My regular work day starts with checking my emails and checking my stats on several sites. I have never thought about organizing basic tasks in my regular business day. Of course, for every project or a website we make plans, timesheets, we use project management tools, etc. But how about organizing the very basic daily tasks we do all the time?

Understanding and Accepting the Problem

Since the beginning of 2007, I knew that I was spending so much time on unnecessary things and tasks in my daily life. I didn’t know the solution, but I have finally admitted it was a serious problem for my business and for my daily life. Then, I started looking for a solution.

Finding Tools to Help Me Solve the Information Overload Problem

It was during December 2007, and I was waiting for my international flight at JFK Airport in New York. Even though I had several books, my laptop and magazines to read in my luggage, I was checking some new books at a store in JFK.

I saw a book named; Getting Things Done, and I was curious. I have checked it out. I knew the name “David Allen” as the “Personal Productivity Guru”, but I have never read his books before.

This books has practically changed my life. It gave me a whole new perspective on information overload, and increasing personal productivity.

If you are smart enough to overcome the information overload problem yourself without reading a book or using tools, great, good for you. But I was NOT. I needed somebody or a book to tell me exactly what to do step by step. And it worked.

If you read this book or any other book to help you with overcoming information overload, you don’t want to change everything in your life right away. You have to take a step at a time, otherwise it will be very hard. Think about quitting coffee. Start decreasing one cup a day, then once every two days, etc. This is how I have implemented the tips into my life from “Getting Things Done“.

I have also found a FREE tool online called FlowChart.com. It is great to create flow charts, or mind maps. I highly recommend this tool. You can also share your flow charts with your friends, partners, employees, and create a collaboration.

Other than Getting Things Done by David Allen, I have also heard great things about Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way by Rick Carson which I will be ordering soon.

You can check out the best selling books about information overload at amazon.com. You need to overcome the information overload before it is too late, and become more productive.

The behavior of both offline and online shoppers in the US are changing, and going more towards Green Shopping. This is great news for the environment, and for our future.

Many small businesses are following the green shopping trend for a while but the big shots in online shopping game are jumping onto the board recently, one by one.

Amazon Green is a category/section within main Amazon site. You can pick 3 products from Amazon’s catalog which you believe are green, then they get rated higher in the Amazon Green Section.

eBay has launched WorldOfGood.com for green shoppers. With the new site, I believe, eBay’s ultimate goal is to target increasing Etsy.com customers.

Amazon’s Green Model within their main site, or eBay’s Green Model with a seperate site. Time will show which business model will be more successful.

Is Your Small Business Still NOT Green?

Amazon, eBay or other big online stores will make their share of $$$ from the green shopping trend. But how can you increase your sales or bring new customers to your small business by going green?

Every niche is different. Some niches are more suitable to offer environmental friendly products than others. You don’t have to offer a large selection of green products. You can do little things to let your customers know that you care about the environment.

Tips to Go Green For Small Businesses:

• Try to use as much recyclable supplies as possible.
• Run campaigns to support environmental friendly non-profit organizations.
• Try to find new green products which would fit into your product line.
• Let your customers know that you care about the environment.

I have been hearing more and more success stories of small businesses which go green. So, don’t miss the “Go Green” trend, and both increase your sales & help the environment.

Yes, absolutely.

Is it true that we can create an affiliate site within minutes and become a millionaire overnight, just like it says in $99.00 “Get Rich Overnight” ebooks?

Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Every penny, a real online marketer makes online, is the result of very hard work and many sleepless hours spent on the computer.

I have found a way to create a stable passive income stream with much less work than any online or affiliate marketing techniques.

I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I will share my biggest secret today which I have never shared before, not even with my close friends. I am a guy who believes in KARMA, so here it goes.

My true story of making over $5000/month passive income within 3 months as an ebay affiliate:

It was around August of 2007 when I have read a few forum posts about a software/script called BANS (Build a Niche Store). A few people were talking about how much they make with this script as an ebay affiliate.

The stories sounded to good to be true, and I didn’t even check the script’s website.

