8 Tips To Grow Your Business

Whether you’re just starting a new business or you’re looking to grow an established business, Feng Shui can help you. By working with the natural energies of the world, you can help draw opportunity and possibility to you just by changing your environment. Here are several tips you can use to grow your business – no matter where you’re starting out from.

1. Look for dead things – Whether it’s plants or items that simply don’t work, if you want to grow a business, you need to toss these items, fix them, or nurse them back to health. Anything that symbolizes death or stunted growth is going to attract that negative energy into your business.

2. Seeds of change – If you like the idea of symbols to represent your growth, try planting seeds and then nursing them to full growth. This will allow you to encourage the energy of upward movement and seeds blossoming into a fully mature plant – much like your business. Taking the time to water these seeds and provide for their needs will help you bring that Spring energy into your business tasks.

3. Failure is not an option – Though most of us would say that we learn from our mistakes, you do not want to surround yourself with reminders of your failures. Remove any traces of negative job performances or other things that went badly in the course of your business practice. This way, you will be surrounding yourself with positive reminders of what you have done well, spurning you on to do more positive things.

4. Read success stories – Focusing on what can happen for your business will encourage positive energy in your day to day business life. Read success stories and post them around your workspace to remind yourself that things are possible and that you might be the next success story. Or you could write your own success story, even if it hasn’t happened yet.

5. Check your fears at the door – You might also want to try your doorknob to make sure it’s not sticking. When you can not open your door easily, the energy coming in and going out is stifled. You need to make sure that your door is always working well and that you can move easily from one part of your work area to the next.

6. Look to the left – When you walk into your workspace, look to the left back area of the room. Is this area cluttered and messy or is it professional and productive? This area is where energy related to wealth and success is focused, so this area should be as clean as possible. If there are any negative items in this section, you should remove them immediately.

7. Center your success – Though the middle of a room is associated with health in Feng Shui practices, you might want to realize that the health of your business can also apply here. By taking care to clear this space and keep it free of clutter, you can encourage financial and business health. You might also want to hang a crystal in the middle of the room to radiate energy to all corners of the room, protecting your space from being stuffy and potentially negative to your business goals.

8. Leave some empty room – So often, we try to fill every corner of our homes and offices with stuff. But when we do so, we aren’t leaving room for anything new to enter. Try to leave some empty space in your office or work area to help you encourage the energy of attraction and of possibility. Since there is always room for more in your workspace, you will be able to have more successful ventures.

8 Tips To Create A Landing Page

Introduction

You need copy for your landing page but you’re not sure where to start. First let’s clarify what we mean by a landing page. A landing page can be a page that visitors come to after clicking on a promotional banner or link. Ultimately, the landing page must convince the visitor that they should stay on your site. You may also have a goal that you want accomplished, such as:

• Signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form
• Buying a product
• Reading informational pieces

What’s going to keep them there? The structure, the language, and the visual appeal all play a part of it. Check out these tips to create a great landing page, or reinvent the one you already have.

The structure

People arrive at your site looking for answers. They scan to see if they’re in the right place and assess whether it’s going to be a quick and easy visit or a long grinding one. Your landing page is the welcome wagon inviting them in and feeding them the information they need. The structure of the page will either pull them in and encourage them to fulfill your goal, or distract and cause them to cut out of there before getting the whole picture.

The structure of the landing page in general should be matching that of the banner, ad or link they clicked on to get them there. So for example, if your PPC Ad is targeting SEO articles, your landing page should discuss exactly that. If a Victoria Secret’s Ad for lingerie shows up and you click on it, you will be transferred to a landing page with the exact image and structure of the ad.

The visuals

• Copy placement – Strategic use of copy and graphics will catch the visitor’s attention. Don’t muck up the page with large, distracting graphics. Use plenty of whitespace and place your message in the central portion of the page rather than placing information down the sides, where the focus can be lost quickly. Keep the copy short. The visitor expects a precise message, so don’t choke it up with tons of mindless prose.

• Beauty is in the eye –Use a consistent color palate. If you have advertising or banners that link visitors to your website, make sure the concept and color scheme match across the board. It’s also a great visual indicator for the visitor because they can easily identify that they’re still in the right place.

• Simplify – Remove any distracting elements like advertising banners, links, or additional blocks of information from the page and get down to the specific message.

The goal

Before you design the landing page, decide what the goal of the page will be. If you’re looking for newsletter subscribers, the goal will be to have the visitor enter their information and become a member of your mailing list.

