One of the things you’ll hear me say regularly in this newsletter is that a major key to success is consistently taking action.

For soooo many of us who are striving to make money online we stumble and fall into the hidden “pot-holes” on the road to success, such as:

• Procrastinating - putting off tasks that are hard until “tomorrow”.
• Information hoarding - constantly buying more and more “how to” guides from self-proclaimed gurus trying to squeeze every last hard earned dollar from your wallet. Only we keep jumping to the next one without properly studying or applying what we’ve just bought.
• Perfectionism - wanting to get everything “just right” before we launch that website, or that blog, or finish that ebook…

The cure to all of these stumbling blocks is to set a clear goal, a clear deadline and start taking consistent action.

I’ll be covering this problem in greater detail in the next issue or two but right now I want to encourage you to take action NOW by giving you with the opportunity to Win Cool Stuff.

The Header Graphic Competition

Over the last 4 days 507 subscribers to this newsletter have downloaded the Free Header Graphics Package that I gave away. That’s a massive 31.37 Gigabytes of files downloaded and videos watched.

Now industry statistics show that only around 5% or 25 of the subscribers who downloaded the package will actually take the time to study it, apply it and use it to start creating their own awesome website graphics.

I’d like to see a lot more than 5% of you learn this valuable skill that will help you with create your online businesses, so I’m going to dangle a carrot on a stick…

Starting from tomorrow I’m opening a 7 Day Header Graphics Competition.

You’ll have until midnight on 26 April 2007 to complete and submit one website header graphic image you have created from Header Graphics Package I’ve given you.

From there I’ll take a few days to judge the entries and announce the winners. if I can squeeze enough time in I’ll try to find a system where you as the newsletter subscribers can vote for your favorites and decide on the winning entries.

Prizes are yet to be finalized, but some of the options I’m considering are:

• A fully paid membership to Marlon Sander’s incredible DesignDashboard.com (click here) service. If you’re already a member, or you decide to purchase a membership in order to get additional training for this competition, I’ll refund your membership fee in full if you win.
• A complete membership content management system website built for you which includes private messaging, forum, gallery, downloads area, ecommerce store, news area etc.
• A 1 year membership to my new paid membership website launching at the end of April valued at over US$300 (it’s still a secret with details being announced soon but trust me - you’ll love it.)

I’ll announce the final list of prizes and where you can submit your entries later on in the week.

Remember, even if you don’t win a prize, simply by taking part you are learning new skills that will enable you to increase your online success!

The Rules

1. One entry per person only
2. Each entry must be based in some way on the Header Graphics Package I gave you. You are free to adjust & add images in any way you want as long as some part of the Header Graphics Package is used and can be recognized (i.e.: no submitting designs that have nothing to do with the package I gave you)
3. There will be three entry categories - design pros (i.e.: pro photoshop users), moderate experience, and complete newbies.
4. I will not provide any design help or answer email questions on how to use design software. Sorry, but I have too much on this week - you must learn the skills for yourself.
5. By entering you grant permission for your header graphic to be displayed on this website.
6. By entering you agree that you will not use copyrighted images in your entry without the explicit permission or a suitable license from the copyright holder.
7. By entering you accept that WebsiteSystemsExpert.com makes the rules, can change any of the rules at any time, and is not liable for anything to do with this competition.
8. By entering you accept that WebsiteSystemsExpert.com may select the winners and that any decisions are final.

The whole point of this competition is to encourage you to take action, have fun and give you skills that will increase your success. Let’s keep it fun and friendly.

So get started now and watch out for finalized details on prizes and where to submit your entries in a few days.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Creating personal systems for yourself is just as important (if not more so) than creating automated systems for your wesites.

So, here’s a super quick technique that you can use to instantly double or even triple your productivity…

Yes… a $10 digital timer.

Here’s What You Do…

Go grab yourself a cheap digital timer and start creating a new habit.

Sit down at your desk, clear it of any distractions and pick the next most important task you must complete in order to achieve your goal.

Set your timer to 33 minutes and press start.

Until the timer hits zero and the alarm goes off you:

• Must sit at your desk.

  No cups of coffee, no phone calls, no patting the dog, no peeking at what’s on TV, no going to the bathroom.

• Must not do ANYTHING that is unrelated to your task.

  No checking email, no surfing the web, no chatting to people online. In fact, it’s better that you quit your chats, your email software and browser unless you are specifically using them for that task

That’s it.

If you obey these two rules then you have two choices.

1. 1) Be highly productive with all your attention focused on that one task until completion or the alarm goes off.
2. 2) Sit at your desk… BORED.

Once you start getting into the swing of using your timer this way it’s like strapping a 2 million gallon liquid-oxygen booster rocket to your productivity and punching the launch button!

Like any new habit, this can be very challenging at first.

You’ll get distracted.

You may start saying things like “I’ll do that as soon as I do this other (not important but easier) thing first…”

Practice and a bit of self-discipline is the key.

Before long I promise you’ll be having fun and enjoying the massive increase in productivity as you watch your todo list start to blur and shrink while your bank balance increases.

You may even find you start challenging yourself…

Just how much can I get done in the next 33 minute block? Two tasks? Three? Four?

So… Grab A Timer And Get Started Now

Give yourself two weeks to master this new habit and make it part of your life.

When you’re sitting back, relaxed and reflecting on all the increased success you’ve achieved and all the extra time you have you’ll be so glad you did.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think…

Today I’m going to teach you about an critically important system you must have for your online business.

I hope you’re paying attention because not having this system could result in a situation that destroys part of or potentially all of your business.

I’m referring to having a Data Backup System for your local computers and your work data.

Of course, everyone knows they should back up their data regularly. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of home & small business computer users do so.

Come on… let’s see a show of hands. Are you guilty of not backing up as well?

