21 Easy Ways To Save Time In Your Online Business

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2 Table of Contents Preface Decide to become an early riser Start using a timer when you work Batch process your content creation Outsource simple tasks in Fiverr Prepare your blog post by having a weekly planning session Hit unsubscribe Set up separate accounts for personal mail, comments and subscriptions Prioritize your task list Create a checklist for future reference Use a client software to access web-based applications Do all your blog commenting at once Accept free help Create content once use it through many mediums Focus on one project at a time Accept guest posts Crowdsource the content creation Work on your 20% tasks before going to the office Use effective deadlines Agree your working times with your family (if working at home) Process your mail only twice a day Clean your desk Final Thoughts

3 Preface This is the same content as it is on my blog, but I have transferred it into a PDF format with minor modifications. Hopefully you enjoy this report since it is easier to read this way. I have one request though: after you have finished reading this e-book, please share it on Twitter or on Facebook by clicking the icons on the last page of this e-book. Also, you can share this e-book with your friends, if you want to. Have a productive day! Kind Regards, Timo Kiander PS. The following bloggers/blogs have been inspiration to this blog post/free report: Thanks to Corbett Barr for publishing an exceptional post called 21 Quick Actions You Can Do Today To Set Your Blog To Massive Success, Adam Baker for publishing a great post called 24 Quick Actions You Can Do Today That Can Change Your Financial Life Forever Dumb Little Man for publishing an awesome post called 30 Easy Ways to Save Money (and No, you are not doing them all!) 3

4 We all need more time. Unfortunately, 24 hours per day is all we have, so instead of looking for additional minutes or hours on top of that 24 hours, we have to be creative on how we use our time and find ways to save it instead. When running your online business (and especially when you are doing that during your free time), using time sparingly is extremely important, because there are lots of ideas, projects and other things that you would like to implement. With following 21 tips, you can make the most out of your time and, more importantly, you can save time, which you can then invest in other projects in order to grow your online business. 1. Decide to become an early riser Notice that I used the expression decide to become an early riser at first, but not become one right away. You may want to familiarize yourself with the idea of waking up early first, before actually implementing it in your life. a) Decide to become an early riser; b) Decide on a target time when you would like to wake up; c) When you are ready to change your rhythm, start waking up 10 minutes earlier than what you used to (for example, over 7 days); d) When you are familiar with waking up a bit earlier, decide to wake up earlier by another 10 minutes; e) Repeat steps C & D until you have reached your target time; f) Keep waking up early on a daily basis so that it becomes a habit. You are more likely to be able to focus on your work with fewer interruptions during the morning than during the afternoon. Besides, if you work on your important tasks after waking up, you are able to move towards to achieve your goals first thing in the morning! Read the story on how I became an early riser. 4

5 2. Start using a timer when you work If there is one tool that I find to be most useful when working on my tasks, it is a timer. I have written about this earlier and, even at the risk of boring you to death with this topic, I want to bring it up again. a) Download a timer software for your computer; for example, Free Countdown Timer for PC or Timer for Mac; b) Set the timer to between 25 and 45 minutes and start working (you decide the time); c) When the timer runs out, have a 10 minute break; d) During your break, drink some water or eat a healthy snack and leave your workspace for a while; e) Get back to work and repeat steps B to D. When you start working with the timer on, you are fully focusing on the task at hand. This, in turn, ensures that you are not thinking about anything else so that you can focus all your energy onto your current activity. Combine this tip with early wake up times! See the link at the beginning of tip #2 for more details. 3. Batch process your content creation What I have started doing, lately, is batching the content creation of my blog. For example, I might record multiple videos for my blog or write multiple blog posts at once. a) Decide on the content you want to create in a batch; b) Find a time block on your calendar when you can work uninterrupted; for example, for 2 hours; c) Brainstorm some topic ideas before you start creating the content (this speeds up the creation process). I brainstorm my topics on Sundays; d) During your brainstorming session, create an outline for your content too. For example, for blog posts, it might be sub-headers for them; for videos, it might be the ideas you want to talk about on them; e) Create the content in one go as much as you can during your time block; f) Once you have created the content, finalize it, schedule it and allocate another time block from your calendar. Because I have a day job, I try to allocate these blocks during the weekends. 5

