The freedom that comes with being able to wake up and wander into work thirty minutes later, coffee in hand also comes with a few responsibilities. I don’t get paid, unless I make myself profitable, my work won’t get done unless I do it, and while social media is part of my daily life and routine, if I spend my days chatting with old friends on Facebook, I’ll just have more to do tomorrow. Fortunately the pros far outweigh the cons and it remains an attractive lifestyle for me and others.
First things first, make sure you have a set schedule as well as a list of tasks that you have written up, mix in required tasks with profitability tasks so that you manage to get the things required to run you’re business done, as well as those projects that will bring home the bacon at the end of the month. I try and break my projects down into five categories.
- Daily tasks – just a list of the things I’d like to accomplish today
- Monthly goals – a list of goals I’d like to hit by the end of the current month. (Fill it in at the beginning, and it keeps you on track, just cross them off as you go.
- 1 – 3 month goals, these are the slightly bigger goals you’d like to achieve, and might include writing an eBook, launch a new product on Clickbank, publish 12 guest posts, etc.
- 3 – 6 month goals – try writing out where you’d like yourself to be in 3 – 6 months, and then what steps you’ll be required to undertake in order to achieve those goals.
- 12 months + – These are generally metrics that I’d like to have achieved throughout the year, income, number of subscribers, daily traffic, joint ventures, etc., and the prior lists were all aligned to make sure that I have the best chance of success, and were designed to keep me in line with the goals I set out as important in my business.
It’s important to note that each person will have a very different list, because we all have different ideas of what’s important to our business and the success of it. We may share some commonalities, but don’t be surprised to find that your goals don’t line up with your buddy who happens to be in the same niche.
Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, MySpace, etc. are all great ways to network, and expand our business, while letting us react in real time to questions or concerns that our readers or customers might have. But let’s be honest, if we aren’t careful some of these can become major time wasters, and drive our productivity, and hence our profitability way down if we aren’t careful to manage our chat time, or social interactions. Remember, just because you don’t spend 4 hours a day on Facebook, doesn’t mean that several of your online friends don’t, who do you think they will be chatting with when they see you popup online? Schedule a time to respond to people in your online community that works with your goals.
Activity logs can be a great way to see just where your time is being spent, and which tasks are taking you more or less time than you might expect. These can be as simple as a notepad beside your workspace or a custom designed timesheet, if you’re so inclined. Generally you only have to use them for a week or so to get a clear picture of where your time is being spent, and which activities might be better situated during you’re peak performing hours. (That time when you’re most alert, creative, and productive)
It’s important to prioritize you’re time, and your tasks when you work from home, and also that you realize the value of your time. Many of the things we do in Internet Marketing have a cumulative effect and value, rather than an immediate one, we might spend three or four months developing a new training video program that takes up ten hours a day of our time for several months and brings in zero income, however when we launch that same product, we might experience times when we are making a thousand dollars an hour or more. Doesn’t mean we make zero an hour, and it also doesn’t mean we make a thousand dollars an hour, but we still need to realize that our time is our most valuable asset and commodity.
Spend it wisely!
Incoming search terms for the article:
- time management for internet marketers (8)
- Time Management For The internet marketing (2)
- business time management plr (1)
- internet marketing time management plr (1)
- TIme Managment forInternet marketing (1)
