First, a warm and hearty wish for a good Holiday season to all of you.

We have lots of snow here, very unusual for our part of Oregon. We’re part way up a hill, with just enough elevation that we get more snow than the valley floor, and it’s very pretty. We haven’t been able to get out for several days, but we’re warm and have plenty of food, so life is good!

I wanted to share some words of wisdom from John Reese’s blog. In this post, he talks about a concept of “time units” for getting things done. It’s basically the concept that you look at the tasks involved in a project rather than the overall giant package that can be daunting. It’s not a new concept at all, but as usual, he pulls it all together in way that sticks.

http://tinyurl.com/736smu

This really resonated with me. I know, intellectually, that the only way to get anything done is to take that first step and just keep going at it. But I do find myself staring at the directory of all the ebooks in my “ebay to be listed” file, with my brain pumping away at “OMG, that’s too much. I can’t take all this on right now. Guess I’ll play an online game for awhile.” Or watch the food channel, or cruise my email…

If any of that sounds familiar, check out the post and read the excellent comments. I’ve bookmarked the page with a resolve to reread it when I get an OMG moment.

Wishing you all a great Holiday Season and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

When eBay lowered the boom on digital downloads, some of the folks affected moved their business to the classified ad format, and they seem to be making money.

I’ve not made the move myself, instead focusing on rebuilding my account with the sale of my ebooks on CD. Truthfully, I have been waiting to see if eBay ever clarified their rules and information. Not my best decision, apparently, since many classified ad sellers are building a tidy business, collecting signups for their mailing lists, and making money.

Apparently, eBay is ignoring changes to classified ad restrictions for now. It’s still kind of a maze, I think, to figure out, but there is someone who has it figured out and is sharing that information. Her name is Tracey Edwards, and she’s published the 3rd edition of her Auction Classified Cash ebook. In it, she shows how with just seven ads running (at $9.95 per month each ad), she’s making close to $1,000 a month. Not a bad return at all!

Even though this is still an income that depends on eBay, I do think it can be considered a separate income avenue. I’m going to spend some serious time looking at making this work for me! Check out the sales page, and see if this isn’t something that can help in your business as well.

Stay well.

You’ve listened to me nag before about diversifying your business, but I wanted to let you know about this new program from Andrew Hanson, a well-known, very successful online marketer.

It’s the coolest new tool, and it’s called FirePow (see the new banner?), and I think it’s an amazing product. Well, it’s actually more than a product; it’s several tools and a community of folks all working to build massive blog networks.

We all know that niche marketing is the way to generate ongoing streams of income. Find a niche that’s underserved, give them good information and products, and you’ll make money. Find another niche, do the same thing, and again and again, and you’ll build a very nice income.

That’s the basic idea of FirePow, and it provides all the tools you need to be able to get your information on the web and indexed quickly. I’m just blown away with it.

Here’s just a bit of what this incredible system does:

1. Builds you a blog from scratch with just a few clicks of the mouse. You tell it how you want the blog to look, the keywords you’re looking to target, what plugins you want to use, and a few other goodies, and it spits the blog out for you. That’s no FTP, no database creation, no messing around with code – just a few clicks and you’re away.

2. It helps you promote your site – in multiple ways in fact. It has in house features that help you post content to article directories for promotion, to social bookmarking services for promotion, to RSS Feed Directories for promotion, and even has it’s own niche blog network of high PR sites from which you can get relevant backlinks!

3. It lets you manage all of your blogs from a central control panel! That means when you have 5 blogs running, you can easily see from ONE screen which blogs need new posts, which blogs are ranking where in the search engines, and you can make changes to any of the sites from one spot.

You do still need to do some work; I’m not going to tell you that by clicking a few places this system is going to set you up for life. Doing the niche research, putting your own spin on the information, etc., are all still necessary. It’s just that FirePow takes you through the techy stuff, freeing your time for the money-making stuff.

I got the great program included with another coaching program that unfortunately is now closed. However, Firepow is very much available, and you can get it at a discounted price for a time (I honestly don’t know when the price will change, but Firepow has been on the market for awhile). Click here or on the banner to the right of your screen. However, if you decide to buy, click to leave the screen first. You’ll get one of those virtual assistants offering a discount.

If you have any interest at all in niche marketing (and you should), be sure to at least look at the sales page. I’m just sorry I didn’t get into this program months ago!