6 Once I have the content of my blog ready and scheduled, I can then fully focus on other projects of mine (writing e-books, reports ), without worrying about creating fresh content for my blog at least for a while. In fact, this approach frees up time for other projects, which are also important if you want to grow your online business. Check out my video tip related to this topic: 3 Ways To Find Time For Your Next Online Business Project 4. Outsource simple tasks in Fiverr At times, we may need a helping hand from others. Sometimes, having a VA or even buying help through Elance may be too much so, in those situations, you should consider using Fiverr for your one off outsourcing tasks. a) Go to Fiverr; b) Register an account there (if you haven t already); c) Browse through the categories for the task you want to outsource; d) Choose a freelancer to do the work. I try to choose the ones who have the best user reviews on a topic; e) Pay your freelancer $5 dollars; f) Receive the work, review it and rate the task. The reason is obvious: you have someone else do the work you don t like or are unable to do. This is a huge time saver. At the same time, you can focus on other parts of your projects and complete them faster. I used Fiverr to create e-book covers or for voice over work for my podcast. I was pleased with the results and the price I paid ($5 per task). 6

7 5. Prepare your blog post by having a weekly planning session I briefly touched on this topic in tip #3, but I think that it is worthy of mention on its own especially if you form a habit of doing this. Planning your content in advance gives you a head start for when you actually start creating your content. a) Set aside some time (for example, on Sundays), to plan your content for the weeks ahead; b) Create an Excel sheet, where you brainstorm topic ideas for your posts; c) Plan your upcoming posts (or other content) by setting a date and a name for the post onto the Excel sheet; d) If you are publishing many posts per week, outline the their sub-headers during this session e) Have this brainstorming and planning session every week preferably at the same time Planning ahead always saves your time especially before you start creating your content. I create my blog posts before going to the office and, by doing this little planning on Sundays, I can get started with the writing much faster. 6. Hit unsubscribe I bet you are a subscriber to many newsletters provided by other bloggers and internet marketers. Sometimes the sheer volume of s is just too much and you may want to put the brakes on to avoid being overwhelmed. a) View the messages in your inbox and decide whether you want to receive them or not; b) Unsubscribe from some mailing lists; c) Let only those bloggers and marketers whose messages are truly valuable to your business access your primary box. Less s you have to process, the less time is spent on them. Besides, less chance there is for temptations (like buying yet another info product you don t need). 7

8 7. Set up separate accounts for personal mail, comments and e- mail subscriptions Avoid the flood of s to your primary box by creating separate accounts for different types of mail: personal, blog comments and mailing list subscriptions a) Create a separate accounts for each type of message (mentioned above); b) When commenting or subscribing, use the dedicated account as your address; c) Batch process your s at once for example, once a day. You are freeing your personal account of overload and you can truly focus on your personal messages in your primary box not sales letters or newsletters. For example, I love to follow the discussions in blog posts I commented upon, so having the followup messages sent to a separate address makes things easier for me. This way I don t miss important s in my inbox. 8. Prioritize your task list When it comes to task lists, there are many opinions about them. Some say they are useless, whereas some (myself, for example) say that you need them, because they remind you about what to do the following day. In order to focus on what you are going to do the next day, you need to compile a task list and prioritize tasks by importance. a) The night before, grab pen and paper or alternatively log in to your online task list application, if you use one; b) Jot down the tasks you want to get done the next day; c) Mark important tasks with the letter A; d) Execute these A tasks first the next day. 8

