Spot-check, guys! How are things going? Hit any milestones lately? How about those resolutions, yeah, still going strong, or did they fall by the wayside?

Any way you slice it, some of the big goals you set for yourself this past New Year would just about expire right now. And there's actually solid research backing up why that happens.

• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work
• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work (an entirely different article)

Resolutions are common at the end of a year, because the promise of a brand new year, one all to yourself, one with which to start anew, makes it conducive to grandiose, inflated expectations and promises. "This year I swear I'll lose weight, quite smoking, save more, break up with that jerk, quite my job, etc...And then I'll be happy."

See what we did there, that little thing at the end? "And then I'll be happy." That's where people trip up most, thinking that doing, having or being X (whatever X may stand for) is the only key to being happy, the fail-based formula being X = goal, and achieving X = happy.

When I think of the word "agenda" the image that comes to mind is of two groups of people looking at each other over a long table in the board room. Think Wallstreet, with Gordon Gekko, or that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman and his colleagues try to one-up each other with, of all things, the fonts on their business cards.

When we think of agenda what pops up is the idea of a meeting or a discussion -- sometimes a heated negotiation or a nefarious plan ("I don't trust that guy, he's got an agenda...."). While the latter covers some of the more emotional connotations of the word agenda, what it boils down to is: an agenda is a list of things to talk about. So, you discuss the items on the agenda in a meeting. I hope that's clear.

An agenda is not a To-Do list. Those are personal and task oriented. An agenda can be seen as a program of sorts, listing topics and issues presented for of discussion.

(Quick insert: An agenda is also not a credenza, even though they sound somewhat the same. I once made the mistake of confusing the two, in writing. It wasn't pretty. And a credenza is not a place of discussion, although you can have a quick chat beside one. Remember, you can put the notes for your agenda on the credenza, but not the other way around.)

In part one, we shared four indicators that you need to diversify in you business dealings. In this, the last half, we invite you to take a closer look at how need,passion, and surprise can help you and your business on to greater heights.

5) When you need to make more money.
In order to expand, to go beyond past a plateau, you need accessible resources, and that usually means money, not just imagination. You need money to make money. So think of what changes you can do with your product line, your services, to tailor them to the changing and emerging markets.

See, diversification, in the most literal sense of the word, means to make in different ways. In financial circles, diversification means spreading your investment around to lessen the risks of over-reliance in any one product, helping you grow your money, and in marketing, its aim is to make more money by creating new products and venturing into new markets.

It's great when you've reached the point that you can step back and take a proud look at what you've accomplished. A stable business, balance (or as close to it as possible), and a steady flow of income that you can rely on...oh, happy day!

Well, here we are to pop your bubble of contentment -- and help you brace supportive structures under your realized dreams.

Nothing stays the same forever. Nothing stays the same for very long, either. Inner and outer forces (and factors) work together in unplanned -- read: random -- ways that can set you far off from where you started, or planned to go. But if you managed to follow through on your important goals, then there will come a point when you realize that in certain areas, you've reached a plateau, and if these areas are important to you, you can't leave their eventual slide into entropy to chance. You need to move before things slide, think ahead of the curve.

But then how would you know? How can you tell when you've reached that point, or are about to?

To recap, the first two steps to successful change are1) paying attention and realizing that there is a need for conscious change, and 2) choosing to change. Or not.

The next three steps on the way to successful change moves you from the contemplation stage to the analysis stage. This second stage will involve you weighing your options and calculating just what it is you need to give up to get what you really need and want for a better life.

After taking stock of your life in the first two steps (hopefully you took very good notes), now is the time to pull up all the information you came up with and use them.

3. Check out the options.
What else is out there? And don't just use your opinion as a guideline for what's good enough. An opinion is an emotional judgment on an issue based on your feelings, your experience and knowledge on a subject. Emotions can cloud judgment, and the experience is all on your side, so you won't know the other side of the issue. Be cool. Don't lock the possibilities out first off.

