How many times do you bookmark websites and then forget to submit them to StumbleUpon? I know I forget all the time. So, I have a big list of Del.icio.us bookmarks, but my StumbleUpon profile suffers from lack of love. But all that changes today thanks to the urber geekls over at GreaseMonkey.

If you haven’t heard, Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. There are hundreds of scripts available for free. And if you like to tinker, you can also write your own. These scripts are fantastic and they can easily add days back into your life by making you more productive online.

My most recent discovery is the Greasemonkey script, Delicious Stumbles. The script adds a link to your del.icio.us page that helps you submit links on the page to StumbleUpon.

The great part is it takes what you’ve already written as Del.icio.us comments and it submits them to StumbleUpon. It does the same thing with your tags. So all you have to do is click the link, verify the info, and then submit the link to StumbleUpon. I’m telling you, the thing is genius. You can hammer out a few past bookmarks in seconds and keep your StumbleUpon profile well nourished.

Productivity is an important topic for me because I am easily distracted and I already have a lot that needs to get done. So anything that speeds my work and keeps me on task is worth it’s weight in gold. Greasemonkey is free, and the time these scripts will save you is almost like getting paid to do what you have to do anyway.

What’s your favorite productivity tool or Greasemonkey script?

Monkeying around,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Do you own a business or a job? According to Robert Kiyosaki, if your “business” doesn’t function when you’re not around, then you don’t have a business, you’ve created a job.

Creating a real business involves setting up systems with replaceable parts. As an example, if a software developer leaves your company, then you need to have a method for hiring a new one to replace them. As part of the system that’s in place to run your business, you won’t be the person to do the hiring. Your hiring manage will take care of hiring a replacement.

As Internet Entrepreneurs, we should be looking remove ourselves from every part of our business that does not add value to our bottom line. We shouldn’t be spending hours setting up a server when we can pay a professional to do it for us. We shouldn’t be setting up databases, configuring software, laying out graphics, writing copy, and on and on. We should be doing the high level stuff that we can’t outsource to others. I know this is hard to accept, but deep down you know it’s true.


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Have you ever considered running an offline business? If you have, then you’ve probably been overwhelmed at some point with a list of things that you need to consider like legal, accounting, advertising, marketing, production, employee training, payroll, client relations, and the list goes on and on.

To avoid this list, you may have turned your attention to doing business online where the promise of a new way of doing business is continually promoted. The only problem is, at some point, you’ve found yourself applying an offline business mentality to online business ideals.

Why is it that when we think of running an online business we continue to try and apply the same mental process to a new methodology?

Maybe you decided to get involved with online business because you saw all those commercials in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s that portrayed the Internet as a place where all the old rules didn’t apply. But as soon as you got online you naturally started applying all the old ways of thinking to your online activities.

The problem is, we haven’t retrained our brains to leverage the new and let go of the old.

In 1998 my wife and I were going back to college as “non-traditional” students. Basically that means we were actually studying instead of going to the campus parties. And during that time she and I listened to an audio version of Robert Kiyosaki’s, “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” We absolutely loved the material and for a time I believe we actually understood a portion of what he was trying to teach everyone in that book.

But, when the time came to graduate college and go back into the work force neither of us applied what we had learned to the way we thought about our jobs. We continued to do what we knew was not going to relieve us of a 9 to 5 job.

That is what happens with most everyone who goes online to make their fortune. They think they understand the vision, but when it comes time for execution, for whatever reason, they miss the mark.

Do you feel like your missing the mark?

To drive home what I am talking about, and to give you an idea of how you can avoid it, I am posting this 90 minute video by Rich Schefren on the “Internet Business Process.” In the video, Rich lays out the reason people don’t make the money they want online and how they can change their thinking to begin earning what they have only been dreaming about. It is an eye opener for certain.

Rich recently released part 2 of his Attention Age Doctrine Report where he talks about the importance of understanding the value of people’s attention and how to get the right kind of attention in a market place that is tired of being sold too. If you haven’t read the report then I recommend you download it now, print it off, and read everything he has to say on the subject.

Keep in mind that the concept of an “Attention Economy” is not a new idea. In fact, Thomas Davenport wrote about it back in 2002 in his book, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.

Once you combine what Rich says in his 93 page report with this video you will have a crystal clear vision of what it is that you need to do to be a success in your online business. Everything else you may have read up to this point is technique and technical knowledge. What Rich is talking about is fundamental stuff that goes deep.

Personally I am still able to identify with the concepts in both the written report and the video. Hopefully you will too. In fact, I would love to hear what you have to say about both of these items. So, be sure to leave a comment on this post and let me hear your feedback. Or if you prefer a more private means of communication, then you can contact me using the OpenSourceMarketer Contact Form on this blog.

Be honest with yourself and see if what he is saying frightens you or excites you.

Assessing reality,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Do you ever wonder why some bloggers seem to enjoy greater success while exerting what seems like less effort than other bloggers who work twice as hard and only seem to get half as much done? Well, in this post I’m going to show you how the successful bloggers cheat the daily clock to get more benefit out of their efforts.

No matter what you might think, blogging is hard work. Blogging it’s just about writing a few paragraphs and going outside to play. There are search engine rankings to optimize, articles to tag, comments to respond to, rss feeds to promote, mailing lists to promote and manage, and ads to manage. So with all that to do, anything you can to reduce your labor is a good thing.

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