If I Only Had 2 Hours a Day…
photo credit: kevindooley
Recently in the comments section someone asked me to talk about what I would do, what I would focus on, what I would make priority if I only had 2 hours a day to work on my online business.
Ok. Sounds like a fun challenge, let’s see if I only had two hours a day how I would fill them.
If I only had two hours a day before I even thought about working I would take a look at my day and see if there is a way I can create more time to work. Is there time in my day when I could pull 15 minutes? Is there time in my day when I’m spending my time doing things that don’t really benefit me that I could divert to my business at least for a while. (can anyone say TV, video games time?)
I’m going to assume I’ve found no extra time. My first action step would be to create a plan. A plan will help me use every minute of my two hours focused on productive, money creating activities. So if I work 6 days a week for 2 hours a day that gives me 12 hours a week. (realize this is really NOT a lot of time when you are starting) I would create a plan that uses most of my time in the promotion phase of internet marketing, since no traffic means no sales ~ no matter how good/bad your content is.
The second thing I would do is make sure my “work” time is just that, work time. It’s not run around after the kids time, answer the phone time, check email time, IM time, twitter/facebook time ~ it’s work time. It’s time exclusively spent doing the tasks outlined in my plan.
I’d get a timer and depending what I’m working on that day I’d set it to help keep me focused and moving quickly from one task to the next.
Here’s what my weekly plan would look something like.
Day 1. Keyword research.
This part really depends on what internet marketing strategy you’re using.
Niche Domination:
Look for 6 to 12 keywords closely related and relevant to one another and your niche. (product specific keywords work great for this)
Niche blogging:
Identify as many related keywords as you possibly can. 50 to 100 is great. Micro Niche Finder is great for this. You can store all the keywords you find in a project folder and then print them out when you’re done.
Keyword sniping:
Search for as many different keywords you can find that will work for this strategy. My ebook Keyword research revealed will show you a great way to do this (this book really focuses on keyword sniping, so if you aren’t doing that strategy don’t get the book) Saving them in an excel document can be a great way to stay organized.
Micro niche blogs:
Find as many niche keywords as you can ~ the more you find the less you will have to do this step again ~ saving you time each week after this.
** At this point I’m going to say I don’t think micro niche sites and keyword sniping are the best options if you only have 2 hours a day to work. Since you only have a short amount of time you want to be able to compound your daily efforts, and building new sites all the time is not really the best way to do this. If you only have 2 hours a day I highly recommend doing niche blogging ~ this will allow you to work on a medium size site and all the promotion you do each day will benefit not only your new content but the whole site as well.
So from here on out I’m only going to talk about the rest of the plan for niche blogging ~ if you’re doing another strategy you can use the outline of the plan and fit it to your strategy.
So we’re going to move on to step 2 assuming you have created a large list of related keywords that fit the criteria. (over 300 searches monthly, under 30 PR on the front page ~ if you’re using MNF a green check in SOC, buying keywords ~ specific and targeted) These are a little different criteria than the christmas lenses because you have a bigger site to support itself (instead of one page only) so you can target a little bit more competitive terms.
Day 2. Content Creation.
Batch process your content for the week. Start at the top of your keyword list ~ I usually like to order my list by competition (SOC) the lowest first so I can easily start ranking the site for some keywords. Take the first 5 keywords, write one post each for each keyword. Using wordpress you can schedule these posts out over the next week. You’ve got 5 posts and 2 hours. Set your timer for 20 minutes, quit thinking so much and start writing. When the timer goes off you should be hitting the schedule button in your wordpress text editor. Set the timer for 20 more minutes and do it again. Make sure each time you finish a keyword focused post you cross it off your list so you know you’ve done it already. Do this again and again until you’ve finished your 5 posts for the week.
Day 3. Promotion.
Before we really get into the promotion part I want to talk a bit about leveraging your time. Let’s say you spend 30 minutes writing an article ~ you get 1 or 2 links from it when you submit it to EZA. What if you spent 30 or 45 minutes writing an article and you got 300 or 1000 links from it? Which is a better use of your time? What if from that article you also got content you could use for tomorrow’s promotion efforts too? Even better right?
