Time Management: An essential part of building your online web business

Published on May 07, 2012 Time Management: An essential part of building your online web business

No matter what the size of your business, time management is a critical part of successfully growing and developing your business to be something more dominant in your chosen market.

What are some strategies that you can use to help you take control of your time more effectively?

Be serious about your business

Online businesses have the potential to be extremely successful, because they generally have lower overheads than physical expenses. Setup costs are lower, and the ongoing rent on an online shopping cart website is much less than on an office block, you can often outsource work that you would need employees for in a physical business, and online competition is fierce so you can often shop around for a better deal. But if you are not serious about growing your business, they stagnate as a “hobby” business, and are not ultimately successful.

Being serious about your business does not mean quitting your regular job however, as until your online store has grown to something that can sustain you with a lifestyle, you will need ‘seed income’ to pay for the various marketing and growth activities that you will want to engage in – as well as feed your family in the meantime.

To be serious about your online shop, start thinking about the following:

• If you are a home business, can you physically separate the area where you will work from the rest of your house? If you assign some part of your home as your work area and assign specific work times, you’ll treat your business as a “real job” and will be more motivated to work on it and prioritise the business when other things come up. It’s too easy to say “I’ll do that tomorrow” when it comes to a self run business, especially when it has no physical office.
• Get a design and print company to produce business cards for you, and once you have them, give them out. Once you’ve told others about your business you’re more likely to be motivated to make the business work.
• Get a whiteboard and put it up in the area where you’ll be working. Put the things you have to do on them, and cross them off as you do them.
• Think about how you can get advisors to help you. If you trust a lawyer and accountant, make sure you talk to them. The money you spend on them up-front can give you invaluable advise that can save you later.
• Spend money on protecting your intellectual property with a Trademark on your business’ visual identity (logo and business name).

Time management strategies

Once you’ve made the decision to be serious about your business, how can you effectively manage your time. Here are a few ideas:

• Work out your long term goals and short term goals and the milestones you will need to achieve to complete them. These milestones become your “critical path” to completing your objective. Convert your goals to achieve the milestones into a weekly and then daily To Do lists that you are serious about achieving.
• For every task on your to-do list, ask yourself is this an urgent task that must be resolved now, an essential everyday task that must be completed for your business to continue (e.g. paying suppliers, sending out orders, etc.), is it something that you need to grow your business (new products or markets, search engine marketing) or a non-time critical item that can be deferred to a later “to do” list.
• Save your emails and to-do lists on your iPhone, Android Smartphone or Tablet PC so you can access your emails and data on the go. Consider investing in a USB stick that you can carry a copy of your key documents with you all the time and put it on to your key ring, in your laptop bag or around your neck.
• Make sure your to-do list has simple everyday things in it that you might otherwise forget to do – like taking time out for exercise to recharge their batteries, or spending time with your family! Many online store owners work very long hours to grow a business and forget about why they are running their business to begin with.
• When you meet with others either via phone or in person, figure out what you want to achieve from that meeting before you attend. Stay focussed on achieving that outcome or else you may end up letting the meeting drag on and waste time.
• Consider listening to some quality self-motivation audio DVDs while you are driving your car.
• Consider implementing a reliable document management system to easily store, organize, and access important documents on the go. Such a system can streamline your workflow, saving time spent searching for files and ensuring data security.
• Take time out. It may seem counter productive, but if you work without break you’ll lose focus and motivation. Short breaks are not only helpful, they’re essential.
• Every day, think of something you have been putting off and make sure you do it. Train yourself to do the things that you don’t want to do and never say “I’m getting to that, I’ll do it tomorrow”. Or tomorrow will never come.