Be a sleuth

Do your research. Keep your visitors in mind when building your landing page and tailor it to suit their needs. By narrowing your options and focusing on your visitor, you’ll stay on target.

Keep your focus

Keep the focus on you. You’ve dangled a large poster board over their head and pulled them in. Now that you’ve got them, don’t give your visitors a reason to wander.

Use a call to action

A call to action, such as ‘subscribe now’ or ‘get this offer’ reminds the visitor why they are on your website. Place them toward the top of your page. For uses that want to click, it allows them to find it easily. For those who are still deciding, it’s a great reminder.

Many sites place the consultation form or contact form directly on the landing page, which may not be such a bad idea. Again, you need glaring calls to action. Don’t add several useless links on the page that will take the visitor back to your main site; rather include the links that will get them to actually purchase your product/service.

Write like a pro

No, you don’t have to hire one to look like one. What’s the best way to come off like a professional? Create landing pages with no grammatical or spelling errors. I recently hit a website offering ‘discount holideys.’ As I clicked out of there, I pictured the four-star flea-bag motel by the swampland I might have booked if I stayed.

8 Keys To Starting An Internet Business

Here is a sound starting place for the would be internet entrepreneur. Eight (8) Keys for starting your own internet based business. The world wide web is a great medium for home based businesses in the 21st century. Like their counterparts, the brick and mortar businesses on main street, there are basics that should not be over looked. Nine basics that the Tennessee Mountain Man and the Computer Man website design team recommend are listed here.

1. You must have a basic idea of what you are going to do and why.

A cursory review of sample business plans will quickly press the idea that you need to define your business desires as narrowly as possible.

If your only desire is to make money and your attitude is everything and everyone else be damned, you have a hard road to hoe. And, if you manage to succeed, chances are your financial success will literally cost you everything that makes life worth living and will certainly steal all pleasure you might otherwise have enjoyed.

If, however, you can grasp the idea of helping others achieve their dreams as your main objective all things are possible. Help enough people reach their goals and yours will follow along with an enjoyable life.

2. You must educate yourself.

Using your favorite search engine or better yet a combination of search engines research your future. Learn all you can about the business and who is currently king of the mountain. How did they get there? How do they stay there? Can you compete? If not move on.

3. Write A Business Plan.

Once armed with the information you need, again using a search engine to get business plan ideas examining the designs of others in your field if you need to, create a business plan. While the business plan is not written in stone, it should be sufficient to keep you going for awhile. It can always and will need to be amended from time to time.

Choose a search engine and search for “business plan sample” or “internet business plan sample”. You will find several… many free. Compare them. Select the business plan best aligned with your hopes and ideas and start designing your own.

4. Choosing suppliers, drop shippers, etc.

Back to research which will become a part of your routine. You must always know where you can get the best deals and service (don’t forget timeliness and shipping costs) with the least amount of warehousing.

5. Build your website.

Do this on your computer then sign up for and move it to a free host for testing.

Do not promote this testing site. In fact you should place a “robots.txt” file in the root stopping search engines from cataloguing it.

Run every possible test and make sure there are no broken links and everything on the site functions properly. You will have enough problems and surprises as time goes by. Plan to succeed. Don’t sabotage your own internet business before you get started.

6. Now you are ready to find someone to host your website.

Do this last. Contracts for hosting are sometimes month to month, but more usually one or two year terms and the clock starts running as soon as you say “I do”. So don’t start the clock until you have a website designed and ready to go up on the web.

7. Submit to search engines.

Once your site is on your new host and up (usually within 24 hours) test again. If all is well, hand submit your new site to the major search engines. Not sure which ones? Back to the search engine. You and search engines are going to become fast friends if you are to be all you can be.

If you use a “robots.txt” file on your permanent web site make sure you have removed the block or reputable search engines will not index your site.

8. Now promote…promote…promote. Why? Just like on main street, location is everything and location in this case is determined by search engine ranking and directory indexing.

Good Luck !!

8 Essential Tips On How To Write A Sales Letter

Before you can embark on the monumental task of writing effective sales letters, there are certain things you have to possess first and it’s not having a deeper vocabulary or the eloquence of a poet. Rather, you need to possess adequate grammar skills (knowing the difference from their and there is a start), knowledge of your target market, and familiarity with sales letters in general. If you have all of those down to pat then it’s definitely time for you to write one yourself.

