Summary of 2010 - A year of achievement

This year marks the biggest shift in my life so far, although I do not notice it. From each year ahead of me I usually expected more fun, more enjoyable time with as little work as possible. When I sum this year up, it was all about work. Greatest achievement according to my parents is that I've graduated. My own personal achievement that I will glorify in this year? I grew up and tailored my world, got a job and finally became independent.

All of that went with a cost, I have lost some muscle mas, I have lost some of my former shape. And my back hurts a little bit from all that sitting, BUT it's worth it, because it's for the sake of my future. You know how they say, work hard know and enjoy the benefits later.

I will summarize this year with more accuracy and I am about to set goal for 2011, and one the things that I am putting at the highest priority is productivity. Doing more, while working less and staying more organized. This will be enough of me for tonight... I am about to hit the bed and dream about how I am going to plan the next chapter of my life.

And I can only tell you, it's going to be even better year of my life than I could ever imagined it could be. Whats your year going to look like?

When you enjoy too much work... And thoughts of the lost battle of net neutrality

These last couple of days I really putted a lot of pressure on myself in order to complete the website that I've chosen to invest myself into. After careful keyword research I started generating content and backlinks from scratch. I've made Squidoo page, satellite feeder blogs, which I update trough Posterous. Not only this is your publishing network, it also generates full back up of your blog on various different web 2.0 locations, so you don't need too much to think about it. Now I came to a point where I need to play in Photoshop and I am complete newbie at it. It's putting me trough a lot of bullshit, because the software is not intuitive, I don't have idea, how to crop images and mix and match them in order to get the result I want, so it's one big frustration. But today I've chosen awesome template for my blog.

I finally get the idea of havign a home based business. If someone says it's easy to make money online, they are saying a bunch of crap. It involves a lot of hard work effort and dedictaion that not many people can go trough. I am exhausted from work and thinking of bed as early as 1 am which is not usual for me. Tomorow is the day when I am going to chill out a bit from overloading myself from work and chill with my friends and hit the gym, while I still can.

I believe it's extremley important to keep up momentum with blogging and writing and creating genuine content for your readers. In order to be successful blogger you need brains, I honestly don't believe that anyone can do this, it's so wide array of skills that person needs to posses in himself in order to be successful. Todays bloggers need to know how to shoot videos, how to record podcasts, it's becoming an industry like any other.

I am not sure how this net neutrality question is going to affect our mobile traffic, but I am quite sure we will figure something out. It's totally lame that Obama decided to give in to telecomunications lobby and allow them to manipulate their web distribution. There is no net neturality on mobile devices anymore and that's something that worries me as someone who's working as internet marketer, because a lot of internet traffic is mobile these days and it's huge trend. It's straight off a killer to newcomers in the game. It's same like that in Europe. There is no free launch and everyone will have to give in to corporate interests, which is so so so lame.

There should be law implemented that you can't be selective ISP, if you want to provide internet services, you will have to provide all of the web content without censorship, not this semi politically correct bullshit that serves no one good, except AT&T and Verizon.

Luckily we still have free Internet in Serbia, but for how long? If this is the trend in Western Countries, what kind of an example are they giving to less lucky nations ?

Internet Marketing is like seduction

Lately I am watching couple of Internet Marketing Gurus like Eban Pagan, Timothy Ferris, Neil Strauss... All of these guys are doing awesome job of marketing their own products based on triggering emotions of their potential prospects. So after 10 months of gathering technical knowledge on how to drive traffic and how to function on the web, I finally got down to the bottom line of communicating effectively. I guess I will read up on effective books on communication.

Emotional triggers seem to be the sweet spot, where money comes from. Pacing and leading people and getting them the results they want seems to do the trick. I won't be to much egotistical about it, just lay down to work. Now I am going to sound politically correct, but if motivation is the seller, there has to be some value included into all of these product in order not to feel bad about selling thin air, because Internet marketing seems to be exactly that.