I was already making good amount of money with my ecommerce business, affiliate sites, blogs, and consultancy business. But I was always searching for that secret recipe; Passive Income, like many other online marketers.

Every penny I made online was the result of hard work and many sleepless nights spent on the computer. I was amazed with the stories of online marketers making unbelievable numbers as passive income. I always thought it was too good to be true. It was a prejudgment on my side, I admit it now.

It was around November of 2007, three months after I’ve heard about this script BANS, now more and more people started talking about it online. I have decided to give it a shot and purchased the script.

I have paid $97.00 for BANS which comes with unlimited website license, and totally forgot about it due to my busy schedule.

About 6 months later, during May 2008, I have decided to spend a few hours and setup a site. I have setup my first BANS ebay affiliate site that weekend, and within exactly 3 months (June, July, August 2008), I have 10 BANS sites with over $5000/month income. (August sales numbers are not finalized yet, but we are at $5,125.24 exactly as of august 29th).

Here’s the interesting part. The first site I’ve built with BANS, after doing the initial promotion, is making around $1000/month as of august, and had a steady income increase of 100% every single month. I have setup the site, promoted it, and left it there untouched. This is pure increasing passive income.

I have seen one thing, if built right, an eBay affiliate store can make more money than you can ever imagine.

Many affiliate marketers will tell you, eBay affiliate sites are too SATURATED, stay away from them. Of course, they will tell you that. Because they don’t want you to be competition. Ok, too much talk doesn’t take us anywhere. I have told you the story of my journey as an ebay affiliate, now it is time to show you how I have succeeded within 3 months, step by step:

Creating My eBay Affiliate Site Network with BANS Script for Stable Passive Income

1) Niche Market Research:

After doing some preliminary research, and reading forums, I have seen that some BANS site owners are getting great results, while others are not making any money at all.

I have figured out that choosing the right niche for your BANS store is the half of the equation, but the important half.

Here are the steps I have taken for my niche market research:

I have used eBay Pulse (eBay’s FREE Research Website). It shows you the most popular keywords, and top ebay stores under any chosen category. This is like gold mine, crazy valuable information.

I have spent like 4-5 hours digging deep into sub sub categories and trying to find the right niche market for my BANS Store.

After a well done keyword research and niche market research I have decided on a few niche markets I would profit as an ebay affiliate and picked one of them right away.

I have purchased Keyword Elite which was highly recommended by my super affiliate friends on many ocassions. It wasn’t cheap, it was $176.00, but I can’t seriously believe how many hours I have saved by using a top notch software like Keyword Elite. It’s on my top recommendations lists.

When I was setting up my BANS sites, I have heard of a tool called Micro Niche Finder, but didn’t purchase it. After reading so many positive reviews by reputable online marketers, I have decided to purchase it recently. It seems like a great tool, I haven’t played with it much yet, but it might help with your niche market research a lot, and save you some time and money.

2) Planning and Setting Up the BANS Sites:

After researching many web hosting companies, I have decided to go with HostGator. I have signed up with their Baby Plan. It offers 600gb diskspace, and 6000gb bandwith for $9.95/month. I host 38 sites on it right now, and everything is working great.

I have purchased 10 domains from Godaddy, for $9.99/year each. I have done some in dept research to find the best keyword rich domains. This is still very important for search engines.

If your niche is Blue Widgets, your goal should be getting a domain www.bluewidgets.com , if it’s taken, be creative and try to find something like: www.buybluewidgets.com, www.bluewidgetsuniverse.com, etc. You get the idea.

Since I have so many sites, and affiliate projects running at the same time, I tend to be more organized nowadays. So, I went to Flowchart.com and created a flow chart for BANS sites network. This is like a roadmap for me, and it helps to be organized. This flow chart shows me which site will link to which site, basic SEO plan, etc. I’d highly recommend signing up at Flowchart.com for an absolutely FREE account. Creating flow charts for your business will help you to survive and be more productive at the era of information overload.

