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Snapchat Traffic Essentials

It’s all too easy to overlook Snapchat as a social media platform that doesn’t really matter for business or marketing. After all, there’s no real way to discover new people to follow, the content doesn’t ‘last’ and it’s generally less geared toward marketing than something like Facebook or Twitter.

Or at least that’s the opinion of many business owners. In fact though, overlooking Snapchat for its marketing potential is a huge mistake. Let’s take a look at why…

Snapchat is Highly Personal

If you’ve had your ear to the ground, then you may have heard the buzz about live streaming. Live streaming services are quickly becoming incredibly popular thanks to their ability to allow direct and live communication between a brand and its followers. But in fact, Snapchat has been providing something very similar for a long time.

Snapchat allows you to update people about your trip to another country, it allows you to invite people to watch the public unveiling of your new product or service and it allows you to share a joke as you’re coming out the shower. This kind of personal communication has the power to create much more engagement, familiarity and trust. And if you look at the big names on Snapchat – like Arnold Schwarzenegger – then you’ll be able to easily see how it can be used to great effect.

It Has Incredible Engagement

Yes, Snapchat’s ‘instant’ nature gives it the potential to greatly increase engagement. And in reality, that’s exactly what it does.

According to a post on Huffington Post, a Snapchat user with 1,000 followers can expect 900 of those followers to watch each video. That’s huge! And this is in comparison to the far smaller amount of engagement you see on Facebook or Email. Email open rates are 25% when they’re at their very best and on Facebook, most of your followers won’t even have the option to see your posts unless you pay for them. The Filters Are Awesome (And Often Times Relevant)

Snapchat’s latest big feature is its filters. These are not only an excellent accomplishment in terms of the sheer coding expertise (this is an example of ‘computer vision’ which is very difficult to pull off) but they’re also brilliantly viral. It’s not uncommon to see screenshots of these filters popping up all over the web! So you're probably asking by now, how do you get started by actually building a following beyond just asking people to follow you...

So how do you build your following on Snapchat?

Simple: you start creating a compelling story and post multiple times per week at least (ideally, you’ll post multiple times per day). Then simply make sure that you download a couple of those and share them on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram along with your Snapchat username. This way, you can show your fans what they’re missing and give them the opportunity to follow you more closely! You can also promote your Snapchat through your blog posts, your website and blog posts. Of course you need to ensure that the clips you show are engaging and exciting enough to attract more users.

Why Snapchat?

You may not realize this but when Snapchat first burst onto the scene, it wasn’t exactly an impressive feat of engineering. What made Snapchat a hit was the simplicity of its idea and how much fun it was possible to have with the selfdestructing messages it created. But in terms of programming, this was a very inefficient app that would eat up your CPU even when not in use.

Then Facebook offered to buy the company for $3 billion and everyone was incredibly surprised when the CEO said no. And for a while it looked like a big mistake. But now Snapchat is back. The lenses that came with the 2.0 update have been setting the world on fire and actually the code on display here is absolutely incredible. Moreso than you may well realize. Read on to find out why.

Why the Lenses Are Amazing

In order to activate a Snapchat lens, all you need to do is to tap on your own face and then hold it for a second. A mesh will then appear around your facial features and this will map you to allow you to start seeing the filters applied in real-time. And what you’ll find is that this is actually quite amazing. Why? Because it is mapping your face in real-time which takes some very impressive coding skills. The way this works is through something called ‘computer vision’. That means that the software is able to look at a photo of your face and then map the contors of your facial expression – knowing what expression you’re pulling, which direction you’re looking, how far away you are from the camera and more.

This, by the way, is incredibly impressive.

What is Computer Vision?

Another example of computer vision is the way that an Xbox Kinect is able to read your body in space, or the way that a car is able to drive itself by detecting what’s in front of it or behind it.

But in both these cases, the devices in question use additional sensors which can scan the depth of the environment. These include infrared and multiple camera arrays to create depth of field.