8 Essential Tips on How to Write a Sales Letter

Tip #1 Establishing Rapport with Your Reader – Start by addressing your reader personally. Rather than writing Dear Madam, go ahead and write Dear Martha. Use “you” instead of “one”, “he”, or “she” when writing the rest of your sales letter. Use a friendly and conversational tone so that a customer won’t hesitate later on to make his inquiries or voice out any of his concerns. And at the end of your letter, sign it personally so that it would truly seem like a private letter between you two than just something that’s mass-produced.

Tip #2 Establishing the Facts Pronto – Your first paragraph – not counting the ones which are made up of greetings and other courtesy lines for your customers – must contain basic information about who you are and why you’re writing to them. By the end of the paragraph, you should have also established your credibility and thus providing them the necessary reason to read more of what you have to say.

Tip #3 Validate Your Claims – The following paragraphs should validate what you have initially claimed in your first paragraph. You can use graphical presentations, statistics, facts from well-established authorities, success stories, and anything else that will let your readers know you’re for real.

Tip #4 Use the Appropriate Writing Style and Approach – Knowing the answer to this will depend greatly on how familiar you are with the wants and needs of your target market. If you are catering to teenagers for instance then they’ll greatly appreciate it if you use simple and hip terms. Speak their language in other words!

Tip #5 Be Careful about Using Graphics – Pictures may speak a thousand words, but they’re not at all easy to download in the Internet. They are better used in direct mail sales letters, but if you’re willing to give them a shot for online use, make sure they’re edited with SEO in mind. Keep them small, reduce their quality without sacrificing image presentation, and provide them with captions.

Tip #6 Make It Unique – Sales letters may use the same formula over and over, but those that are successful will have certain unique features or memorable lines included in their letters. Yours must have one or two of those as well. Making your sales letter unique and original in at least one part of it will ensure that your readers will enjoy better recall of your company’s offers.

Making your letter unique is easier said than done, but one way to do it is by concentrating on what your company has and others don’t.

Tip #7 Creating the Best Subject Line and Title – Writing titles are sometimes more difficult than writing the actual content. To make this task easier, it’s best to leave them at the end. Once you’ve completed the content of your sales letter, you’ll usually have an easier way of summarizing everything up with the appropriate subject line and title. As you go about forming them, just make sure you keep them brief but interesting. Ultimately, titles and subject lines must be able to explain the gist of your sales letter but at the same time serve as an irresistible invitation to read more about it.

Tip #8 Ending with a Strong Call for Action – Anyone with any knowledge and experience in writing sales letters will always tell you to end with a strong call for action, and this article won’t be any different because it’s truly integral. After all the things you’ve said in your letter, you have to remind them at the end what your point was in writing in the first place. Emphasize the need and urgency behind the action!

Follow these eight tips, and your sales letters are sure to attain their objectives!

7 Ways To Reach Your MLM Goals

Setting goals for your mlm company are important, but they are nothing if you don’t follow through with them. Setting the goals is the first step of the process while doing it is the ongoing process. Here are 7 things you can do to reach your mlm goals.

1. Envision your dreams

The best way to stay motivated with your mlm company is to envision what you would like life to be like. If you can be faithful to your dreams and stay true to your goals you will have a better chance at accomplishing them.

2. Hang around successful people

There is a myth that you are who you hang around with. If you can surround yourself with successful people you will pick up tips, advice, and an overall attitude that you can and will succeed with your mlm company.

3. Listen to motivational tapes

If you continue to pound it in your head that you can do it and you will attain your goals you will. Listening to motivational tapes and attending motivational speakers will help you gain confidence in yourself and become fearless of the task that lies ahead of you.

4. Become an expert at what you do

In order to accomplish your mlm goals you have to be able to succeed in different facets of the business. By practicing your presentation and going over your approach to prospects you will be less nervous and more confident when the time comes to talk to the prospects.

5. Avoid all bumps in the road

You are going to come across people saying you can’t do it or you gave it your all. To accomplish your dreams and have success with your mlm company you have to put these people and their words behind you. These are simply distractions and bumps in the road that will try to get you off course. Stay focused on what you want.

6. Keep your priorities straight

Having a successful mlm company requires your full attention at all times, not half the time or some of the time. If you want to have success and want to have a fulfilling life with network marketing you must keep your priorities straight.