This is called leveraging your time/content/effort. Leveraging usually costs money, but when you’ve only got 2 hours a day it’s something that will be very important. The best way to leverage your time and content is by subscribing to UAW. It will distribute your unique content all over the place giving you tons of links pointing back to your site. It will also give you unique content you can use for your other promotional steps. It is not cheap, but it’s worth it. You can also use services like 1 way links to leverage your time, it’s a little cheaper, but you don’t get unique content to use other places. Another way you can leverage your time is to hire someone to work for you and spend the time you don’t have. You can hire a full time staff person for around $300 a month ~ part time from $150. It seems like a lot but if you have someone working on your stuff for 20 to 40 hours each week imagine what you can get done. If you really want to make it work on 2 hours a day you’re going to have to find a way to leverage your time.
Ok back to day 3, promotion.
If this is the first week of a project I would spend time submitting my site RSS feed to RSS feed directories. I’d put up posts at free ad blogs. (this will probably not take 2 hours, but you don’t want to start out with too many links before you have much content. Just point all these links to the homepage of your site, this effort will help your site get indexed and start the process.
If this is an ongoing project I would go ahead and do an extra day 4 activities.
Day 4. Promotion:
Create an article using UAW. Take one of the original unique articles with the resource box and submit it to EZA. Take another of the unique original articleswith the resource box and submit it to Articlesbase.com. Send your article to 15 or 20 articles a day through UAW. Make sure you spin the anchor text of your links in your resource boxes ~ which is easy to do with UAW ~ so your anchor text will be varied in your links.
Day 5. Promotion: (are you seeing a pattern here?)
Go to UAW and get a unique version of your article from yesterday and create a squidoo lens, a hub and a wetpaint if you have time. To create a lens from an article get all your modules put in and use 3 or 4 text modules in the lens. Write a brief intro on the topic, and then break the article up into a couple paragraphs sections, add each broken up section to a text module and give it a good title. Add a couple non text modules ~ definitely the RSS module and point it back to your niche blog site.
Remember these are not money maker lenses ~ that is not their purpose. Their purpose is to give you links back to yoru site ~ so choose keywords that are not exactly the keywords you’re targeting on your niche blog, but relevant. You can add amazon modules or links as well ~ that’s fine, but don’t spend a million years working on these, it’s really just a place to get a link to your niche blog to help that page. OH yeah, in this lens you want to link not only to your homepage but to a specific post that has now published.
Doing a hub is even simpler ~ get another unique article from UAW and put it in whole. Add an RSS module linking back to your niche site, and maybe add an amazon thing or a video related to your topic to your hub. Again ~ the purpose of this hub is not to make money ~ it’s to give you links back to your niche site and a specific post on that blog that posted this week. (make sure you use anchor text in your article instead of your resource box at hubpages and squidoo)
Same thing with Wetpaint. Get another unique article from UAW, and create a wetpaint site based on a relevant keyword. You can leave the article whole ~ just take out the resource box and use anchor text links from within your content to link to your homepage and a different post that will post this week. (next week you can add pages to this wetpaint and use another relevant keyword on the same wetpaint site)
Day 6 Promotion:
Create a related free blog somewhere. Each week you want to create a new blog somewhere. You can set it up at blogger, and have UAW provide free content for it. You can start one at tumblr, or anywhere else (except wordpress.com). Put a few related posts on the blog 5 or 10 (if you can’t use UAW) and then put your links to your homepage and your posts for the week in the sidebar ~ using your keywords as anchor text.
Each week go back to the blogs you’ve created and add your links to the new posts you’ve done this week to each. You can also spend a little time and submit your RSS feed to the directories as well.
Start over again next week.
If you’re doing niche blogging then you will still have keywords on your list to work on and won’t need to do kw research each week. So I would suggest you move up your days and for the kw research day work on an additional article for UAW. This will give you plenty of links pointing not only to your homepage, but to specific posts. It will also give you plenty of content to use on the other platforms.
Now when it comes to Day 5 you can use other free platforms to create content, but you want to get some links out there from other domains, and other places besides ones you own.
So there you have it, if I only had 2 hours a day that’s what I’d be doing. I’ll let you in on a little secret ~ it looks pretty close to my weekly schedule. 
If you have questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comments section below. If this stuff interests I can certainly do more indepth posts on each day. 
