DAY 12-WEED OUT UNPRODUCTIVE PROJECTS

Go through your list of projects and separate the inactive and non-productive projects. Look over your list and you can choose projects to remove by the following criteria:

• Time needed for the project
• Money spent on the project
• Length of inactivity of the project
• Internet project resources needed
• Potential

Once you weed out the list, look it over and see if there are any that have some monetary value. Domain names, articles, and websites can be sold individually or alone. Some projects can be set aside for a later date. You may choose to allow some domains and hosting to expire to eliminate the expense.

Once you weed out the unproductive and inactive projects, you will free up the following:

• Time
• Energy
• Funds
• Space

This will allow the more productive projects and the projects with more potential to grow and increase in income. It can be difficult to let go, but once you do, you will find it freeing. When your income increases, you will find that motivating.

DAY 11-CREATE A BALANCED SCHEDULE

Even a single person will need to make time for family, friends, socializing, wage earning job, and household tasks. A person in a relationship and/or children will have even more to juggle. The best thing to do is to make sure you have time for unexpected changes in your time available and to make time for responsibilities outside of your Internet projects. Also, include time in your day for relaxation and some fun.

Have an outline of how you will spend your time each day and week. This should then be fine tuned each morning depending on what is scheduled for that day. Planning your time will assure that everything that you need to do will get done. Having some flexible time built into your schedule will reduce stress when things take longer or something unexpected comes up.

Fulfilling your responsibilities will reduce stress at home and at work, which will result in less time playing catch up, dealing with problems because of neglected responsibilities, and strife in relationships. This will reflect positively because you will find that you can be more focused and productive when you do sit down to work on your projects.

DAY 6-STRENGTHEN WEAK MARKETING AREAS

Look over the list that you have and see what areas that you will need to get more information, help, or education. This should be done first, so that you can complete the tasks efficiently. You should estimate the time that each task will take and then you should determine how much time you have to dedicate to your Internet projects. You need to set realistic goals when you set goals for your Internet projects. There is no need to set unrealistic goals and set yourself up for failure.

Create a timeline and then put the various tasks in the slots that are available. You want to include time to monitor and analyze the results of the work you are doing. Before finalizing your goal list, let it sit a few days and see if you think of anything else you want to include or if you want to rearrange the timeline.

Setting goals to strengthen weak ares in marketing is a good way to keep things moving forward on a successful project and also to stabilize the income of an Internet project that fluctuates.

DAY 5-REPEAT WHAT IS WORKING

The first thing to do is to write down the steps that led to success. See what has been working. You can use this list to make goals for projects that aren’t doing well and also for new projects. Once you have this list, look over it and organize it. You can sort the steps that led to success by listing the steps in the following categories:

• Marketing
• Design
• Content
• Advertising
• Promotion
• Social Networking

As you make your list, you will find that some areas you have been stronger at than others. When goal setting you will want to repeat what works. In the areas that have been weak will be the areas to set some goals using the lessons learned from the strong areas. It may also be an area you will want to do some research in so that you can further strengthen your projects that are doing well.

When setting goals, be sure to give the changes time to work. Sometimes you may see results immediately, but to know for sure what you are doing is working, you will want to monitor it for a month and compare averages to the previous months.

DAY 4-SCHEDULE TIME TO DO INTERNET WORK

Decide how much time you have to devote to your projects. You can always add more time, but you will feel like you have failed if you spend less time than you planned on. So choose an amount of time that you know you can do. Having time daily set aside most days of the week is successful to getting results, but always have time off from your projects to avoid burnout.

When you are dedicating time to your projects, have a list of things to do, so you never spend the time just sitting there, trying to think of things to do. A little time almost everyday with at least one day a week with several hours dedicated to working on projects is a good start. Even existing projects will need to be monitored to assure that they maintain their position on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and are still bringing in consistent income.

DAY 3-CREATE FILES ON THE COMPUTER

Before you hire someone or take time off to transcribe your written material, you will want to create files on your computer. It doesn’t matter if you are an idea generator or you are the person that makes ideas a reality; each idea will need its own file. First just create files. You can organize them later.

Idea generator-create a file with each idea. Within those files, you will create a file for the tasks that will need to be done for each idea.

Idea maker-create a file for each task. Within those files, you will creatre a file for the ideas that need those tasks done.

Once you have the files, you can then start organizing the information that you store on your computer and in written form. If you have a lot, you will want to devote some time each day to get some of your information organized into the files you created. You can always add more files as you go.