7. Go over your goals EVERY DAY!!!

You should get in a habit of reviewing your mlm goals on a daily basis so you know exactly what needs to be done. Every time you accomplish a goal, cross it off the list and move on to the next goal. Your list is not set in stone by any means, so if needed don’t be afraid to add to the list. If you know what your goals are and see them repetitively, you will be more apt to achieve them.

These are just a few of the things you can do to assure yourself of attaining your mlm goals. Everyday you will come across negative people with negative comments. However, if you can maintain a positive attitude and envision your dreams you will find yourself on the right path towards an accomplished mlm company.

7 Ways To Harvest Free Traffic

The downfall of many would-be successful internet marketers is that they just can’t get the revenue to expense ratio right. High on the list of culprits is paying too much to drive traffic to their websites. One way to fix this is to concentrate on free traffic and can the advertising altogether, as these 7 Tips will help you do.

Tip #1: Organic Search Engine Rankings. There are only three search engines you need to worry about and those are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Conquering top search engine rankings in the big three starts with good keyword research. When you know what search terms you want to target, it’s then a matter of tailoring your site to match what these search engines are looking for.

With Google you need lots of original content (that is, large websites) and natural-looking incoming links. With Yahoo it’s pretty much the same except that you can use reprinted articles, otherwise known as duplicate content, in building your subpages. With MSN you can attain top spots with small mini-sites that simply use the search terms in the domain.

You need incoming links, known as backlinks, to move up in the rankings. Some popular ways to get these include using social bookmarking sites, posting comments and trackbacks on blogs (and other sites) that don’t use “no follow” meta tags, submitting articles to article directories, posting your URL on directory sites, and exchanging links with other sites.

Tip #2: Social Networks such as Myspace. This usually involves making multiple profiles and getting very social on the social network with other users. Automation software is often utilized to make mundane tasks such as sending friend requests, comments, and messages to other users much faster. Myspace allows their database to be sorted by a nice range of demographics, which is very helpful if you need a target list of prospects to promote your product or service to. You can also access members of groups who all have a shared interest in a certain subject.

Tip #3: Free Classified Ad Sites. This is getting to be a very effective free traffic method, but you do need to go about it with some tact and creativity. Craig’s List is the king of free online classifieds, and a properly tailored campaign can harvest hundreds of targeted prospects per day. Software is very handy for managing larger campaigns.

Tip #4: Video Hosting Sites. Anyone can harvest sales leads from video hosting sites these days. You can make a video using a digital camera or free screen recording software on your computer, or a combination of both. This is where the creative types will soar above the crowd.

You Tube is the undisputed king of online video hosting, and a smart marketer  can reap thousands of views for his or her video per day from inside You Tube itself. All you need to do is drive people to your page, which can be done by commenting on other videos or other peoples pages, and sending friend requests. Software makes this process much more efficient.

Tip #5: Question and Answer Sites. These are becoming incredibly popular, with Yahoo Answers being the clear leader for the moment. Anyone can ask questions, anyone can answer questions, and as long as you don’t come across as a blatant spammer, dropping your links into both questions and answers is pretty easy. It’s certainly worth your time to market any niche through Yahoo Answers.

Tip #6: Forums. Message board forums exist on the internet for just about every topic imaginable. An advanced Google search using “message board forum” and your topic of interest will probably turn up several places where people discuss your subject. Join these forums, become active and helpful to others, then do subtle marketing through your signature (or even your user name).

Tip #7 Give-aways on auction sites. Auction sites such as ebay are a great opportunity to find customers for your niche. Write a 10-page report that has a few good tips and a great sales pitch for your product, and then give it away for free (or charge something like $1 for it). Hype it up with some good sales jargon so it moves well. Capture the emails of those downloading the book and add them to an autoresponder service so you can keep mailing them offers.

These tips are only the beginning of free traffic opportunities on the web. Plenty of marketers make a nice income without spending a dime on advertising. Will you become one of them?

7 Types Of Sales Letters You Can Use To Improve Profit Margins

While the main objective for sales letters does not change at all – and that’s to encourage customers to avail of your products and services – there are different types of approaches you can use to make them more effective.

7 Types of Sales Letter You Can Use to Improve Profit Margins

Introductory Sales Letters – This is perhaps the most discussed about type of sales letter in the Internet. This type of sales letter introduces your company to prospective customers. Readers may or may not know about you, but either way, they’re sure not to have bought from you, and your sales letter should tell them why it’s time to change that fact. When writing this letter, keep it as brief as possible because they don’t know you well enough to believe that reading more than one page of your letter would do them any good.