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Hi Jackie,
This is perfect. I’m going to print this out and simplify it into bullets.
Thanks!
Follow me @bernitaburdick on Twitter!
So basically, promotion is the key to success of all efforts you’ve done. No follow ups, everything will be put into waste.
Most webmasters are into outsourcing to maximize their time and effort. They are rather searching and studying new strategies than doing less earning activities.
I think what you said about making the effort to find extra time is important. Sometimes I will feel like I have NO time at all, when in reality I’m just wasting my day doing things that are not productive whatsoever. Even the days when I really only have an hour or 2 I’m SO much more productive now than I ever was because I STAY FOCUSED. Thats the biggest thing for me, I could jump around for hours and never get any work done. I think because I’ve recognized that fact and now I know how to avoid those occasions, things have been a lot better… Thanks again for all of the great info and encouraging words!
Dennis
Follow me @dennismw on Twitter!
How hard would it be for you to go thru those steps for the average slow internet beginner so we could have a course to follow on Jing. I get stuck on most every little detail and get very little if anything accomplished. The other day I responded to something on a post but I looked for a long time to find an answer but could not find where it went.
Stupid things like that eat up my time and I don’t get much accomplished. If I don’t have the financial ability to get into every program because I ate up too much money buying every program under the sun before I became broke, what would you do without a lot of money to get articles submitted to get backlinks.
Hi Pat,
I can probably work in a step by step of this approach.
If I didn’t have the money to leverage my time with a service like UAW I would submit articles regularly (5 times a week) to EZA and articlebase.com. I would also begin creating my own network of sites I can post on around the web. I would start creating my own blogs at all the free blog sites ~ using general topics so I could post a wide array of links on them, and then keep going back, adding to them, and adding links back to my main sites. (this can easily take more than 2 hours a day though)
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Jackie
Thank you so much for answering my “cry” about lack of time. Sometimes I feel so fragmented with way too much to do in my internet business and way too little time which I’m sure is a problem a lot of people have. I have often thought I just have to figure out a way to give up sleeping as it is unproductive time…LOL.
I too am going to print this out and hopefully it will help me focus in the couple of hours I have each night after job, kids, dinner, etc….
One question that I keep having and you may have answered this already… but when we are using your Christmas Cash system…. we are doing Niche Blogging, right?
Thanks again!!
Jane (MoneyMom)
No, the christmas cash is not really niche blogging ~ it’s something a little different. Niche blogging is having a medium to large sized wordpress site where you focus on many different keywords that are all relevant to one another. IE. a mountainbikeforsale blog where you do different posts featuring different types of mountain bikes for sale and link people to a place they can buy that bike.
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Luv it – luv it – luv it!
I’m sure I’m not the only person who took to heart your earlier post on making a plan for the next 6 months with a goal we wish to have achieved at the end of that time.
I’ve done that and have a list of the things I need to do to achieve that goal. These steps are all centered around what I’m already doing, just trying to take things up to the next notch.
This post gives me a much better idea on how to use my time most productively. I have more than 2 hours a day but then I’ve got a lot to get done. In the past I’ve spent to much time writing content and not enough time on link building strategies and feeds etc.
I really do think over the next 6 months it is all going to come together.
Jackie,
I know that eBay just changed it’s affiliate program, but I was wondering if the new setup may actually be better for beginnners? I am gettting quite a few clickouts from my lenses now, but no conversions on amazon yet… Would it be worth my time to make a few lenses using ebay where those clicks would be making me money, or is the payout so small that I should stick with amazon? Just wondering, thanks!
Dennis
Follow me @dennismw on Twitter!
Hi Dennis,
I’m not sure how they are working the payout now on lenses using the ebay modules. You used to get part of the money from the sale ~ now I’m not sure if you would get part of the money from the clicks? Couldn’t hurt to try.
When you say “quite a few clickouts” what does that mean for you?
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Well I’ve got about 5 lenses on the 1st page of google now, and each get around 2-3 visits a day, and I’m getting around 5 clicks a day… I know that isn’t very much but to me thats quite a few, last month I was getting 0! …. Total I’ve had 54 clicks to amazon this month, still no conversions…
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I asked because the general conversion rate is about 1 to 2% ~ so you can probably expect to get at least 100 clickthroughs before you make a sale.