3) Setting Up BANS Store Categories (MY SECRET RECIPE):

Your hosting is setup, your domain is registered, and you have installed the BANS Script. Installing BANS is very easy even for a non-tech savy person. BANS comes with a step by step installation guide with screenshots.

The tricky part is setting up the categories. That’s where my secret recipe for a stable passive income method by BANS comes in.

You have two options to setup categories within BANS. You can either pull a specific category from eBay with all the auctions, and BANS creates the category and sub-categories automatically. Most of BANS store owners choose this option. If you pull a specific category from eBay, let’s say you’ve chosen Baby Gear category, there will be many other BANS stores which have chosen the exact same category, and your store will be another DUPLICATE BANS store for Google. You will never get great search engine traffic.

But instead, if you enter “2″ as your main store category number, this means multiple category store, you have the chance of entering search queries for each category, and create 100% customized categories.

For instance, you can have a 100% unique category called “Handmade Baby Gear”, even though eBay doesn’t have a category like this, and create a custom search query and pull all auctions live. This way you can focus on more long tail keywords.

eBay has a great GUIDE called USING SEARCH COMMANDS. Please read this guide very carefully, and do tons of test searches on eBay according to this guide.

When you fully understand how the search queries work at eBay, it will be a piece of cake to setup 100% custom, long tail categories with eBay search queries. This will be your competitive advantage.

Feel free to ask me any questions regarding to eBay search queries, and setting up BANS categories at the comments section under this post. I will be happy to help as much as I can.

After you’ve setup your BANS site with custom categories, play with the template, and create a unique look if you like. BANS template system is very easy to customize. This is what I love about BANS, you can have a 100% unique looking affiliate site.

4) Promoting BANS Sites & SEO:

BANS admin panel has Store Pages and Content Pages options. Store pages are the category pages, and content pages are a built in CMS system to add content to your BANS store. As we all know, the power of unique content is priceless for SEO.

So, I’d highly recommend adding around 5 unique articles to each of your BANS sites. Be creative, add a video page (embed youtube videos), also add a pictures page (embed flickr images), etc. These will bring the quality links, so spend some time and create unique content.

Basic SEO: Every BANS site I have built had a few unique content pages, and some basic SEO.

What do I mean by basic seo? Doing some article marketing, directory submissions, blog commenting, video marketing, social bookmarking etc. For each BANS site I have created, I have done some preliminary SEO, not much.

That’s ALL. After these 4 steps, sit down, relax and enjoy your income increasing every single day.

The more you work on creating unique content, and doing SEO, the more traffic and income you will get. No secret recipe here. You will enjoy the free organic search engine traffic to your custom categories and you will realize the power of long tail keywords.

Very importan note I must add. I haven’t brought any PAID traffic to my BANS sites. So, over $5000/month passive income within 3 months is pure profit minus the domain and hosting cost (which is close to nothing).

I have seen many BANS sites making good amount of money with paid traffic (Google Adwords, etc.), but I haven’t had the time to setup PPC campaigns for my BANS Sites.

All the traffic I get is PURE organic search engine traffic due to long tail keywords. 92% of the traffic comes from Google organic search as of today.

Tools Used & Money Spent to Setup my BANS Network and Passive Income Sites:

• BANS Script : $97.00 (Must have. One time fee, unlimited sites license)
• Keyword Elite: $176.00 (Optional. One time fee, unlimited usage)
• Micro Niche Finder: $97.00 (Optional. One time fee, unlimited usage)
• HostGator: $9.95/month (Must have if you don’t have a hosting account. Unlimited site hosting, great for a network of BANS sites.)
• Godaddy: $9.99/year per domain registration (Must have, one of the most reputable domain registration companies in the market)
• eBay Pulse: FREE (Optional. Free website)
• Flowchart.com: FREE (Optional. Free website)
• eBay Search Commands Guide: FREE (Optional. Free website)

If you think this is too GOOD to be true, think again. Do some research online about BANS success stories and don’t take my word if you like. But I’m in a KARMA mood today, and I just shared all of my secrets to create a stable, passive income as an ebay affiliate marketer.

Remember to share your success stories and ask your questions at the comments section below.

