Effective Time Management For Internet Marketers – Where does the time go when you’re having fun!

Last week we had a Webinar every night about how to drive traffic to our websites and it became very clear that effective time management is the vital key to getting everything done. Alex gave us so many ways of driving traffic to our blogs for free that my head was spinning. Where do I start?

Let’s see if I can remember all the ways he mentioned of driving traffic to our blogs. There is good old article marketing, forum participation, blog commenting, press releases,  video marketing,  use of social networks like Twitter and FaceBook, bookmarking, guest blog posting, creating Hub pages or Squidoo lenses, blog linking and submitting to blog directories.  I’m sure there are others that don’t spring to mind right now.

My first thought was how do I find the time to do all this. I could spend all day and night at my computer doing stuff. I could really. I love it, but other more mundane things have to get done as well.

The late Jim Rohn, the great entrepreneur and motivational coach, once said “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you cannot get more time”.  How true that is.

It’s essential that if you going to make money on the web you have to make very good use of your time. When you are just starting out and you haven’t done some of these things before you need some time to figure them out.

Effective time management is a priority. Here are 5 of my best tips:

1 Drain Your Brain

A common time management mistake is to try to use your memory to keep track of too many details. This leads to information overload and brain stress.  Drain your brain before it drains you by writing everything down that you want to do or have to do you can take better control of the tasks and keep yourself organized.

2. What’s your Rank?

The next step is to rank those tasks in order of priority   Doing this will help you focus and spend more of your time on the things that really matter. If your list is long you can divide it up into several lists. Make an A list, a B list a C list and even a D list if you have to.

3. Get a Life

Spending some time on planning how and when you are going to do the things on your priority list will help you get them done. You know the saying all work and no play? Planning your days will let you have a life as well as a business.

It takes time to make a schedule but it is time well spent. You only need 30 minutes at the most at the beginning of each week.

4. Don’t be such a fusspot

It’s always tempting to try to make something better.  When starting out in a new venture you want everything to be just right don’t you? For example, it’s tempting to keep going over an article you have written to make it better and better. A couple of revisions, yes. But more than that is a complete waste of time.

It’s a good idea to set a time limit for getting a task done. The truth is is that nothing can ever be perfect. Just get it done and get it out there. You are your own worst critic. No one else will worry about the things you do.

5. GSI

My husband refers to certain jobs in our house as GSI.  If you haven’t already guessed it stands for Get Someone In. In our case it means outsourcing. Hire someone else to do some of the things that are draining your time or that you don’t like doing.

You can find people through guru.com, elance.com or peopleperhour.com

When starting out on a tight budget you may not not be able to do this but as soon as you can it really helps to free up your time so you can concentrate on the things you are really good at.

There are many other tips I could mention for Effective Time Management but these 5 are a good way to start.

If you liked this article you might also like to read my hub page article on Internet Marketing Success Mindset.