You’re getting there!!
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Thank you Jackie,
it is more clear for me to spend most of the time on promoting, not to work on contnt. I was mostly working on lens building. Backlinks, backlinks and more backlincks.
Liliya.
Super post Jackie. I’m putting my hand up for more in-depth posts.:) Anyone else with me?
I agree with the above post for more in dept posts on each day.
Also, Jackie, if the Christmas Cash System is not niche blogging, what would you consider it when referring to your earlier post about what business path we want to take? or did I miss that part?
Jane (MoneyMom)
I don’t really consider it any of those things ~ it’s something a little different. At some point I think it’s important to own your own real estate. Which is the next step ~ the methods I outlined are the next step from christmas cash lenses.
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Thanks for that comment above about the expected conversion rate – I feel much better now about my 3%!! I just need to get more of my stuff on the front page of Google – I had a lot of lenses ranking on the first page, until about 2 weeks ago, when I guess everybody and their mother starting ramping up for Xmas and passed me by!
I’ve got the time to work while the kids are in school – My problem, though, is actually making lenses – As of this week, I’m starting the 6 month challenge (actually a 7-month challenge for me) . I got OWM on Friday, and started day one yesterday – got my keywords, etc… and today, got bogged down trying to write all 5 lenses. It took me a good 3 hours just to do the first one! I’m guessing it’s going to be a learning curve, and that I’ll get faster as I go along – and I need to quit obsessing about being perfect, because I can always go back and fix it! It’s just easier said than done :/
I have the same problem doing so many lenses on very similar topics which is why I start with 1 lens like in the Christmas cash plan. Not very OWM of me, but better than nothing. Then if something takes off I can go back and add to the campaign. I guess you could say I do a lot of Test lenses like Jen talks about in One Week Marketing.
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I have been using traffictravis which was recommended by Jennifer, and I really like it… I was wondering though, it shows the PR for the first 20 pages on google, should I add the total of those and look for something around 20? I’m looking at a few keywords and there are a few pages with PRs of 3,4,and 5, but a lot of zeros as well… Should I be ok with that, I kind of forgot what the guidelines are and I had trouble finding it in the blog.. Thanks!!
Dennis
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Just because it shows the first 20 doesn’t mean you have to use them.
Just count up the first 10 and it should be under 30.
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Jackie,
I don’t know what happened to my comment but I will try posting again! This is a great post about managing what little time many of us have.
Is Niche Blogging what PPG is talking about with 6 Step Niche Sites? Due to the fact that I am taking care of our 16 month old daughter I really only have 12-20 hours a week to work with and I think that Niche Blogging is it.
I do have some ideas/questions that I would love to bounce off of you but I really don’t want to throw them up here, nothing personal everyone
but I am trying to see if my idea will work.
Thanks
Chad
That is a cornucopia of strategies for 2 hours. Backlinks is the crux. Once you accumulate them sincerely, your site should go north.
6steps is one way to do niche blogging. I think of that more of micro niche sites ~ I like my niche blogging to be bigger ~ 50 to 100 posts on the site. Here’s are only a few pages. But it doesn’t matter what you call it ~ if it feels right, then go for it.
You can always get 30 minutes of coaching to get you off on the right foot. http://www.SquidooChristmasCash.com
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Hey Jackie, what a great site you have here. I am always look for great content to post with my articles and on my blogs and I am glad I found your site. Please keep the great content coming.
I must fully agree with one thing: 2 hours a day (twelve hours a week like ypu said) is not enough time to create money earning online business. This is full time work, and everyone who is interested in making real money from it should work at least 8 hrs a day, or even more. I know that for beginners such vision is not acceptable, because everyone need some work to get real money. To earn from blog few months of hard work are needed so I think that it is extremely difficult to do it the best way possible and to spend enough time to make blog a blockbuster.
Hi Alicia,
I don’t agree with you that you can’t do it for 2 hours a day. You can ~ your results may take longer, but you can do it. Quite frankly with niche blogging I’d say 4 hours a day would be a perfect amount of time to have. It gives you enough time to get your work done, but not so much time that you waste a lot of it. If you are clear about the task at hand, focused in your actions you can do it in whatever time you have available.