It’s time to get back to work and create more BANS Sites.

If you are reading this review, it means you are interested in applying for a government grant. If you haven’t read already, I’d recommend reading a post I’ve written about How to Get Government Grants also.

If you like, visit Uncle Sam’s Money before reading my review.

Uncle Sam’s Money Review

There are so many government grant application information products on the market, most of them are CD’s that you get in the mail. The trick is you pay only shipping, get the CD in the mail with the information but they start charging your credit card monthly until you cancel it. Uncle Sam’s Money is a one time fee program.

Here’s what you will get if you decide to purchase Uncle Sam’s Money:

• Instant access to all the resources (membership site)
• Free Consultation from a grant specialist. As far as I know, only Uncle Sams Money offers this option.
• Grant Writing Tutorial and a Grant Writing Software. This is very useful if you haven’t applied for grants before. Writing a great grant application is one of the most important part.
• Up-to-date Federal Government Grant Programs Directory.
• Up-to-date State Government Grant Programs Directory. (most programs do not offer the state government grant directory)
• Unlimited email support by Uncle Sams Money staff. If you have any questions about your grant application, there will be support to answer your questions. This is very valuable when you need guidance.
• Seperate directory for education grant resources.
• Contact details of grant specialists (including phone numbers) in your area. This is worth getting the Uncle Sams Money.
• Resources and wealth of information for all types of grants such as small business grants, education grants, women’s grants, research grants, personal needs grants, housing grants, healthcare grants, etc. Not focused on on specific field of grants.
• They offer so many free bonuses (ebooks, information, tutorials, etc.) that I won’t even have time to list here. Here’s the full list, go check them out.

Visit Uncle Sam’s Money to view the full list of features.

How much does Uncle Sam’s Money Cost? Is there a money back guarantee?

Uncle Sam’s money is normally $79.95 (one time fee), but they are running a limited time special for $39.95 (one time fee, no recurring charges). Everything is upfront, no hidden or recurring charges, that’s what I like about Uncle Sam’s Money Program.

They also offer 90 days, 100% money back guarantee, this shows their confidence in their program’s success. You will also get a FULL refund unconditionally if your grant application is not approved. Nothing can get better than this.

If you are in the process of preparing a government grant application and trying to decide a program to purchase, I’d highly recommend Uncle Sam’s Money, one of the most respected programs on the market.

I wish you the best luck getting the much needed grant you deserve.

Market Research Before Selling or Buying a Business

When there are thousands of businesses for sale on the market, market research might be time consuming. If you haven’t done so, check out these articles from SBA (Small Business Administration) about buying a business, and these articles about selling a business.

Buy or Sell a Business via a Local Business Broker

There are advantages and disadvantages of hiring a local broker to buy or sell a business. Many brokers will only charge if they sell your business. Some brokers offer a list of businesses for sale and it is always great to see what is available in the market and get an idea of the price range for related businesses. Here’s a list of local business brokers in the US and Canada by state. When you are ready to buy or sell a business, start with an extensive market research, then I’d recommend to get a consultation from a local broker first.

Buy or Sell a Franchise Business

If you have the cash to invest and if you are not experienced in business, I’d highly recommend starting with a franchise. Most of the franchise businesses comes with a great business plan and forecasting. When you need help, the company does everything to help you succeed. Owning a franchise comes with many advantages.

If you are planning to buy a franchise, here’s a great site about franchise opportunities. They have bunch of information about franchises and a great directory of franchise business listings. Also take a close look at Top 500 Franchises by year at entrepreneur.com . More listings and information about franchises.

Best Places to Advertise your Business for Sale:

• Sell a business at BusinessMart.com
• List your business at local classifieds sites such as Craigslist.
• If it’s an online business, you might also try SitePoint Marketplace.

It is always good to get a word out there when you decide to sell your business. Your competitors might be interested in buying it, and it might be an indirect way to let them know. Business brokers also may contact your competitors to let them know about your business.

