15 Money Tips to Make You Rich in 2015

This Article is dedicated to all the people who keep asking me if its possible to make money online .

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."– Henry Ford

To make 2015 your most lucrative year yet, you may have to do some things differently than what you've done in the past.

Here are 15 action items that can put you ahead regardless of what happens with the economy in the coming year and beyond:

1. Become your own CFO.

You can't fix what you don't know, so the first step is becoming completely aware of your finances and where your money is going.

As soon as you start to understand your current situation in detail, you will be able to identify leaks and simple solutions that will help get you on your way. 

Nobody cares more about your finances than you do (not even a financial adviser), so it is on you to take control of your financial future and direct it to where you want to go.

2. Go on a diet.

I'm not talking about what you eat. Identify one expense that isn't helping you achieve your goals, and cut it out for 30 days.

A simple expense to choose is cable television. The average American watches more than five hours of TV every day. That is thousands of dollars and thousands of hours often wasted each year!

Try a TV (or other guilty pleasure) diet for 30 days, and use that time and money on something more beneficial. I'm sure you'll survive without it just fine. 

3. Be selfish.

When you get on an airplane, what do they tell you during the safety instructions? "Put your own mask on first, and then help the person beside you."

It should be the same way with our time and our finances. Be selfish and take care of yourself first, and then you can have more flexibility to take care of others. The problem is that so many of us put others first and then aren't able to help ourselves. 

4. Be selfless.

Although you want to be selfish with your time and money at first, you also want to be selfless with your attitude. The wealthiest entrepreneurs I know give, give, give, and focus on helping others. By doing so, more money shows up in return.

Focus on impact and income will result.

ShutterstockBe willing to help others when you can.

5. Improve your credit score.

Credit is boring and I hate to talk about it, but it does make a difference. Think about it: Most of life's biggest expenses are purchased on credit. It's important to start to take care of it now because there is going to be a situation in the future where you'll wish you had.

The way to improve your credit score again starts with awareness. Get your free report each year from AnnualCreditReport.com and find out if there are any items that are directly hurting your score (which you can get for free at Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, or Credit.com). Address those now and you'll save yourself many thousands in the future.

6. Define what true wealth means for you.

In the dictionary, wealth is defined as "a large amount of money and possessions." However, when you ask someone who is truly wealthy, you get a completely different answer. 

As I show in "Make Money, Live Wealthy," the 75 entrepreneurs I interviewed most often shared words like freedom, purpose, family, health, experiences and other things that mean much more than just money.

Money is an important tool that makes all of these other things much easier, but it shouldn't necessarily be the goal in and of itself. Realize this and you will ultimately create your dream life much sooner. 

7. Automate your money.

The key with your finances is to make it as easy as possible on yourself. The best way to do this is to automate your finances as much as possible. What this means is that as soon as money comes in, it is dispersed to your other accounts automatically. 

For instance, you can set up your finances so that money is taken straight from your paycheck into a retirement investment account, or from your checking account to pay off fixed bills like your internet and cable. The less you can worry about moving your money around and the more you can focus on optimizing it, the better off you'll be.

The key reason why this works is not only to free up time, but it helps prevent us from wasting money. If we see extra money in our account, we'll find a way to spend it and then won't be left with much if any money to invest in ourselves and our future. Automation helps keep our priorities in line and takes the emotions out of it.

Flickr / Foxcroft AcademyFigure out how to earn more through alternate income streams.

8. Add another income stream.

One thing that I learned over and over again from the wealthy this year is that they never rely on one income stream. They have numerous sources, which protect them from changes in the economy and also add up to the greatest numbers. 

If you want to make 2015 your most lucrative year yet, your best bet is likely to add another source of income.

9. Focus on passive and residual income.

There is only so much time in the day, so it's hard to build wealth quickly when you're trading your time for money. Instead, the wealthy focus on building income streams where they can get paid over and over again for their work by putting their business or money to work for them. 