Keyword research and analysis for my first serious project

Most of people that are closer to me, know that I am working on an ebook about productivity. If you wanna know how's it going to look like, pay closer attention to PC Power User Series, I wouald really appreciate your feedback and that would greatly improve my work.

A couple of days ago I've bought Market Samurai in order to improve my keyword research and analysis for website trough which I will promote my work and try to monetize it. I will cover what I've done in my blog, so I hope anyone who reads it, will be able to learn from my experience. When I position myself for certain keywords, I will reveal them to the public and explain what I've done from the SEO perspective.

Beside SEO perspective and backlink strategy, which I will keep secret for the time being, here's the list of following tools:

1. Opt In list: Lists are most important thing in Internet Marketing. You will learn this the easy way or the hard way, but that's only actual data, that you can keep, regardless of what happens. It's your channel of communication that Google and Facebook will hate and primary reason why you can't push ads with links that push to Opt In list. Also I am going to add a bit of Social Media twit into it, and make Opt In list from Facebook login. For some people it's going to be easier, since they aren't actually leaving you any of their data, but they are allowing you to email them.

2. Social Media integration - field where I excel. It will consist of Facebook and Twitter integration. Like button, share buttons and Facebook commenting system for viral spreading of ideas. I will cover YouTube as well, and that will be one par of my social media strategy.

3. Blog commenting.

I will explain my SEO and Social Media Strategy and break them down in details when I start implementing them. Best advice which I can give to any newcomer is to create something that they are passionate about. Your product should be reflection of your passion and people can pick up on that energy even trough internet, no matter how abstract that may be, but that is the law of attraction at work.

Keyword research is critical part of any website creation, that information is helping your content creation process and your overall web visibility. SEO became harder, but luckily you have social networks that can help you drive traffic to your website while you don't hit the #1 spot.

I am excited about this and doubtfull, because I never actually made it to #1 place for competitive niche, but that makes it a good challenge and good source of motivation.

Improvements to my working environment

For all of the people who are working on the computer, I have this awesome tip: Buy two monitors. It's complete shift in the way you work and think. This is one of the best investments I've made in quite a while. It's especially good for someone who's translating. On one monitor I have functional things and the other one is working environment. So instant messaging, music, widgets other usefull stuff are on the left side and clean writing or browsing window is on the right, in full screen. Or just imagine, watching the movie on one side and working on the other...

With two screens possibilities are endless and if your work in front of PC, this is a must have. Idea for this came while I was on internship in Piraeus Bank Belgrade, where employees in treasury department were following various graphs and statistics across several monitors. I wanted to do the same at my home, now it became my reality and I am incredibly happy.

Having your office inside of your house is one amazing experiences. I believe that this trend will continue in the future and more and more people will be working from home. So how does your office looks like? Would love to see it, so share it :)

Shut down the noise, become what you dream

There is simply to much noise in our lives. Cell phones, computers and most of the gadgets are made to help us be more productive, but most of us just end up being slave to distraction all of these tools provide, thus lowering our productivity instead. It's not only about distractions, we're also distracted by other peoples ideas. This is what is really holding us back, that kind of noise is killing us, because we are constantly exposed to fresh ideas, instead of focusing on our own thoughts.

In order to tap into massive creative potential of your brain you need to unlock it. How do we do it? Whenever you start a change in your life there will be tons of people to drag you down, they might be your closest friends or even parents. This is the noise of social conditioning, where every other person knows what's best for you, but biggest problem of advice from other people is that it's subjective and created according to their reality. I am really strong headed person, quite often I made bad choice, but I can't say I regret it, it was my choice and it was my lesson. If you constantly listen advice of other people, you will eventually loose confidence and your decision making power will drop and you will eventually depend on other people, rather than other way around.

