Your systems are what make your business run. They’re the day-to-day processes that fit together to create effective methods of creating products, managing people, getting customers and so on.

Your business systems may be clearly written out, or they may just be your day-to-day actions that you go through without ever consciously thinking about it.

One of the highest leverage activities you could do is to carefully review your business processes and systems to see where you can improve things.

==> Write Down Your Business Systems

Start by writing down your business systems for all the various components of your business. Common systems include management systems, marketing systems, fulfillment systems and product creation systems.

Writing down these systems allows you to look at them objectively. When they’re just in your head, they’re hard to examine. When it’s all on paper, it becomes much easier to point to one step and realize it needs some work.

Use a mindmap format or a flowchart format to map out these systems.

==> What Systems Don’t Exist, But Should?

Through this process, you may also come across many systems that don’t exist yet – but should.

For example, what is your system for when a customer doesn’t receive their order? If you don’t have a system yet, your customer service people will behave differently with each missed order, which creates disorder and can leave customers dissatisfied.

Instead, map out the system and hand it off to the appropriate people. For example, the system might be first contacting fulfillment to see if it was shipped, then checking the UPS code. If something happened to the package, send it again and give the customer a $5 gift card.

==> The Kaizen Philosophy of Incremental Improvement

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of incremental improvement. It’s because of Kaizen that car companies like Toyota and Honda have overtaken American car companies.

Instead of trying to make huge improvements all at once, Kaizen encourages people to make tiny incremental improvements.

This philosophy works extremely well with systems. Ask yourself and your employees: What is one small thing we could improve about this system?

For example, instead of processing each order as it comes in, you might decide to process them all at once at the end of the day. The process might save an employee 30 minutes a day.

In the grand scheme of things, small changes won’t seem all that radical. However, when you add small changes on top of small changes, you’ll very quickly find that they add up to major improvements.

Take your existing systems and write them on paper. Create systems for business tasks that don’t have systems and seek to systematically improve your existing systems.

The Bird’s Eye View: Are You On Track to Your Long-Term Goals?

Over the course of running a business, it’s very easy to lose track of your long-term goals. You get into the business with a crystal clear sense of what you’re trying to do. Then the day-to-day minutia gets in the way. A couple years down the line, you’re just running your business without a clear sense of direction.

Don’t let that happen to you. Every once in a while, take a step back from running your business and look at it from the bird’s eye view. Ask yourself: Am I on track to my long-term goals?

==> Where Do You Want to Be in 10 Years?

Start by figuring out where you want to be in 10 years’ time.

Do you want to have a family? If so, how much security would you need to support them?

Do you want to be a millionaire? If so, do you plan on achieving this through income or through an exit? If it’s the latter, do you have a solid exit strategy?

Do you want enough passive income to not work anymore? If so, do you have a plan on how to create or acquire those income-producing assets?

The time to start planning for your 10-year goals is today. Most of life’s difficult goals don’t happen over the course of a year, but over a decade. Plan for it today if you want to see it happen by then.

==> One Year Goals

All that said, it’s also important that you have a good sense of what your one-year goals are. One-year goals are much more tangible than 10-year goals and you can clearly see whether or not you’re on track.

They can also be more motivating than 10-year goals. If you double your income in one year, that’s a very tangible benefit that you get to enjoy right away, much more so than passive income in 10 years’ time.

Figure out a set of one-year goals that are both challenging and inspiring for you.

==> Develop a Set of Day-to-Day Metrics

If you aren’t watching your metrics, it becomes very easy to stray off course. You can get sucked into solving problem after problem, until you lose sight of the bigger picture.

Instead, develop a set of metrics that’ll tell you whether or not you’re on track to your one-year goal.

These metrics can be in the form of traffic, in the form of sales, in the form of new customers, in the form of email subscriptions or in the form of anything that makes sense to your business.

Ideally, you should have no more than three key metrics.

Watch out for your long-term goals. Don’t forget them and don’t let them get overtaken by day-to-day activities.

Part 2 of the Review, and the Course:

The 8 Million Visitor Section is just as awesome as the first section because 8 million visitors is really the potential (or more) if you keep following the blueprints.

Unfortunately, this second section entails a little more patience than the first section, but once implemented, this blueprint teaches you everything you need to build your own traffic-driving “Hard Internet Asset” that will keep growing in real value while sending more targeted traffic to your offers every day.

This second section of Phase 1 is another “whole and complete blueprint”, this time, for setting up and filling a website that will dominate any niche you put it on. (I can’t reveal the type of site here as it wouldn’t really be fair to the guys and their customers, but trust me, this is something you will want to know more about.)