Product Update Sales Letters – This is mainly for old and existing sales customers. The primary thrust of this letter is to let them know about your latest product offerings and how they compare to previous items in your product line. Usually, sales letters of this ilk offer incentives as well for customers to buy during the promotional period. Make sure you include details about the expiration date for the promo period as well as information for ordering just in case they’ve forgotten how already.

Selling Incentive Sales Letters – This type of sales letter is also for old and existing customers. Although you’re not offering them anything new to buy, you’re offering them the chance to purchase old or existing products and services for lower or better rates. There could be discounts, rebates, or other selling incentives. It could be a contest or any other promotion to encourage them to buy more and buy now.

When writing this type of letter, it’s important to make the incentive as exciting and attractive as possible. Secondly, emphasize the urgency. Selling incentives last for a brief period of time – it has to or you might go bankrupt – so make sure they understand that the clock’s ticking away!

Thank You Sales Letters – If it’s the first time for any individual to avail of your products and services, always send them a thank you letter right after completing their purchases. You don’t have to do it and they know it. But you did it all the same and customers will always appreciate your efforts. It will also make them remember your website more easily. At the end of your letter, of course, make sure that you mention what other great products and services are awaiting them in your website upon their return.

Holiday Sales Letters – Never let any important holiday in the year pass by without writing to your customers. Write to them one or two weeks before the holiday. Write the appropriate greetings then segue with explanations as to why your products or services could be a perfect gift for the celebrated holiday. If you have holiday promotional offers you definitely have to mention them in this letter.

Company Celebration Sales Letters – These sales letters establish the fact that you think of your customers as part of your family, and that’s why you include them in your celebrations. If this year marks the 60th year you are in business then make sure that you let your customers know this. Acknowledge the role they’ve played in your success and of course don’t forget to end the letter with an invitation to drop by your website in order to build stronger and longer lasting bonds. These letters also apply for any achievement, award, or recognition that has been bequeathed to your company.

We Miss You Sales Letters – Your customer or order tracking software can usually alert you when a long period of time has elapsed since certain customers have dropped by or purchased from your website. Make sure to send them “we miss you” sales letters to these customers as well as customized information regarding your newest products and services that you’re sure they’ll welcome based on data from their previous orders.

These may take time to write, but it’s an effort well-spent because it ensures that your customers will remember you – even when though much time has passed since their last visit – simply because you took the time to remember them as well.

7 Top Ways To Make Money Online

Why would anyone want to make money online? Well, firstly you can work from anywhere in the world that you can get an internet connection. Secondly, you can create an incredible income even if you only have a few hours a day. So if you want freedom, flexibility and want to make money, read on…
So, how do you actually make money online?

Here are some of the most popular and proven ways to make money online, in no particular order:

1. Make money on eBay
2. Make money with blogs
3. Make money with Online Surveys
4. Affiliate Marketing
5. Google Adwords
6. Google Adsense
7. Your own website

Some of these methods require some internet knowledge, while some are suitable for a total beginner. Some will produce an immediate income while others may take months or more.

For instance, blogs and surveys are ideal for the beginner, and surveys can produce immediate income. A blog is like an online journal. Surveys simply require you to share your opinion.

Your own web-site on the other hand requires some expertise and will usually produce income in the longer-term. However once your site does start making money for you, it’s like having your own money-printing machine!

Google Adsense is where you enable adverts to show on your blog or website, and you get paid every time someone clicks on the ads. So, if your blog or website become popular, and you are getting thousands of visitors a week or a day, you can make a great income doing pretty much nothing! (You did the work previously setting up the blog or site and now you can reap the rewards).

Google Adwords is where you pay for your own advert that will appear down the right side of the page when people do a google search. For instance, let’s say you are selling health products and need more customers. If you have your own website, however simple, you can create an advert that will appear on Google’s search results when someone does a search for health products. You pay every time someone clicks on your advert. Let’s say Google charge you 20 cents a click, and for every 30 people that click you get a sale of, say, $40. As long as you are in profit with the results, it can be well worth doing. However, I strongly recommend that you follow the experts with this method, else you could waste a lot of money. Read my ebook before you get involved.

Affiliate marketing can work well with Adwords. This is where you send buyers to other people’s websites and get generous commission on any sales made. The sales are tracked by way of a coded link. You don’t need to buy stock or send items to customers, the website owner does all that. This can be a superb way to make money once you understand it.

