We’ve all been down this road….

“I need more traffic to my website”

… and if you’re anything like me - the pain of building backlinks basically sucks the lifeblood out of me - it’s tedious…sucky work. So when I was reading ShoeMoney today - I was very happy to see his link to SEO BOOK and his article on 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

It has some great pointers on how to get good traffic to your site and even offers up a list of 30 things that could kill the traffic to your site.

The suggestions here, gives me hope that what I’m doing for linking is a good thing - I’m on the right track and that it doesn’t have to be an enormous pain in the ass to do.

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… that was last week. It totally made my day.

But since then it’s been a dry, barren wasteland across my blogs, sites, and all other little bits and pieces that I have online. It is sometimes VERY hard to stay motivated. I usually end up trying to motivate myself through making lists - keep focused. Focus. Focus. Damn it, FOCUS. But that usually wears off after about a week - I just can’t seem to do it. So I channel my thoughts into designing a site, building a template (which I love to do)… and it makes me happy for a little while.

Then I realize that there is about a billion other things I should have been doing.

… never mind all the “off the computer” stuff I have to do.

This past weekend was one of those where I wasn’t on the computer for more than an hour. I managed to get new advertising content for the main page of the site that hooped itself before it even got off the ground due to an advertiser pulling out of CJ. Which left all my links…. sadly hooched. I got the index done. That was it. I just wasn’t into it. I had a million things on my mind, and 90% of it was offline stuff… issues… problems…. etc.

But I really do have to get my shit together this week - organize that health related site - because I had put in advertising on Text Link Ads as well - which I might just say is pulling in the clicks too. But it isn’t doing me any good when I see 14 bad clicks to products that COULD HAVE BEEN potential sales. I’ll never know, unless I get off my ass this week and start switching products over to my new advertiser.

I think I’m a bit frustrated.

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As I found this via Business Opportunites Weblog - Do it Yourself Strategic Planning. I thought this was a good point - write it down. Put all your ideas in one place, be it a folder on your computer or in a shoe box under your bed. But keep the ideas flowing, and write them down so you don’t forget.

Gladys Edmunds in USA Today:

Strategic planning is not new. What’s new is that names and labels have been given to the unnamed things entrepreneurs have successfully done for years.

For years I kept a shoe box on the corner of my desk. I told my employees to clip or make a note anything they read in the newspaper or heard on radio or television relating to our industry and then drop it in the box.

And, if they read or heard anything about our customers, potential customers, or political policies that affected our business, they were to note that also.

Each weekend I took the box home and went through it for information and ideas to help me develop strategies for building the business.

Today it could be called strategic planning; I called it “figuring out how to get more business.”

This was a great article for me right now, because here I am trying to figure out a gameplan to make my websites more successful. I need to get more into writing things down, research more, be more observant as to what’s going on in the industry and even what’s going on with my site itself. Popular pages, entry/exit pages, keywords that have been picked up for my site. Just get it going.

I really like what she writes for her conclusion:

Creating strategies to meet your goals can and should be fun. So, until you call in the pros, use your imagination and enjoy!

…. absolutely!

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As I’ve been saying in the past… I have a very hard time focusing on my project(s). My mind is going 100 miles per hour and I just can’t seem to get it together to finish things up - where I’m happy with what I’ve got. Always tweaking, changing, adding new ideas, sites. But really I don’t have a whole lot to show for it.

So in my quest to figure out a system that might work for me to get things organized and straight in my head (and perhaps Karma is kicking in here too) I’ve come across some time organization / organizing things sort of sites.

1. Through ProBlogger’s site - I found the 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive. Which is totally excellent - because you’d “think” that I’d be able to find something in those 25 tips that would help me with this whole headache about staying focused and productive…. right? Also at the site - Solution Watch gives a great rundown on those sites/tips - far better than I could, currently.

2. David Seah’s Printable CEO is another good organizer deal too. I do believe he’s now got it going in Flash so you type it in and print it out. Might be an avenue to try if you’re looking to see where your time is going during a day. Too much RSS reading, too many distractions, too much surfing the web… and then realizing that’s where your time is going. Pretty handy… and a bit of an eye-opener in regards to time management.

So those are my tips for the day - focusing on the here and now - working towards the dream.

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