Have you ever been sitting up late at night working on your website, PPC campaign, or autorepsonder sequence and things are just not flowing? Have there been other times when the work takes no effort and everything seems simple? The answer to both these questions is ‘yes’, but did you take note of what you were doing when you were ‘in the zone’ and when you were not?

I’ve clearly identified that writing content is not one of my strong suits. I know what I want to say, but I’m not very good at writing it in a compelling way. I can get the work done, but I struggle big time. Unfortunately, my content site project relies on my unique experience, so I have to write content.
You should also pay attention to those tasks that you excel at and those that you struggle with. Why? Because when your online business grows to any size at all, you will want to focus on the things that you do well and outsource the things that you do poorly.

When you focus on tasks that are clearly not your strengths, you become the bottle neck in the productive process. Like it or not, you are your own worst enemy. By focusing on your strengths and outsourcing work to people that are strong in other areas, you leverage your time, skill, and energy.

Obivously, outsourcing costs money, and in the early stages of your business, the expense may not make outsourcing practical. However, pay close attention to those tasks that you would outsource if you could. Those will become opportunities for outsourcing when the opportunity presents itself.

Image by jonny.hunter

I work on multiple computers and constantly have to save files to transfer to another computer later. I have a USB Flash drive, but I’m afraid of losing it and the information stored on it. What to do?

Firefox is my primary browser, and I’m always on the lookout for useful plugins. On one of these plugin hunts I found Gspace. In simple terms, Gspace uses the file space provided with a Gmail account for file storage. The interface looks like this:

The directories on your local computer are in the left panel and the files in Gspace are in the right panel. The blue arrows between the two panels copy files in the indicated direction. In the bottom right, it indicates my used space is 105 Mb while my total space is 6,396 Mb. Another nice feature is that you can use the space in multiple Gmail accounts if you have them.

From a functional perspective, Gspace sends an email to your Gmail account with the file attached. To avoid cluttering my inbox, I set up a label, ‘Gspace’, and a rule so that the incoming emails would be marked as read and tagged with the ‘Gspace’ label. Bear in mind that file space taken by Gspace is less available for Gmail.

Here’s everything you need to use Gspace:

• Firefox Browser
• Gmail account
• Gspace plugin

All in all, I’ve found this a handy little plugin for Firefox. If you want to give it a try, you can go directly to the site here: Gspace.

I recently wrote a book review for Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver. This post delivered a lot of traffic to Cliqpreneur, so I wanted to analyze that result a bit to see if we gain some useful insights. Let’s take a look.

The original post was made on January 15, and I submitted it to Sphinn, StumbleUpon, and Digg on January 21 and 22. As of this morning (February 2), the traffic broke out like this:

• Google - 48%
• Sphinn - 19%
• StumbleUpon - 11%
• Digg - 7%
• Other - 15%

The Google traffic surprised me, so I did a search for the main keyword phrase that was generating the traffic. To my surprise, my post was #3 behind Amazon and Affiliate Classroom. Check it out:

Given that placement, it’s no surprise that Cliqpreneur was getting so much search traffic from Google. Unfortunately, this great result was short lived, and the listing has dropped so far down in the search results, I cannot find it quickly. It is interesting to note that my Digg of the post still sits in the last position on page 1 on Google.

So, what are the takeaways? Here are some of my observations:

• Timeliness of the post - Clearly, not a lot of people had written reviews for the book, and Cliqpreneur got some exposure and traffic from being one of the first
• Keywords in the title - This is pretty obvious. Keywords in the title and in the beginning part of the body help search engine results.

From looking at the results in Google, I might have been able to draw a few more readers if the first sentence had been more broad and compelling. For example, if I had removed the words “newbie to beginner”, more advanced readers might have clicked through. However, since Cliqpreneur targets people just starting their online business, people that clicked through to read the post probably found it relevant.

What insight do you draw from the the traffic generated on Cliqpreneur by Moonlighting on the Internet?

Photo editing tools can have a steep learning curve as well as a high price tag.

When updating the look of Cliqpreneur, I needed an editor to create the new header image. However, I didn’t want to spend any money on software (if I could avoid it), and I didn’t want to spend more time learning the software than getting the image edited. My only previous experience editing images has been cropping and re-sizing.

Image Editor Selection Criteria
I had three criteria for the photo editing software I would use:

• Easy to learn and use
• Good set of features
• Free (not shareware)

Paint.NET - Review by CNET
I searched for photo editing on Download.com and then filtered by free license and found Paint.NET. The CNET reviewer rated it 5 stars out of 5 and had this to say:

If all you want is a quick image retouch, Photoshop is overkill. Paint.NET, on the other hand, is an open-source freeware editor with all the essentials, including tools to crop, rotate, resize images, adjust colors, and create collages.

Paint.NET supports common image formats–JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and others–but not high-resolution RAW files. There are enough basic and intermediate effects and features to keep image-tweakers happy, though the red-eye removal tool is notably weak; those images may require manual attention.

Unlike most free image editors, Paint.NET supports layers and has an actions manager. The pleasing interface boasts semitransparent windows for ease of use.

Version 3 fixes many old quibbles, including a convenient thumbnail manager for handling multiple image editing, and improved program graphics. Paint.NET is far more advanced than Microsoft Paint, and given its free price, it’s a must-have for anyone needing to fix images.

The user reviews were also good, and there were a large number of downloads.

Paint.NET - My Experience
I downloaded and installed the software, and then started creating the header image for Cliqpreneur. From to install to an edited image took about an hour including searching through the Help contents to learn what the heck I was doing. Adding the slight gradient to the right end of the header took the longest to figure out.

I will say that the text editing feature could be improved. The software allows you to add text to a layer, but once you’ve left that tool or layer, you cannot go back and edit the text. Your only option is to delete or clear the layer and start over. Also, there are no special effects that I found that you can apply to text like shadows, reflections, etc. You might be able to apply other tools to the layer to get the same effect, but I couldn’t readily see how to do that.

Paint.NET - Summary
All in all, Paint.NET has a good feature set, is easy to use. While it is free, they do accept donations to support future development if you feel so inclined (I did). One final note: there are additional plugins available for Paint.NET in the support forum that extend the tool set of the software.

You can get Paint.NET from Download.com or directly at http://www.getpaint.net/.