Learning To Let Go

One of the biggest problems with trying to build up an online income is that time is finite.

With everyday activities (i.e. work, kids, school, etc.) taking up the majority of your waking hours, you may find that you don’t have as much time as you would like to work on your online activities.

Or you may have a lot of time to work, but you still end up making very little money to show for your efforts. That is even more frustrating.

I am also pretty sure that you don’t want to become a slave to your computer and spend 14 hours a day trying to make money online.

The sad reality is that most people are spending countless number of hours trying to make it work.

You may have very well fallen into this same pattern and there are consequences that come with that such as neglect of your family and poor health.

When I look back at my Internet marketing career, I have realized that I have wasted weeks or even months working on projects that yielded very little results or income to show for my efforts.

I have also realized that I had a serious problem of “letting go.”

What I mean by this is that I should have let go of futile projects long ago rather than tried to make them work.

For years I have been beating a bunch of dead horses.

There are many reasons why you may also be working on useless projects everyday with very little results.

* Maybe you bought a $2,000 course and are convinced it will EVENTUALLY work for you and that is why you continue to do it even though you hate it.

* Maybe you have a passion for a particular topic and are convinced that you will eventually make money with it.

* Maybe you have invested so much money into a project, that you will not give up until you at least get your investment back.

I recently decided to stop working on a project that I have spent that last 11 years trying to make it work.

Yes, that is ELEVEN years, so I am one of those types of people who had a serious problem letting go.

I finally made this decision a few nights ago after thinking how much money I have spent (over $50,000) and the countless number of hours I have put into this particular project.

This decision came after I did a “Return On Investment” calculation on my work hours and I want you to do the same exercise.

I want you to mark the time you spend on the computer for a typical day and see where you are spending your hours.

Here is an example:

Check Email 30 minutes
Write a Niche Article 60 minutes
Add PPC Keywords 30 minutes
Visit IM Forums 15 minutes
Work on Auto Insurance web site 15 minutes

You should do this for an entire week and then take all
the revenue for the week and assign it to each activity:

Check Email $0.00
Niche Articles $50.00
Add PPC Keywords $30.00
Visit IM Forums $0.00
Auto Insurance web site $0.00

So if we were to measure this over an entire week:

Email – $0.00 / 2.5 hours = $0.00
Dating Article – $50 / 5 hours = $10.00
Add PPC Keywords = $30.00 / 2.5 hours = $12.00
Visit IM Forums – $0.00 / 1.25 hours = $0.00
Auto Ins web site = $0.00 / 1.25 hours = $0.00

Trust me. If you do this exercise, you will see where your time is getting bogged down. In this example of a 10 hour work week, 25% of it was wasted answering or checking email that yields zero revenue.

If you are spending too much time answering customer support emails, then why not create a FAQ section to help reduce these emails?

The key here is to reduce your work time and use this time on activities that have results. Or better yet, use this time to work out or spend time with the family.

I mean, that is the whole point why we are all trying to making money online, right?

Let me know your comments.

Best wishes,

Gauher Chaudhry