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Remember our first lesson was making sure you always developed a plan for each project you choose to start.  There is probably nothing more important then setting priority when it comes to the planning process.  If you don’t set priority to each task make a list and rank the action items in order of importance you will never actually do your tasks in the right order.   

This will at a minimum make your projects take longer to complete, often it will result in skipping critical steps that will hurt your ROI (return of investment) and many times it is actually the death nail in killing projects that simply never get completed.  

So how do you set priority?  The process is simply a matter of first writing down all the steps you need to accomplish to finish the project, second being honest with yourself about which ones most need to be done first, third creating phases and assigning groups of tasks to each phase and finally identifying any sub tasks for each main task and prioritizing them.  

Good lord but isn’t that a mouth full!  Ok well, lets use a small project to break it down to a real world example.   

• Write content
• Get a domain name
• Get some server space
• Put some initial content on the first page even if it is just some text from an article directory or wikipedia or some of your old content.
• Put the domain on the server
• Get some widget pictures and widget related pictures
• Make a basic site outline to define the structure
• Publish the site
• Get at least a few links to the site
• Get many optimized high quality links
• Optimize the content on the pages and do good meta tags
• Format the content into web pages
• Tune up and make the site pretty

First – Get a domain name if this is a completely new site instead of an addition to an old one.  Reason (if the site is new there is a time delay to get it listed in the search engines and get it ranked and you can’t do either until you at least have a domain name)  

Second – Get some server space (if you don’t have it already) for the same reason mentioned above.  You need to get the domain up and active.  For that you need hosting space.  

Third -  Put the domain on the new server (the reason should be obvious based on the first and second step)  

Fourth - Put some initial content on the first page even if it is just some some of your old content. (again this is about getting a brand new site indexed, you might as well start that process while you are building the site it won’t hurt you that’s for sure.)  

Fifth – Get a few links to the site (You can do this in seconds, just make a few forum posts, perhaps post an article to a directory with a link, if you have other sites give yourself a few links.  Again this is just to get your site indexed.  NEVER bother to submit a new site to the search engines, links on sites that are already indexed work faster and much better.)  

Sixth - Make a basic site outline to define the structure (This will be your basic outline the site may and probably will grow beyond it.  However you will have to decide what you want to convey that is NEEDED to launch the site and start it on its mission.  Make a simple outline of those sections and make notes on it, also make sure you plan the structure for future growth if the site is destined to become big some day. Don’t bother to write content until you make this outline.)

Seventh – Write the content for the site.  (Most people start this before the rest but look you now know what to write to get the core of the site done, your site is already getting spidered and gaining age while you work.  Isn’t this a much better way?)  

Eighth – Format the content into Web Pages (After you write your content you can go ahead and set up your basic web site with the page format.  Drop in your text and your site is basically fleshed out.  To save time I almost always use a template for a site if it will be anything more then the most basic type of web page.)  

Ninth – Publish the site.  (Sure it isn’t done but you are going to keep making changes and when the spiders come back they will see change occurring and that gets them interested so they will come back often during your modifications.  Again you want to get the site indexed and more important you now want all those new sub pages indexed too.)  

Tenth - Get some widget pictures and widget related pictures (So many people start here but search engine could care less about pictures except for image tags.  Instead you got the pages up and found by Google, MSN and Yahoo, now find some photos and art work to add, just don’t over do it.)  

Eleventh - Optimize the content on the pages and do good meta tags (Alright now go through each page and pick a few targeted key words to get into the copy, title tag and other meta tags.  You only did the images first so you can alt tag them during this step.)  

Twelfth - Tune up and make the site to make it pretty.  (OK now you have time to play with that image and see if it looks better on the left or right side of the page.  Decide to take out a bullet point or what have you.  This is the polishing phase of your site.)  

Thirteenth -  Ok now you need to get a lot of really good optimized links.  Nice thing is since you started out with getting the new domain into Google it is probably in now.  Many link exchanges and web masters won’t link to you until you are at least in Google.  

Now you may not totally agree with my priority list above and like I said a full plan is longer specifically a full product launch where the site is only one part of the whole plan but I just wanted to help make sense out of how and why you have to do this.  

Now let’s say like most internet markers you have a full time job, a family life, personal obligations, etc.  You do your internet marketing part time and that may only be 10 hours a week or may be 20 but it sure isn’t 40-60 right?      

So what happens when you get time to work?  Most check emails, read forum posts, get a bit of news, research that next new toy they have to have and check up on other stuff.  During this time they actually do some work too.  In the end if they “work” 20 hours a week 10-15 max are actually work hours.  

Hey that’s OK too!  This is supposed to be a business but it should not be too much like work or why the heck would we do it?  The key is let’s go back to building this new site and we are on day one and you get that one real hour to work.  What do you do?  Step one, two may be three as well.  

Now you finish up and a day later you get your time to work again you are right back to your schedule and knock out four five and six.  Any time you stop if you have a priority list you know exactly where to start the next time you get back to your project.

Can you see how much more effective this is then doing 3-4 projects at once?  Or even how much more effective it is then doing one and just working on this part or that part?  

So this was a long lesson but it was really two in one.  I did not just teach you to set a schedule I also taught you the way to plan out your next web site launch..  

Tomorrow we are going to talk about another mistake you absolutely can not afford to make under any circumstances,  

~ Jack Spirko

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