9 Prioritizing important tasks will enable you to focus on them first, get them done and then concentrate on lower priority tasks (instead of spending too much time on the lower priority tasks first). If you have a long list of tasks to do, marking the important tasks with letter A, makes finding them easier. Check out my video related to this topic: Improve your daily task list 9. Create a checklist for future reference You may be faced with a repetitive task and you may want to make sure that you get the same results every time you carry it out. If this is the case, create a checklist with the steps you follow. a) Identify those tasks you are carrying out repeatedly; b) Create a document listing all the steps you have to follow to complete these tasks; c) Regularly update and refine the lists as new steps may come up or some steps may become obsolete. For example when I m publishing a new blog post, I have a checklist of things I need to do, before the post is ready. The steps include finding a picture for my post, proofreading the text, optimizing the SEO of my post or writing a mail to my list about the new post. When I have a checklist of things to go through, it ensures that I m not forgetting anything important when it comes to my blog posts. On the contrary, if I didn t have the checklist available, the process of checking the essential parts of my posts would be so much slower. Beat the blog post perfection by using checklists Thanks for Jason from Business Mindset Expert of this idea. 9

10 10. Use a client software to access web-based applications Maybe this is just me, but I have realized that using client-based software to access web-based services is faster and easier than using the actual web-based interface. a) Figure out whether any of the web-based services you use has a separate client software; b) Download it and install it to your computer; c) Find out whether there is really a time benefit. Obviously, should the client software prove to be slower than the web version, switch back to the web UI. Based on my personal experience, I find that opening up my browser, entering the URL of the service and logging in takes more time than just opening the relevant client software on my local computer. Some of the client applications I m using right now are Windows Live Writer 2011, Evernote and Wunderlist. 11. Do all your blog commenting at once I try to participate on a daily basis in discussions in those blogs that relate to my niche (personal development & time management). However, commenting takes time especially if you want to bring something new and valuable to the discussion. In order to handle the commenting effectively, I prepare a bit for it the night before. a) Sign in to your RSS reader (I use Google Reader myself); b) Reserve a separate folder for the blogs that you actively visit and comment on; c) Mark those blog post headers with a star you find interesting (a star is used in Google Reader); d) The next day, go through the posts/headlines that you marked the night before; e) Do all the commenting at once leaving valuable comments on those blogs I try to comment on at least three different blogs per day and the most efficient way to do this is by batching the commenting activity. Also, when knowing exactly which blogs I want to comment on, I can speed up my blog commenting. 10

11 I m doing my blog commenting during the morning hours on a daily basis. Alternatively, you could decide to dedicate specific days during the week to comment, but you have to test different ways to see which works best. 12. Accept free help When someone offers his/her help to you especially for free be sure not to decline it. You may save time, directly or indirectly, through this. a) When someone offers help, don t hesitate to accept it; b) Be grateful for the advice you get and show your appreciation by saying thank you. When someone helps you especially if you are stuck in a specific situation, you save time because you don t have to ponder about the problem on your own. For example, I have been given free advice on how to develop my blog further in exchange of leaving a comment to a blog or tweeting a specific blog post. These are easy ways of getting help and when a situation like this occurs, you should definitely take advantage of it. 13. Create content once use it through many mediums Back in the 90s, when the Java programming language was created by Sun Microsystems, they advertised it with the slogan: Write once, run everywhere. This is a great motto; you should apply it to your content creation as well (in a modified way of course, like write once, publish everywhere ;). a) Create your content; b) Figure out whether it can be converted to other formats (from blog post to video or podcast ); c) Deliver what you have created to content specific sites (YouTube, itunes, SlideShare ). d) For example, a blog post can be turned into audio format (podcast), video and slides. Audio can be transcribed into text. Video can be transformed into text (transcription) or just audio. Your blog posts (best of them) can be compiled into e-books. As you can see, there are lots of different options for converting from a content type to another. 11

12 You can benefit from the one piece of content that you have created and you don t have to recreate new content for each medium. Also, not only is your content available on different platforms, but this serves your audience as well, since some people may like to read your content, some people may like to watch it while some may like to listen to it. 14. Focus on one project at a time If there is one thing that most online entrepreneurs are bothered by, it is distraction and lack of focus. We like to work on many projects at once, thinking that more things we do at the same time, more we will get done. In fact, it may take you much longer to complete your tasks this way than focusing on one project at a time. a) Start working on a project; b) Figure out what sub-projects it might contain; c) Work on one sub-project at a time; d) Once you have finished a complete project, move on to another one; When you focus on putting all your energy into completing one specific sub-project (or one project in general), you will get it done smoother, because you will be giving the project your full attention. When I first started my blog, I got the best results by focusing only on its launch and nothing else. Once I had finished that project, I was able to move on to other things. The way I handled the blog project was by dividing the project into sub-projects and working on each one at a time. Once I had completed one sub-project, I moved to another one and so on. For example, I wanted to create a lead magnet and an subscription feature for my readers (sub-project #1), create cornerstone content for my blog (sub-project #2), create my Facebook fan page (sub-project #3) and so on. When all the sub-projects were completed, I was able to move on to completely other projects. 12

