Be honest – how many online marketing courses leave you breathless with excitement that soon turns to exhaustion and confusion? That is a common frustration for people who are trying to get up to speed in online marketing.
There seem to be so many things to do that the time drain can be enormous, and the profits don’t match time expended. Stop and make a priority list. What do you want most from online marketing? Supplemental income?
Potential for full-time income in one year or less? Freedom to work from home or anywhere you find an Internet connection? Identify your top three goals, and only three. Next, create an immediate to-do list.
What is necessary to get into business online? Get your domain name, build a website, get an autoresponder, search for products, etc. Make sure you have at least a DSL or high-speed Internet access that is reliable.
Get a computer that is the best quality you can afford. Follow the ideas you learned in the online marketing courses, but start at a basic level. Some courses want you to jump in at the deep end and presume you have the basics already.
With the basics in place, create a weekly to-do list. Print these as check-off sheets and keep it on a clipboard at your computer desk. Here is where you put order into the chaos of leaping around cyberspace to tag, post, comment, blog, write, research, and all of those other tasks used by experienced online marketers.
Unless you have a list and a time schedule, you can spend hours posting to blogs only to get distracted with other information. Decide how often you need to do each task weekly. If you are marketing on a part-time basis, then you could do tagging on Monday, forum postings, or social networking on Tuesday and Saturday, blogging on Wednesday and Friday, and conducting keyword research on Thursday.
Take Sunday (or at least one other day) as an online free day to get out, take a brain break and enjoy yourself. You may need to set time limits on your to-do list items. Use a screen reminder or an old fashioned kitchen timer.
Sitting for hours fixated on the computer screen is bad for your eyes and posture, but also puts you at risk for mindless munching on junk food. Here is another time-saving tip … turn off the instant message or email notification while you are focused on a to-do task.
Promise yourself to stick to the tasks at hand!
