The Mini-Day Work-at-Home Schedule

The most effective schedule for your business making money online is to set up what is called a mini-day schedule. A mini-day is basically a period of time set aside to complete a specific type of task. Your work day would then consist of several mini-days.

The first step is to identify your vital tasks and determine how much time per day or per week you should spend on each task. For most people running a business making money online, your list of tasks will include things like keyword research, writing articles, updating your blogs, sending Tweets, visiting forums, writing copy for your webpages to test, developing ads, sending email blasts and reviewing tracking reports. You also need to set time aside to think about strategy and write down goals and plans, and research new products and processes.

Once you have identified your vital tasks, you need to group them together with like-activities. For instance, all activities that require writing should be lumped together and scheduled into the same mini-day.

Once you have identified the tasks and grouped them, you need to schedule time for each group. For instance, your Monday work schedule may look like this: 2 hours keyword research online, 3 hours writing articles offline, and 1 hour submitting the articles to directories, bookmarking sites, and other planned marketing, plus reviewing tracking data and updating reports while online.

Then Tuesday's schedule may be: 2 hours visiting online forums, 2 hours researching new sites and programs, 1 hour writing out a new marketing strategy offline and 1 hour writing new ads offline.

Wednesday's schedule might then include: 2 hours developing new Squidoo lenses and Hubpage hubs online, 2 hours writing articles offline, 1 hour submitting articles, lenses, and hubs to directories, bookmarking sites, and other planned marketing online, 1 hour keyword research online. And so on.

The key to effectively getting everything done on time is to stick to your work-at-home schedule. If you have scheduled a two hour mini-day for keyword research, you should spend two hours at the task. Do not stop at 30 minutes, but don't go for three hours, either. If you stick to the schedule, then you will be making progress on every vital task and are less likely to neglect a key element of your business.

Even though making a schedule may seem constricting at first, creating mini-day schedules ironically give you more flexibility. For one, the mini-days typically do not have to be completed in any particular order and they do not have to be done consecutively. You may complete your two hours of keyword research in the morning, take a break to visit the park with your kids, then come back in the afternoon to write articles for three hours.

Errands should be added to your schedule, as well as regular breaks. I find it best to set aside one afternoon a week for errands and appointments and try wait until that set time to run around unless it's an emergency.

Creating a mini-day work schedule can be beneficial not only in reducing the number of hours you work, but it makes your work time more productive, reduces stress, and helps you maintain a passion for your business making money online.

Give it a try.