Automation Part 2

I have another task that I am very close to automating. This one is way more fun and interesting than the bill automation. I won’t give any clues but it should be ready Saturday or maybe Monday. Check back then for a very cool piece of automation. Who knows… I may even get a picture or two of it up on the blog.

Richard Lee

Automate!

In response to Aaron Brandon’s weekend task, I set about to automate my billpaying. I was largley successful.

I was able to automate all but three of my regular bills. With the exception of those three, I’ll never have to spend a single second paying bills again.

How did I improve the remaining three?

The last ones were bills that I would take the time to write out a check or go buy a money order for. I’d then fill out the pay stub, rummage around for the correct postage and affix a return label. Next I’d drive to the post office to mail them personally as I wanted to be 100% sure the task was completed.

I rarely paid them all at the same time and would usually make two trips a month to mail the three.

Well, I took the time to set up accounts and fill in my banking info on the Web-sites of these three bills so that I could pay them in seconds using the Web. I then bookmarked the log-in pages and put them in their own bookmark folder.

Now to test things out…

I open the three Web pages and one at a time, I log in and pay all three bills. I punched my Polder digital timer when I started and again when all three had been paid. Total time: 2 minutes 32 seconds.

I estimate that the old way of doing this took 90 minutes/month.

Here’s what I’ve gained by investing a little time today.

I have freed up almost an hour and a half per month. Also, I would periodically think about those bills all month reminding myself to pay them. I have set up a series of e-mail and physical reminders that allow me to never think about them and know that I won’t forget to pay them… ever.

I’ve removed that negative “bill” thinking so I can now replace it with “income” thinking instead. That’s the reall gain here.

So did I fully automate my bills? No, they’re about 97% automated based on time. However, I can and will fully automate these last three bills in the coming months as I figure out how to do that.

Go look at Aaaron’s task challenge, pick one and get it done today: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/?p=43

Richard Lee

What I’ve Learned From James Brausch So Far

If you know the causes for failure, you can engineer a formula for success.

Causes of failure:

1. Not taking any action – stuck in the learn, learn, learn mode. Sadly, where I was for four years.
2. Not taking focused action ie. doing only a little and expecting a lot.
3. Not following a proven plan (kind of self-explanatory.)

What I’m doing with what I’ve learned:

I shined a light on failure cause #1 and scared it away. I’m positive I have #3 down pat. I’m working hard on #2. My first product and Web site are fully functional. Everything is set-up. I have a few articles submitted and traffic is starting to come in. I want to pump out an article a day as well as take time to build my ezine publishers list.

The only thing between success and me is… well, me.

I obtained a much better handle on things by scraping my change together and buying into James’ mentoring program. I got to e-mail a multi-millionaire who made his money the same way I’m working at making mine. I strongly urge you to do the same as I was able to glean a lot in just a few e-mail exchanges. I paid $600 for the month but all those spots are gone and it’s now $700/month. It will only increase. If it is physically possible for you to join, I implore you to do it today. Go here now: http://www.jamesbrausch.com/magic.html

Richard Lee

Slowly But Surely

Another one of my articles was picked up by a Web-site with an Alexa rank of less than 26,000. It apprears that they really like my articles. I’ll mark them as a site to always submit to.

Richard Lee

Automating Blog Announcements

I’ve been meaning to figure how to incorporate blog posts with a simple announcement system to subscribers but hadn’t set aside time for it. Today, I stumbled across just such a thing on Aaron Brandon’s blog: http://www.aaronbrandon.com.

He explains in a very clear way how to do just that using aweber.com

Go check it out at: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/?p=31

Richard Lee

365 Articles In 365 Days

I’ve hit upon an idea to write an average of 1 article a day for 365 days. I realize that some people reading that will think it’s impossible. Well it’s not if your writing on a topic that your familiar with. I have written almost a dozen articles now and I’ve found that I can write and article in roughly 30 minutes not including research time. Which is yet another reason to write about what you know. The more familiar a topic is to you, the less time you’ll have to spend researching it. Think about that for a while.

I’ve also hatched a plan to get a little work in on the days I have to work my J.O.B. On my breaks, I can flesh out ideas for articles, outline articles and even work on actually writing articles. Even though I work 12.5 hours a day, I can get in a couple of hours writing and brainstorming on break and then another hour or so when I get home from work.

I might even be able to get an article written on my work days so I stay on pace for 365 in 365. We’ll see how that pans out…Actually I know it’s going to work because I’m going to make it work.

Richard Lee

Article Propogation

Not much will happen today because I have to work 12.5 hours in my J.O.B. but I just checked and my first article is showing up twice in Google and Yahoo! MSN seems to be a little behind the others.

Richard Lee

Another Article Written And Submitted

As stated earlier, Mondays and Tuesdays are my massive action days. However, today I still managed to write another article and submit it for my own product as well as completing an intern task. The next 4 days will being light work and I have to work 12.5 hour days for the next 3 days and I take Sundays off.

Richard Lee

Massive Action – Redefined

So far today I’ve spent the entire day catching up on my intern work (http://www.jamesbrausch.com/intern.html). I was a few days behind and decided yesterday that I wouldn’t go to bed until I was caught up. I completed 4 tasks today. The average task takes 3 hours so that’s 12 hours of work. I got it done in 9.5. I can’t go into any details about what those tasks were but you can sign up for James’ intern program and see them for yourself.

Where else can you get a free coaching on how a multi-millionaire runs his business?

My eyeballs are killing me so I’m going to goof off for a while but before I go to bed, I’m going to at least outline the next article for my own product. I may even get the first draft done tonight.

Monday and Tuesdays are my most productive days working in the intern program as well as working on my own business because I don’t work them at my J.O.B. This week I also have Wednesday off.

So far today I’ve put in 9.5 hours and will put in several more. Between the 4 intern tasks I did today, I wrote 3130 words! That shattered my previous record of 1400. I think I’ve redefined massive action.

What did you do today?

Off to enjoy the sunset and get ice cream.

Richard Lee

Wow! Part 2

I posted earlier today that after using ArtemisPro (www.artemispro.com) to submit an article for my first info product, I found that it has been posted on a PR7 site with good traffic stats. I used a unique pen name when I submitted to track it. Well, I just checked and that article has already been indexed by Yahoo! Wow! This stuff really works. I’m going to make note of that site and always submit to it.

Also, I just checked and found that my sales letter site has been listed in Google. I registered that domain just over two weeks ago and the biggest search engine on the planet has already found it and added it to its listings.

I’m having a good day.

Richard Lee