So, you have decided to jump in and start building your business online! You have opted-in to numerous expert’s newsletters, joined as many social media sites as possible, started your blog, and made a few connections. Now what?

Well, that is a very good question that I would like to answer for you. Are you ready?

SET A SCHEDULE!!

Did you think I was going to tell you something else? Setting a schedule for your business is the same as knowing what time you have to arrive at work, what your daily tasks are while there, and most importantly, what time you get off. Why should working from home be any different?

First, start by setting your hours. What time and days are you going to open your business? This is essential in planning your daily income producing activities (IPA). Look at your schedule and see what family commitments are planned, what days you do not want to work, and begin to build your schedule from there. How many hours should you be working? If you are considering this a full-time career, start with 20-30 hours per week. For part-time, try up to 10 hours a week or work on the weekends.

Next, since you have decided to become a social butterfly, I would highly recommend that you set a time limit on this. You can become easily distracted by the other discussions and get sidetracked with your purpose. The goal in this step is to get your message out, interact with a few people, develop relationships, and build your business. It is okay if you go over time if you are performing these tasks, but do not just sit there watching other posts, playing games, and watching silly unrelated videos.

How do you plan your social media time? If you are a beginner, select one site for social marketing, one site for content marketing, and one site for advertising. Intermediate and Advanced Marketers can do two or three of each if you have the time. Once you have selected your primary sites, decide on a weekly goal. How many contacts do you want to have? How many posts are you going to make? How many articles are you going to write? Your answer to those questions will help guide you in making a schedule.

Last, but definitely not least, is self-development. Please, please do not neglect your mind and your body. Continue learning about your industry. There are so many changes in social media, pay-per click, and even technology that it is almost impossible not to stay informed. Also, remember to take care of your body. Take at least 30 minutes a day to exercise to keep yourself in good shape. What is the point of making all the money if you are unable to enjoy it??

Those are three easy steps to jump start your business online. Remember, setting a schedule for your business, your interactions, and yourself are all major parts in being successful in any business online or offline.

This article from the Affiliate Marketing Guide is going to take you through the importance of keywords, and how to develop a strategy that will optimise everything you do to ensure that you are attracting as much free traffic from the search engines as possible.

Let me say first of all, that, starting out the whole concept around keywords seems like a black science – at least that is what it seemed to me! However, once you get it clear in your head then it is simply a matter of following a process!

Very simply put, keywords are those words or phrases (also known as long tail keywords) that people type into search engines on the internet to find some answers to questions they have. The challenge is to find those keywords that you are going to focus on to get yourself on the first page of the search engines, be it Google, Yahoo or Bing, which is where you want to be.

So, what are the steps to finding the right keywords, and once found, what do you do next?

1. Find keywords. One truism I am sharing with you on this – there is no substitute for continuous digging and hard work to determine your keywords. You simply have to put the time and effort into finding the right keywords for you. There are tools that can help you enormously in this exercise. For example, Google Keyword Tool is a fantastic resource and it is free! This will help you find out how many searches are made for those keywords on a monthly basis which helps you determine how big the market is for those words or phrases. But, be warned, the more popular a keyword is, the more competition you will face to get ranking on the search engines. There are other tools that can help you dig deeper and get a better understand of the competitiveness or otherwise of these keywords. Tools like Wordtracker or Market Samurai, and there are others, are really good for this type of work, but you will have to pay for them. You can get them on a free weekly trial to have a look at to see which you like best, but after that you will be paying. This is just grunt work that has to be done and there is no quick solution. However, done properly and it is giving you a great foundation for your business.
2. Select your keywords. Once you have completed this exercise then select, say, the first 10 keywords that you are going to work on. The reason I say 10 is that you want to have a number that you are working on simultaneously so that you are driving traffic to your site, or blog, from as many different places as you can. Also, 10 is a relatively comfortable number to do a really good job on before you move on to the next batch. You will end up with a long list of keywords, but tackle them in blocks of 10 to make it manageable.
3. Develop a strategy. Once you have your list you now need to have a clear strategy and plan as to how you are going to approach this part of your business. You will hear me say this time and time again in the Affiliate Marketing Guide that maximising the opportunity that using the correct keywords offers, is a critical element in the establishment and growth of your business. So, what should be included in your strategy? The first and, to me, the easiest approach to this is to ask – how am I going to communicate with my audience? If the answer is, for example, my website, my blog, articles, videos, social media, then I must have a clear strategy for each of those and they must interlink. So, how am I going to integrate all these routes to market into one clear plan? The answer to that question will give you the strategy that is right for you.

That’s it for Part 4 of the Affiliate Marketing Guide. I am writing these articles in separate parts with 3 clear action steps in each article to enable you to build your business brick by brick rather than giving it to you all in one document, that is more likely to result in overwhelm!