So, instead of chasing traffic around the Internet like a hungry dog, this asset will draw traffic to you, while paying dividends with every offer, and increasing its own “cashing out” value every day.

You could easily earn $200-$300 a month off this blueprint and cash out for $30,000 or more in a year if you wanted to get out of the internet business, but with the blueprints making it so easy and so fun, who would ever want to??

The next section of Phase 1 of Underground Traffic Blueprints takes a fresh look at the oldest profession on the web? “Article marketing”. This “underground look” uncovers a “different” world, that of the “extreme article market”.

The extreme article market is not what it looks like on the surface and once you get your underground, “back-stage” pass, you’ll understand why you haven’t been making the profits the gurus have been promising, and how you can win at this game.

This is a complete article marketing espionage kit, with secret codes for peeking under the hoods of article directory sites. You can then cut the strings of the puppet masters and put your articles in the money spot instead of the fluff that’s been appearing. Jeremy and Simon even expose the “grey hat strategies” you are up against so you can take appropriate action to beat them at their own game.

Finally, in this section they show you how to leverage content so that you can get high quality articles in next to no time.

If all this sounds like something you can really use to grow your business, then order Underground Traffic Blueprints now. Buy now

If you are still not sure it is right for you, look out for the next part of my in-depth review.

Here is a handy presentation which helps you to start formatting ebooks and other content for the Kindle ebook reader, Nook and more. http://digitalbookworld.com/2010/ebook-101-designing-for-kindle-and-epub/

Karyn Martin was
cautious about launching her freelance career online, but she soon
got results:

"I remember the days when I dreamed of being a freelancer," she says.
"The word seemed magical to me somehow. Romantic, almost. Now, after
having actually been a freelancer for a while, the scales have been
lifted from my eyes and I have seen the light. You pay for being able
to manipulate your time. You pay by working more, working harder, and
– hopefully – working smarter. But what you get in return is
priceless. Now I can call the shots about when I work, for whom I
work, and how much I make."

"For every one of you out there feeling a little discouraged, and
especially for those of you on the verge of throwing in the towel, I’m
here to tell you this. There may not be a Santa Claus, but there is a
place to find work without paying some ridiculous "transaction fee" or
never knowing whether or not the projects are ‘fresh’ – and even the
name is easy to remember – Go Freelance."

Be the next work-at-home success story. Click here to get instant access to hundreds of freelance jobs.

Just saw this way-cool new device, a private wifi hub that can host up to 5 devices in your immediate vicinity, wireless, about the size of your hand. I think I will have to revise my Christmas wish list…

http://now.sprint.com/nownetwork/mifiProductPage.html?id9=Ad_2009q3_mbb_mifi_anyspot_728x90

Tips for Tweeting As Part of Your Daily Business Routine 1
One of the most highly touted social networking sites on the Internet right now is Twitter. One of the reasons it’s so highly touted is that Tweeting can become a new part of your daily business routine quickly and easily.

The following ideas will help you to incorporate this service into the marketing efforts of your business on a daily basis.

Networking for your business
Twitter is a great tool for chatting amongst friends and fellow online business owners.

So how do you get started on Twitter?

First, you must sign up for your own Twitter account or page. The service is free to use and takes just a few minutes to get going. Simply go to http://www.twitter.com/
and sign up.

When you set up your account don’t forget to fill in your website’s URL and a tid-bit about yourself or your business in the profile. Make sure this is well-written marketing copy but without being too spammy.  Make sure it is free of typos-remember, you are putting yourself out there in a public, social networking forum and first impressions do count.

5 Reasons Twitter is a Powerful Marketing Tool 5

5. Tease Your Readers
You can also use Twitter to tease people a little bit, in a fun way, of course!  You are enticing them to learn more about your products, services, special deals and so on.

When you use Twitter, you have to keep your messages short, and in many ways, a little mysterious.  Pique their interest, joke around, and you’ll find that you gain a lot more followers and hopefully website traffic and customers as a result. Think tasteful Superbowl ads! Twitter as entertainment can be fun and educational.

One word of caution regarding Twitter:

Yes, Twitter can be a great marketing too. But be warned, just as with any other social networking site, Twitter can quickly become addictive if you let it.

Don’t go overboard and get so involved in all your tweeting that you lose too much time away from your intended purpose, that of building and marketing your business. Remember also that it is just one of many tools in your Web 2.0 arsenal which you will also need to devote time to in order to spread your marketing message.

That being said, used wisely Twitter can be a great and powerful marketing tool to help create online business success.