But in the case of Snapchat it’s using only a single camera. And that camera isn’t even a particularly good camera – this works with even a low MP front-facing camera.

To give you an idea of how breakthrough this is, the technology is impressive enough to potentially change the way we interact with virtual reality. Using a Gear VR it is currently possible to look around but not to walk around. This is because the Gear VR can’t detect whether you’re moving forward or backward because it has no sensors capable of doing this. Palmer Luckey says that this would never be possible with a regular phone.

But using the technology available right now and on display in Snapchat, it would be possible for the Gear VR to do exactly that with its front-facing camera.

So in short this technology is very much right at the cutting edge. And it’s being used to give people dog tongues. That’s the internet for you!

How To Actually Build A Following On Snapchat (For Traffic)

Snapchat remains one of the most important social media platforms to promote your brand on. This is something that many marketers and businesses don’t realize however and often it is overlooked as a channel. There are several reasons for that but one of the biggest reasons is that it’s not so obvious how Snapchat marketing actually works.

If you look at Facebook, this is incredibly easy to understand right away. Facebook marketing involves posting things to your Facebook wall, which in turn will be seen by all your followers. And if some of those followers should like your content or share it, then it will also be seen by their connections on Facebook and thus your following will grow.

The problem with Snapchat is that it doesn’t have a wall or a homefeed and there is no way for people to discover you if they’ve never heard of your brand before. So how can you go about growing your following? And what use is there in posting?

Growing on Snapchat – The Answer

Of course this is a very short-sighted view. Suffice to say that Snapchat would not be the global phenomenon that it undoubtedly is today if it didn’t have any means for users and brands to increase their audience.

So what do you need to do? The answer is simple: you promote your Snapchat on other platforms and that way build interest for people to actively follow you. And the simplest way to do that is to download some of the content you are creating for the social tool and then to share that elsewhere – on Facebook for instance, or on Google Plus. The idea then is that people see this, think it looks great and thereby realize what they’re missing and are motivated to find out more.

This is something that Arnold Schwarzenegger does very well. He updates his Snapchat regularly and that way manages to maintain a very close relationship with his audience on the channel. His fans get to come with him to visit the locations where he might be shooting or promoting his latest movies and they get to see humorous videos of him doing his best quotes.

Every now and then he simply posts this to his Facebook following with the message ‘follow me on Snapchat’. Each time he does this, he’ll undoubtedly get a ton more followers on Snapchat.

This same method works on every single other social media platform and it will likewise work if you promote your Snapchat on YouTube or through your blog directly.

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YouTube Traffic Weapon

Let me ask you something: are you using YouTube as a marketing strategy for traffic generation in your business?

Quite simply, YouTube is by far one of the most powerful but still underutilized platforms on the internet when it comes to online marketing.

Notably, YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the net. As such, it's also the best platform for engaging in the act of video marketing. Which, if you didn't know, is one of the most powerful tools for the persuasion of audiences for generating clicks and conversions.

Consider the impact that video has on you in your own day to day life. Think about the placement of television sets in your world and how they're often a center piece of most living areas. How often have you started watching a TV show or documentary far too late in the evening and ended up staying up way passed your “bed time” just to get your fill of the action?

YouTube also offers countless advantages towards social media marketing. For starters, it gives you the power to build a following that you can continuously market to in the future. It also allows you to leverage your connections through influential marketing and other strategies. This greatly differs from Facebook and Twitter where there's a large element of luck involved.

Acquiring marketing success on YouTube is all about having something interesting to say and then a unique way to deliver that message. If you have this criteria met, and you've figured out how to package it, then YouTube can deliver you almost guaranteed continual success.

The only downside? YouTube success involves a little more work than some of the other strategies you might have tried in the past. With this course, you’ll have your blueprint for success. As long as you're willing to execute the steps herein, you will be able to build a huge following and influence them as with no other strategy.

