Help me focus....PLEASE!

First thing I'd suggest is to change the title of your thread so it actually reflects your question. You'll get more (and more targeted) responses that way. "My Brain Might Explode" could mean anything or nothing.

If you say you love writing, why don't you just start writing and packaging your articles as PLR packs for sale here? You could also look into ghostwriting. This would be a very good start, and it'd play to your writing strength.

Paul

Your not the only one who needs focus...I need it too.

James: Do you have an existing program you are trying to implement, or are you trying to "go it alone" so to speak? If you are trying to get an online business up and running, it can be very hard if you don't have something to follow, especially if you don't have the advantage of following a known-working plan.

You state you have lots of ideas at school. Carry a notebook and jot down the ideas as they occur to you. When you get home, transcribe the ideas into a list of ideas. Add comments and notes to each one, expanding on the idea, looking at possible pros and cons to each, along with things you think to help define them.

Once you have a list, put them into an order you'd like to attack them, then put dates and times beside each one. The date is when you want to start, and the time is what you expect to take to complete the item. As you proceed with an item, update the time or completion date appropriately. Especially starting out, you will grossly underestimate the time it takes to do something. For example, when I was writing my Honest Marketing Techniques program, I expected to finish out with about a hundred-fifty or two hundred pages and be done in two weeks or so. It took me a LOT longer than that and finished at over 400 pages. Every time I proofread the program, I found another thing that needed to be included, because the new online marketer wouldn't necessarily know how to do that particular item. I'm sure as you work on your ideas, the same sort of thing will happen to you.

If you really don't know WHAT you want to do, you may wish to talk to others around you to see what they think you are good at. You mentioned writing. There are a ton of ways to make money writing, and I assume you have at least some interest in online marketing (or you probably wouldn't be here on this forum) so you might want to look into writing articles for others, if you don't want to start your own online business.

Go by your local bookstore, look for a magazine called "Writer's Digest". It may give you some ideas about conventional writing (short stories, magazine articles, novels, etc). If these don't appeal to you, there are tons of other ways to make money writing. In my online business, it probably takes about 90% of my time.

Wow Rick, very helpful. And yes, I am very interested in IM and I most certainly DO want to have an online business. As for writing articles for other people; no thanks. I think that writing for my own business would be much more beneficial in the long run.

As far as having a plan... Where do I start? I have to many >.<
I think I'll start simple, perhaps promoting an amazon or CB product. Most likely an amazon product that I already own, because I believe in being transparent and honest, so I can't really promote a CB product and say that it's groundbreaking and life-changing when in reality I know nothing about it. I have a few websites already so I think I might set up a blog/review site for movies or games and have the amazon affiliate links on the page. I'll get traffic via articles and YouTube. If things go well, on to PPC.

Sound like a plan?

Gifted writers make a lot of money with blogs but it takes time and patience to build up an audience. If you like writing then pick a subject in any market and get to work. Check out technorati.com to get some ideas. You don't need anything massive or fancy. 25k unique visitors each month can translate into 100k visits if you are a good writer. If you know how to optimize a site correctly and if you are clever about it you can average 3 pages per visit which is 300k pages. banners can earn you $15-$20 cpm so that is $5k - $6k from just 25k readers. Not to mention you can create private membership areas with special content, make money from mailers, possible affiliate products, etc.

Do something viral (contradict another popular writer to create a little drama/create a viral video/what ever) and you can up your views very fast. Leverage 2.0 and it can grow fast if you are a good writer and you are writing about something you really want to write about.

Prodigal, I think that is a wonderful thought. *begins writing down subjects of interest*
Thanks man, I think I am going to pursue this idea.

1) Choose a niche topic that your both passionate and interested in, dont think you can be one without the other;
2) Do a sxxt load of keyword research to find the low - medium competition keywords. If you dont know how to do this I sugget getting a book by David Viney titled Getting to the top on Google and learning the tecvhniques. They work!
3) Find a decent domain name;
4) Buy a shared hosting package;
5) Install Wordpress and essential plugins, do a search on here for that info.
6) Add a couple of CPA adverts related to your niche
7) Start posting unique content drawing on your writing expertise. Aim for at least 1 post per day intially.
8) If your confident doing it you could also add a sign up box offering a free PLR article to start building a list;
9) Keep adding unique content daily for a month or so.
10) If you have done step 2 correctly you should see your site indexed by Google quite quickly;
11) It takes a few months for the homepage to become indexed although if you are adding unique content dAily with each post targetting keyword from your step 2 list you should start ranking for the post kw quickly;
12) From day one build backlinks by writing quality articles and submitting them to article directories. There are loads, do a search on here for the best.
13) Build additiuonal backlinks by creating forum profiles, blog posts on for example wordpress, blog.com etc by creating your own blog.

Overtime your site will get higher ion the serps and you can start split testing ads until you find the convertors.

This is only my take on where I would start but its where I would begin if I were starting out again, knowing what I know now.

Hop it helps a little.

