Attempting to make money online for years teaches a person quite a few things. You learn lessons about yourself and about the business. Recently helping out on the eProfits site has helped me remember the struggles I had when I started and the steps I took (and still take) to move towards success. One of the lessons that helped me the most was developing an action plan.
The action plan was all about ensuring I was using my time the best way possible. It helped me stop procrastinating, and it made sure I was focusing on all areas of my business.
Having an action plan is an important step to making money online. I just whipped up a blog, signed up for some social media sites, threw up some ads made three posts and wondered where the money is. Then when it didn’t come, I didn’t know where to go next. I had no long term plan.
It is one thing to create a blog and set up social media accounts, it is a whole different thing to actually use them.
This is where the action plan came in. I had to actually think about how I would build my site and maintain it. That didn’t just include on-site, that included being active in off-site areas as well (like social media).
I notice some new people on eProfits struggling just like I did, so I want to share the easy method I used to start my action plan. I have since moved on to much more complex scheduling and goal setting, but this general model was a great introductory step.
All you have to do is schedule these daily activities. Now when I say daily, I mean for the people who work on their site daily. If you work on it a couple times a week, just schedule these general activities for each of those days.
Content Creation – This includes making blog posts, products, video or audio. Any content you can add to your site basically. For most people this will be a blog posts, or a video for video bloggers. It also includes sales letters, squeezes pages and other landing pages.
60% – This is the bread and butter of your online efforts, so it is the biggest time commitment. You should be using about 60% of your time to create content. This may seem like a lot, but remember this includes a wide variety of things.
- Blog Posts
- Landing Pages
- Lead Capture
- Videos
- Audio
- eBooks
- Websites
- Etc…
Social Networking - This means using social networks to either drive traffic to your site, or simply as keyword real estate. The two main ones I focused on in the beginning were Twitter and Facebook.
25% - For a quarter of your time you will want to be networking online. I see so many people say I have Facebook and Twitter why am I not making money. Well you have to set some time aside to become valuable parts of those communities. You need to engage people. This means, don’t spam Twitter, offer valuable replies to people looking for help. Just act natural. Think of it as an online cocktail party, you want to “mingle” a bit. With Facebook, update your fan page often, ask and answer questions of your community etc…
Another great way to network online, is to find a message board that is related to your topic. Join the board, and become a helpful member of the community. Answer questions, and give thoughtful replies. Include a link to your website in your signature if they allow it. Some message boards will even have forums dedicated to selling your offers or services.
Education – No matter what your niche is about you will want to be researching it and watching for things like developing trends. You will also want to educate yourself on internet marketing in general. This could also be personal development training where you work on goal setting and motivation.
10% - make sure you are always learning because the world of internet marketing is always changing. Use this 10% of your time to read some related blogs you are subscribed to. Use it to follow some online tutorials. Or you can spend it learning more advanced online marketing tactics. As long as your are gaining knowledge that will help you succeed then you are not wasting time.
Experimentation – This is an extension of learning. This is some time you dedicate to attempting new design tricks or testing new techniques.
5% - This might not be required by everyone, but I think experimentation is important. I think as an internet marketer while you should focus, I think it is important to have some free time where you can try anything. While it might not be a tried and true method, you never know when you will hit gold. Use a small amount of your time to try something different, or to test anything you learned from your education.
To help the ratios make a bit more sense, if you worked on your site for 20 hrs, then you would spend:
- 12 Hours on Content Creation
- 5 Hours on Networking
- 2 Hours on Education
- 1 Hour on Experimentation
An action plan will certainly help the new affiliate marketer. Anyone who wants success in any field should have one, and in the competitive world of internet marketing it is certainly a difference maker. To help the ratios make a bit more sense, if you worked on your site for 20 hrs, then you would spend:
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