In this article I want to show you what not to do when you work from home…

My friend Bob always dreamed with work from his home and enjoy the freedom that comes with it…

that’s why he decided to build and internet Business… Unfortunately…

He miserably failed… Let me tell you why…

A normal “workday” for bob started at 11 am when he wakes up… I have to take a shower to wake up – he said, and spend a long time under the hot shower.

Then, he spends a long time deciding on what to wear to start working… 12 pm rang on the clock… While he pours his first cup of coffee, bob turns on his computer and check the last news…

Then, he opens his mail… And check each of every single mail that came from the endless lists he is subscribed… If the email has a link he checks the link and stay surfing a while on the page he is sent… Answer and forward every chain mail he receives… dangers of working from home…

It’s lunch time now… He goes out to buy pizza or hamburgers (this way he saves the deliverer guy tip) and goes to the grocery store to buy some things that he needs… While he is lunching he has in mind all the stuff he has to do for his business… … and all the stuff he has to study and read the last ebook about making money he bought yesterday (even though he still hasn’t finished yet the video course he bought last week).

When finally Bob sit in front of the computer again, he takes the occasion to get updated about what their friends are doing on twitter and facebook, and change his status to “working from home”…

His girlfriend Susan is online and can’t pass to “say hi” and mention how good time they spend the last weekend… Susan tells Bob that she uploaded a new Youtube video, so Bob goes to Youtube and watch the video…

And another fifteen related videos,

And the trailer of the movie that is coming this week,

And the last video of his favorite band

And some funny videos…

Finally he put hands to work to start his daily tasks, but then he realized that his farmville animals hasn’t eaten yet, so he feeds them… And purchased some new hotels on mafia wars – just a couple of minutes more, then I get my job done – he said while answering a survey about which animal are you in bed…

Bob then realize that his eyes are soring because he has spent a lot of time working in front of the computer, he needs to relax… He grabs a beer and sit in his couch to watch the game of his favorite team. And then a movie… perhaps two…

It’s time to dinner…

After dinner and two more coffees, Bob comes back to his computer… Checks the daily task for today and realizes that they are so many, is past midnight, it’s too late and he is so tired, so re arrange the tasks for the next day where he will wake up earlier and work from home…

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Even though this may seem funny, this same routine repeats every day in a great amount of entrepreneurs that decided to work from home.They don’t have a clear sight of their target and for the same reason they don’t have an actionable plan… A job routine is key if you don’t want to fall into the procrastination trap…

You must eliminate from your vocabulary the. “I’ve better do this tomorrow” or “Tomorrow I will write that article”… Procrastinating your job and not taking it seriously like a business, will always give you the same results…zero…

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My friend Bob tried to start an Internet venture to make money online like many people has being doing this days, but he made a lot of mistake in the way, and here I’m going to tell you four of the biggest mistake he made.

Bob (let’s call him Bob to protect the innocent) is a eye doctor who loves grasshoppers (I don’t know why). And he tried to make money on internet with his hobby.  But he didn’t investigate the market, and simply wrote a 500 pages volume about Grasshoppers eye diseases. It was the first time that somebody wrote about it so he though he will become wealthy.

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My friend Bob finally did it, by chance, accident or pure luck; he finally made a sale online. He was so happy that he told all of his friends (including me) that he was so good on internet marketing that he made his first sale. Bragging around to everybody he found in the street "Hey did you know? I made a Sale online!" he said. Someone actually bought his "grasshoppers eye diseases" e-book.

But my "crazy naive" friend Bob with all his joy totally forgot to setup his thank you page on his auto responder, and with all the continuous changes he made to his website he put a broken link on the download page.

So when the unlucky fellow who tried to download the "grasshoppers" e-book only found a 404 page.

He created a mail account solely to answer the questions of the customers but he never took the time to check it, gosh… he even can’t remember the password!

This is how "Gosh I can’t do things right" Bob didn’t delivered what he promises on his sales page and had to refund due to a dispute with PayPal. Not so good for his first sale online.

At the end my "dumb chaotic" friend Bob ended with no sale and banned from PayPal.

There are three critical things to take on account when you build your site.

Always keep track of the changes you made on your pages. Sure you want to improve them, split and test the headlines, the colors, the position of your links, but you need to remember the changes you made in case you want to undo it. So write this down, keep track of your changes all the time.