Creating A YouTube Marketing Plan

In this section, we're going to cover how you're going to use YouTube and what your marketing plan will be for success. There's a number of factors to consider here and of course, the overall nature of your marketing plan is going to depend on the type of business or company that you're running, your goals, and so on.

Additionally, your budget, resources, and other elements will also have an impact on the direction that you need take when building your audience on YouTube and acquiring traffic and views.

Regardless of the nature of your YouTube marketing strategy, you obviously need to start somewhere. So that's exactly what this course is going to help you do.

For starters, if you're using YouTube video marketing to promote an existing business, then monetization isn't an issue for you. If you're new to digital marketing, then you need to determine how you're going to benefit from the viewers and traffic that your videos get.

• Will you be promoting your website or products in the descriptions? • Are you running advertisement based videos (for your products or others)? • Will you be using YouTube ads to monetize the traffic that views your videos? • Do you plan to interact on YouTube and have a presence there?

Another part of your plan will be to determine how you're going to scale up your success of videos that attract larger audiences. It's especially helpful to have a good strategy in mind here, so ask yourself about how you're going to get your first 100 views and then ask yourself how you'll grow that first 1,000 subscribers or followers.

More importantly, consider the types of topics, products, or content that you're going to present in your videos. Are the topics going to be easy to rank for? Are they attracting enough of an audience to be worth your time? Is there a platform or network that you can cross promote your videos and media on for increased visibility and potential?

For these factors, it can be useful to perform some market research and even keyword research by looking at your competition and even doing the traditional methods for digging and seeing the overall potential.

Consider if there are other YouTube creators or channels that are making money from the platform in your same niche, doing what you do.

• How successful have they been? • Is there more opportunity for you to capitalize on that traffic? • What niche(s) are these creators working in? • How are they marketing their brand? • Do they have their own products or how do they monetize their network?

Take note that there's nothing wrong with “borrowing” a business model that's currently working and producing results. If there's a popular YouTuber out there in your niche that's making money from e-book sales or other sales like that, then make it a point to pay close attention to what they're doing.

Even better, take a look at their older videos and see how they've gradually built their audience and network to the point that it's at now.

Once you have your business model and plan in mind, you should begin to plot all of this out on a sheet of paper, or an online resource for planning. This will give an actionable blueprint that you can follow.

Make decisions here such as how many videos you will need to upload to reach your target audience. Think about what the topic of each of your videos will be and then go so far as to plot your trajectory over time. The more details you can make your step-by-step process for marketing on YouTube, the easier it will be to stay motivated and achieve results (and success).

Also remember that when you create this type of business plan, you should use estimates and projections that aren't overly optimistic. Make sure that your plan will work in a 'worst case scenario' and don't put unnecessary stress upon yourself. This way you can only be pleased by the results that you end up achieving.

The Grey Hat Strategy For YouTube Ranking Success

First off, let me just say that the reason this is called grey hat is because there's a few different ways to go about it. Some of them are black hat and some of them are white hat. The entire method here is just fine in regards to TOS on any video sharing or hosting platform. So there's no need to worry about that stuff.

Now that you're of this, let's just get right into it...

In terms of creating a video, it doesn't matter what kind of video you upload to YouTube, this strategy will work for any video. Just make sure that your video is optimized in terms of production. That means you should have a clear call to action within the video, or something that encourages your viewer's to take action in some way or another. This is, of course, dependant on the goal of your video.

Let's say you have a video created, and you've set up your YouTube channel so that the home page is fully optimized. You should have an appropriate channel name, art, a description, connected social networks, and make it look like the channel is active – which it should be.

This is the important part, you have to do some relevant research for the optimization of your video.

Let's assume you're uploading a video to YouTube as part of your marketing strategy, which would be to gain views and often times conversions. This would mean that you want the video to rank high in the search results, and draw in unique visitors on autopilot. After all, that's one of the biggest benefits of video marketing as a whole when it comes to the internet.

