Internet Marketing Time Management
When I was working at a day job, I probably only had 1 to 3 hours to put into my business each day, so I crammed in whatever I could every day.
Now that I have a lot more time to put into this, I categorize each day of the week to PRIMARILY complete a certain task... I picked up this tip years ago from a report written by Willie Crawford.
Here is what I do during the week. I'm always improving my systems so you won't always see this formula but here is what I plan for...
Monday: Writing Day. Write all e-mails to be sent out the rest of the week. I tend to launch (or relaunch) one new product a week, so all I need to do is think about four things to mention about what I'm launching (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and write those as four quick e-mails.
E-mail marketing is always quantity over quality anyway, so why not send short and to-the-point e-mails that blend content and sales (which makes it okay to end each daily tip with a pitch). If I'm feeling nice, I might hit them four days of the week with regular e-mails and then a blog post on the fifth day.
But the point is, I get all my e-mails queued up one day so I don't have to worry about sending e-mails the rest of the week.
Tuesday: Customer Service Day. Here is where I knock out all the refund requests, lost download links, and so on. I answer customer service a little bit each day but I get so much, if I answered customer service first thing every day, I wouldn't get anything done.
Right now, the majority of my support requests come from Action PopUp, which is silly because if people read the instructions and tried things like disabling other plugins temporarily, making sure all files were uploaded, and testing the plugin on the default theme, it would eliminate 90% of all problems.
But people still need my help and I'm happy to help them. Tuesday is where I clear out customer support so that I'm about 24 hours behind instead of my usual average of 3 days.
Wednesday: Webinar with Jason. Without webinars, Jason and I could not have had several back to back $30K months. I'll be honest, our latest webinar didn't sell out as well as I thought as it would and I fell to $21,000 in April. But I've still made roughly $110K in the first four months of 2009.
We run the rolling four week webinar model. We have a big launch and create a four week e-class on a topic... anything from video selling to product creation... have a 90-minute webinar once a week and fill in stuff in a private blog in between. At the end of week number four, we sell them on the NEXT four week webinar.
It's a great model and I can actually get customers to do things they wouldn't do if they bought a stupid e-book from me. During the day I add content to that blog for the week, then at night I co-host the webinar. Right now we're smack dab in the middle of Webinar Crusher.
Thursday: Webinar with Lance. Since the April dip I decided to get a second e-class going to target a whole other crowd of buyers... Lance's new-school low ticket buyers who appreciate a good funnel. Same rolling four-week model. Right now we're hosting the Blog Invasion System.
Friday: Product Creation Day. I keep pushing so that if I want to create a product, I do it in a day... or at least a weekend. On Friday I'll either write a report, or knock out a bunch of PHP scripts or WordPress plugins. If I'm on a roll this will usually carry over into the weekend.
The weekend is usually a mix, but I definitely ignore most e-mails until the weekend is over. I definitely spend a lot of time away from the compuer on the weekends but I make sure to put at least 5-10 minutes in.
There you have it, my day-to-day system...
- Monday: Writing Day
- Tuesday: Customer Service Day
- Wednesday: Jason Webinar
- Thursday: Lance Webinar
- Friday: Product Creation Day
What's your daily system? Do you even have one? If not, post a comment below and make one up. I need 11 comments and 11 tweets to this post if you want me to keep adding to this blog...
Filed in: Productivity
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Hi Robert
My daily system is that I write three things, I have to do that day.
Last week, most days were very similar, and my notes were:
– Poker (write articles about playing poker online)
– 7Day Profit System (I tested this as a case story)
– WoW strategy (I wrote short articles about World of Warcraft)
I was surprised to learn that you took care of customer support yourself. I guess it has it’s advantages, but I would have assumed that you outsourced such a job. Why not?
You make it look so easy!
🙂
Great stuff as usual.
Doesn’t get any easier than that.
Ely Delaney
My Business Marketing Mentor
Great information Robert.
As you know I have been a professional networker for over 15-years and have recruited over 60,000 people in various work-at-home and MLM programs.
I make a list every night of the 6 most important things that I need to accomplish the next day in order of importance.
With 23 income streams and thousands of students I have to be very careful with time management.
The best thing I ever did was start a blog which outlines the various ways I have made millions online and I actually show step-by-step the tools I have used to recruit over 60,000 people.
Thanks,
J.R. Jackson
http://JRJackson.com
Aye Robert.. you make it seem like its effortless.
It’s so inspiring to me that I so look up to someone so young and I have adopted many of the things you say, such as Subliminal CDs and working directly in the EZA and aweber compose windows so i don’t end up with a million half-typed things.
When will you update your whiteboard for us again?
😀
This is great! I needed a successful example to model. Nothing I’ve tried so far has kept me in focus and on track.
I didn’t know what to focus on during what kinds of time increments. This helps tremendously!
Thank you!
Robert,
I appears to be of the old school format. I work off a daily planner “Day Runner” (paper model).
I list the activities that I’m going to do for each day and I consult back to the previous days list to see if there was something that I didn’t get done.
I try to have no more than 5 checklist items each day as that has proven to be the most that I can get complete each day.
Then I work in bursts of time on each task for 30 to 60 minutes each until I’ve completed each item.