Selling on Ebay is another way to make money online quickly. You don’t need to sell stuff from your loft, you can sell whatever you are most interested in – so, if you love sport, why not look into selling sports-related items. If you make jewellery, sell that. If you love dogs, sell dog-related items. Again, there are tricks of the trade that will make the difference between ebay success and failure.

There are e-books available which show you how to create your own web-site and you can also get free websites when you buy information packages on the web (for examples of this visit the recommended businesses via the link below). I make money in all these areas because I think it’s a great idea to have more than one income stream. After all, why limit yourself?

I go into detail about exactly how to make money online with all 7 of these methods in my free e-book (see below).

My best advice is to do what I did and copy those who are already making money online as I demonstrate in the e-book. Why? Well, you can avoid wasting lots of time and money this way. I spent 18 months trying to figure out the best ways to make money online and the result is, many methods can work but not always as fast as you may wish. So, you can get started with the methods that make immediate cash and then progress into other methods if you want to earn more.

Some people make six figures A MONTH online, while others just want a few hundred a week. That’s the great thing about making money online, you can build up to whatever income you want, and let’s face it, there aren’t many jobs that offer you that!

7 Tips For Getting Listed In Search Engines

Getting listed in search engines is very important for internet marketers. A high search engine ranking for your website is critical if you want to generatel your own leads that will convert into signups and sales. This article discusses the keys to getting listed in search engines.

The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

1. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your home page’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your business name.

2. Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keyword. It is usually best to keep them to six words or less.

3. Your website content also plays a crucial role in getting listed in search engines. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content The text on your site must contain the most important keywords, the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

4. Each page on your site should contain around 250 words, but if this is not desirable due to your design, shoot for at least 100 carefully chosen words. This text is essential to achieve a high page ranking.

5. To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you can to do this, the text is HTML.

6. Next are what is called meta tags. These are just simple code. They only have a small effect in getting listed in search engines.

7. Finally, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is very important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site.

Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.

To check your link popularity, an easy and free tool to try is http://www.linkpopularity.com/

Getting listed in search engines is not all that difficult when you follow a few simple methods and use a system that creates quality links.

7 Tips For A More Spacious Home Office

The majority of entrepreneurs that work from home can remember the days when their home office was brand new. It all looked so professional with the newly bought equipment and furniture. There was very little clutter or mess. Several months later, we look around to find areas crowded with stacks of papers, disks and files from our daily work; it doesn’t look so tidy or professional anymore.

To work properly it’s not only important to have your office organized but also to have plenty of space in the office itself. Having room to work will help keep you motivated and inspired to complete your daily tasks. It helps you stay focused on what you’re doing instead of becoming annoyed at all the clutter around you. Here’s a few tips to keep your home office spacious and functional.

1. Get rid of all the clutter. Anything that doesn’t serve a purpose or is required for your day-to-day work has to go. Old memos or drafts of work past their sell by date? Get rid of them. Any paperwork that’s not needed gets sent to recycling. Simple.

2. Mounted cabinets are a great way to tidily store office items. A medium or large sized cabinet will hold more stuff and keep papers from piling up into small mountains on the floor and your desk. Having them wall mounted means your floorspace isn’t eaten up by yet more office furniture.

3. Non-work items. Look at your desk. How many of those items are actually required for your work and how many are just useless accessories that got left there over time? Get rid of the items that don’t serve a purpose.

4. Your desk shape plays a huge part here. Having a desk in the shape or a U or L will give you more room because you can sit “into” the shape of the desk giving you more room than you might imagine. Use the small drawers of the desk to store additional office supplies like pens, staplers, stamps and so forth.

5. Tidy up the wiring. If you’re using a computer and a phone there’s going to be wires hanging all over the place behind or underneath your desk. Not only does this look bad but it can be dangerous – people can trip over these things. My dog loves getting herself caught up in any loose wiring and trying to drag computer equipment off my desk.

6. How much light is in the room is also important. Good lighting will make any office appear more spacious. Always let in as much natural light as possible. In the evenings have plenty of floor or desk lamps to make sure you’re not sitting in the almost black of night while you’re trying to work.

7. Shelving can also be very handy. One or two large shelves in your home office will give you space for printers, fax machines and files. I personally keep my printer on a shelf away from the desk. Why? Because it eats up too much space and I can still reach it from where I sit.

Using any of the above tips will give you more space in your home office. That space allows you to mentally and physically breathe in that room and get the most out of each working day. You owe it to yourself and your business to do this.

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