(This article reprinted with permission from Joan Craven of InexpensiveKidsFun.com.)

One of my heroes is Joan Craven, of Craven Communications (JoanCraven.com) in Calgary, Canada. Joan is a Mom, Grandmum, Business Owner, Professional Speaker, and about a million other things to boot. She is what I hope I can learn to be like: happy, fulfilled, and most importantly, completely organized. (No kidding. You should take a look under her bathroom cupboards. Everything’s in neat little piles and rows.)

She’s written an article that I feel compelled to share with you as Writers. While she may not have had Writers in mind when she wrote this, it certainly applies to all of us obsessive writing types, who once an idea enters our brains, we cannot sleep/eat/do laundry until it has been purged by writing it out. Balance is not one of my fortes, to which Joan will attest. This simple article seems to set me right, and I’ve posted it on my office wall, to re-read it often.

Sometimes as we think back on our past work week we begin to beat ourselves up over what did not accomplish. That nasty little voice in our head says “why couldn’t you get it all done?” or “if you just used your time more wisely you would have been successful.”

Are you asking too much of yourself? Where is your time being spent?

The value of any work week is based on two things:

1. what we accomplished
2. what we have learned

The first question to ask yourself is “What goals did I accomplish and what ones need more time? Why didn’t specific goals get accomplished? Was I realistic in my goal setting? What have I learned?”

Once you have answered those questions plan out your next week, keeping in mind your professional and personal priorities. Devise a visual method that works for you.

Personally I use a “Things to do list” that has professional and personal goals for the day. When something isn’t accomplished one day I add it to the next day’s list. This has helped me in two ways:

1. I set realistic expectations for myself because I try to jot down estimated time each item will take. I include some stress-reduction type activities. For me that is chatting with a friend, going for a walk, baking, preparing a meal or visiting a library or bookstore.
2. As soon as I think of something to do, I jot it down so it doesn’t keep circling in my head. Once I see my list getting too long for one day I start a sheet for the next. Sometimes I have to juggles items from one day to the next.

Once I trained myself to check my email only twice a day and return phone calls once or twice a day, I had more time for other items. Two other strategies I consciously started were:

1. To turn off my computer at 6 p.m. each night.
2. To only watch 1 hour of TV a day.

All of a sudden I had much more time and I began to sleep better. When I travel to do workshops I now plan for the day-after to be a shortened day where I do ‘mindless tasks’ like filing or sorting or even just some professional reading because my energy is depleted from delivering the workshop. I try to set realistic expectations for myself.

By asking “what have I learned?” when I’m not successful in completing my goals make a huge difference to the way I talk to myself. Sometimes I fall off the wagon and am up completing a project until the wee hours of the next morning or I watch TV all night. Exceptions happen; they are just no longer my norm. What I consciously try to do is build high fences around personal time and strive to balance work and home.

What do you do to find balance in your life? What methods work for you?

Thanks, Saint Joan, for putting me back on track, once again.

Watch this 2.5 minute video on YouTube.com - but don’t make assumptions until you’ve seen the whole thing.

I admit it – I didn’t see that coming.

Creating a special web page to sell your eBook is almost more important than the eBook itself. Here are my top landing page tips for eBooks and many other products.

Let’s define what we’re talking about: the term “landing page” refers to the single-purpose web page where potential buyers “land” when they click on an ad, a link, or a direct URL that invites them to buy your eBook or other product. A landing page can be part of a larger website/blog, or link to one, or not. But it’s just designed to do one thing: sell your book. The science of landing page design and testing is now quite sophisticated, and there are a variety of web resources on the subject. I won’t bother to link to anything here, as one search in Google for “landing page design” will bring a flood of information.

Directing web traffic to a devoted sales page has several advantages over sending users to your standard website;

1) You can direct visitors down a strict path that is engineered to do nothing but close the sale. Don’t underestimate the power of this. Certainly, you may wish to provide links to your main web presence, but good salesmanship suggests staying focused on only need to know information until buyers demonstrate additional interest by clicking or scrolling.

2) If your product takes off and sells like hotcakes, you may end up with an overloaded web server, or coping with some inevitable negative feedback. Insulate your website by keeping it separated, except for hyperlinks if you choose to provide them.

3) You can target sales niches that are outside your normal market, by slightly altering your copywriting, graphics, etc. on this page alone. Make niche buyers feel extra special by speaking directly to their specific problems.

4) You can offer partner companies custom sales pages that enhance a link between your product and someone else’s. This might relate to affiliate marketing relationships, or an important endorsement.

5) THE BEST REASON: You can use a special targeted URL for a landing page, such as TheTitleOfYourBook.com, rather than YourCompanyWebsite.com, which may have no intuitive or similar-sounding relationship to the name of your eBook. I never, ever endorse a client marketing a product for which they do not own the associated .com domain name. Click here to view my tips on how to choose great domain names, and in turn, titling your eBook.

Landing pages and the “science of conversion”, or figuring out what converts browsers into buyers, is an extremely deep topic. But we can explore a few basics here that will help to eliminate any obvious mistakes.

Top Tips for eBook Landing Pages;

1) Make a beautiful, bright and most importantly, clear “Buy it Now” button (BIN button) and put it in several places all over the page. (See below for the 4X4 Rule.) The term “Buy it Now” is obviously not the optimum sales language to use on the actual button, but when we talk about the BIN, this button is what we mean.

2) Use video. Sitting in front of your webcam is better than nothing, but if you have a home video camera, that will do an excellent job. Edit the video as per the tips in my “Video Tips” post.

3) Make sure that all text and images are high-contrast and easy to read. No flaky fonts, no greyish text on patterned backgrounds, etc. Pay attention to the heirarchy of the information you want to convey, and make that in the largest font, then the second-most important info in the second-largest font, etc.

4) Use imagery from your eBook on the website to entice readers with a bite of what’s inside. Don’t give away the farm, but pictures send a message quickly. Use them to tell the story fastest.

Nadine is the Author of “The Groove Mamma Goes Gourmet – Easy Ways to Put the Fun Back Into Entertaining”, a 28-page eBook that I created for her. Nadine created her landing page at GrooveMamma.com herself, and she did it in one evening. She sold 10 copies in the first 48 hours, before the marketing campaign had even begun. The lesson to learn here? SPEED is the name of the game.

The 4X4 Rule:

When designing your landing page, follow the “4X4 Rule”. This rule is about where you place specific items on the web page. This is based on eye-mapping testing, which tells us which parts of a web page get read more often or in priority order, and this is also based on actual split-testing of results on various landing pages.

Divide your space on the landing page into four quadrants, and put the following content in each quadrant:

Top Right: The Desired Action
Whatever you want people to do on this page, put it here. The BIN, the sign-up form, the download, the “vote now” button – whatever.

Top Left: The Story Image
An uncomplicated, clear image of the emotional story that you want buyers to understand right away should be part of some sort of banner that sits here. The photo can be overlayed with the product name or a Big Question, but keep any text really, really simple and easy to understand and read. People need to instantly GET IT and want to be or identify with what they see in the picture.

Bottom Left: The Details
Here is where you type the topics covered in the eBook, the problems addressed, the items included, the extra bonus CD’s, the incredible benefits by reading it, etc. Don’t forget to tell them what a genius you are and why anybody would want to pay to listen to your advice.

Bottom Right: The Endorsements
Here is where you put quotes from happy customers, logos from websites and magazines where your product has been featured, and links to both of those if you choose to add them, which will be super appreciated by those other sites. Be sure to get permission where appropriate.