Step 1: Organization
Getting organized can be a pretty quick and simple task. You need to make your work environment one that makes you more productive. Clean up around you computer area and get rid of the junk. Get yourself a notebook and a pen or pencil. This takes care of your physical desktop.
Your virtual desktop (your computer) needs to be cleaned up as well. Do you have 50 icons on your desktop? If so, you have way too many (you know even if there are 20, you got too much). You need to make yourself some folders on the desktop with the main one being your business folder - name it what you want, but all of your online business related activities will go in there. Make some other folders within that one. Make one for your blog (if you don’t already, you will have one), one for your programs (most likely affiliate programs that you will be promoting), and one for promotion (this will be for all of you promotional activities- advertising, etc.). Your affiliate program and promotion folder should also have spreadsheets opened up in each one of them - an Excel type of program to keep track of all your affiliate links, where and what you are advertising, etc.. You will see over time how important it is to track your efforts to see what is working and what is not. I will be expanding on the tracking of efforts down the line. For now, just make the folders and open up some blank spreadsheets and label them. Once you see that you have information that you need to keep, you at least will have an immediate place to put them.
Your e-mail. This may be a tedious task, but it is vitally important as it has a direct impact on the next step which is focusing your efforts. If you have been interested in online marketing for any length of time whatsoever, you have undoubtedly singed up for list after list and probably receive anywhere from 20 to over 100 e-mails a day. This is too much. You already knew this, but haven’t done a thing about it have you? You need to pick no more than 10 lists to belong to. You will have to go back and look at what information you receive and determine who is sending you “good” information, and not just ads disguised as information. Why 10? It is an arbitrary number, and I believe that this is a reasonable amount of information for most people to handle. You need to be able to continue to receive valuable, free information as well as see what other online marketers are doing. If you are receiving mailings from marketers, they have some level of success. Look at what they do and pay attention to things that you like and don’t like about their marketing efforts - take notes.
Okay, that is enough to keep you busy for a few days. Be back here in a few days for your next steps.
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