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How To Stay Focused And Motivated While Working From Home

Working from home is an ideal choice for many. Whether you own your own business or your employer allows you to telecommute, working from home offers many conveniences and freedoms that a traditional office job does not. However, working from home also offers many challenges; the primary challenge for many is staying focused and motivated.

Step One: Create a Workspace

Staying focused and motivated when working from home requires a home office. Yes, maybe the kitchen table or the couch could work. However, placing yourself in those locations is just asking for distractions.

When you create a designated workspace, your frame of mind changes immediately when you walk into it and sit down. You’re mentally more ready to focus. Make your workspace comfortable enough that you enjoy being there yet not so comfortable that you want to be there when you’re not working or that it becomes a place to hang out.

Additionally, when you create a workspace, your family will take your working from home more seriously. It becomes easier to set boundaries. When you’re in your office, you’re working and you’re not to be disturbed.

Step Two: Create a Schedule

Okay so maybe one of the things you love about working from home is that you don’t have to create a schedule however a schedule will help you stay focused and productive. When you create your schedule, remember to schedule in breaks, household chores, and time with your family and meals. It’s easy to say, “I’m going to work from 10-4” however actually sitting there and working for six hours is going to be a lot more difficult. Give yourself breaks and downtime during the day. When you schedule in your distractions, your working time is much more focused and it’s easier to stay focused because you know you have breaks to look forward to.

Additionally, make sure to schedule days off. It’s easy when you work from home to work from the time you get up until the time you go to bed seven days a week. It’s a sure way to suffer burnout quickly. Plan vacations, days off, and time for yourself to stay motivated.

Step Three: Eliminate Distractions

Make a list of distractions. Perhaps it’s laundry, your children, your friends calling you for coffee, appointments and errands. Make a list of these distractions and then find a way to eliminate them.

For example, if your children are a distraction, then how can you plan your day around them? Can you trade childcare days with other parents who work from home? Can you hire a sitter for part of the day? Can you work around their naps?
Staying motivated and focused when working from home is possible. Rather than modeling your work from home life around what you feel you should do, take a look at your reality, your needs and personality, and create a work from home life that works for you. It takes a little planning and premeditation to get the job done.

Make Sure People Find Your Website

When it comes to owning and operating a successful online business there are three very important words – Search Engine Optimization. It’s how people find your website because if they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you and that after all is what business is all about.

Step One: Understand what search engines do. Search engines are essentially programs, which index all of the pages on the Internet. When someone enters a phrase into his or her search engine of choice, that search engine searches their database and displays their results. Different search engines store what they index differently. For example, Google stores a portion of the webpage and Yahoo stores every word on the page. How they store this information affects the results.

Your goal as a business owner is to achieve the highest results possible because people typically only look at the first couple of pages

Step Two: Finding Your Keywords

Keywords are the words your prospects use to find your products, services, and information. Keywords can be one or two words, for example, “Miami vacation.” Keywords can also be a phrase of many words, for example, “Miami Family Vacation On a Budget.” With more than 80% of Internet users researching purchases online before they spend a dime, the right keywords make all the difference.

To find the right keywords:

Brainstorm ideas. What words do you think people use to find your website and your products or services?

Take advantage of keyword research tools like Word Tracker and the Google keyword tool to do a bit of specific keyword analysis.

Step Three: Placing Keywords

We mentioned in the beginning that search engines scan the Internet and index web pages. They look in a few key places including:

* The Title,
* The Headers,
* The Body Content
* The Meta Tags.

Step Four: Add Content

Content is what the search engines search. Therefore it pays to upload relevant and keyword optimized content on a regular basis. It’ll motivate the search engines to index your site and those pages thus pushing you up on the search engine rankings.

Here are some of the types of content you might consider using on your site:

* Articles
* Special reports
* Interviews with an industry expert
* Product reviews
* Discussion forums
* Blog posts
* “How to” guides
* Tips lists
* Training courses

Step Five: Get Links

Search engines typically skip listing websites if they do not have relevant incoming links. A link is a website address which someone can click on to go to another site – in this case your site.

There are different types of links.

Standard link - typically considered a direct link which looks like a basic website address – www.yourwebsitehere.com

Text link - link where the website address is embedded in the text.

Deep link – a link to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page.

In order for a link to provide value it must be both relevant and credible. Meaning, the site linking to you has a lot of visitors and a lot of incoming links the search engine will give credibility and weight to the value of that link and it must also be in a website which shares a common interest or complimentary subject matter to your website.

Take these five steps and you’ll be well on your way to making sure people are able to find your website. It’s one of the most powerful business building strategies available.

Make Advertising Work For You

In order for your advertising to perform optimally, that is for it to generate the awareness and sales you desire, it’s imperative that you create a system to test and track your results. Tracking will tell you how your advertisement is performing and testing will tell you which specific variables, like your headline, work the best. Here’s how to make advertising work for you.

Step One: Find the right tools for the job. Google analytics does a wonderful job of tracking website data. Creating an advertising strategy whereby you can track the click through rates of specific advertisements will go a long way toward providing the information you need.

Additionally, if you’re using AdWords or other pay per click search engine-advertising methods then they’ll provide the necessary data.

In order to tweak an ad for optimal results, many business owners use a system called Split Testing or multivariate testing. This method involves testing the results from two different variables in the same advertising campaign. The results are tracked over a specified period of time. There are many software programs, which will facilitate a complex multivariate testing strategy however; it can also be as simple as sending the viewers of each different advertisement to a unique webpage and tracking the results.

Step Two: Decide what to test. You can split test just about anything from the headline to the background color in your banner ad or your call to action. The most useful items to test include:

* Keywords
* Graphics
* Copy
* Headlines
* Price points
* Photos
* Bonus offers
* Text links
* Calls to action

The most important thing to remember is to keep everything constant except the item you’re testing. This means that if you’re testing to see if a particular keyword works better in a PPC campaign, the advertisement has to remain exactly the same for both keywords.

At this point you’ve chosen your ad type, you’ve chosen a location to advertise, you’ve written your ad and you’ve created ways to test the ad to analyze effectiveness. You’re ready to start advertising and testing and tracking your results for maximum effectiveness and return on investment.