10 Ways to Earn More, Work Less, and Enjoy Your Summer

Want to earn more and work less this summer? Read this article to find out 10 ways to do just that.

If you’re anything like me, you start looking forward to summer as soon as the calendar flips to a new year. Take advantage of summer’s slower pace and people’s more casual attitudes and plan to not only take time off but to make some money while you do!


1. Commit to your vacation time.

If you haven’t already scheduled a break for this summer, stop reading this right now and do so! Even if you don’t have plans to go away or if your budget is tight, I strongly encourage you to put at least a long weekend break into your calendar now - and then make sure you do anything you want for those few days - EXCEPT work. You’ll come back to your business refreshed and recharged. You know you will and you know you need it.

2. Have a summer sale.

Are there some products or programs in your funnel that you could offer a summer discount on? I’d be willing to bet there’s at least one. Kick off the summer season by offering your prospects a special deal on one or more of your offerings.

3. Make a special offer to your current clients and customers.

Summer’s a great time to give your current clients and customers a special deal. For example, if they’ve already purchased something from you at the first level of your funnel, offer them a special deal for investing in an additional offering of yours, maybe at the next higher-priced level of your funnel.

So, if they’ve already spent $50 on one of your products, offer them a $50 discount towards another of your offerings.

4. Trim your expenses.

Are there some business-related expenses that could be put on hold for the next few months, without a negative impact to your bottom line? There are probably at least two or three things that you could eliminate for the summer, and you may find out that you can eliminate them completely come the fall.

For example, I’ve stopped my monthly subscription to the screen-sharing software I use because I know I won’t be using it for at least the next three months. That’s $150 in savings for my business!


5. Create summer hours.

Start later in the day, take a mid-day break for a few hours, or end your day earlier. Take one day a week off. Work half days. Take four-day weekends. It’s your choice, but by creating summer hours, you’re not only giving yourself some time to enjoy the fleeting days of warmer weather, but you’ll also find that you’ll be much more likely to focus only on your priorities, which means you’ll actually move ahead much faster!

6. Repeat a previously profitable product.

Do you have a product that when you first launched it, it sold really well? Maybe it just needs some new life and a new promotion. Don’t re-invent the wheel and simply repeat what’s already worked for you in the past.

7. Republish your best articles in your newsletter.

For the summer, consider giving some of your best articles (the ones people commented on, or were reprinted most often) an encore presentation in your ezine. If you’ve been publishing for awhile, your readers most likely will appreciate the reminder the articles will bring, while it will be new content to your newer subscribers.

8. Declutter your office.

I simply can’t think when my office falls into chaos, and I’m always amazed by how much better I feel and how much more productive I immediately become once I get rid of the clutter.

Summer is a great time to declutter and reorganize. Enlist a friend to help, or hire a professional organizer to really get you geared up for the summer (and the fall!).

9. Declutter your mind.

When you started your business, did you write down your vision for it? If you haven’t, or if you haven’t visited your vision in awhile if you have, the next few months are perfect for reflection, dreaming, and planning what you want the rest of your year to look like.

I’ll be dreaming up mine on the dock at the lake. Where will you be dreaming up yours?

10. Plan some fun stuff.

Even if you don’t have plans to travel this summer, you can still plan some really fun things to do near your home. Having something to look forward to will help you enjoy some time away from your desk while the sun is shining.

Believe me, I know how hard that can be. I love what I do, too. But one main reason we work for ourselves is so we can enjoy our lives, right?

Published By : The Author

10 Ways To Get Links To Your Site

Find out how to get links to your site easy and how to increase your site ranking in SERP’s. Here are 10 simple yet effective ways of raising your link popularity.


Getting links to your site increases traffic and boosts your rankings in the search engines queries.

Here are the 10 methods I used for getting links to one of my directories:

1. Directory submission.

If you don’t have time to do it your self, you should hire some one to do this for you, as this is the best and the safest way to increase your back links.

2. Link Exchange With Other Webmasters.

This is a slow process and not always reciprocal linking is a good idea, cause search engines place more importance on one-way links than two-way links. Still, it can bring you valorous links, if you have what to exchange with.