Taking charge of your life starts with baby steps, you start deciding where you will land your next step. Stop asking for permission, give yourself permission and keep giving it to yourself. Allow yourself to be whatever you want to be, by taking the choice and being on your own path. Don't let other people tell you to do things that don't make YOU happy. Awaken yourself, don't be blind sheep who follows advice of common thought. Don't be afraid to be different! Because if you do what everyone else is doing, your results will be like that. Wake the fuck up!

If you decided to become your best self, yourself from your dreams, than it's time to take responsibilities for your own actions and take that burden of carrying yourself. It's small shift in thinking from being a follower to being a leader. Not everyone can do it, because not everyone realizes the importance of independent thinking. It's though part to start, because it's going to be painful for most of the people that were asleep for most of their lives, because they got into habit of allowing others to think for them.

If you really want to grow, you will need to shut down the noise, go trough the pain period and think for yourself. Think hard, because if you let other people do it for you, you won't be person from integrity and you will be the part of the herd and just another mediocre individual.

PC Power User - Google Reader

What exactly is Google Reader?

Of all Google's products, this one is my favorite! I was already mentioning it in my previous blog posts, but since this tool is so awesome I wanted to dedicate it an entire article. According to Wikipedia's definition gReader is:

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

http://img703.imageshack.us/i/googlereader.png/

Beside theoretic definition, what is it for me? It's central hub of all my information streams that I am following and hopefully it's going to become great sharing tool! Google Reader changed the way I communicate with the web and with my friends, also I use it for market leadership. This web application is awesome way to quickly follow most relevant news to your niche or your main area of interest. So let's say you are blogging about your favorite topic and it's Sport News, with Google Reader, you can subscribe to Top Blogs regarding Sports News and you will have all the information delivered to you as they are published via websites that you are following.

How to use it?

Traditional way of following RSS feed is kinda slow, my neat trick on following blogs you want is simple and it requires extension for Chrome (for all the Mozilla lovers out there I am sure there is corresponding application out there).

Now you should pick a list. Let's say you want to follow my blog, you can do so by clicking the RSS subscription button that you can find now in your address bar. Keep in mind that when you get used to it, you will start following a lot of RSS feeds, there's so many good and high quality information out there, but in order not to get your head confused I highly recommend the use of folder. When you are subscribing to new RSS, there will be option to create a folder, I would recommend you to make a couple. Good example of a folder that can get spammy and kept away from others is "NEWS folder". I usually don't subscribe to news RSS, because they are overloading my reader with chunks of useless data for me mostly, thus lowering my productivity.

Learn to use the Shortcut Keys.

Navigating using the shortcut keys makes things so much simpler. Here’s a list of the easiest keys to remember, and the ones I use most are bold:

ga – Go to all items view.

gs – Go to Starred Items.

gu – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a particular feed.

gt – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a tag

s – Star an item

n – Navigate to next item without opening it

p – Navigate to previous item without opening it

j – Open next item

k – Open previous item

o – Open / Close item

r – Refresh. (I think I’ve worn out this key)

t – Pop up dialog box letting you assign a tag to an item. Very cool.

Shift+A – Mark all as read.

Follow your favorite podcasts!

This feature is highly neglected by many users! What I love about this feature, it allows you to pop up the podcast that you want to listen. Here's how to.

Read your feeds offline

Google Gears – It allows you to run Google Reader offline. With Google Gears, you can download your feeds onto your PC and then access GReader offline. It is very efficient, the work you do on GReader while being offline will be synchronized with your GReader account when you next time go online.

Read your feeds on your android

This is my favorite part! You get to read your updates directly on your mobile device. If you wanna download it, you can get it from here. For those of us who are less fortunate, because Google doesn't support all of the countries with their fresh products, second best option is gReader app and you can download it here. I don't read articles although in Google Reader, I use this application instead. It's called InstaFetch and it cleans up all the mess and provides you with awesome reading interface. It's synced with InstaPaper and that's my filter for good material.

PC Power User - Google Reader

What exactly is Google Reader?