You're going to want to do some Google searches AND YouTube searches for relevant keywords related to the topic of your video. This could be different variations of keywords or key-phrases. You want to determine the amount of traffic that's possible for certain combinations and keywords, on both of these platforms since they're essentially intertwined.

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Reddit Traffic Love Affair

When it comes to digital marketing and promoting websites and businesses online, a lot of attention is given to Google and to conventional social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While those are all important and powerful aspects of an online campaign, they are far from the only options available to you and it may just be that there are easier and more effective ways to get a lot of eyes on your business and to increase your sales and profits.

One such alternative avenue for instance is Reddit. Reddit's a site that can get you thousands and thousands of hits from a single post if you get it right and that gives you a direct route to market and an easy way to find a highly targeted audience. Put simply, Reddit's potentially just as powerful as Facebook or Twitter and possibly even more so depending on your niche/industry. This is something you can't afford to ignore. Read on and we'll look in depth at how Reddit works and how to make the absolute most of this incredibly useful platform. You might just find it's the ultimate way to have your traffic go viral and to truly explode.

If you're not familiar with what Reddit's, let me explain it very briefly. Reddit's a social bookmarking/link sharing site along the lines of Digg or StumbleUpon. More than this though, it's an aggregated content site where you can find content voted to the top by other users and thereby selected for its popularity among the community. Reddit's mission statement is to become the 'front page of the internet' and it achieves this by letting users select the sub communities (called Subreddits) that they want to subscribe to and then showing them the top voted content for that community each day.

In this brief course, we're going to assume that you're familiar with Reddit and how it works, so we won't necessarily cover those kind of topics in depth. Instead, we'll be covering some of the best methods and strategies for utilizing Reddit for traffic generation, regardless of your niche or business.

Reasons Why Reddit Is A Great Tool For Driving Traffic

“Is Reddit the right solution for my site?”

“Why should I consider Reddit to boost traffic?”

Like everyone else in the internet marketing field, your goal is to see your traffic shoot through the roof.

I mean, without high levels of traffic you will be swallowed by other sites, right? This is why many people focus on social networking sites. Well, you certainly should consider Reddit.

The following are 3 reasons why Reddit's great for driving traffic:

1. Huge Traffic

We all know about huge traffic. Yes, the elusive traffic that will skyrocket your site from out of nowhere to among the very top pages. Well, many social networking sites are known to have many followers. In fact, many boast about having millions of visitors who are always interacting on their site. But, few can rival the page views Reddit gets.

According to statistics, Reddit gets more than 2 billion views on their pages monthly. With such huge volumes, a person is assured of good traffic if they can make a successful post.

2. Less Tasking

People spend lots of time, effort and money just to attract traffic. In fact, many give up after the realization that it'sn’t that easy. Well, with Reddit it’s friendlier. You only need a few votes on submissions or comments to drive traffic.

Forget about looking for 1000 plus up votes. It's not unheard of sites almost crashing because of 50 votes originating from a subreddit with 60,000 readers, or getting 90 votes from a subreddit with 35,000 readers.

3. Your Influence Doesn’t Matter

“You are more likely to drive traffic if you are popular.” This is what other social sites put across. So, the ordinary Joe will have to spend twice or thrice the effort than Twitter’s Chris Brogan.

With Reddit, your influence essentially doesn’t matter. Whilst there is the ‘karma’ system, with the right comments or submission you will reach the front page regardless. The secret lies in understanding your community and knowing what tickles them. A small subreddit usually has about 20,000 readers- imagine connecting to them?

Looking at the above breakdown of 3 reasons why Reddit's great for driving traffic, it's evident that Reddit's a valuable resource for boosting traffic. In fact, many people have seen traffic increase tremendously from just a few comments or submissions. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean this is a shortcut to driving traffic. Failing to apply proper techniques may lead to you being swallowed alive in the net. It's critical to post good content, specialise in your niche, and most importantly always engage your “Redditors.”