3. Build A Network Of Websites And Interlink Them.

Building multiple websites is always a good idea, but be careful to host them on different ips, not on the same server, as the search engines will believe you are manipulating their results and will most penalize your sites.

4. Write articles like this one.
You can see in the footer my bio-box, that has 3 links. as you see, I am not writing the article for nothing.

5. Build a reciprocal directory.
If you build a niche directory related to your site, many people with similar sites to yours will want to submit a link to it, and, in return, you could ask for a link to your site.

6. Build a theme / template for used scripts.
Like Wordpress, or phpld. Put in the footer of the theme, your link, as in “Designed by yourlink.com”. If you can’t do one, you could always buy it from people that can. The catch here is to advertise it well.

7. Post on forums that allow you tho have a signature.
You won’t get a great deal of of page rank, as most forums do not have a high page rank for their threads, but you will build up a good number of links, and as forums are generally very crowed by search engines, bots will follow the links to your site and and crawl your site on a regular basis.

8. Leave Comments On Blogs And Guest books.
Don’t abuse it and start spamming other people’s blogs or guest books. Make comments to the subject, and make it look like you actually have something to contribute.

9. Write Good Testimonials.
By writing and submitting testimonials to websites that you have previously purchased products or services from, you can get high-quality links to your site.

10. Buy Links.
This can have a dramatic effect on your page rank and subsequently your search engine rankings if you can get links from PR6+ sites, however the only problem with this is that most links for sale are often for a set period of time, usually a month, and so you have to keep buying them to maintain your higher page rank and rankings.

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$3 Million in 6 Months With Adsense!

The Power Play Interviews: Markus Frind- $3 Million in 6 Months

This is the first in a series of Internet Success Stories that you will begin to see on the Power Play Blog. Hope you enjoy them!

Markus Frind, the creator of Plentyoffish.com is a success story worth noting, as he has managed to take a niche formerly ruled by giant corporations and give it his own brand of marketing savvy. A case of David vs. Goliath, where the little guy comes out on top in the end. Markus is the top “individual” adsense publisher in terms of pageviews. Lets find out what some of his secrets are as he shares some advice with our readers. Feel free to comment!

Markus, what is your experience in computer programming and how did it prepare you for becoming a webmaster?

The average pageviews a day is around 14 million for the last week. I’m getting another 80 million pageviews a day from users polling the site to see if they have new messages. Really intensive bandwidth wise!

When I go to your website, I notice that the ads are targeted to my region, yet I have not even registered- can you explain to our readers how you accomplish this feat?


I’m just using ip2location.com- Basically i take your IP, look it up in the database and it tells me what your city is. I then bring up a list of users in your city, nothing magical about it at all.


Are most of your visitors coming primarily from search engines (SERPS), or are you finding that they come from other avenues? Do you actively advertise in the media?


Search engines account for something like 2% of my traffic. The vast majority of my traffic, like any other site with over 5 million pageviews a day comes from word of mouth, and repeat visitors.

The services on your site seem to be offered at no cost to the registrants. Is there some advantage you have over your competitors that allows you to do this?

I’ve developed new algorithms that allow me to create a mega site for next to no cost. Several years ago I created algorithm that was thousands of times faster then the algorithm used in the 1990’s to find a string of 22 prime numbers. At the time a professor used several super computers and hundreds of regular computers over the course of several years to find a record. I did the same thing on 1 computer in 2 weeks.


Fascinating! Are there any other sites you currently maintain, or is plentyoffish.com the only one?

Its the only site at the moment. I’ve got a few other sites I registered for friends so they could learn to do marketing/affiliate stuff. At this point i think 1 site is enough.


Any tips for those looking to create a profitable endeavor on the internet?


IF someone else thinks what you are doing is a cool idea I’d say it isn’t… Find something no one else thinks is important and build up a site with big traffic in that area. Also keep in mind, sites that have low monetization today but have traffic may be the gold mines of tomorrow. In the internet world anything and everything will be monetized at some point and traffic is king.


Traffic is King- very wise advice, Markus. One last question- How do you find the time to maintain such a large commodity on the internet? Surely you must have some other interests in life besides programming and website monitoring?


It only takes a hour a day on average, but its very tiring work. I spend the other couple of hours reading and seeing what is going on.

