Cha-Ching: When Earnings Make You Smile

This morning I checked my adsense account and check my earnings for yesterday. I studied the screen for a minute convinced I had hit the wrong button or something as I made about $25 yesterday. That is my highest adsense day ever!

Now, I know I won’t stay at a level as usually I range from $2 to $10 per day (daily average ~$5) and nothing dramatic has changed to increase my earnings to a new level like that, but still, it was nice to have a good day. In fact, September so far is looking good. I’ve had a few good Amazon sales and I got my first Clickbank sale on a 1 year+ site that has earned close to nothing up until now despite being a “hot niche”. And since I will be starting semi-full-time on Monday along with a new focus, it’s very motivating to see some nice earnings.

As far as what exactly my focus will be, I’m still working out the details, but I will have a fairly rigid plan of action by the end of next week for the rest of the year. Up until now I wasn’t taking my IM activities seriously enough and I was like a ship without a rudder jumping around from one idea to the next. Most people doing IM know exactly what I am talking about so I won’t elaborate further on the ship/rudder thing.

Working from home may sound like a dream but I have found that it’s hard to be your own boss – I’m just too sympathetic to myself. From now on I will look in the mirror and verbally degrade myself for at least an hour  if I don’t meet my goals. Okay, just kidding. I think.

Anyway, I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks as to why I’m not where I want to be as far as earnings and I’m ready to change that. I thought about writing up a post about some of my mistakes, some of which are unavoidable and not necessarily due to my lack of focus, but really, who cares. I’d rather talk about how to move forward.

As far as focusing, I will now have weekly and daily goals for myself. I’m thinking on Fridays I will set my goals for the following week, breaking tasks down for each day. I will write my goals for each day into a notebook and cross things off as I get them done. Seriously, that is what I did at my “real” job so why wasn’t I doing it at home??

I only plan to devote 4 hours each day to working starting right after my kids leave for school. I am more productive early in the day and once I have my work done I can (try to) not obsess over it the rest of the day. Why only 4 hours a day? Well, because I have mom and household duties that need to get done. And I’ll be honest, I was letting those things slip too much before and I can’t let that happen. And I forgot – I need to get some exercise also!

Before I was working on and off most of the day and squeezing in the other stuff and it was too scatter-shot. I would rather have 4 dedicated hours than 8 partial hours each day. And did I tell you that with our move I have lost an hour of kid-free time because of a different bus schedule?? Yeah, darn. Plus I have a new house that needs a lot of work still and that chaos can distract me from working. So if I can squeeze in an extra hour or two here and there great, but 4 hours per day, 5 days a week is what I have planned (yeah, weekends off to spend with my family also).

BUT, I am confident that just having 20 hours of dedicated work will be more productive than whatever I was doing before. And that is because I will not only have goals but I will be strict on working hard for those 20 hours. No reading emails, forums or any of your blogs (sorry) – I will be working on my sites. Nose to the grindstone!

By the way, part of my change in direction is also because a few new fires have been lit under my tushie. For one, I was wrong about our finances – I do need to make an income. I thought we would be okay on just one income, making IM just a nice extra, but that is not correct.  Second, I have a new house that needs a lot of updating. Third is a more personal matter that requires me to make my IM stuff look like a real job with a real income. Eventually I will set a goal for how much I need to make each month before I may have to consider an active income source (yikes), but can’t do that just yet. Will probably do that in January.

Well, this is getting a bit long so I will end here. Next time I’ll talk a little about my general goals for the rest of the year and how I can get some accountability using this blog without resulting in a time-sink.

Related posts:

1. My 2011 Reflections and 2012 Plans
2. August Update – Getting Ready
3. Almost May Progress Update