The Best Type of Content To Post On Reddit

Reddit's an amazing website, thanks in part to its great variety of sections for people to search through and more than enough ways for people to interact with each other. However, this doesn't mean that every single bit of content should be posted there. There are a number of specific types of content that you can contribute to Reddit that will help you better leverage the power of the community.

Listed below are just a few kinds of content that Reddit users seem to react best to: Questions Can Be Great

You should consider asking creative questions on Reddit. You can ask questions relating to what people would do in certain situations or what ideas can be found around the world. If you ask questions on occasion then people will interact with you and give you their own special ideas in response to your topic. If you are smart you can find a way to link to your own site.

Make People Laugh

Comical content can be perfect for you to post on Reddit. It's often easier for people to share content on Reddit if it's funny. This is because people always enjoy a laugh every once in a while. Also, people want a respite from all the hostile and negative content that's all around the online world. They'll want to feel happy and excited about whatever it's they are finding online.

Add New Ideas

You should think about new ideas that you want to share with other people. Whether it's to offer a new recipe to people or to showcase some new innovations or creations that have been developed over time, you should share new ideas with others. People want to learn new things and are willing to go online to find them.

Solve people’s problems

Some of the highest rated self posts on Reddit are ones that solve a problem that individuals or a community has. When someone is able to offer genuinely useful content, people feel obliged to upvote it. Therefore, when you are posting make sure that what you a writing is just rubbish and that it will be helpful to someone.

Check Out the Videos

Media is more easy for an audience to consume than text, so if you’re posting a video of yourself or a link to Youtube then you can expect it to do better than text. Online viewers are lazy, appeal to this laziness with images, video and audio.

How To Get More Upvotes On Reddit

Let's be honest, there's really no other place on the web that is more coveted for online entrepreneurs than the first page on reddit. If you operate or run an online venture, you have probably realized that it's a huge task to get up-votes on reddit especially if your site is new.

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Google Plus Traffic Pool

Google+ is the hottest thing in social media. In just a few short days, the site gathered hundreds of thousands of users, making it a definite contender in the social media arena. A few weeks after launch, it was up to more than twelve million users! With such explosive growth, it is poised to become a major player very quickly.

There is even some buzz in the world of social marketing that perhaps Google+ might even eventually replace Twitter, because it is so easy to use and integrates so many features into one unique platform.

Obviously, anyone who is serious about promoting their brand should take advantage of emerging technology, and Google+ is at the forefront of new developments in social networking. This is the perfect time to join the game!

Tips For Using Google+ For Traffic Generation

In this course, you’re going to learn a few tips and tricks you can use to make the most out of Google+ to promote yourself, your business, your website, and your brand. So let’s begin..

Tip #1: Google+ Viral Marketing

One of the most powerful aspects of Google+ is the +1 function. This function allows individuals to share things they like by using the +1 button. This has the potential to allow your marketing to go viral through Google+ users.

You can add a +1 button to your own blogs and websites, and you can even customize your plus one button. Just visit the following URL to customize your +1 button.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

The +1 button is essentially very much like the “Like” feature of Facebook. It will promote the links to your Google+ friends, and the more of your friends who vote for the link with a +1, the more your link will be promoted.

Be careful to share links only occasionally. The less often you share links, the more impact you will have when you do, and the more often people will be willing to add a +1 to those you do share.

Tip #2: Getting Google+ Friends And Connections

Obviously, getting contacts is paramount. The more friends you have, the better, but they must also be targeted. It won’t do you a lot of good to have a million contacts if they aren’t interested in whatever you’re offering!

Contact lists on Google+ are known as “Circles”. You can have as many circles as you like, and you can divide people into various circles. Your contacts will not see which circle you’ve added them to, so you don’t have to worry about offending anyone. You can easily keep your family and friends separate from your business contacts if you’d like to use the same account for both business and personal contacts.