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What’s A Blog And Why Should I Have One? - Using Blogs To Generate Business

Most everyone on the internet has, at some point, run across blogs. Blogs are simply internet journals recording whatever happens to be on a writer’s mind at a given moment. Typically written in an informal tone, blogs read as though the writer is having a friendly conversation with their readers. Though blogs have exploded in popularity, few online retailers understand that having a blog can be a very effective way to drive sales for their e-businesses.

Getting Started

The easiest way to start a blog is with a free commercial service, like Blogger or BlogSpot. All you have to do is just set up an account and start blogging. To create a blog that sits on your website, you can go to SixApart and choose from several software options.

It takes time to build a loyal base of readers, but you can start guiding traffic to your site by linking with relevant blogs. Go to Technorati and find blogs whose content ties in with yours. Link only to blogs with content that’s useful and entertaining to your customers. Request they look at your blog and consider linking back to you.

For your product sales site, you don’t have to blog about your product itself. Blog about things related to your product. If you sell camping gear, blog about the country’s top camp sites, your hiking trip in the Appalachians, or the best time of year to visit Yellowstone. According to Anthony Perry, of BlogAds, “You can make your customers feel empowered if you inform them to make their own decisions, as opposed to just beating them over the head, saying, ‘This is a great product! You should buy it!’”

3 Benefits of Blogging

In addition to educating your viewers, your blog provides you with several advantages:

1. The familiar tone of blogging creates a window for buyers to see there’s a real person behind your site. The internet’s an impersonal selling medium, but the personal nature of blogs creates an element of customer trust and loyalty to your brand.

2. By sharing your valuable knowledge, you’re giving your customers a reason both to stay and to return. It’s a proven fact that the more time a user spends on a site, the more likely they are to purchase something. The more your readers return for your expertise, the more you increase your sales.

3. Get feedback on your products, your site, and your customer service. Let your users leave comments, and find out what changes they’d like to see or what products they’d like you to carry. Says Perry, “Blogging’s a tool that lets you communicate with your customer base in a way that’s far more intimate than a monthly e-newsletter.”

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Where To Get Content For Your Blog

Blogs and websites that have rich content are always going to do better than those that don’t. I am sure you wondered where these blogs get their ideas, views and opinions. It is easy to write about something you are passionate about- but to do that most days of the week is extremely hard, since you would probably run out of things to talk about or you simply don’t have the time. So how do they do it? Where do they get their ideas? Do they get help from tools and other sources available on the Internet?

The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link. You’ll definitely want to sell the idea about the services and products beforehand. What that will do is set the stage or the “mood” and give your recommendations authenticity.

Expounding on the uses of a particular service or product, with your own likes and dislikes, achieves this naturally. With an affiliate program, it is a good idea to have a personal anecdote that goes hand in hand with the product or service.

Using private label articles is a viable alternative. PL articles abound in the Internet and you can always buy some that are connected to your central topic and then place them in your blog. One way of maximizing a purchased PLA is to cut it down into several pieces, thereby maximizing its content.

Utilizing RSS feeds to post on blogs is becoming very popular, although not everyone is familiar or willing to learn about RSS feeds. The advantage to an RSS feed is that your blog is automatically updated with fresh news and content. The disadvantage is that it is not unique content and that anybody interested in the feed will likely click out on a story that appeals to them.

Putting in your very own content is the best way to go. One way to find fresh ideas is to look for an appealing news article and then do a summary write-up based on it. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but you and your readers will find it the most rewarding way. If you feel that you just don’t cut it as a writer or you genuinely don’t have the time, then hire someone else to do it for you. There are many services out there who provide a “blog service” which includes daily posts of unique, engaging content and you can instruct these content writers as to where you want the links in your blog pointing to- so that any burden of cost in terms of hiring them should be offset by the gains in your increased visitor base, the marketing of your other websites and earnings from your affiliate programs.

These are the best ways to generate content for your blog. It is advisable not to be going with the automated path. If you do decide to do that, you will probably have plenty of content- but the substance of the text is unlikely to increase traffic for you. Putting in some good, old-fashioned content work will yield better results for you. As the expression goes- “you get out what you put in…!”

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