Examples of this include the investing, owning real estate, running an online business, and writing a book. If you're going to do the work, you might as well get paid over and over again for your efforts. Work hard, but also work smart, and you'll much sooner find the freedom you dream of.

10. Get a library card.

The wealthiest and smartest people in the world have something in common: They're avid readers. 

For very cheap or even free, you can get access to the most brilliant and inspiring people of all-time. Investing in yourself is the best investment you can make, and by reading, you are doing exactly that.

Whether it be audio or in print, books have helped change my life and bank account and can do the same for you. 

Flickr/Alex ProimosLibrary cards aren't just for kids.

11. Make your investments boring.

Back in 2010 when I started investing heavily, it was exciting. I had multiple monitors continually streaming charts, CNBC, and countless stock prices. This is what I believed that successful investing looked and felt like.

The thing was, I wasn't making any money.

Finally, I started to learn what works and began to take the emotions out of it. When I did, the excitement dropped dramatically (along with my stress) while my results started to shoot upwards. 

"Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas." 
– Paul Samuelson

12. Track your progress.

It doesn't matter how much money you make. It doesn't even matter how much you spend. What does matter is how much you keep. 

Every month, track your net worth (I use Mint.com to do this). This makes you think about the entire picture from income to expenses to investments to taxes. With this focus, you can ultimately make the greatest impact on your finances. 

13. Cut out 10%.

Even the most frugal people can find 10% of their expenses to cut. If you then take that 10% and invest it in yourself and in your future via training, paying off debt, or putting it towards vehicles that make you money like investing or starting a business, you'll be much better off. 

Try it. Go through your expenses line by line and see what you can cancel or reduce. I do this practice at least twice per year to keep things in line, and I find hundreds in savings each time. 

Miles Willis / Stringer / Getty ImagesYour network is your net worth.

14. Hang out with rich people.

Your network is your net worth. Seriously.

As Jim Rohn said, "You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with." It doesn't matter if we're talking about happiness, health, confidence or your income, the people you hang out with are strongly reflected in your own life.

So, if you have one thing on your 2015 to-do list, it should be to raise the quality of your peer group. This will have a domino effect on every other area of your life.

15. Reduce your goals.

Most people don't even create goals, but those that do often go to the extreme and create too many goals. The ultra-successful, however, are great at simplifying their mission and creating a single challenge in front of them at any given time. 

As Gary Keller talks about in the great book, "The ONE Thing," the way to get more is to focus on less. Less distractions, less stress, and fewer goals lead to more income and a better lifestyle.

That's it; 15 small steps that can add up to enormous changes. Remember, new and better actions will lead to new and better results.

Cheers to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2015.

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-money-tips-to-make-you-rich-in-2015-2014-12?IR=T

The 6 Most Important Things in Email Marketing for 2015

As the new year approaches, we are starting to make plans. Next to stargazing and broad predictions about the future of email marketing. It is interesting to see what marketers find are focus points for their email program for next year. 

What will email marketers focus on next year?

We can’t do everything and especially not everything at the same time. So one of the major questions is: what will we be focusing our email marketing efforts on? Econsultancy ask just this question in their yearly email marketing census study (which, by the way, reports thatemail is still one of the most effective marketing channels). Which three areas do we think are the most important for the coming year? Below are the answers marketers gave.

Looking at the top 6, here are a few tips for the coming year:

1. Strategy and campaign planning

Starting off with the big one. Strategy (or a lack thereof) has always been a top priority on the road to effective email marketing. Write it down. Write all the ideas down, create a strategy document, but before putting it into action imagine the next scenario where you are presenting the outcomes of your email strategy.

A normal marketing plan will not just say: let’s keep doing exactly what we were doing and try to get the results we got the year before. Unless the market is really down, we want to elevate the results and possibly improve email marketing ROI. Some plans however look more like an endless wish list where you will find everything that you might want to do possibly, maybe, someday. That is not really a plan. We have to make some choices because you can’t do everything at the same time. If it is not now, move it to your email marketing bucket list.