Make sure to check out various Google+ directories to find people who are interested in your niche. You will probably also want to add yourself to the directories, as well. Below you will find a few directories to try.

https://plus.ftppro.com https://www.findpeopleonplus.com https://www.gphangouts.com

Tip #3: Moderate your Promotion

One of the biggest mistakes people make with social marketing is spamming their followers. While social marketing is essentially permission-based, you can still spam your followers if you post too often.

Because of the potential viral marketing element, it is especially important to moderate your promotion on Google+, because you want those promotions you make to be impactful. More people will +1 your links if you post them rarely. I suggest posting no more than 2-3 links each day. This will give you the biggest potential to be seen, while still being respectful to your contacts and not flooding them with promotions.

Don’t forget to mix your promotions with useful links from time to time. This will get people to pay attention to everything you post, because they won’t want to miss anything important. Make sure you get them used to seeing useful, important links from you!

Tip #4: Streams

A stream is a newsfeed that includes your own posts and updates, as well as those of the contacts in your circles. You can think of it like Google+’s own RSS feed. You can view your stream simply by logging into your account and visiting the main page. Don’t neglect to do this, because you can make great use of it.

Watch your stream carefully. Whenever someone posts something related to your niche, especially if it’s a question, be sure to add to their discussion. This will help boost your reputation within your niche, because people will see that you are knowledgeable, and they’ll also see how helpful and friendly you are.

Remember, the stream isn’t just there for your own updates. Pay attention to the updates of your circle and you’ll get a lot of great promotional and branding opportunities out of it.

Tip #5: Hangouts

Hangouts are live, multi-person video conferences between Google+ users. These are great, because they can be used for webinars, and you can get a lot of people together at once.

Hangouts are great for making presentations to your audience. Be sure to put together an outline or script before you begin to eliminate a lot of the “ums” and “uhs” you might get otherwise, and schedule the webinar a day or two in advance to give people plenty of time to clear their schedules.

One major reason you should use Hangouts is because you can get live feedback from the other people who attend the video chat. This allows you to figure out what people want to know without having to ask them upfront.

Additionally, it allows you to make a physical presentation by showing real world examples of what you’re talking about. This could be especially helpful for live howto demonstrations.

Hangouts offer a level of human contact a standard chat never could, and they can be an excellent marketing tool if used properly.

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Introduction

Everyone wants to be more successful in their life, but actually knowing how to take the steps needed to achieve that success can be mystifying. Even when you understand what is required, it can be extremely challenging to take action unless you know where you are going. Most people stumble blindly along, not understanding why they continue to fail at their efforts. But this book is going to change all of that for you. In fact, this guide is going to give you the tools that you need to finally achieve the success you have always wanted – and that you deserve.

The Facts about Success

If you don’t think that you are where you are meant to be, you are in good company. In fact, according to a Harris Poll, two-thirds of Americans are unhappy with their life. Most people have not achieved their goals, and are not on track the way that they would like.

That’s why the self-help industry is bringing in more than $10 billion a year. People pay exorbitant amounts of money for personal coaching, self-help books, seminars, audio presentations and DVDs to help them achieve their goals, and most of the time, they fail at whatever they are trying to achieve, which puts them right back in the market for self-help.

The Solution is Surprisingly Simple

You don’t have to be one of those people who continue to fail at setting and reaching your goals. While the self-help industry is set up for failure (because the majority of money is made from recidivism) the actual process of achieving goals is surprisingly simple.

In this book, you will learn that process. You will be able to achieve the results you have been wanting by learning how to get rid of negative habits that are preventing you from being successful and then replacing them with good habits that are going to be moving you towards the success you want every single day.

The Benefits Offered by This Book

There are probably hundreds of benefits that you could get from these chapters, but there a few that this book has been specifically written to provide you. Here are ten benefits that you will get from this book.

• Being Able to Define Success: You will be able to define success, which most people cannot, and often, they have more trouble achieving their goals because they don’t know exactly what success is for them. You will not only know what success means to you; you will also know what successful habits are so that you can create them easily.