I love to be able to check things off the list.
The nice thing about the paper system that I use is that I can flip back to say “April 2nd” and see exactly
what I was able to get complete for that day.
Thanks for sharing your system!
Chris
sounds good all but Tuesday: Customer Service Day.
I outsource all my customer service.
My system is simple too. I know about what amount of money I will make from doing each task I do so… I make a long lists of tasks that well net me at least an extra 1k/month.
And… I make sure I do one every single day. So at the end of the month Im making an extra 30k/month.
I only have to work about 1-3 hours a day and anything extra I do is just extra money 🙂
This can easily be done by choosing the right tasks.
I also find things to motivate me. Like recently I wanted to take a vacation in the Smokey mountains for a week..but in order to allow myself this vacation I made myself work a whole 8 hours straight.
Normally yo wouldn’t get me to work that hard. 🙂
But I wanted this vacation pretty bad so I did and… well lets just say wit will pay for itself many times over.
I set a budget ever month for my bills and anything over that budget I make myself work extra for. This works out great!
If I want to make more money my solution is…find something I want to buy and spend more!
Most of the time I’m either creating new products or testing ones I already sell for a higher conversion rate.
I outsource all my product creation efforts as well.
Time management is extremely important to me. This is why I only focus my time where its most valuable (writing copy) and outsource the rest 🙂
thanks for the tips. I enjoy getting your email.
I’m also using one of your tactics…The cool timer is awesome!
peace
OK, I’m one of the guys that didn’t read the direction on ActionPopUp and had to submit a support ticket!
I’ve found that for me, there’s no such thing as “multi-tasking.” I can either do one thing, and one thing only, and do it right — or I can try to do two things at once, screw them both up royally, and then have to do each one over again.
Splitting your responsibilities into discrete time periods (days, hours, morning/afternoon, etc) really helps you stay focused on what needs to be done. Plus, you don’t have to worry about the other stuff that needs to be done (like Customer Service) because you know that it will be taken care of on its own specific day.
Hiram
My weekly schedule is as follows:
Saturday from 1 to 4:30 I attend two classes, one as an admin and one as a student.
Sunday from 3-6 I host a peer group for the class
Monday from 8 to 11 I attend two classes, one as an admin and one as a student.
Tuesday from 1 to 3 I host a peer group for the class
Wednesday I work on creating my own class material
Thursday from 1 to 3 I host a peer group for the class
Friday I work on my class material;
which brings me back to Saturday. In between times each and every day I work on building my business online.
If you want to know more you can contact me at dla.affiliates@gmail.com
Hi Robert,
I love your strategy. Mine goes like this:
Mon. writing all day. Emails, ar’s, newsletters, blog post for the rest of the week.
Tues.Traffic generation. Seo optimization, twitter, forms. Advertising.
Wend. Article writing all day. With research.
Thurs & Friday: Research, sales copy, websites, customer service if needed. Right now I have no customers service.
Weekend: Family time. Rinse and repeat.
I was honored and surprised that your system was
someone inspired by something I wrote years ago.
I still focus on completing/focusing on one major
thing each day.
Seeing how productive you are, I may need to shift
my time management to a little more like yours.
Willie
Looks good Robert, I need to implement this!
My week usually starts on something important then I get distracted.
Start and hopefully finish yesterdays projects then I get distracted again.
Rinse and repeat.
I do usually have about 3 productive days a week, but I usually have to stay up half the night to get anything worthwhile done.
Thanks Robert, you have a great way of keeping things simple and focused.
Robert,
I’m so impressed. I’ve been finding it hard to segue between the “day job” and my home business. I’m now going to plan out a more focused schedule based on the one you did.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Hello Robert! I always reading your blog.. I’m so impressed with this one.. like Betty Fellows said.. it’s hard to plan out.. and more focused.. thanks man for your information
Semmy
http://www.myminisitegraphic.com
I did read the instructions. I did not submit a support ticket. But I did lose two days trying to get action popup to work on an incompatible theme. Still no idea of the cause, but I’ll find out one of these days 🙂
Wow! This is indeed a good technique.. as for me a part time blogger, I’m trying to balance between creating post, commenting other blogs, and forum.
I’m a time management dummy. Not that I don’t know that I need to do it…I just consistently fail to plan the day out properly. I know it has cost me thousands of dollars this year alone.
You know the old saying. If you fail to plan…you are planning to fail.
Embarrassing but true.
Thanks for the reminder.
Hi Robert,
I landed here last week as part of the Jason Fladlien’s funnel…now I see where he got his focus and product creation genius ideas!
I read your post last week several times and what impressed me most was the Product Creation Day on Friday.
I was actually mesmerized by the thought of having a product created every week. During the week my brain was unconsciuosly searching for ways to implement that goal.
The result was that I discovered two product goals that I will be implementing soon using Jason’s “Expert” and “Niche Invasion” products.
Thanks for sharing such an out of the box schedule…!
MikeR
My biggest thing for time management is leaving email to the beginning middle and end of the day rather than hitting refresh all day, same with Facebook. Try to leave less time for LISTENING to the world and more time creating for the world 🙂
Hmmm. I only do daily panning. I’ll give this weekly planning a try.
Thanks
Tanim