I’m building a review site right now for online dating offers.  I didn’t realize quite how much work I would have to put into it, but it has been a lot of hours at this point.  Nevertheless, I feel great about it.  The reason I’ve been able to work so hard is because I’ve been breaking the entire project down into lists of steps that I have to follow.  I talked about this a couple days ago when I wrote about keeping records of everything you do, and also with the affiliate review site “formula” I posted about a week or so ago.  It was a formula, but I regret to inform you that there are a ton of little steps in between that I did not foresee.  Nevertheless, it still is a rough outline of what needs to be done.  It’s just that there’s a lot of grunt work in between.

I feel that I’m not at the level with this review site where I should be outsourcing everything yet, simply because I want to turn a profit on it first and see what kind of potential it has for the first one.  If it works out the way I hope it will, then I will feel much less guilty spending on outsourcing a few more when I know that there is almost certainly money at the end of the tunnel.  I feel very confident that there is, but I also feel that so long as I’m forced to sit at work for 8+ hours a day, I might as well be getting things accomplished.  So I will be my own bitch for now.  The me who thinks up these projects will hire out the me who sits at work all day to do the grunt work.  Fine.

I cannot express how greatly my new habit of breaking projects down into simple to-do lists has improved both the amount of work I’ve put out, as well as the quality of work I’ve put out.  By designing the project from start to finish, I set a clear road ahead of me.  I made a number of adjustments and additions to these steps, but that was only in the midst of trying to accomplish them.  That’s where the real learning occurred during this process – in the doing.  Furthermore, by having this clear list of things to do, and by putting my blinders on and not allowing myself to get distracted from this project, I have had only two options each day – perform the steps set out on the list from the day before, or don’t.  If I don’t, then I am on the path to nowhere (failure).  The only other option is to work on the damn project.

Make a giant to-do list, small-chunk it, and then work, work, work.  Then you can sit back and marvel at all the things you’ve learned and created.  I’m now convinced this is the only way to go.

There are plenty of mindless, totally boring steps in internet marketing, particularly when it comes to link building.  That has been the major thing slowing down my output, and dragging on me.  Every time I realize that the time has come to post all my damn articles to 50 different websites and build the links, I get this ultimate dragging feeling and then my mind distracts itself by finding something more interesting to do.  This cycle perpetuates, and the reason is that it’s simply NOT worth your time to do all the linking yourself.  Ugh.  What a terrible task… just about as bad as accounting. HA!

Now that I’m finally willing to pay other people to do things for me, I’ve realized that the most important factor to success is getting things done exactly how I want them to be done.  Communicating clearly with the outsourcer, and having very specific requirements for the work I receive.  That way, if I’m not happy with the end result, I can point to a specific line in the job instructions that clearly states what I expected, and then demonstrate how that objective wasn’t fulfilled, eliminating any confusion in the mind of the outsourcer.

So what I’m doing now is going through every boring & repetitive task that I feel is essential to my current project,  doing it once, writing down exactly what my thought process was, as well as the steps I took to accomplish that task in a manner that pleases me.   It sucks, but I have a feeling of accomplishment when I finish each task, knowing that I will hopefully never have to do that task again unless I choose to.

An added bonus is that by keeping very specific track of these tasks, I’m actually creating a specific internet marketing method for success that I’m going to turn into a product down the road and sell to other people.  2 birds, 1 stone.  Huzzah!