• Replacing Bad Habits with Good Ones: Instead of learning how to get rid of bad habits, this book will teach you how to replace them with good ones. There is a very specific reason for this, and it has to do with the psychology behind habitual behaviors. This will be explored in much more detail in Chapter Four.

• Forming Permanent Habits That Will Stick: You will also find techniques for making habits permanent. Eventually, you want to reach a point where your good habits happen automatically, without you having to consciously think about doing them. These permanent habits what will carry you along the road to success and the faster and more strongly you can make them stick, the faster you will achieve a higher level of success.

• Getting the Confidence to be Successful: People often lack the confidence that they need to be successful and a lack of belief in oneself is one of the main reasons that people fail. This book will demonstrate techniques and tips on gaining that confidence so that you have a foundation for success.

• Identifying What Triggers Bad Habits: When you do an action habitually that has negative consequences, it is usually because something triggered it. Both types of habits – positive and negative – have triggers and learning what triggers your bad habits can mean putting a stop to them.

• Creating Triggers for Good Habits: Triggers do not just prompt negative habits. You can create triggers for good habits as well. In this book, not only will identifying negative triggers that prompt destructive habits be covered, but also identifying, creating and maintaining good triggers so that positive habits can be developed in their place. These good triggers can then replace the negative ones so that an entire overhaul of your habits takes place, where negative habits begin to quickly get replaced by good ones and you start seeing real changes in your life.

• Motivating Yourself to Start the Journey: In addition to triggers, you will also need motivation, and you will need a great deal of it the first few days that you are working on a new habit – or series of them. You will also learn how to create habits that reinforce each other which adds to your motivation both initially and over the long-term.

• Motivation to Stay on Track for 30 Days: 30 days is the key to developing new habits that become deeply ingrained in your mind and body. If you can consistently perform an action once a day for 30 days you will be on track to making it a permanent fixture in your life. This book will teach you how to make it through those thirty days, including an entire section on the first few days of the journey, which are going to be the hardest.

• Overcoming Obstacles that Stand in Your Way: Finally, you will also get the benefit of expert advice on overcoming any obstacle that stands in your way, whether that be your family and friends being less than supportive, personal issues that make you want to put off your plan for another time and many more, both expected and unexpected, because you will encounter both.

The bottom line here is that this book is exactly what you need if you have struggled to create new habits and if you follow the principles here you will have success, no matter what your specific goals actually are.

Chapter 1: What are Successful Habits (or what is Success)?

Before you can start the journey towards being successful and begin building habits that move you along that road, you need to understand what success is. Most people only have a vague idea of success. This prevents them from actually becoming successful because they don’t know where they are going.

It’s like getting in your car and jumping onto the interstate with a full tank of gas, trying to drive to the perfect vacation spot. Odds are, you aren’t going to stumble onto it by accident. You need a destination in mind, and you need a map to get you there.

That’s exactly what this book is designed to be for you – both a way to identify your destination (sort of) and a road map to show you exactly how to get there. But in order to start the journey, you first need to understand what success is, and specifically, what successful habits actually are.

The Definition of Success

The reason that people have problems becoming successful is that they have not figured out exactly what it means to be it. That’s why defining success is the first step in achieving it.

The problem is, success isn’t really a destination. Success is actually a journey with stops along the way. Those stops are definitely the destinations that you want to arrive at, but there is no “final destination” that you will get to where you will finally be happy. When it comes to being successful and happy, the only way to achieve it is to be constantly moving towards your goals.

For example, suppose that you have the goal of financial freedom – being wealthy enough to afford some of the finer things in life. You may want to eat out at better restaurants instead of places like Chili’s or Applebees (or fast food). Once you have created enough wealth to be able to afford restaurants where the bill always comes to at least $100, you are still not going to be satisfied.

You are going to want more, and that’s okay. You set another goal – a higher goal – of being able to attend charity dinners where the price of a plate is over $1000. Your happiness isn’t dependent upon the actual reaching of that goal – it is based upon your hard work and your sense of accomplishment from achieving that goal.