BusinessMart.com has become the fastest growing business for sale search engine, helping buyers and sellers of small businesses and franchises. BusinessMart.com has many resources to help you on your journey to start your own business, sell your existing business or open a franchise. I’d recommend spending some serious time on BusinessMart.com if youare buying or selling a business.

If you have a business consultant working for you, and if you haven’t discussed this topic, you should do it now, because government offers these grants to any type of small businesses. It doesn’t matter how profitable your company is, you might use some free extra cash to buy your own facility, right?

But if you don’t have a small business consultant, or can’t afford one, don’t worry. Applying for government grants is not that hard. Here’s a step by step guide:

How To Get Government Grants Guide

• 1) Visit Grants.gov and read all the information available.
• 2) Visit Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Government Grants Search Page and visit all the categories until you find the most appropriate category for your needs. You can also visit Grants.gov search page and search grants by keyword.
• 3) Preparing the government grant application is the most important part. You can get great information at Grants.gov or on other sites, but remember many applicants fail due to the mistakes on their application. There are many affordable informational products out there to guide you on the application process step by step (some of them include live chat and/or phone assistance from experienced grant writers). I’d highly recommend getting one of these products. Beware of the scams out there, there are also many scam products on the net. Here’s a great guide which compares government grant programs, they have tested over 50 products, and they recommend 5 of the best ones. If you ask my best pick, it is the Government Research Guide, I have personally used it and it was extremely helpful. You can also read Uncle Sams Money Review I’ve written which is a great progra.
• 4) Keep track of the New Opportunities Page at Grants.gov. It is updated daily, some fascinating grants become available, and if you visit this page, you will be one of the first people to learn about it.
• 5) When filling out the application, be very honest, explain your goals in detail, and do not exaggerate your situation, ’cause many people do. Here’s the online application system for applying to government grants.

That’s basically the steps you need to take for the answer of “how to get government grants” question. Now, sit back and relax, and hopefully you’ll have the next government funded success story. Good luck.

Internet advertising is becoming more popular for both online businesses and local small offline businesses. There are some quality local business directories online. One of them I’ve found recently is Kudzu.

Kudzu.com is an Internet venture owned and operated by Cox Search Inc., a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services. So, it’s backed up with a well known brand.

Kudzu is running a special for a limited time. They are offering FREE Premium listing through 2008. I have registered my businesses last week, and already started receiving some quality traffic. I wanted to share this information with my readers since it’s a great value (normally it’d cost you around $750.00).

Click to visit to register your business for FREE (No credit card required, nothing to lose).

Here’s how your premium listing will look like at Kudzu.

Take advantage of this limited time offer and register your business for free. Every visitor helps for your business.

* Important Tip: You don’t have to own a local business to be able to register. One of my websites receives the most traffic from a niche local business directory site.

Our prediction shows that our ecommerce business sales will increase around 50% for the month of december (compared to november), and we will try to keep the increase until June with different promotion techniques.

Included in Forrester’s report were the following findings:

Apparel and Accessories: This category will top holiday shopping lists.
(80% of respondents said that they will purchase something in this category online.)

Free Shipping: A majority of consumers still have interest in free shipping promotions.
(61% of respondents said they are more likely to shop online from a retailer offering free shipping.)

Less Flare: Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)

*Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

ComScore, Inc. also released recent information and predictions regarding the 2007 holiday season. ComsScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, projects that the months of November and December will see approximately $29.5 billion in online consumer spending.

2006 versus 2007

Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)

2006: Jan-Oct: $77.5 Billion
2007: Jan-Oct: $93.6 Billion
(21% Increase)

2006: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $24.6 Billion
2007: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $29.5 Billion
(Projected 20% Increase)

Their reports also show that the first eighteen days of the holiday season saw more than $7 billion in online retail spending.
Holiday Season to Date, 2006 versus 2007

Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: November 1-18, $6.01 Billion
2007: November 1-18, $7.04 Billion
(17% Increase)

“The online holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in the first week of November, but it has since picked up sharply,” notes comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Sales in the first ten days of November were up modestly versus year ago, but surged to levels in excess of 20 percent by mid-November. It’s likely that warmer than average weather at the beginning of November kept people outdoors and away from their computers, weighing down early holiday season sales, especially for key online categories like apparel. The growth rates during the second and third weeks of November are likely to be better indicators of how the remainder of the season will play out.”