What will make your management and CEO dance on the table at the end of the year? In your email marketing strategy describe that outcome very specific and the way to achieve that. The magic is in catching your outcome and translating it into the right email marketing KPIs. It also is a good litmus test to see if you are chasing ghosts. Is someone really going to be doing the jive in the boardroom because of X% more opens alone? (Hint: I hope not)

2. Automated campaigns and marketing automation

Yes, let’s focus on automated campaigns. They are hot, the adoption of Marketing automation is up and for good reason, if you automate the right type of campaigns they can garner quite the results even with lower volumes. In fact, a study by The Lenskold Group reported that 78% of successful marketers say marketing automation is responsible for improving revenue contribution. Wow!

Picking the right campaigns to work on is maybe the most important step. You’re looking for high impact, lower time investment and an increase in activity of your subscribers, plus enough volume in terms of recipients.

There are many types of automated or drip campaigns with their own do’s and don’ts. Thought a birthday campaign was out of fashion or corny? Not as long as it works! It adds a timely contact to all the subscribers in your list, that is good reach for a triggered campaign. And to come up with an original / inspiring message, creativity is the only challenge. Want to get more out of them? Those triggered messages often work better as a series.

3. Segmentation

By splitting up your database into groups with similar characteristics, you can send more targeted messages. If at all possible, a nice combo with automation can be made by for instance loading in the articles from your site per interest / preference group.

My tip: It is a good idea to stop treating your subscribers as a homogenous lump, but also keep the added value of the email newsletter segmentation up. Segmentation isn’t something you do because you can, or because it is the right thing to do. We all say we want more relevant messages, but when it comes to execution, segmentation isn’t always the answer. Does something like a different intro text per segment going to make a message that much more relevant?

If there isn’t any added value to that specific segmentation, don’t segment. It might seem like you are breaking the rules, but a segmented message isn’t better per definition. Value comes first. An alternative might be to not go so specific inside the email, but instead write a message that is appealing to multiple groups.

A good tip is to segment your results. Send out the same email, but look at which groups respond best and to which themes and parts of your messaging. You can break free from the tyranny of email marketing averages and learn what enthuses each segment.

The Econsultancy email census reported that respectively 24%, 22% and 20% of marketers say they put the following in their top 3 focus points for the year as well:

• Measurement and analytics,
• List / data quality
• and delivering relevant communications.

Think of these as the lifeline of your email program: they are needed to succeed.

4. Insights from measurement and analytics

24% say you can’t analyze or improve on what you don’t measure. Analytics goes beyond the click in the email of course. Inside your email marketing software there is a lot of statistics at your fingertips and as soon as the emails are out the door, real-time stats start updating, telling you how many and which people opened, clicked, bounced and so on.

My tip is to not only start monitoring the statistics but start reporting regularly. Make a report each time you send an email, or at a regular time interval if you send very often. Yes, go beyond that dashboard and with each email you send, write down:

1. what worked,
2. what didn’t work or could be changed,
3. what questions remain unanswered.

I used to work at an agency before becoming a consultant and we used to do this all the time. With each email there would be a short report. So even if you have one of the best email agencies working for you (yes there are specialized email marketing agencies), be sure to let them add value there. There is a danger to this reporting though: Soon you will be wanting to answer those questions and actually start paying attention to the metrics that matter!

What else it does is set inherent reminders of things that need to be fixed. Because those issues will come back again and again and again in the reporting. Added extra is that it is definitely inspiring to find A/B email split testing ideas and will allow you to share your results with interpretation.

5. List / Data Quality

22% say growing your email list into a bigger, more active audience is a sound tactic to improve your email marketing outcomes. It is almost the same effort to use professional email I wrote about picking the right touchpoints for email list growth before and there is even a template for that. The source is a big predictor for the quality of the list.

