I'm reading Richard Koch's "The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less". It's a book about how 80% of your successes / achievement / profit / etc comes from 20% of your input / effort / investment / etc.

The principle, then, is to focus on the 20% that gives us the 80% result rather than focus on the full 100%. The idea being that you can work less and achieve more when you apply this principle.

I've been applying this sort of thinking with my work with great results. This month, for example, I've doubled my income by refusing to do any new work and focusing on the 20% of work/clients that pay me the 80% of my income.

I'm less stressed, less overwhelmed and also, richer :)

Here's a cool tidbit of things to do to put the principle in practise. (From page 39 in the book)

- Celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts.

- Look for the short cut, rather than run the full course.

- Be selective, not exhaustive.

- Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.

- Delegate or outsource as much as possible.

- Choose careers and employers with extra care and, if possible, employ others rather than be employed.

- Only do the thing we are best at doing and enjoy most.

- Work out where 20 percent of effort can lead to 80 percent of returns.

- Calm down, work less and target a limited number of very valuable goals where the 80/20 principle can work, rather than pursuing every available opportunity.

- Make the most of those few "lucky streaks" in life where our creativity peaks and the stars line up to guarantee success.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, over-worked and under-paid, read through this every day until you can find reasonable ways (or even drastic ways) to make these bits of advice work for you.

Buy it here:

My new catch word is WORM. Write once, read many. You do the work once and earn from it multiple times.

Like writing an article, and then tweeting about it, and then Google picks it up and you start getting a steady stream of traffic to that article and you continuously earn money from the AdSense ads (or affiliate links) on that page - it's WORM.

I don't say passive income any more because it's not actually passive - you have to work at least once for it. But it can definitely be WORM. You do the work once and earn from it many times.

Or maybe it should be WOEM - write once, earn many!

Or even DOEM - Do once, earn many. I'm DOEM'ed ;)

This post is in both "Self Development" and "Wealth Creation" and I'll tell you why. Checklists are one very powerful way to ensure you cut the crap and get on with the important stuff.

I've just created a checklist called "Site a Day". It's designed to guide me through the process of creating a very small, very effective, keyword-focused web site - every day. By reducing the steps involved to a simple 7-step checklist, I keep myself focused and the process of ticking each step off is a great motivator.

If you're a Michael Gerber fan, you will already have learned about checklists. You may even have a few checklists for important processes in your business, that you require your employees to tick off. Good on you!

If you're looking for a faster way to make printable checklists, then look no further than the awesomeness that is http://printablechecklist.org. It's intuitive, lightning-fast, doesn't require registration and, when you're done, you can just print to PDF. With your new PDF, you can print as many copies as you like as often as you like. More recent versions of Firefox support printing to PDF so this really couldn't be simpler! Enjoy :)

There was a guy called C. Northcote Parkinson who said something very useful and profound. He said:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Which means that a task you give yourself 1 hour to do will, by virtue of the time assigned to it, be simpler to do than the SAME task, if you give yourself 1 week to do it in.

As Tim Ferriss puts it in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week, you then have 6 days of turning a molehill into a mountain.

Ferriss also says that, to be more effective in your work, you should set out to do the same work in MUCH less time.

So I decided to test this theory out this weekend and here's what happened...

On Saturday, I spent 1 hour and 15 minutes finishing some work that I thought would take at least 2-3 hours. I simply set the tight deadline and then did the work. The shorter timeframe forced me to focus on the bare essentials and I got the work done!

I spent the rest of Saturday chilling and relaxing. (I had planned to work most of Saturday)

On Sunday, I spent 1 hour and 4 minutes finishing some work that I thought would take 2-4 hours. I spent the rest of the time with my family. (Yes, I had planned to work most of the day!) Are we seeing a pattern yet?

In short: I achieved in 2 hours and 19 minutes what I would normally dedicate 4-7 hours to do.

And, in short, I had a really great weekend.

The most important part of this all is that I normally procrastinate on any task that will take more than an hour to complete. Now I don't need to because the shorter timeframe forces me to simplify and focus which means that things get done and I don't procrastinate.

