I wrote last week about needing to focus on fewer projects.
The first step of doing that is to identify all the projects you currently have going, even if you’re not doing anything active on them. A project that, in your mind, is still ongoing drains your creativity even if you don’t spend time on the project. It’s far better to give the project a decent burial, rather than continue to have it be on your mind.
I wanted to do this process publicly, to help anyone else out there who might be suffering from the same problem of having too many projects and not enough time.
Here’s my list of ongoing projects:
Online Opportunity — This blog, of course. I probably spend a couple of hours on average working on posts and doing research. Not all at once, but spread throughout the day.
Advisory Panel — The forum I started for anyone who wants to make money online. I spend about an hour or two a day on this as well, averaged out over the course of a week.
Neglected Niche Sites — Two niche web sites I created, and as the name suggests, totally neglect. One brings in absolutely nothing yet, the other averages about $20 a month via Adsense. I spend zero time on these. The nice thing is that, since they were meant to be neglected sites, I also spend zero time thinking about them.
Quality Niche Site — A niche site that’s intended to be higher quality than the neglected niche sites. This one suffers from lack of attention, I probably spend an hour a week on it. I really want to give this one more time, though, to develop it into what it could be, so this is a creativity drainer.
Backlink Service — I have a project in mind that would help bloggers build quality backlinks to their sites. This is still in the design stage, and needs a dedicated programmer. This one sucks a lot of creativity right now, because I don’t have the time to devote to programming it myself.
PPC Marketing — My ongoing experiments with Adwords, affiliate marketing, and CPA marketing. Some of these are done as part of the advertising exercises over at the Advisory Panel, others are done separately. I’ve seen some nice progress with these, and spend probably a couple of hours a week at them. I need to spend more time to see real results, though.
Marketing Pond — I tend to recommend Marketing Pond to a lot of people as a way to build their first income stream. These days I don’t do much with it myself, since I don’t have the time. I probably spend an hour a month here.
Various email courses — I’ve written various email courses and promote them in appropriate places. Probably an hour a week promoting these. I also have an email course I want to finish, but probably won’t (on creating niche web sites).
So there you have it, the list of projects (at least those I can remember) that I currently have going. I’m going to sit with the list for a while, and I’ll do another post when I decide what I can cut, if anything.