• Article/content writing-11 hours
• Categorizing domains-2 hours
• Business development-3 hours
• Brain storming-3 hour
• Photography-11.5 hours
• Jan’s Writing Services-6 hours
• Marketing-4.5 hours
• Organizing-2 hour
• Planning-1 hour
• Keyword research-1 hour
• New project development-5 hours

The challenge resulted in me working on my photography more than I had planned, increase in income, and some great ideas for future projects.

All posts on the 50 Hour Challenge

To find out more about other challenges you can go to the category-challenges.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I spent 5 hours on my photography at the workshop and at the rodeo. I spent another 2 hours photographing snow in the dessert (rare) when we got enough snow that it stuck a couple weeks ago. It was quite the experience. I took so many pictures between a couple trips to the rodeo, the snow, the barn dances, visiting a national monument, and friends out dancing that I was almost tired of taking pictures! Have lots of great shots and awesome memories.

WRITING

I have been getting a lot done with my content writing services. I have a new writer and new client. I’m going to credit 4 hours towards the challenge. I got my new writer started, worked on articles for a new client, wrote articles for use for marketing, and wrote a little for a new faith focused project I started. That would be 2 hours for Jan’s Writing Services and 2 hours for content writing.

WORKING WITH BOB SCHMUCK

The time working with my son, Bob Schmuck continues to be productive and motivating.  We have gotten together twice in the past few weeks. During that time we did the following:

• organize (1 hour)
• marketing (1.5 hours)
• keyword research (1/2 hour)
• write (2 hours)
• brainstorm (1 hour) during our time.

The focused time has paid off. I hit my $100 in Adsense income in two months…a personal record! (happy dance!….happy dance!)

NEW PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Working on a few new projects. One is for Super Bowl L (50). I am going to have two sites that I will develop over the next 4 years and then sell it right after Super Bowl XLV (45). This I got the domain names and keyword research done.

The other project is faith focused and I haven’t gotten much farther than lots of notes and ideas in a notebook. It will have a lot of videos. It will start with a focus on teens. I did get the domain names.

When my new writer submitted her sample article, she actually had an excellent keyword. I have the articles ordered for that and am going to develop a website. I got the domain names.

For these projects I probably spent about 3 hours plus about 1/2 an hour on keyword research.

Well, I’m almost done! I have tomorrow off and hope I will be able to get closer to finishing.

TOTAL    42.5/50 hours

Yesterday was especially productive time spent on my 50 Hour Challenge. In addition to the time with my son, I had gotten some writing done earlier in the day and prepared some handmade American Indian jewelry to photograph. My photography is another one of my incomes streams (self-employment).

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING MEETINGS

When  Bob Schmuck and I get together we usually do the following:

• Brainstorm
• Write articles, content, intros, etc. (me)
• Submit articles to directories (Bob)
• Create/update website designs (Bob)
• Blog comment submissions (both of us)
• Plan future projects (both of us)
• Keyword research (Bob)

BASECAMP FOR WEBSITE MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS

Basecamp is a free service (click on pricing, then in small print the free option is under the price boxes on the right) that is upgradeable. Yesterday we set up a Basecamp project for our work. We are going to upgrade in the future, but for now, we are using the free option. We started with having our meeting under milestones and then added a to-do list that covered everything that we did. This will be a good document of how we progressed and we will be able to evaluate the length of time until we see results from our work. The write board will be used to list ideas for future meetings.  This should help us be more efficient in the future when we meet.

One of the main reasons we want to upgrade is to be able to share files and also to be able to have more than one project.

INTERNET VENTURES UPDATE

Adsense-My Internet income from Adsense is continuing to break personal records as the results of previous Internet marketing is seen.

Jan’s Writing Services-Bob and I re-connected on Facebook with an Internet marketer that we met years ago online. He contacted me regarding doing some writing for him. I am no longer writing for Karma Snack due to inconsistencies in my delivery of articles. I’m looking forward to using what I have learned with new clients.

The re-organization of Jan’s Writing Services included working for my family first, getting new writers, setting up schedules, and only working with clients who have professional business practices. The fresh start will fit in perfectly with my re-organization. New clients won’t have unproductive practices that will need to change and I will start with a clean slate. This will be great for everyone.

(2 hours writing, 2 hours marketing,1 hour brainstorming)

TOTAL     20/50 hours

I will plan 51 things to do to increase income and build my businesses. I will probably do more than one a day some days if I know I will be busy or miss a day due to being busy.

I will list my Internet projects and income streams and have at least one day devoted to each project.

I spent about an hour planning my next challenge.

TOTAL     15/50 hours