Will list growth be recognized as a win? Not if your goals are only set in percentages. Open, click and conversion percentages are great to compare individual emails and look at activity trends. But at the end of the year, we want to see the results in absolutes. You see, a 15% growth of your file at the same quality will boost your results by 15%! Data quality is sometimes an issue though, are the people on your list really still interested in the preferences they gave 2 years back? At least add an easy win in the footer of your emails, asking them to update their profile.

6. Delivering relevant communication

Delivering relevant messages seems like the holy grail of email marketing. In my personal opinion relevance has been watered down a bit too much as an email marketing term. It has lost much of its meaning because people without experience in the field tend to overuse the term. The truth is, it is impossible to be relevant all the time to everybody. So here is a thought: how do we change that broad term into something more manageable? Try and make emails have value to a part of the recipients by knowing their needs and build it up from there. Either building the value to be greater or addressing more parts of your list. That will end up pushing their content buttons.

We all go into the next year looking to be more and more focused on getting real business value through all of our marketing channels. But as you have seen, it isn’t more than Strategy, Automation and Segmentation that will determine success. 

http://blog.getresponse.com/6-important-things-email-marketing-2015.html

8 Successful Content Marketing Strategies

Image source

Are you sick and tired of feeling like your content marketing strategy is a whole bunch of guesswork?

Even the most data-driven marketers can find themselves grappling with what to integrate next. The cost of creating video or infographic content can seem overwhelming. It’s hard to make the leap if there’s little proof in your content market metrics that a new tactic will work.

Understand that you’re definitely not alone. While most of us realize we should significantly expand the repertoire of our content marketing strategy, making decisions about precisely what to do next can be challenging.

Well, you’re in luck. We’ve combed studies and surveys to compile 8 data-backed tactics that will drive results in 2015:

1. LinkedIn Promotion for B2B

Looking for a surefire platform to convey your content to B2B prospects? In a slightly surprising 2014 study from Content Marketing Institute (CMI), it turns out that LinkedIn reigns supreme. In fact, it’s the only content promotion method that the majority of B2B marketers feel is effective. Make LinkedIn a core component of your content marketing strategy; for posting original content, links to your blog, and participating in groups.

Image source

The world’s most effective content marketers aren’t afraid to front enough resources. In fact, CMI reports there’s a strong correlation between how much budget is dedicated toward content, and results. Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean producing more content. It could also mean more multimedia content, or content that’s exceptionally high-quality.

3. Don’t Dismiss Email

Inbound marketing tactics may come and go at a staggering pace, but email is still hanging on. In fact, 73% of B2C marketers feel that eNewsletters are a highly effective way of communicating with customers and prospects. If you’re still a little dubious, consider the fact that email is ranked by your content marketing peers as even more effective than video.

4. Content for Sales

When asked to pick the top organizational priorities for 2014, your peers had ROI on their minds. Sales copy for lead nurturing was a major component, which supports the fact that email communications are definitely here to stay. If you’re still focused on creating content for first-time website visitors and other non-leads, it’s critical to start considering lead nurturing. An effective content marketing strategy encompasses the entire scope of marketing, from first click to sales.

5. Don’t Ignore Paid

Can your business thrive and grow using purely inbound marketing tactics? Absolutely. However, it’s wise to never dismiss anything entirely. Nearly 60% of marketers use paid search advertisement in their content marketing strategies at least occasionally. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is even ranked as the most effective paid tactic.

This doesn’t mean you should immediately drop ship and start investing heavily in PPC. Other paid tactics, like billboards, print advertising and radio commercials still don’t work. However, always stay open to new possibilities to drive results.

6. Refine Your Buyer Personas

Are you still relying on just one buyer persona profile, to encompass all of your target audience? That might be dangerous.

The average marketer today has 4 defined ideal customers, and creates content for each of these personas. Expanding to further target your work can only increase your relevance. However, keep in mind this is an average. Highly niche organizations will naturally market to fewer types of people than very large companies with a wide range of services.

