What’s your New Year Plan?

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Hi guys,

The New Year is nearly upon us and as we count down the last handful of hours and reflect upon 2008 lets remind ourselves of the plans we had and should have done but… at the end we just couldn’t be bothered to do them. Shame on us!

I have therefore made my NY resolution to try and help all you beautiful people out there in getting your online business started and assisting you on your blog’s journey to success. Just like I’m being taught by my Welshman coach Alex Jeffreys (no sheeps involved ;-))

On a previous post I mentioned to you that you need to choose a Niche that interests you, a subject that excites you, something that your passionate enough to write about.
After all, you’ll be spending several months and perhaps even years writing to people about it so you better like it!

And now that you’ve chosen a Niche (you’d better thought of one) it’s time to get the PLAN in motion.
Yes! There has to be a PLAN in place. Sorry guys we need to get organized for 2009. Even dictators had plans before they overthrew governments - Ooops, lousy example - I know.

It is time to take a break away from your computer and turn to the old paper and pen. That’s right, we’re going back in time to when people actually wrote things down - like dictators
On a piece of notebook paper, or whatever is lying around, describe your blog. Take five to twenty minutes to come up with a purpose for your blog, or better yet, call it your Mission Statement.

What are you going to do with your blog?                             
Who is going to read your blog?
What kind of information will you be posting on your blog?
Why are you doing a blog?
How often will you be posting and adding information to your blog?

Really focus on what it is you want your blog to be about and empty your thoughts and ideas out of your head and onto paper.

Great stuff guys, well done! Now that you’ve written down the answers to those questions I would like to ask you one more question.
What do you want to achieve with your blog in 1 years time?
In other words:                                                                                                                                    
how much traffic do you want coming to your blog?                                                                          
how many subscribers will you have?                                                                                                 
how much money will you generate?
Be precise.

Now Break down your 1 year plan into 4 chunks of 3 months and start off by creating a 90 day plan -
where do you see your blog in 3 months time from now?                                                                  
How many subscribers do you expect to get?                                                                                    
How many posts do you want to write on a weekly basis?                                                                
How will you be sharing the information with your audience - via posts, videos, podcasts, e-books, newletters?

Remember, You don’t work forward from the start you start by planning from the end and work backwards.

Once you’ve broken down your yearly plan into quaterly chunks, then monthly chunks and then weekly chunks, I suggest you do what Alex Jeffreys does - do a daily did sheet - a sheet which tracks your daily doings online.
For example: Yesterday I did -

Emails for 20 minutes                                                         
Surfed for 1 hour
Face book 20 min
Ate food 60 min
Wrote a Post for my blog 40 min
Emails 20 min
Surfed the web 30 min
Posted comments on others blogs 1 hour

If you do a daily did sheet on a daily basis over the next 2 weeks you’ll see what productive tasks you get up to and what wastage you get up to as well. A daily did sheet will really help keep you on track.

I have come across several tools while planning my blog and I would like to share some of them with you. Gary Simpson’s action planner is a must. Do me a favour and use it for your plan of action. Just click on his name to download it for free. Another great tool for planning your Blog is a mind mapping software called free mind. And yes, it is free as well :-)  This allows you to bring all of your ideas, projects and suggestion onto one page. It takes a while to get used to it but once you grasp the basics then you’re on a roll baby!

One thing I know that people have a problem with is sticking to their daily plans. Therefore I suggest that you write your plan of action (with the help of Gary’s Action planner) every night before you go to bed so that you’re ready for it the next day. And make sure your prioritize your tasks so that you get the most important ones done first.

Another good thing to do is Creating a journal -
Write down everything you learn, or done wrong. After about 30 days you will see what worked and what didn’t work and this will give you the drive to move forward and learn from your mistakes. This could also help you to create a short E-book to give people a path on how to do it right.

So, to recap.
1. Write down the purpose for your blog.
2. have a plan of your ultimate goal - what you want to achieve in 1 year.
3. break down your plan into quaterly, monthly, weekly chunks.
4. do a daily did sheet every day to track yourself and see what you’re up to.
5. write an action planner every night for the next day and prioritize your tasks.
6. create a journal every so often to track your progress.

That’s it my compadres. Easy stuff, eh?
So get cracking for the New Year and like AJ says ‘It’s time to shine in 2009′

Let’s make it happen.

Guy