Next, I'm going to try this during the week. My goal is to achieve in 2-4 hours what I would normally spend the whole day doing. And then I'm going to play guitar, watch TV and spend time with my wife.

Yes, Parkinson's Law is my new best friend!

Time to recap on my goals for 2009.

First, my business goals...

1. Get FreeArticles.co.za back over the R5,000 hump.

FreeArticles.co.za stayed earning under the R5,000 mark but I sold it for R50,000. Less than it's worth but I'm investing it and it does free up my time for other things, so I still feel like this is a win :)

2. Push GuitarForum.co.za over the R5,000 hump as well.

Not doing good in this regard. The site makes maybe R300-R500 a month. Maybe. However, I have a BIG plan in the works to transform the site into a Drupal site which will give me a lot more freedom in offering more/better/cooler features which also translates into easier monetisation.

Even though I feel off-target with this goal, I'm having fun with this site. I love it so I'm not concerned about the cash I'm not making with it ;)

3. Go under debt review and stop getting calls from banks and things ;)

Win + fail. Went under debt review, couldn't make payments. Creditors likely to be on my butt again soon.

4. Push SpotOnForex.com over the R20,000 hump.

On-target here. We've got an affiliate who is promoting us like crazy and we're about to start offering a managed-trading option where we do ALL the hard work for our clients. They seem very happy with this so far and it should boost their income in a very BIG way. So affiliate signups should skyrocket. Definitely feel on-target here :)

5. Push IconFarm.co.za over the R1,000 hump.

I've gotten the ball just barely rolling along on this one. We need to get more icons and designers on the site then I can push the SEO into top-gear and achieve this goal quite easily, I'm sure.

So far I'm getting the feeling that I should review these goals every 3 months, not 6 months. Reviewing every 3 months would probably inspire me to get back on course a lot faster. Not impressed with how I basically "forgot" about these goals! Moving on...

6. Push iThank.co.za over the 1,000 users hump.

Not even close. Haven't put any effort into this site at all. It has so much potential. Seriously off course here :/

7. Revive JogMyMemory.co.za and push it over the R1,000 hump.

Good things happening here. Got an investor involved who has funded some development in a new direction. Still lots of work to do but this one might surprise me and go over the R10,000 mark this year.

8. Develop semi-confidential projects that are potentially worth over R100,000 per month.

This is (if I recall correctly) related to JogMyMemory.co.za. Headed in the right direction but need to pay a bit more attention to this to get to R100,000 per month!

9. Get R1m funding so I can get other people to do the work necessary for some of these and so I can finally realise my vision of Maxiware CC being a solid web development and internet technology research house.

Way off-course but also not entirely convinced I still want this. The past few months have made me wonder if I would rather like to keep things very small, tight & easy. ie: Build sites over 3-24 months and then sell them. Rinse, repeat.

Having sold FreeArticles.co.za, I know what it takes to build a site I can sell and I know how to find a buyer. With bandwidth prices coming down, we should see more buyers entering the market, so there's a good chance I can make a very, very happy living out of this sort of web site flipping biz.

On to my personal goals...

1. Reach my 100 pushups goal and stay there or do better.

Fell off the wagon here. Stopped doing the pushups altogether. Not happy about this and would like to get back on track but not sure how to motivate myself to stick with the program.

2. Take at least one week-long holiday somewhere pretty. Can even be up the road, as long as it's pretty.

Took a weekend off in Mpumalanga. Was really nice but still not quite the week I was aiming for.

3. Pay everyone on time.

Rent has been on time every month. Quite a change from last year. Quite a relief. Other things have been a little less on-time :P

4. Help my mom, dad & sisters in some significant way.

No idea if I've achieved anything here. We've been doing little bits here and there for them but nothing I would label "significant".

5. Help other family as well.

Probably also a few very minor things here.

6. Build a repertoire of really awesome songs I can play on guitar. (Learn them first, duh :P)

A little bit of success here. I'm currently working on "Ten Words" by Joe Satriani and, also, a jazzy composition of my own. Not sure how many songs I need before I can call it a "repertoire" but I'm making a little headway here, which is good :)

A couple of disappointments in some areas while other things are progressing at an acceptable rate. One thing's for sure, I don't have the same energy as what I had in the beginning of the year, when I wrote this post. I need to revive that energy as it is, most likely, what is needed in order for me to achieve all these goals in the next 6 months.

