Here it is – the secret in one word – Focus!
A bit of a let down you might think? Another useless post by Shawn – and picking on the #30DC (30 Day Challenge) crowd because they are the only ones listening in my ‘at the moment’ limited audience. Sorry about that – but this is more useful to them than most – honest…
Just something I myself am going through and I’m sure many others have the same problem – especially if you are starting off on your first site(s).You need to Focus on the tasks that matter and not waste your time…
I’ll explain…
First for absolutely no reason again, a related or favourite music video… Alanis Morrissette, showing how to change the definition of a word slightly and then write a song all about it – Ironic – and showing that lonely car journeys can be made more interesting by singing with mad imagined version of yourself – Don’t try this in company…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc
Back to the post – It’s an important one IMHO…
The problem comes through mainly because the Internet is ‘too darn interesting’, especially to enquiring minds wanting to pick up on the latest methods, the latest news and any information that will give you the latest edge! Pretty much the latest is coming at you faster and faster in more interesting ways. It is only too likely that you start off the day with great intentions and have a list of what you would like to get done in the time you have.
Do you manage to do it?
I wrote recently that, for my own goals, that I needed to look in detail at the work I am doing to achieve an objective in Internet Opportunity System Idea looking for Input and Imagination. As I work and something springs to mind I add all these bits to an ever growing mind map of all the different tasks that seem to get included. It is absolutely clear though there is only a small subset of activities however that actually EARN revenue and all the other bits, although they help, are not really adding much to the whole process and often are distracting from it – one of course is the research. Although most important, it must not take over work!
This is how it might go for me at the beginning of the day – I will have a list in my mind of what I want to achieve and full of enthusiasm for the possibilities that each task holds. I will use just use the Keyword Research process as an example and only give a brief idea of the things that happen. But believe me if I was honest this list would be EXTREMELY long…
- I will have an idea of what markets to look for in Market Samurai and follow the process (still following the 30 Day Challenge one). A cycle takes place where huge amounts of information gets shown to you on what fairly competitive keyphrases are available. I find category keywords with the limits.
- Looking at the category keywords I might think they do not fit well together, or the niche doesn’t look very interesting – I might drop it and start again.
- Looking at the competition I might think that there is a little too much to get a site going and back off – I’ll start again with another idea.
- I might have gone through a few ideas and begin to think that I need a spreadsheet to note down the values. Then I could look through all my ideas at once and pick the best one. A spreadsheet is created, made pretty, values added, with many of the search results there.
- Not being sure of how much competition I really should go for I look again at the training. Maybe wander around the Internet again to see what others are doing. Lots of variation I see, some under the radar, some over the top, but anyway I find lots of useful resources that look important.
- Realising I might be wasting time I decide to put the clips of the found pages into OneNote (my choice of notes taking – you might use EverNote etc). But then there are so many that I really should tidy them up – so a little work is done so I might find them easier later.
- I found a niche that looks OK – I am not sure yet so I look at the Competition in Market Samurai
- The competition may be filled with red, so I might go back to my spreadsheet and pick another one.
- I find one that looks OK after a few goes, maybe checking again on the training to see if I have missed anything. Maybe also checking on the Internet to see how others judge the competition. Often finding videos and pages that look interesting so I’ll clip them, download them for later viewing. Though some look very interesting and I watch a few videos.
- After confusing the issues even more I realise that maybe I should just stick with the program and look at what others are doing in the niche.
- The competition module shows my competitors, often big ones sit firmly at the top but a few microniches are there to look at. I see their backlinks, their strategy, so I take a look at some of the sites they are using. Often I will take note of them and place them once again into my notes.
- It may be that I find huge silos, pyramids, or whatever behind some of these sights and after spending some time looking at them, their articles at EzineArticles, what other articles they did, what other niches they are into I might decide that the competition is too much and go back to the spreadsheet.
- Meanwhile, email, twitter, facebook, buzz, etc are all jumping up for my attention and some of them just have to be attended to right there.
- Then there’s the question of is there money there, maybe a huge set of products and services to understand, and so on …
I’ll stop there, I think I have shown enough of what is going on there. A lot of it is maybe insecurity in what is already known. The search for answers is so tempting with the Internet now that you can spend all day looking for them. Strangely enough though – it isn’t the answer!
Now a lot of these sites found are giving probably invaluable information but I keep coming back to the strategy I envisioned in Internet Opportunity System Idea looking for Input and Imagination – there is really only one way to find out… You just have to do it!… Test, Monitor, yes … Look for for new way, yes …. but you just have to do it yourself first and find out how effective any of it is…
The system in front of me glares one important point too. There is one set of actions that you need to do, the rest is fluffy detail. Quite simply if you do not do them – you are DOING NOTHING – you are WASTING TIME.
Here, as brief as possible, are the two main milestones and a direction
- Find the Market is it worth it? – Keyword and Competition research … no amount of research will tell you if it WILL be worth it or not.
- Set up Content and Revenue- Site or Blog or Social Hosted Page, Articles, Video? … everything you need for the first stab and of course it has to make money
- Review, Monitor and Maintenance – Backlinks, if needed, make them, find them, participate in the market. Get the traffic. Make the most of generating revenue – products,conversion etc. Making the site rank in the search engines. Take it as far as you want to and learn from the experience.
The first milestone is the most important, you do not want to waste time later, but then again the values in Market Samurai are showing you if the niche is approachable or not. This is the clearest view you can get so far on whether to go ahead or not. The only variation here is the work you need to put into it to get it ranking. Later with experience the amount of work you need to do will become clearer. But you haven’t actually achieved anything yet so you MUST start somewhere.
The second milestone is the only one where you have ANY possibility of achieving anything. You MUST have a site there, … obvious really. All the activities that lead up to that point account for nothing until this happens. The faster you get there the better – the more time wasted getting here delays any chance you have of making any money online. Without that site(s) you have nothing to learn with, nothing to test new ideas on, nothing that you can make use of any of the products that you see online that may help your business.
The direction isn’t necessary, it may be that you do nothing with the site – or you might auction it off on Flippa. However, this is where you direct your site going forward.
If you set up the site and it goes wrong, it most likely isn’t permanent, it may just need more work, just try again with another site, put more work into the first and test out different ideas on it. This is where you evolve the site from a microniche if you want to – or use it as an anchor to gain your foothold in the niche you are after – today the niche, tomorrow the world. More importantly, it is not from all the notes, videos, ideas and sites that you learn the Internet from, it is from your own site where the real learning takes place. You can only master any of this advice if you actually DO IT! and only learn if you monitor it.
So Focus on achieving the first two milestones – and learn from your sites. Do not waste time getting there by distractions and shiny pretty new things…
Can you see where this post is a little ironic? I could add – do not waste time by adding another post to your personal blog 🙂
Finally, I am not picking on the 30 Day Challenge crowd for the reason stated above – it’s just that it would really give me quite a kick to see that any post I make on this is helpful to anyone stuck in the black hole of distraction – I see many that take on this challenge in danger of falling into it. Well, this is the way out, Focus on reaching the milestones and shut down everything else … It is working for me …
My revenue has multiplied infinitely since taking this idea on – Well, it went from zero to something 🙂 which mathematically is an infinite increase :-)… The wonderful thing is no increase later will ever beat it!
Your thoughts?…