We all have a limited amount of time available to grow and run our businesses. So how can you decide where your time is best invested?
I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. My conclusion: Investing time in tasks that create long-term value is the way to go.
That might seem obvious to you, but is that how you operate? Or do you spend your time on “right now” tasks–going from doing repetitive jobs, such as filling orders and paying bills, to putting out “fires”? When you do productive work, is a large portion of it work for which you will only be paid once? If so, you need to make some changes.
Someone once told me she could not spend 15 minutes setting up a page on her web site with affiliate links because she was so busy with her work. Well, that single page probably wouldn’t make her rich, but it might bring her $20, $50, $100 or more (possibly much more) every month.
Let’s say she bills $100 an hour. Doing her regular work and billing for15 minutes earns her $25. If putting up the affiliate page brings in $500 or $1000 (or more) a year, every year, what is the better use of that 15 minutes? I’m not a math whiz, but I can figure that one out. Think this can’t happen? I put a single link on a page on my website and made hundreds of dollars a month for several months. It took me all of 10 minutes to do, so I figured I made the equivalent of thousands of dollars an hour with that one link.
Commit to spending at least a portion of each work day creating long-term value. That means doing something that can help you prosper for years to come. Here are just a few ideas.
Create content for your web site, and monetize it with ads (such as Google AdSense) or affiliate links.
Develop material you can present again and again. There are workshops I gave for more than 20 years. I long ago amortized the time I spent in development. After doing each workshop several times, my preparation time was near zero, and my only time involvement was the actual presenting time.
Better yet, turn that workshop into a product, such as an audio or video recording and eliminate the presenting time, too.
Write a book or ebook and sell it with Kindle Direct Publishing.
Create other products, such as books, ebooks, audio programs and more. Sell them yourself and recruit affiliates to sell for you. Set up automated downloads for digital products, and get an assistant to ship physical products for you, or hire a service such as http://www.SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com/.
Create a course you can offer on Udemy.com or another course platform.
The best part? Each of these will make money for you for a long time to come.