Ask around, ask for other people's opinions (they're not as involved as you are and that distance can help. But prepare a few grains of salt, just in case.) When you ask people for information, you're multiplying your brainpower effortlessly, tapping their experience and knowledge base to amass a more comprehensive picture of the options open to you, a picture you can't make based only on your own experience.

The year's almost over, and now is the time to think about what you did well in the past twelve months...as well as the other things that didn't quite go the way you planned. The dying time of the year is the traditional time to remember and reflect on that year's triumphs and mishaps, so you can learn from them and strive to do better in the coming year.

Here are the first two of seven steps to making a successful change, and make for an awesomer --yes, we know it's a made-up word -- new year.

1. Recognize a growing discomfort with what is, with the status quo.

As a rule, we are never fully satisfied with what we have for long. Once the shine wears off our eyes go back to looking over the fence, wondering what we're probably missing, and checking to see the particular shade of grass on the other side...

It's also ironic, and completely true, that we also tend to stay in uncomfortable situations for far too long.

Lest the two seemingly unrelated ideas confuse you, here's where they connect: We often stay too long in uncomfortable situations because of various reasons, and in an effort to deal with the pain, we look to getting new stuff to 'fix it'.

Only, the new stuff is new only for so long, and the makeshift solution only masks the discomfort, not address it. So, to deal with the dissatisfaction, you keep getting more new stuff ("It didn't work, there must be something wrong, better go get a better thingamawhatzit..."), not seeing to the root cause.

It'll take too much time away from my money making activities.
I mean, I'm in this to make money after all, why waste time writing down things I already have in my head about where I want to go with this?

As long as your business plan is only in your head, you should know that people change their minds all the time. And in doing so, can lose track of important details.

The very act of writing things down does 2 things:

No one knows everything. Once you write down what you know, you can solicit advice from people you trust, and experts who can help, to make up for your weak spots and inexperience in certain areas.

I just wanted to let you know that we've just recently opened up our JEM Reseller Program. Many of our clients have been clamoring to be able to resell JEM as a white label solution, so we've been working hard to get this going.

Now, you can register as a JROX reseller and resell JEM under your own label. You can download a customized version of JEM complete with your own logo, links and welcome messages.

And if you're a cPanel web host, you can also add JEM as white label eCommerce Manager via the cPanel cPAddons feature as well.

This program has volume discounting built-in as well, so the more you sell, the bigger the discounts you get as a reseller, up to 80% off the regular licensing price.

Last, but not least, we've also created an option for you to sell licenses automatically via licensing automation. All you'll need is a valid paypal account. This is just an option and not a requirement.

For more information and to register as a reseller, just visit our resellers page:

http://www.jrox.com/resellers/

Hello everyone,

We're releasing JEM 1.0.6.65 today. This is primarily a bug fix release, just to address a few issues that some of our users have found.

please go through the update instructions for safely upgrading your installation:

http://www.jrox.com/docs/article/updating-jem

If you have any issues, please post them via the forum.

For the change log:

http://www.jrox.com/docs/article/code-development/change-log

Every e-marketer knows the importance of discovering good and profitable niches. It's like mining for gold -- only the mine in this case is the world wide web and the 'gold' trickles in through e-transfers for products sold or services rendered. A lot of the people who make their living educating other people to 'mine' the internet have a very simplistic way of teaching niche discovery -- finding the richest 'veins' in the gold mine, so to speak. The gist of their advice on finding your niche often boils down to the following:

• Pick a subject or topic that you're passionate about, one in which you have experience or are interested in.
• Use the main keywords from this topic and plug it into a keyword research tool.
• Look at the search count results. If it's about 30,000 per month, it's a good bet. Below 30,000 searches, it's a very tiny market, so no money there. If it's way above 30,000 searches, you'll have too much competition, so your risk of failure is higher, and therefore unacceptable.

That's it. Based on those three steps, you are supposed to find yourself a profitable niche.

What's missing from this picture?