That’s ok - you’re far from alone. You’d also be very surprised about who else fails to have even a basic backup system in place.

Last month I did some work for two big name internet marketers. I was working on each of their dedicated servers which hold all of their websites, memberships, products, services, forums, custom software, helpdesk etc. When I asked if those dedicated servers were backed up, what do you think both of these top Internet Marketers told me…

No… but we probably should be doing that.

They’re playing with fire.

If the server hard disk crashed or their servers was hacked they could be out of business instantly.

I had to learn the same lesson the hard way this morning when my Windows XP laptop decided to lock up.

Of course this happened when I was working towards a major promotion deadline. No matter what I did, Windows was unusable. After 2 hours of rebooting in safe mode, going back to restore checkpoints and googling for answers I gave up and decided to re-install from scratch.

At least I’d done one thing right - I’d keep all of my project data on a separate partition to the main Windows partition on my laptop. I also backed up that data partition to my other computer regularly so all of my data was safe.

But… it has still taken 4.5 hours to do a complete reinstall of Windows XP from scratch.

That includes all the time taken to download and reinstall software that I own - Photoshop Elements, Camtasia, firewall, AVG anti-virus etc, all Windows updates and all the annoying reboots (about 10 in total).

If only there was a way to fully restore a computer complete with Windows, all Windows updates, all the software you own and all of your critical work data in less than 30 minutes should disaster strike.

There is!

With 30 minutes initial preparation and another 10-15 minutes each week your computer data can be kept completely backed up and safe and reinstalled immediately should disaster strike.

Go to http://www.acronis.com and download the trial of the Acronis True Image software.

By “image” I mean it creates an EXACT duplicate of the data stored on your hard disk. If you ever need to do a full reinstall, you simply use Acronis True Image to copy the “image” straight back to your hard drive - there’s no need to install windows first, windows updates or your applications again - they’re all already there!

Once you have your initial “image” backed up to an external drive, or burnt to DVD you’re safe should anything happen.

From there you can do incremental image backups each week, meaning that only the files that have changed are backed up and can be reinstalled in minutes along with your full backup.

This is a very simple and effective way to create backups for all of the data on your local computers and I highly recommend it. I should have had this system in place already so that when disaster struck this morning I could have returned my computer back to the exact state it was in a few days ago in 20 minutes.

Acronis True Image costs US$50 for the home user edition and it is well worth the investment. It’s easy to use, simple and smart - for example it chops your image backups into DVD sized files so you can easily burn hard copies of your backups for off site storage.

If you have critical data on your computer(s) that would cause you major problems should something happen, then having a backup system like this is a MUST.

And on that note Acronis True Image has just finished building a full image for my freshly installed laptop in less than 9 minutes. Should the same problem strike again I’ll be up and running again in 20 minutes instead of 5 hours.

Here’s that link again:

http://www.acronis.com

By the way… for those of you who have heard of Norton Ghost - the software is similar. My brother (who put me onto Acronis) used Norton Ghost for for a number of years and now swears by Acronis says:

Norton Ghost wasn’t very user friendly and was difficult to use. At the time it required reboots to DOS whereas Acronis would work while windows running.

Having regular Acronis backups has been a lifesaver on many occasions.

Numerous times for lost files… twice for a completely corrupt windows partition that wouldn’t boot, and several times for reverting to a previous clean install state once windows had become clogged up.

In the next issue of the Website Systems Expert Online Newsletter I’m going to give you something valuable to help you with your websites - a pack of graphic header templates. Not only that I’m going to give you step by step video instructions showing you how you can customize those templates to create powerful and compelling header graphics for your own websites.

To your success!
(And safely backed up data!)

Phill Coxon
WebsiteSystemsExpert.com

Hi and welcome to the brand new Website Systems Expert newsletter.

I’ve started this newsletter because I am constantly asked by people what the secrets to online success are.

Without hesitation I tell them that I believe online success is directly related to two things:

• Your Attitude & Ability To Take Action
• Your Website Systems

I’m going to touch on both of these issues regularly in this newsletter, but let’s have a quick glance at the second item to start with.

So what are website systems?

In a nutshell, website systems are processes you put in place that will reduce the amount of time, effort and expense related to your online businesses.

Website systems include:

• The software you use to create your websites (i.e.: text editors, html editors, graphics software)
• The software you use to run your website (static web pages, blog software, membership scripts, payment processing etc.)
• Online products and services that increase your website profitability and provide you information to grow your website (tracking software, email autoresponders, advertising services, lead capture services)
• The systems you use on a daily basis to set goals, break those goals into managable tasks and steadily work on them while managing overwhelm, confusion and distractions.
• The processes you put in place to add value to your customers so they trust you and return to buy from you over and over and over again.

The end goal of creating excellent website systems is that your online business will start to take on a life of it’s own and work… without you.

By that I mean, setting up online businesses that are as automatic and automated as possible, there by reducing the amount of time you need to spend working on them.

With the right systems in place, your customers will love you, your mailing lists will grow and your bank account will fill with increasing larger deposits.

Best of all, your free time will increase, your stress levels will drop and you’ll be able to walk away, leaving your automated website systems in charge, taking care of your business for you.

That’s what I’m going to teach you to do, step by step.

Look out for the next part of this newsletter in a few days where we’re going to get right into a system that will immediately add value to your website businesses. I’m also going to give you a free gift to get you started with your systems.

If you’ve visited this blog page directly, you must join the Website Systems Expert mailing list to get the download access links to the free gifts and tools I’ll be giving you. So if you’re not already a member… click here to subscribe:

http://www.WebsiteSystemsExpert.com

Get ready for a fun ride!

Sincerely,

Phill Coxon
WebsiteSystemsExpert.com