13 15. Accept guest posts One great way to get the content created for you is to accept guest posts. So, let someone else write the content for you, while you focus on other parts of your blog in the meantime. a) Create a guest post policy page on your blog, which explains the requirements that a guest post should meet before you will publish it; b) Be active on other blogs too by leaving comments and building relationships with blog authors. This way it is easier to get guest posts from someone else; c) When you receive your guest post, check that it complies with the policies you have set and, if everything is fine, publish the post on your blog. Obviously, when someone else creates content for your blog, you save time and you can set your focus elsewhere. At the same time, guest posts might generate lots of attention to your blog bringing more visitors to it and possibly convert some of the visitors to your followers. 16. Crowdsource the content creation A good way to get fresh content for your blog with less effort is to initiate a crowdsourcing blog post. Crowdsourcing might work with other content types as well, but a blog post is perhaps the best example of crowdsourced content. For example, if you are operating in a geo caching niche, you might want to ask the various geo caching bloggers the most important tip that you need to know before getting started with this hobby. a) Start interacting with the blog authors you regularly read by leaving comments and even getting in direct contact with them; b) Ask politely for their willingness to participate to a crowdsourcing post. Remember to introduce yourself if you are not a regular visitor of that blog; c) Send s to blog authors asking the same question; d) Receive the answers and compile them into one big post (be aware that not all of the people are going to reply to your message); e) Give credit to the people who answer the question (a picture, blog URL, Twitter name ); 13

14 f) Let the people know when the blog post goes live by sending them an about it or Tweeting it You save time because someone else is creating the content for you. Naturally, your job is to initiate the task, compile the post and let people know when the post goes live but, in some instances, this may be easier than writing a blog post from scratch. There are also other major benefits in creating a crowdsourcing post. First, you create relationships with other bloggers in your niche, which can lead to even more interaction later. Also, asking the same question to several people provides different points of view. You not only learn about the topic yourself, but your readers will also be interested in the opinions of others. Here, as an example, is the that I sent when I was doing my crowdsourcing post related to my blog launch: 14

15 Hi XXXX! My name is Timo Kiander and I'm a reader of your blog. I love the content that you provide on your site. I have my own blog at and I blog about personal development and how it can be used to improve one's online business. My blog is still quite new and this is my fourth month of blogging. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to participate to a crowd-sourcing post that I'm creating. This post is going to be part of my blog's launch on April 11th, Basically, I would like to hear your opinion on this question: "What is the most important mindset that an online entrepreneur needs and why?" I understand that you are busy with your blog and other commitments and if you feel that you are not able to participate, that's OK. However, if you are going to participate, please reply with couple of sentences. With the answer, please provide a picture of yourself and your Twitter account address (I already have the link to your blog, so that part is covered :). These pieces of information are going to be included within the crowd-sourcing post itself. I'll be contacting other bloggers with the same question as well and after I have received the answers, I will compile them to a single post. Your answer will be part of that post. Once the post is finished and published (on April 11th), I'll let you know about it. Anyway, thanks again for providing valuable content on your blog :) Cheers, Timo Kiander Check out the crowdsourcing post I made earlier this year: 15 Bloggers Reveal: What Is The Most Important Mindset That an Online Entrepreneur Needs And Why 15