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Great tips. I already use UAW but your post just made me realise I am not making the most of it! Why didn’t I ever think to submit the unique articles to places like HubPages as well as EzineArticles?! That will save so much time!
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I agree that more than 2 hours a day would be IDEAL…. However, right now I work 9 hours a day (from home) doing medical transcription, have 3 kids, and I also am a Powerseller on Ebay…… I can’t really afford anymore than 2 hours each night (unless I give up sleeping) and then I try to split my 2 days off a week to build by Ebay business and then also work on Affiliate Marketing because I truly believe that this is my future and a real way so I can leave my “day job” and concentrate more fully on the Affiliate Marketing.
Jane (MoneyMom)
UAW can be a strain on the pocket, especially when one is on a shoe-string budget. I think article submission, to say, EZA, is a viable option?
If that’s what you can do then it will have to do. The point of uaw is it leverages your actions ~ you get lots of links from writing 1 article. You don’t get that with EZA submission ~ you just get the 2 links from your article.
But ~ if you have more time than money then I’d say write articles to eza every day, in addition to the other things mentioned.
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Jackie,
I was looking for samples of good blogs using blogger.com that I could look at . I wanted to look at those because I believe you can see how users are making the most out of their blogs based on the limitations or rather options that blogger.com has available.
I have a blog being http://www.best-gifts-for-christmas.blogspot.com that I believe is somewhat bland and probably not optimized. Right now I use it as a link building tool so my focus on it is minimal. However, if I wanted to start niche blogging I’d like to know how to create the blog to reach its maximum potential for conversions.
The free resource is necessary right now with the idea to build word press sites in the future.
Thanks,
Jolene
Follow me @jochris26 on Twitter!
Jolene,
The platform you build your site on is really less important than the research you do, and the links you build.Whether you build a site on blogger or wordpress is really of no consequence ~ either one will work. You just have to do the keyword research and then build links.
A link blog is much different than a niche blog ~ they have completely different purposes ~ you should have both kinds of blogs in your blog network ~ but you can’t combine them together.
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Thanks Jackie,
On my niche blog, how can I learn how to really maximize it to its highest potential. As I said, my site is very Blahhh. (How’s that for a technical description?) And if I had a niche site, I really don’t know how to develop it any more than this link building site.
Thanks.
Follow me @jochris26 on Twitter!
how your site Looks really has nothing to do with whether or not it will make money. You have to attract people who are searching for what you have. If you make that connection you will make sales.
I’m doing a whole series on building niche blogs, so just play along, you’ll get there.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
This is a great post, alot of people waste time trying to learn new things when it comes to Internet Marketing, the most important thing to realise is that the best way to make money is by doing not by reading.
Again thanks for the post, I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for the valuable information! You have given me some promotion idea’s that I knew but wasn’t really using!
This is the most information I’ve ever seen on one post. It is really nice to see someone giving so freely of their knowledge.
Thank you so much…
Thank you Jackie – you do talk a lot of good sense!
I have all your emails go into a separate folder and I confess that there are quite a few there waiting for me! However, the good part about that, is that I get to see all the posts and answers since! – there is a silver lining to every cloud, I guess!
All the best to everyone for 2010. It isn’t an affiliate link, but if you want a really good book – free just pay postage. To start changing the way you set and achieve your goals grab your free autographed copy of his book right now at: http://FreeBookFromRaymond.com. Raymon Aron is an inspiring speaker and writer – enjoy.
Janice from Auckland
Dear Jackie:
This post is fabulous. I just finished going through the first pass of OWM using LearnItStepByStep. I was left wondering if I am not a hamster, how will I ever find the time to be successful? How will my fingers ever hold up from all the typing of unique content and how will I ever get enough backlinks.
Then I thought about MNF and UAW and wondered if they were the key to saving time to do this.
This post explains the exact blueprint of how to be successful with a limited amount of time.
Thank you for your generousity.
Laura
Hi Jackie,
Do you offer coaching on the “2 hour a day” internet niche blog business? I would like some help in implementing this very smart long term Internet business stragegy.
If so, how do I contact you for this?
Thanks.
Laura
Shoot me an email and we’ll work something out. However ~ though the platform is different the process is QUITE similar to OWM.
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