I remember when I first started internet marketing I would excitedly come to my desk every morning. I would check my email, and I would do a little of this, and a little of that. I would spend HOURS doing this and that, and the other thing. I eventually became pretty frustrated because I wasn’t making any MONEY!!
Over time I started to realize (of course this is simple trial and error) that some activities are more beneficial than others. Some activities make me money, and some just waste my time. I started doing more of the money making activities, and low and behold I started making more money.
Then I started realizing that if I looked at what I was trying to accomplish (my goal) I could figure out exactly what I needed to do to make it happen ~ then I made even MORE money.
What I’m trying to say is all computer activities are NOT created equal. This is an important lesson to learn early in your internet marketing career, especially if you only have a couple hours a day/week to spend on it. Spending your time engaged in specific money making activities will take you much further than 80 hours a week spent doing time waster activities.
I understand when you’re new to IM it’s hard to know what the “money maker” activities are so let’s take a look at how you can know what to do today.
1. Know your goal.
It’s imperative to keep where you are going in sight. It’s much easier to redirect yourself in the right direction when you get distracted (and you WILL get distracted) if you know what your goal is.
We’re going to stick with Christmas Cash goals for my examples, but this will work for any goal you are working on.
Goal: Get 10 lenses in the top 5 of Google.
Make sure you goal is big enough to give you enough to do. If you set your goal at 1 lens in the top 5 there is going to be a lot of down time that you could be using. Some things in internet marketing just take time ~ time that’s out of your control. Google takes time to find your links, EZA takes time to approve articles, Google takes time to rank your lens ~ you have no control over that, so you want to be working on enough that you have stuff to do even when you are stuck waiting on things.
2. Take Stock of Where You Are Now.
Your goal is 10 lenses in the top 5 of Google. Where are you now? Do you have 15 lenses that aren’t doing anything ~ but they’re published? Do you have 1 lens that’s half finished. Do you have 10 lenses that are half finished but not published.
Look where you are at, and then move forward from there.
3. Check your mindmap
Check where you are on the mindmap and create your action steps from there.
I did this yesterday. I took stock of where I was and realized I had a bunch of lenses that were done, but weren’t doing anything. Some of them were indexed, some of them weren’t. I looked at the mind map and realized I needed to make more links (since I was finished creating good content). That’s what I focused on all day long.
If you have 1 lens half finished you’ll start up at the content creation part. Finish your lens, and then move on to the link building portion of the mindmap.
If you have lenses that are done, indexed and ranking on page 2 or 3 you will want to go right to the building links section and get started ~ because more links will drive them up the search engine ranking.
As you can see your actions will directly reflect where you are in reference to your goal.
3. Create a system and plan of action.
A huge part of niche marketing is being able to keep track of everything. It can be a huge stumbling block for beginners and experienced marketers alike. (myself included lol). The thing is, if you can manage to keep track of your stuff you’ll have a lot less work to do. It’s much easier to get what you’ve already gotten done working better than it is to just create new stuff. Like I did yesterday I had to look at what I already had and decided I was dropping the ball and got my butt in gear. 
Creating a system is a great way to keep track of everything. Whether you’re a paper person or a computer person you can create a system that works for you. You can get a composition notebook and write down the name/title/keywords for your lens and then keep track of the linking you do by date ~ and the position of your lens by date. You could also do all this on excel or something similar.
***SIDE NOTE***
Please do not consider creating a system an invitation to OBSESS. It is not. It is a way for you to keep moving in the right direction. Please don’t spend all your time checking your rankings. This is not a money making activity, it is a time wasting activity. It will take time for your links to be found and your lens to move up ~ just accept that. If you know you’re going to be working on a set of lenses or one lens go ahead and check the stats real quick so you can get an idea how what you did last affected your lens, and how much more you need to do, but do NOT let stat checking take over your life ~ really I speak from experience here too.
Back to the original programming…
Once you’ve got a system for keeping track of all your stuff, make sure you add each new thing you do to the system. Then you need to work on a plan of action.
What is it you need to do and how are you going to do it?
I got my system put together yesterday, and I went through and started at the beginning of the linking section of the mindmap. I did new posts on all the free ad blogs I could find for each of my lenses. Since I have 1 Way Links and it doesn’t take long to do I put up posts there for all the lenses I was working on. (which is a batch of 13 right now)
That all took a while and it was time for me to go do other things by the time I was done, so I noted where I was at, and what I had to do next.
In fact, I wrote on the calendar for today that I would be working on blog posts for all the lenses. Now when I’m done with this ~ getting very long winded ~ blog post I will know exactly what I need to work on all day.
What’s gonna work?
That completely depends on you. There are an infinite number of ways you can set this up, it has to be what’s going to work for you. Here’s a few things that work for me. I do suggest if you have short amounts of time you can work you figure this all out BEFORE that time. Don’t spend you “work” time trying to figure out what you need to do, know exactly what you’re doing when you sit down. I often figure this out after Hanna’s gone to bed. Then I’m all set when it’s time to sit at the computer the next morning.
Here’s some tools I use to keep me moving forward, focused, and working.
1. Day Planner.
I have a weekly day planner on my desk, where I write any appoinments, but also the tasks I plan to accomplish for the day. Now sometimes it gets buried under a bunch of crap, but I’m pretty good about digging it out.
2. Accountability partner.
I have a partner I get on the phone with each morning (this should be a short call ~ 15 min). We go over what we accomplished yesterday, any problems we had, celebrate successes, and then identify tasks to accomplish today.
This has been a huge help for me, keeps me on track, and when I’m feeling lazy I know I’m going to have to tell someone else I was lazy so I usually keep going.
3. Timer.
Yep ~ the good old egg timer, although now it’s the digital edition. I keep a timer on my desk for a couple reasons. If I need a break and start doing something that can be a time suck (email) I set the timer for 10 minutes so I don’t get lost. I also use it to give myself some motivation, especially when building links ~ I go all out for 10 minutes. It was a huge surprise to me how much more I get done when the timer is ticking away. lol.
Ok ~ we’re moving toward epic novel length for this post so I’m going to wrap it up. (dang my mom just called and totally disrupted my train of thought ~ can’t remember what I was gonna say).
1. Know your goal.
2. Take stock of where you’re at.
3. Identify what you need to do (specifically) to get to your goal.
4. Create a plan so you know exactly what you need to do.
That’s what you do today ~ and every day to keep moving directly toward your goal.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d5dbd517-3716-4be2-b2a6-8c404ec1eb3e)
Other Posts That Might Help:
[...] a question today over at the other blog. It’s a question I get a lot and SWORE I had done a post on, but I guess not. So here’s [...]
[...] Backlinking Mind Map and Strategy [...]