7. Publish Frequently

Planning your content marketing strategy around a once-weekly blog and monthly eBook could cause your organization to fall behind your peers. Researchers have long known that the more often you publish, the better your search engine optimization, traffic, and lead generation will be.

As of late 2014, nearly half of marketers are publishing fresh content either daily or multiple times per week. This measure almost certainly includes some of your competitors. If you’re looking to achieve serious results in the year to come, it will almost certainly pay to publish better content, and more frequently.

8. Using Your Content Marketing Strategy

This may seem a bit meta, but a really effective tactic is using your documented content marketing strategy. Recent studies indicate that 62% of the world’s best marketers follow their strategies “very closely.” Your strategy should be a living document, which clearly maps your editorial calendar to your brand’s overarching goals.
http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/8-successful-content-marketing-strategies-01090010

Hootsuite - Empower Your Business with Social

A Useful Tool ,  Hootsuite  :
read my latest post on social media management tools which can assist you with all the social media platforms you use

5 Tools to Internet Shortcuts on a Budget

Every marketer wants to make their job streamlined and easier to get results. There are a ton of tools out there to increase your productivity, but sometimes you can lost in so many tools that you just want to keep it simple and effective. We as marketers also start to listen to everyone’s opinion, but we should know to debunk those marketing myths.

The ideal job for marketers is to generate leads to their website and funnel the users through their website to turn into sales.

We want to make that as easy as possible and for that to happen we want the internet to work for us, not the other way around. Here are some tools that can help us automate that process. Keep in mind that while there are many more tools, these are either free or extremely cheap to use.

Automate the Internet

IFTTT – If This Then That is very easy to setup with over one hundred apps. You can automatically post your latest WordPress post to Facebook or Twitter (or to your Buffer if you want to stick to your optimized schedule). Take an RSS feed and automatically tweet new posts out (but don’t let this be the only thing you are doing on Twitter). Be sure to have personalized, conversations and engaging posts in the mix as well.

Zapier – Similar to Buffer in that if something gets triggered, or in their terms zapped, then the action you select will then happen. They have support for over 300 applications, so slightly more than Buffer. It all depends on the applications that you need to use in an automated fashion to determine which is best for you.

Getting Social

Buffer – I prefer it to Hootsuite because the dashboard is very simplistic and easy to use. You can easily use it for dozens of different clients and keep your queue filled up. You can also easily share when you’re browsing the internet with their browser plugins too.

It suggests content to share, as well as sets up your schedule for optimal times of engagement. You can also share the same piece of content several times over the next few months, all with a different message.

Tweriod – Online tool that will analyze your followers, when they are active on Twitter, and let you know the best days and times to share your content. Typically the best times are Monday – Thursday, from a little before noon (be mindful of west coasters) until the late afternoon. Twitter apparently takes 3-day weekends so stay away from Friday – Sunday. Buffer lets you easily see analytics and what posts got the most visibility and engagement.

Buzzsumo – Buzzsumo is a great way to see what topics are trending and how many social shares they got. You can filter by infographics, guest posts, articles, giveaways, videos and interviews over the past year, 6 months, past month, week, or in the last day. It will show the number of shares across all the top social networks as you can see below:

This will help with your brainstorming stage of creating content and will give you an idea of what has worked, what hasn’t and what hasn’t really been done yet…or effectively.

You can see top influencers for keywords and look at how often they get retweeted, the percentage of their tweets that are retweets, and the percentage of how often they reply.

Lastly, ContentGems is a great tool that you can use for free for up to 2 keyword terms. You put in your interests and get a daily e-mail from the most trending topics associated with those keywords.

This list can help you get started to automate a lot of your daily processes, but it isn’t the complete list as there are many more subscription options out there. If you have any free or cheap tools to automate the internet and your social media marketing please drop a line below