One thing I've noticed is that, each time we move houses (we moved to Kempton Park in March), I lose all my motivational stuff, goals, quotes, affirmations, etc, that I had stuck around the house. That's pretty sucky as I lose focus and get beat down a whole lot faster. I'd like to pay some attention to having a more permanent way of reminding myself of my goals & aspirations.

Perhaps a wooden notice board? I'm not sure but I need to address that before I lose any more steam!

Exactly 2 months ago (29 Jan, 09), I blogged about "Finding My Three Quarters".  I was making around R5,000 a month passive income.  That is to say, I wasn't putting in any hard hours to get that R5,000.

I'm half way to R20,000 so this post is about finding the next 2 quarters.  Pretty exciting stuff!

What happened?  Two of my sites started getting the traffic they deserve.  By no accident, mind you.  The one site has undergone (and is still undergoing) a LOT of optimisation to get it to this point and the other is being actively promoted by one of our affiliates.

Groovy stuff huh?

Now I could still go ahead and try make up the remaining 2 quarters of my desired passive income by building 30-Day-Challenge sites (see my previous post) but it's obvious to me that focusing on what's already working would be a wiser investment of my time.

So keep that in mind next time you wanna make more money - figure out what's ALREADY bringing in the most significant amount of money and focus more attention on THAT. 

Also remember to work smarter not harder. 

As a web developer (or webpreneur), working harder means bookmarking your site more, commenting on more sites, submitting to more article directories, writing content, etc.  Working smarter means helping your site's visitors bookmark your site, encourage THEM to write more content, add a weekly newsletter that runs itself, automate posting GOOD content to Twitter, Facebook and the likes.  I'm hoping you're getting the picture by now :)

So I sat down a day or two ago and worked out just how much money I make each month that is, give or take a few hours of maintenance, passive income.  It turns out I'm about one quarter of the way to my R20k a month goal.  That is, I make just over R5000 a month without putting in any "hard" hours.

Well, with that in mind (and on paper), I now needed to figure out how to get the remaining three quarters and, by golly, I think I've got it :D

Using something like The 30 Day Challenge, if I could set up 15 sites that each make a little over $100 p/m each, I'll be golden :)

Is it feasible to set up 15 good sites in the next 5 months?  If I put in the hours, sure!  Will each make $100 p/m from the geto-go?  Unlikely but some of them certainly will and that will put me in a stronger position than I am in now, so it's hardly a fail.

The biggest trick in getting this right will be doing the research part.  If I develop a coupla sites around dud-keywords, I'll be wasting time, so I need to spend enough time doing research so that, when the time comes to actually do some SERIOUS work, I'll have a much greater chance of actually making money instead of wasting precious hours in my day.

Another thing that comes to mind is the possibility of using these 15 sites to help boost the traffic to some of my other sites that are already making me some money.  Cross-pollinating, if you will.  That should definitely make the exercise worthwhile.

Will it work?  Well, let's see :D

So Ally mentioned something about self-assessing once every 6 months and I think it's very wise so I'm putting my goals down in writing out in the open and, somewhere around June, I need to come back and see just how much of this I've achieved and what I haven't and what I need to change to get back on track...

Business Goals...

1. Get FreeArticles.co.za back over the R5,000 hump.

2. Push GuitarForum.co.za over the R5,000 hump as well.

3. Go under debt review and stop getting calls from banks and things ;)

4. Push SpotOnForex.com over the R20,000 hump.

5. Push IconFarm.co.za over the R1,000 hump.

6. Push iThank.co.za over the 1,000 users hump.

7. Revive JogMyMemory.co.za and push it over the R1,000 hump.

8. Develop semi-confidential projects that are potentially worth over R100,000 per month.

9. Get R1m funding so I can get other people to do the work
necessary for some of these and so I can finally realise my vision of
Maxiware CC being a solid web development and internet technology
research house.

Personal Goals...

