in a mansion five years later? More specific goals lead to more specific paths, and those specific paths lead to more productivity. Specific goals give you something to strive for.
You read through this blog post word for word. Only 20% of people actually read the blog post (the other 80% stop short at the headline). If you have been reading this blog post word for word, then that means you are looking for some tidbits on being productive and asking yourself if you really need to be more productive. If you read up to this part of the blog post, chances are you need to be more productive.

Now that you know the signs that you need to be more productive, you need to increase that productivity as quickly as possible. Luckily for you, I wrote an entire blog post with 10 different methods you can use to increase your productivity. If you liked this blog post, then you are definitely going to like the other one as well.

It’s So Much Easier

August 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Easy

To watch than do.

To work for someone else than work for yourself.

To walk than run.

To quit than continue.

To continue doing the wrong things than quit.

To settle than thrive.

To get discouraged than feel optimistic.

To take than to give.

To live in despair than in happiness.

To want more than to be grateful for what you already have.

Just because something is easier does not necessarily mean it is better. We are constantly searching for the shortcuts to avoid putting in more time and effort. Taking shortcuts results in the final result not being as good as it could have been.

The Simple 10-Step Guide To Better Blogging

August 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are millions of blogs on the web, and hundreds of thousands of blogs get added onto the web every day. With the amount of blogs on the web rapidly increasing, more people than ever are looking for ways to become better bloggers and get more traffic. If you are one of those many people, you have come to the right place. In this blog post, I am going to provide you with the 10 steps that many bloggers including myself have used to become better at what they do.

Identify your niche. You need to know what your niche is before you write your first blog post.
Get comfortable with the dashboard. Getting comfortable with your dashboard means knowing how to publish a new post, publish a new page, add sidebar widgets to your blog, and more.
Read other people’s blogs. Doing this will allow you to learn more about your niche. Even if you just read other people’s blog posts for 15 minutes every day, you’re ahead of the game.
Get ideas from other blog posts and from idea generators. This makes the process of thinking of ideas easier. When writer’s block hits, blog post idea generators and other blog posts come to the rescue.
Only write about the things you enjoy writing about. You may be writing about the same thing for years to come, so make sure you have fun every step of the way.
Keep it simple. I could have added an extra 5,000 words to this blog post and convey the same messages, but I don’t think you would want to read a blog post that large.
Make it easier for your visitors to read your entire blog posts. Make them shorter, make lists, use bold font so some people with busy schedules can skim through the content, and write in bite sized paragraphs instead of one giant block of text.
Write better headlines. Headlines attract people to your blog post and encourage them to keep on reading. Here are some ways to write better headlines.
Practice every day. If you are able to practice every day, you are naturally going to get better at what you practice in. Why not practice writing every day?
Never limit your scope of possibility. Why settle with where you are when you can do something much greater and more empowering.

Implementing these 10 steps will allow you to become a better blogger and write in a style that would encourage visitors to come back. Which step was your favorite?

5 Blogging Myths Debunked

August 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Blogging Myths

A blog is a powerful way to interact with more people, boost your presence on the web, and get more sales at the same time. Some people have been able to make full-time incomes with their blogs. However, most people have not made full-time incomes with their blogs yet. Quite on the contrary, most blogs bring in little to no revenue despite all of the work those bloggers put into writing valuable content. There are many reasons why a blog does not bring in revenue such as not being monetized or not bringing in traffic, but another reason why most blogs are not successful is because the bloggers behind them live under five myths. These myths are commonly practiced, but they are also not as powerful as they are thought to be. Here are the five myths:

Writing more blog posts equates to more traffic. Most of the popular blogs just happen to be filled with content. What allows these blogs to become popular is that the blogger has developed a strong social media presence that gets used to promote the blog. Then, as social media traffic, goes up, SEO traffic goes up.
SEO is king. SEO is something you should look into, but social media is more powerful than SEO. While you have to hope for the best with SEO, building a social media audience is a reliable way to bring in more blog traffic.
Traffic is more important than good content. Once you get the traffic, the value of your content will determine how long people stay on your blog. It is better to get 10 visitors that stay on your blog for 10 minutes each than it is to get 1,000 visitors that only stay on your blog for two seconds.
You can be a successful blogger overnight. If overnight success means a few years, then yes, it is possible. The reason there is no such thing as overnight success is because it takes a long time for people to know about you. This blog got 38 views on its first month and is now getting hundreds of thousands of views every year. Many bloggers become demoralized if they do not become overnight successes, but it is just part of the process. Here is a picture that shows you exactly what I am talking about.
The knowledge you have is good enough. No matter how smart you are, there is still more information you can learn about your niche. That is why I strongly encourage you to read more articles on the web, read more books, and watch YouTube videos related to your niche.

These five blogging myths continue to deceive bloggers into thinking in the wrong way about their journey and making the wrong decisions. By addressing these myths now, you can stop thinking the wrong thoughts about blogging and continue your journey on a brighter note. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other blogging myths you would like to debunk? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Tips To Becoming An Influencer

August 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Influencer

Becoming an influencer allows you to become an important public figure in society. Since one of the human desires is to be and feel important, many people strive to be influencers. However, most people are doing it all wrong, and many of these people have the wrong definition for what an influencer is. An influencer is someone who changes the world, and many people would miss if that influencer went away. Nelson Mandela is someone that millions of people miss, and he changed the world. We now celebrate Mandela Day every year.

Chances are you want to be an influencer too. Whether you become an influencer at Mandela’s level or not, it is important to know how to become an influencer in the first place. In order to become an influencer, here are the four things you need to do:

Identify the audience you want to change. Who is going to benefit from the changes you put in place? You need to choose who you are targeting, and if you choose everyone, then you are really targeting no one.
Money comes second. Alas, everyone ignores this one. Being an influencer is about making a difference and changing the world. It’s not about ending up with some extra green cash in your pocket. If you want to be an influencer, you need to put money second. The money will come eventually, but changing the world needs to be your top priority.
Make it your livelihood. If you are trying to be an influencer and are working at two jobs, things are not going to work out in your favor. In order to be an influencer, you need to focus a majority of your time on changing the world the way you want to.
Get people to know about you. This is where social media is very helpful. You want to interact with the people you are trying to change. The bigger your audience is, the more your message will spread.

You have the power to change the world. YOU have the power to make a difference. By being an influencer, you will be able to change the way many people live their lives. What are your thoughts on these tips and being an influencer?

3 Social Media Tips To Get More Clicks

August 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media is a tool that allows you to interact with your followers and build an audience. However, social media is not the place to make money. Social media is the place for you to build awareness for your products and blog. You want more people to click on the links to your articles so you are able to bring in more revenue. The problem for most people is that getting those clicks is difficult. After tweeting blog post after blog post, only a few clicks come in. If you are successfully able to address this problem and get more clicks, your blog traffic will soar, and you will get more sales. In order to address that problem, follow these three social media tips.

Grow a targeted audience. A targeted audience is different from any other kind of audience. This kind of audience is one that enjoyed the type of content you share before they started following you. Now that these people are following you, they will be interested in your content.
Tweet better headlines. The headline is the sole indicator of how many times a link gets clicked. The more catchy and clear your headline is, the more clicks that headline is going to generate for the link. Here are some ways to master the headline.
Tweet more often. The more content you tweet, the more people you are going to reach. It is important to remember that the world has different time zones. A podcast I would be featured in was scheduled to start at 3:30 pm. I got on my computer at 3:30 pm and then sent an email to verify that it was going to happen. Little did I know, the person was using Pacific time. This person’s version of 3:30 was my version of 6:30, and my version of 3:30 was this person’s version of 12:30. Although email and social media have connected us more than ever, the time zones remain disconnected. You need to tweet throughout the entire day so you reach everyone at the optimal time, no matter what time zone these people live in.

Implementing these three tips will allow you to see a gradual increase in the amount of clicks that you get. By getting more clicks, your will be more likely to sell more products in a shorter amount of time. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.