Of all Google's products, this one is my favorite! I was already mentioning it in my previous blog posts, but since this tool is so awesome I wanted to dedicate it an entire article. According to Wikipedia's definition gReader is:

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

http://img703.imageshack.us/i/googlereader.png/

Beside theoretic definition, what is it for me? It's central hub of all my information streams that I am following and hopefully it's going to become great sharing tool! Google Reader changed the way I communicate with the web and with my friends, also I use it for market leadership. This web application is awesome way to quickly follow most relevant news to your niche or your main area of interest. So let's say you are blogging about your favorite topic and it's Sport News, with Google Reader, you can subscribe to Top Blogs regarding Sports News and you will have all the information delivered to you as they are published via websites that you are following.

How to use it?

Traditional way of following RSS feed is kinda slow, my neat trick on following blogs you want is simple and it requires extension for Chrome (for all the Mozilla lovers out there I am sure there is corresponding application out there).

Now you should pick a list. Let's say you want to follow my blog, you can do so by clicking the RSS subscription button that you can find now in your address bar. Keep in mind that when you get used to it, you will start following a lot of RSS feeds, there's so many good and high quality information out there, but in order not to get your head confused I highly recommend the use of folder. When you are subscribing to new RSS, there will be option to create a folder, I would recommend you to make a couple. Good example of a folder that can get spammy and kept away from others is "NEWS folder". I usually don't subscribe to news RSS, because they are overloading my reader with chunks of useless data for me mostly, thus lowering my productivity.

Learn to use the Shortcut Keys.

Navigating using the shortcut keys makes things so much simpler. Here’s a list of the easiest keys to remember, and the ones I use most are bold:

ga – Go to all items view.

gs – Go to Starred Items.

gu – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a particular feed.

gt – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a tag

s – Star an item

n – Navigate to next item without opening it

p – Navigate to previous item without opening it

j – Open next item

k – Open previous item

o – Open / Close item

r – Refresh. (I think I’ve worn out this key)

t – Pop up dialog box letting you assign a tag to an item. Very cool.

Shift+A – Mark all as read.

Follow your favorite podcasts!

This feature is highly neglected by many users! What I love about this feature, it allows you to pop up the podcast that you want to listen. Here's how to.

Read your feeds offline

Google Gears – It allows you to run Google Reader offline. With Google Gears, you can download your feeds onto your PC and then access GReader offline. It is very efficient, the work you do on GReader while being offline will be synchronized with your GReader account when you next time go online.

Read your feeds on your android

This is my favorite part! You get to read your updates directly on your mobile device. If you wanna download it, you can get it from here. For those of us who are less fortunate, because Google doesn't support all of the countries with their fresh products, second best option is gReader app and you can download it here. I don't read articles although in Google Reader, I use this application instead. It's called InstaFetch and it cleans up all the mess and provides you with awesome reading interface. It's synced with InstaPaper and that's my filter for good material.

PC Power User - Google Reader The Smart Way

What exactly is Google Reader?

Of all Google's products, this one is my favorite! I was already mentioning it in my previous blog posts, but since this tool is so awesome I wanted to dedicate it an entire article. According to Wikipedia's definition gReader is:

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

http://img703.imageshack.us/i/googlereader.png/

Beside theoretic definition, what is it for me? It's central hub of all my information streams that I am following and hopefully it's going to become great sharing tool! Google Reader changed the way I communicate with the web and with my friends, also I use it for market leadership. This web application is awesome way to quickly follow most relevant news to your niche or your main area of interest. So let's say you are blogging about your favorite topic and it's Sport News, with Google Reader, you can subscribe to Top Blogs regarding Sports News and you will have all the information delivered to you as they are published via websites that you are following.

How to use it?

Traditional way of following RSS feed is kinda slow, my neat trick on following blogs you want is simple and it requires extension for Chrome (for all the Mozilla lovers out there I am sure there is corresponding application out there).

