The Hardest Part About Making Money Online Is..
Keeping focus.
That’s hands-down the hardest part. And as lame as it may sound, I’m sure everyone reading this has their own stories to share…
Over the past few months, my business has been growing, and last month I nearly hit $10,000 ($9,218 to be exact). But along with that growth came more customer support emails, more websites to maintain, more articles to write, more links to build, more affiliates to pay… oh what the hell I’ll just say there’s more of everything.
Now, I already have 2 staff helping me out in the support area, and I have several bloggers working on a handful of blogs. I outsource a lot of stuff too, especially those that I flat out suck at.
So why is it getting so hard for me to focus? Am I really having a problem focusing my energy of is it just because I was working on a major project for Malaysians (only) and I’m finally feeling the heat?
I kept on asking myself that question. Eventually I found the answers and I’m not surprised at all.
Culprit Number 1 - Checking Email
I’ve been checking my emails a lil too often. It’s the first thing I do in the mornings, and it’s BAD. Why? Because there are basically 2 types of work you can do:
- Productive work
- Non-productive work
And believe it or not, replying emails falls under number 2. You should spend the first few hours of the day when your mind is eager and fresh, to do Productive work - writing a new article, finishing that ebook, publishing that PR, etc. Work that directly makes your business grow (in terms of money, traffic etc)
Imagine the first thing you see in the morning is a refund request or a rude email. That will certainly screw up your day.
Now I’ve given that advice to many people before, and just as often like today, I find myself needing it too.
Culprit Number 2 - The Phone
I used to turn my phone off when I’m working, but somehow that good habit fell apart. So if you call me and I don’t pick up, you know that I’m back into it and just call back half an hour later.
Just when I’m in the middle of something my girlfriend calls me and starts a long, long story about some event or some person. Then the entire line of thought and focus is gone, in an instant.
I only have myself to blame though - my discipline’s slacking off.
Culprit Number 3 - Too Many Projects
I bit off a little more than I can chew, again. Although it’s something that runs in my nature (I love starting but hate finishing) I’m sure I can plan my work better in the future.
Well some of you reading this may think “Hey dude I have no idea what you’re complaining about since you made more money this month than ever before…”
But that’s the whole point. I want to keep on making more, while not increasing my working hours as well. To me that’s what an Internet business is about.
It’s all about having the right balance, and I guess I need to get everything back in balance if I want to keep my sanity..
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Hehe yeah… more money.. more work to do
that’s life 
Congratulations on last months income! Nice job. Care to reveal what your biggest money-makers were?
Yeah, focus is definitely something I need more of - I often find myself checking my e-mail too often. But I’m trying to cut that down - maybe I should try just checking e-mail once a day…
And too many projects? Tell me about it… Getting an idea and starting something new can be very exciting - but seeing it through can be a whole different thing
Well, good luck on your continued success.
I totally agree with you. We must always focus in everything we do.
As I’m learning my way in internet marketing, I find it hard to juggle between my job and making money online.
FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS!
Hi Gobala,
Let me share with you my experience. First thing you need to do is outsource everything mate…I mean everything. Focus only on whats important. I’ve got 1 webmaster who takes care of my sites, 1 assistant who reads my email, 2 executives who work on project with me, 1 site admin that takes care of my 2 health sites, 4 guys who write articles for me part time and 1 manager who runs my office for me
I start out in a niche doing everything myself until I establish myself after that I either get new people to do the stuff for me or I’ll my existing team to do it. The reason I start doing everything myself when I am starting in a niche is to build my credibility, I dont want my staff doing that for me and I’ll learn the market and niche. After establishing my self, i’ll outsource everything.
My time is very precious to me. I’ll warn you that sometime outsourcing can be painful…I’ve some bad experience. For example the person who supposes to be taking care of my domains forgot to renew one domain which was my jagsenghera.com and I lost it to another bidder….talk about choosing the wrong person for the job aye…
But most of the time, you get what you pay for. Remember outsource everything.
Hi Jag,
Yeah I do outsource a lot of stuff although I dont have as many staff as you do. I might consider taking on someone full time, though, by end of the year.
A site administrator, maybe. My business is not as big as yours I guess, so I doubt I’ll need more. It’s just a matter of doing important stuff first before letting emails and phone calls dictate your day.
Glad to say that I’ve been practising that yesterday and today, emails off till after I finished writing for my blogs, and doing other important stuff. And I can say that the results are obvious.
And Jag, just curious..
Why would someone bid a domain name with your name on it, unless he has the same name, which i think is quite unlikely?
No wonder I could not find your blog anymore
Well what happen is, the domain name expired because the person suppose to renew my domain names forgot to do it…and when I went to get it back, it takes 90 something days before a not renewed domain is fully expired while that period of time if anyone can bid a higher price then you are bidding they will steal the domain name from you…
I see, well I lost one domain name before beasue I didnt register in time. Was a PR4 site running on PHPBB and getting quite good Adsense income. I hate the idiot who stole it from me, but I did learn a really valuable lesson..
I’ve also registered domain names with typos…lol