Many will sale most of the ecommerce niches are already saturated. DO NOT Believe them. There are so many ecommerce niches that needs new online stores desperately. Even some big names still don’t do a good job in online marketing. For me, an ecommerce business is like a long term investment. People will shop online more, and your ecommerce site will keep growing if you work hard on it.

Happy Holiday Sales!

The concept is simple; A member creates a campaign, and participants pledge to take action only when enough other people have pledged to do the same thing. If the tipping point is reached, members agree to boycott a product, donate money to the cause, or take some form of civil action. You can review all the campaigns, and decide to participate or not.

If the site becomes popular, one of the main concerns might be the cencorship. I couldn’t find any information if ThePoint.com will use any cencorship towards any campaigns in the future or not. This part from the Terms & Conditions Page may give us some idea:

The Point may remove any Content and The Point accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all. To report Terms of Service abuse, please email: abuse@thepoint.com

TechCrunch points that ThePoint.com has already raised $2.5 million from angel investors, and will soon try to raise more in a VC round. I’m very curious about the monetization techniques they will use. I will definitely write a followup.

Andrew Mason, the founder of ThePoint.com, has posted this comment at TechCrunch after a question raised by a reader about the similarity of ThePoint.com to PledgeBank.com ;

Pledgebank is a great site and shares the same basic “I’ll do something, but only if others cooperate” model, but beyond that, there are more differences than similarities. First, The Point is largely focused on “do this, or else” campaigns — ultimatums targeted at a third party that are designed to, once they tip, quickly force a change by creating an unendurable financial stress. For many campaigns on The Point, the tipping point is something that can be quantified — it’s the point where the cost to a target of the group action becomes greater than the benefits of not changing. The tipping point of a campaign on The Point shouldn’t be determined by a prediction of how many people are likely to join, rather, a calculation of how many people are needed to force change. On The Point, it’s less important that a campaign tip than it is for people to have the sense that they will only be asked to take action when the conditions exist for a combined action to solve their shared problem. We also have an awesome feature called conditional anonymity — your identity isn’t revealed until the campaign tips — that makes The Point a singularly powerful tool for forming issue-specific workplace unions.

Overall, I like the idea and the site (usability, design, and concept is pretty good). I will definitely be checking the campaigns, and will participate.

Why am I writing about taking risk, and learning from failures?

I have recently had some conversations with a few friends about starting a business. These friends of mine work corporate jobs, and always searching for opportunities to start their businesses. I have observed a particular difference in business perspective between them and myself. When they talk about a business opportunity or make a business plan, they are looking for absolute ZERO risk. They always mention, oh of course you have to take risk, but when it comes to reality, they are scared to take risk. They know it, but they don’t accept it. One thing I have learnt as an entrepreneur is “Failing is a part of entrepreneurship”. If you take risk to achieve big goals, you will not be 100% successful. You will fail along the way.

I took a risk, Failed, then what?

Always re-evaluate your business along the way. You will make many small mistakes, it is normal. If you can find out what you are doing wrong, correct it, and learn from your mistake, you are doing the right thing. Even if you fail, the key is trying to learn from your failure.

Never get discouraged

Keep your motivation at the maximum level. I set goals with daily sales for instance. If I can’t reach that level, I work harder. If I reach the level, then I set a higher goal. Setup your daily, weekly, monthly (short term) goals, even write them on a post-it and put it on your desk, wall, monitor. Never get discouraged if you can’t reach your goals, work even harder.

According to Komisar, what distinguishes the Silicon Valley is not its successes, but the way in which it deals with failures. The Valley is about experimentation, innovation, and taking new risks. Only a small business that can deal with failure and still make money can exist in this environment. It is a model based on many, many failures and a few extraordinary successes.

If you don’t like the idea of taking risk and failing, here’s a short but useful formula:

NO RISK = NO FAILURE