1. Reach my 100 pushups goal and stay there or do better.

2. Take at least one week-long holiday somewhere pretty.  Can even be up the road, as long as it's pretty.

3. Pay everyone on time.

4. Help my mom, dad & sisters in some significant way.

5. Help other family as well.

6. Build a repertoire of really awesome songs I can play on guitar.  (Learn them first, duh :P)

That's it!  Let's see how I'm doing in 6 months :)

This is a crazy post because most people won't believe that it's possible and, quite frankly, I haven't done it yet so I can't prove that it is. But I'm going to share my crazy idea with you nonetheless.

Ivan (my brother-in-law) and I run Spot on Forex. Our product is basically a forex-based trading plan. I could say, "We sell forex signals", but that would be lying, it's more than that. We basically help you make money every month using forex. We do that by setting goals and stopping trading when we reach them. So, for example, this month we reached our target for the month in 3 days. (No jokes, check it out here) As a result, our members have stopped trading and only a small handful are trading based on opportunities that Ivan spots. For everyone else, it's back to work as usual until next month!

Before we started trading like this, our members weren't making so much money because they never had specific goals to work towards and, just like they say in those gambling ads, "Winners know when to quit." You need to know when to walk away.

So my point here is simple, since we started working towards a goal and then stopping trading once we reached it, we've all been very profitable. To the degree that we can expect to turn R3,000 into R4,000 in a month's trading. That's not too shabby by my standards.

However, this is where it gets a bit crazy...

I decided to see what would be possible if you started with R3,000 and NEVER DREW a SINGLE PENNY in 3 years. This is know as compound growth and, provided you can predictably and consistently achieve the same level of growth each month (29% - 33%), you're looking at making some really SILLY money.

The trouble is that most people cave in and grab their money once they get to R10k or whatever amount of money it is that they need to solve their short-term worries. That's been my story for the past 2 years! Until early August this year, I'd never even had a savings account. Luckily I changed that! Moving on...

I did some calculations and, if you stick to the plan, then imagine having R 28,731,005.51 sitting in your account by month 36. Not too shabby eh?

The thing is, I'm not the kind of guy that likes taking risks. So I changed my calculations a bit and decided to pay myself back my R3,000 as soon as I'd doubled my money. That usually happens around month 3 or 4.

So, if you take your original investment back after your third or fourth month trading, tell me, how does R 11,465,813.81 sound to you in month 36?

I don't know about you but I'd even take R1,000,000 in my account!

I've made my spreadsheet downloadable for you over here. Check it out and play with the initial investment and monthly percentage but don't go over 33%. That's just being greedy ;)

There are only 2 fields you need to edit, your initial investment and the percentage you expect to earn each month. Which reminds me, I've been working this all out on 29% growth, NOT the 33% best-case scenario.

As long as you don't touch your account (AFTER withdrawing your initial investment, mind you!) you stand to make a LOT of money with this plan.

I can't guarantee a single thing! I won't promise you riches, retirement or anything at all. All I CAN say is that I'm doing this (starting from January because I'm saving up to start with R10,000)
because I believe in our system and I've seen it work for others (Ivan and our members). I always told myself I'd invest properly when I had more money but I only realised recently that you have to start with what you have right now and put it away! Enough about me...

If you'd like to try this out for yourself, please do! You can sign up for our signals (R267 p/m) here or for our 2-week trial (R10 once-off, no rebills unless you subscribe!) here.

If you have questions, post them on our forum here so either me or Ivan can respond.

What's next?

I'm not asking you to sign up, I just wanted to share my idea with you but, if you like it, hey sign up ;)

Tags: forex, investing, retirement

I practically worship Frank Kern.  One day I'll go to the US and buy him something real nice for all the great stuff I've learned from him!

He says he learned this from John Carlton -- a legend copywriter.  It's basically 3 steps to selling more of anything.  3 steps to making a lot more money than you're making now.

The 3 Steps Are:

1.  Here's what I got
2.  Here's what it'll do for you
3.  And here's what I want you to do next

If you do those 3 things WELL enough, you'll make money, provided "what you got" is quality, not crap.

Watch the video here.

Tags: copywriting, frank kern, make more money