Double and triple check your links, you don’t want broken links, misaddresses or 404 errors pages on your site. Also remember when you put outbound links in your page make sure they open in a new window, you don’t want that people leave your site. This is only for those authority sites with content. For a sales page never put an outbound link, the only link your sales page need is to the Order Page. That is how you made sales online.

And finally the most important thing to make successful sales online: always deliver what you promise. Ok, this is so important that I have to repeat it. ALWAYS DELIVER WHAT YOU PROMISE. Even more, if you can over deliver like an unadvertised bonus, people will simply love you.

Take a good note of this three advices and your first sale online will not be as traumatic as my friend Bob.

The other day I found my friend Bob crying like a baby girl, I asked him what was wrong with him, and he told me the saddest history ever.

He wanted to make a living from Internet and make a ton of money selling affiliate products.

He opened a ClickBank account and built a squeeze page to build a list of prospects. So far so good.

But he has to face the highest and thick wall that any newbie has to face when he start a IM page. The traffic wall. He has not the slightest idea of how to drive free traffic to his site.

So he decides to take the fast track, the highway, the PPC road. He opened an Adword account and here is where the things went nasty with pay per click advertising.

He enters on a highly competitive niche and search for the keywords with more searches per month and bid on them.

What is wrong with that? He bid on broad keywords on a generic niche, having a specific product for a specific segment of that niche. A sub niche if you want to call it that way.

He bid on keywords without taking any consideration if the keywords include the words "free" and "no cost". Even a kid knows that these words simply do not sell, period.

As he did not plan his pay per click advertising, he bid on one word keywords instead of long tail. One word keyword on adwords may have the highest volume of searches but also has the highest cost per click.

He put a higher budget and a higher bid on the keywords and let it ran. He never care about track which keywords did converts or which did not. He never group his keyword list, or use variation of the keywords like quotes or brackets. No, he let his pay per click advertising campaign ran until the credit card company called to tell him his credit was max out.

He did not split test his ads to track the conversion rate. He only put a catchy ad, or what he thought was catchy, without any research on the competition.

Did people click on his ads? Yes, thousands, but not the right kind of visitors, only the tire kickers looking for free stuffs.

You do not make the same mistakes that my friend Bob made. The smart marketer only seek for buyers and smartly avoid the non buyer keywords like a plague this has to be the fundamental of the pay per click advertising world.

In your adwords campaigns you must wisely find high profitable keywords, the "buyer kind" of keywords.

My friend Bob was deep into affiliate marketing and wanted to make a living of it. So he leaves his job and starts his affiliate business on his home. In theory work from home is easy and gives you plenty of time to do whatever you wanted to do. In Theory…

Let me tell you how my friend Bob failed working from home and perhaps you don’t repeat the same mistakes.

On a regular day, my friend Bob wake up close to midday and turn on the TV while he pour the first coffee on his mug, read the paper (the comic strips and the sport section) and then go to the gym (he doesn’t lift weight he just go to see the girls on tights).

After that hour he come back home and take a lunch, then he turn on his computer. He read his mail and click on every single offer he receive and subscribe in every single opt in he sees. Spending about two hours in the process.

Then he takes a nap from about one hour.

After that he grabs a snack and a cold beer, and enters in the forums and spends another two hours reading the latest post and make comments on it.

Then he visits his facebook account and spends another two hours playing mafia wars and Farmville. After that another hour is gone in his twitter incursion.

The TV is always on and his messenger always receiving messages from his friends (and of course he answered back). He eat dinner and then sit down in his favorite sofa with a beer and a big bowl filled to the top with pop corns, to watch a movie (or two) and "rest his eyes" from all the hard work he did in front of his computer.

After the movie he sits in front of the computer and notice that is really late for work. So he turns off his computer and goes to bed.

The Work from home system could be great and an ideal situation if you want to spend more time with your family. but you still must remember that is a work, and as such must be take it seriously.

If you want to work from home, do not be like my friend Bob. Be consistent in what you do. organize and optimize your time, this is important, distribute your work time around the day, work two hours and then stop for one, rest and do anything but work, and then continue for another two hours.

If you are consistent, then with the time you can spend less time working and more time doing what you like most to do.