The lure of starting an online business lies in the chance of making lots of money from multiple income streams without having to spend more time at the office or working. It is the stuff that most dreams of financial freedom are made of. But with only 24 hours to do everything each day, you may find that striking a balance between business and life can get difficult. As an internet entrepreneur (Netpreneur), you still need to practise time management to get things done.
Here are some tips to help you save time:
Review projects
Start by listing down everything that you need to do for each project. Identify which projects work and which do not. Keep the ones that are doing well while discard those that are just a waste of your time and resources. Consider partnering with someone qualified to do a new project that you’ve been eyeing instead of starting from scratch to save time.
Systematise
Every busy entrepreneur should have a project management system like BasecampHQ which organises projects, team members, tasks and schedules efficiently. Basecamp is a relatively inexpensive web-based system that can be accessed on your iPhone, making it easy to stay on top of your team wherever you go. It acts as a virtual office where members of your team can check off to-do lists, write messages or upload files on the system.
Mail filters
A lot of the messages that gets into your email boxes may be things that you don’t need to read and can keep you from seeing the ones that require your immediate attention. Identify which emails you can read later like those from Facebook or newsletter subscriptions and use filter preferences to direct these to individual folders assigned to them. Gmail and Yahoo Mail both have filters under mail options. Another simple way to increase your productivity is by limiting the amount of time you spend on social networking unless you’re conducting a marketing campaign on it.
Outsource
You might be spreading yourself too thinly by doing everything yourself. Delegate some of the tasks which you may not be good at like internal accounting and bookkeeping, content writing and web development. Outsourcing ensures that tasks are done well minus the headaches of doing them on your own. While I still do my own simple web pages and sales copies, I outsource a great percentage of my articles and website projects to give me time to focus on other matters.
Having control over your time may be one of the perks of being an entrepreneur or home-based business owner but if you’re not careful with how you allocate it, you may be missing out on a lot of opportunities to increase profits and to enjoy life.
Internet Sidelines 