16 17. Work on your 20% tasks before going to the office The 80/20 rule (also known as the Pareto principle) states that 80% of your results come from 20% of the effort. A very classical example of the 80/20 rule is that 80% of your sales are generated by 20% of your customers. Although the previous example of the Pareto principle is about sales, it can be applied everywhere even to online business. a) Prioritize your task list the night before and decide on which important (20%) tasks you want to get done the next day; b) Wake up early, so that you have enough time to do as many of those 20% tasks as possible (before going to work). Alternatively, if you don t wake up early, work your way through those 20% tasks as soon as it is possible for you. When you focus on the most important tasks of your day first thing, you will get them done with less distraction (especially when doing them early in the morning). Often, the later in the day you do the tasks, the higher the likeliness of schedule changes occurring, which may even cause the outright postponement of the tasks themselves. This tip is handy especially for those who are part-time bloggers or online business owners. Although your day job (not to mention your family or your hobbies) takes up most of your attention, you still need to find some time to build up your online business on a daily basis. Check out my podcast related to the 80/20 rule: SI4OE 006: 80/20 Rule In Your Online Business Part Use effective deadlines I used to hate deadlines, but I have now realized that they are one of the most important ways to get the necessary work done in time. a) Find a task you need to finish soon; b) Set yourself a deadline or by someone else; 16

17 c) You want to be realistic in your deadlines setting too tight a deadline for a big task may not work however, it should a bit challenging so that you are pushing yourself to meet the deadline; d) When you finish a task in time, congratulate and reward yourself! Deadlines push you forward; you want to make sure that you do everything to meet them. For example, if your editorial schedule says that you should publish a new blog post each Friday, try to set a deadline for completing the post on Wednesday (if you start working on it on Monday). Even if you find the deadline a bit too tight, you will push yourself to get the stuff done in time. While you can set deadlines yourself, having someone else setting them for you may be more effective because of accountability. In that case, you don t want to disappoint the other person, who expects you to finish your task in time. That is a strong motivation for anyone to meet deadlines. Whatever the task may be, try to set a deadline for it. Otherwise, you will just keep spending too much time on one task and your other projects (or tasks) will get postponed. 19. Agree your working times with your family (if working at home) If you have a family and you are working at home, make sure that you agree the working hours with your spouse and children (if you have any). a) Plan your working hours; b) Agree them with your family so that everyone is aware of them. c) Indicate clearly when you are working By knowing when you are working (and for how long), it is easier for everyone to keep quiet during that time or not to expect you to be available for anything else. This, in turn, will help you focus on your work without interruptions; less distraction there is, the faster you will get your task done. If you have a separate working room, you can close the door during your work sessions or even put a sign on the door asking not to be disturbed. 17

18 20. Process your mail only twice a day This tip is not a new one and you have probably heard it many times before yet, by applying it, you can save lots of time when you make it into a habit. a) Work out times to you check your ; b) If possible, only check and batch process your twice a day (morning/afternoon); c) Concentrate on your important work first, then check your . The amount of has exploded over the last few years and, although it is a handy communication tool, it is time consuming too. By following the actionable steps above, you are not getting sucked into your inbox and wasting your time there. Instead, you will work on those tasks that are most important to you first and you process your s later in one go. 21. Clean your desk The last tip is to tidy up your desk once you have stopped working. You should make a habit out of this so that you tidy up your desk automatically once your work is done. a) Take a look at your desk if it s messy, it s time to clean it; b) Put your pens back in the jar, put away the papers that you are not using; c) Try to keep your desk as tidy as possible during work and after each working session; d) It is extremely important to form a habit of tidying up your desk otherwise you will notice that paper and other clutter builds up on your desk bit by bit. When you clean your desk, the less distraction there is. When this is the situation the more you can concentrate on what you are doing. It may be impossible to keep your desk completely tidy during your work sessions. However, it should hold only the materials (pen, paper, notes ) that you use in your work. Once you have tidied up your desk, you may wonder how on earth it was possible for you to work with a messy desk in the first place! 18

19 Final Thoughts I hope that you have enjoyed this free report! Perhaps at some point I might create a sequel to this report, where I will reveal even more tips when it comes to improving your productivity. So, stay tuned! Before I let you go and start implementing these habits, I have two wishes I want to say: 1) Share this report with your friends and peers by clicking the Twitter or Facebook buttons below! 2) Visit my blog and leave comments there I hope that I could make your day more productive! Kind Regards, Timo Kiander Web: Twitter: Please share this report: 19