Now you should pick a list. Let's say you want to follow my blog, you can do so by clicking the RSS subscription button that you can find now in your address bar. Keep in mind that when you get used to it, you will start following a lot of RSS feeds, there's so many good and high quality information out there, but in order not to get your head confused I highly recommend the use of folder. When you are subscribing to new RSS, there will be option to create a folder, I would recommend you to make a couple. Good example of a folder that can get spammy and kept away from others is "NEWS folder". I usually don't subscribe to news RSS, because they are overloading my reader with chunks of useless data for me mostly, thus lowering my productivity.

Learn to use the Shortcut Keys.

Navigating using the shortcut keys makes things so much simpler. Here’s a list of the easiest keys to remember, and the ones I use most are bold:

ga – Go to all items view.

gs – Go to Starred Items.

gu – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a particular feed.

gt – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a tag

s – Star an item

n – Navigate to next item without opening it

p – Navigate to previous item without opening it

j – Open next item

k – Open previous item

o – Open / Close item

r – Refresh. (I think I’ve worn out this key)

t – Pop up dialog box letting you assign a tag to an item. Very cool.

Shift+A – Mark all as read.

U - Full Screen View

Follow your favorite podcasts!

This feature is highly neglected by many users! What I love about this feature, it allows you to pop up the podcast that you want to listen. Here's how to.

Read your feeds offline

Google Gears – It allows you to run Google Reader offline. With Google Gears, you can download your feeds onto your PC and then access GReader offline. It is very efficient, the work you do on GReader while being offline will be synchronized with your GReader account when you next time go online.

Read your feeds on your android

This is my favorite part! You get to read your updates directly on your mobile device. If you wanna download it, you can get it from here. For those of us who are less fortunate, because Google doesn't support all of the countries with their fresh products, second best option is gReader app and you can download it here. I don't read articles although in Google Reader, I use this application instead. It's called InstaFetch and it cleans up all the mess and provides you with awesome reading interface. It's synced with InstaPaper and that's my filter for good material.

Keeping your cool and boosting your productivity with inspiration

I had awesome evening and just wanted to say a couple of things. We're supposed to live for those cool moments, not for work. I feel sorry for workoholics, they are missing hell lot of fun. Work hard, party harder. I've read this fantastic book today, called "ReWork" from 37signals.com. I must admit I admire their new innovative approach to leading business, be it online or offline. One of most important concepts they introduced is to stand for what you believe it's true. Sooner people figure out, that staying late at work, doesn't always mean that they accomplished more, the better.

One of main reasons why I started blog series "PC Power User". Always ask yourself, am I being productive or I am just "busy"? It's incredibly easy to appear busy to anyone. It's because we procrastinate or we're simply doing wrong things. Especially entrepreneurs, it's strange bunch, many of them. They will die silly to their business. Seriosly guys, go to sleep. Don't stay up late, just because you want to finish your next new project as soon as possible. Also the flaw of many people is that they didn't figure out the joy of outsourcing. Many things can be done by someone else and they're gonna be better than you would do them yourself. Don't be afraid to delegate your responsibilities to someone else. Especially someone who's better in it than you.

For instance, I am happy with my job at the moment. Most the things aren't done by me and let's keep it that way. Working as a manger made me awesome team player. I get to know my designer and I get to know my programmer. Their limitations are my limitations, and I am not pushing anyone, but my crew is motivated to extreme level and that's what makes me happy. There needs to be balance between inner peace and outer results, when that balance is achieved most of the things are completed during your work time, especially if you hit inspiration, than your productivity is maxing out.

Being inspired is valuable asset, but in order to have it and maintain it, all other aspects of your life need to stay balanced, and that won't happen if staying long hours in your office backfires you. No amount of invested time, you simply won't get the work done. You are more likely to check YouTube and watching the next funny video. Which is completely fine, but... You are obsessing about getting things done.

Nurture your balance and watch how your life grows and expands...