A list often works. Whenever you get ideas in your daily routine of things that need to be done, write them down. After you have a decent sized list of internet marketing tasks that you want to accomplish then prioritize them starting with the one that is most likely to make you money and on down.

You said that you write well, another good option is the egg timer. Turn it on for a set period of time and tell yourself 'ok for this hour all I am going to do is write articles'. It may sound silly but it allows your brain to think in terms of 30 minutes, an hour, etc. which narrows your focus down to the task at hand...in this case writing. Make sure to check things off the list as you complete them also, this keeps your mind uncluttered and focused as well.

I have specialized on this issue with my first big course a long time ago and can say proudly it has changed many lifes and internet careers, maybe it fits to your problem, too: THE RICH COURSE

TK

1. Buy an audio recorder or use your mobile sound recorder to record your ideas in the school.
2. When you get home, take 10 minutes to listen to your ideas
3. Now open MS Excel and prioritize the ideas in the sequence of list you want them with estimated timelines to achieve the targets
4. Plan your research -- for example, if it's a product to sell, then first thing you want to do is use google adwords keyword tool to find out the search volume on that particular phrase or keyword
5. First hour on computer, please do not open your email inbox or any social networking website, like Facebook, twitter etc



Well the list can go on an on, if you start sharing the areas of your interest ....

You could also offer your writing services through sites like oDesk, Guru and Freelancer.

I am afraid that there's not much we can do about it, as it entirely depends on your discipline and determination. It's ultimately you who's got to put in the effort.

Patience patience. Always have a pen and a post-it note near you. And whenever those thoughts come, find time to write them down and make sure to set priorities. Or you could also try it on your mobile phone by making simple drafts of your "To dos keywords". I would consider this situation similar to information overload. Know what you want for the given time by using the notes, focus on accomplishing them and, last but not the least, always track your progress.

Have same issues, also one thing is that I keep opening or bookmarking more sites than I have time to read. Right now I'm going to save this thread for later reading hehe But I saw couple good advices already so should be worth it.

Im somewhat in the same boat. Whenever I'm not in front of my work I have tons of ideas all the time and then when I sit down to start even one I get sidetracked and get onto another and another until I have 20 different things at 25% completion which is never good.

A nice thing I do that helps me when trying to work on one thing at a time is whenever an idea comes up I jot it down in my phone on one of my list apps (gotta love smartphones). Then when I get home or in front of my work I try to prioritize them and get some sort of nice flow to which one first then which one next and so on.

Its the best method I have so far, sure there can still be times I get off track but for the most part it works pretty good

hope that helps...

Thanks everyone! These tips will definitely help me prioritize things. Hopefully I'll begin to get some things done.

How to focus your creative juices:

Make a bullet list while at school as soon as your ideas pop into your head.

When you get home and decide you want to do some work, pick one item from the list. Just 1. No cheating.

Save the others for later.

Once you start working on that ONE thing from your list, you may notice that the creative thinking you are doing at school now produces development ideas on that 1 topic, not a bunch of new ones.

It sometimes works, sometimes not. But if this happens, rejoice! you are now focused, and developing, testing, the idea.

Feel free to drop ideas that after a while develop into junk.

Pick a new, single, idea to work on.

Repeat.

Pretty quickly you will learn which ideas are worthy of your efforts.

Now you have achieved clarity.

Here you go:

1. I always carry a stack of index cards, the Hipster PDA :-) Hipster PDA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Before writing, clear your mind, and visualize yourself completing your writing task easily.

I get up very early --- 4am --- if I'm working on a project which requires ultimate focus. When you get up early, you're half asleep, so you're very close to your subconscious, and the words flow.

3. If you're getting up early, make a list of one or two things you want to accomplish in the morning just before you go to sleep, and then do them as soon as you wake up.

4. Use free writing to eliminate pressure: Free writing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Visualization works. Just close your eyes and imagine that you're tapping away at the keyboard happily, and that you complete your tasks in an easy and relaxed manner...

Hope this helps -- good luck with it. :-)

It sounds to me like you don't need a *business* strategy to follow so much as you need a *focus* strategy.

If you're getting all those ideas when you're at school but can't sit down and implement them when you get home, it might be the environment more than not knowing what to do.

Sometimes when I sit down at my desk to work, I just can't seem to get focused on what I need to work on. I *know* what I should be doing, it's just not flowing for me.

Sometimes going for a drive & listening to my favorite music or some kind of training webinar or something will help, other times I'll take my laptop and head to the local Starbucks or public library. Something to get a change of scenery.

If you think better and can focus better at school, can you do some work there? Either on your laptop if you have one or using one of the school's computers along with a USB drive or cloud storage like Dropbox, so you can access what you've done after you're back home?

Sometimes the secret isn't to come up with a better strategy, it's to find how and where you're the most productive and rearrange your work so you can do it there.

John

Thanks guys great tips. Something very big happen today; I found a business partner. I will be selling his product online for him at 50% commission. So now I have a plan

@niche, those are definitely great ideas, but a change of scenery is very difficult for me because I live 20 miles from the nearest town (which doesn't happen to have a nice coffee shop) and I don't have a car. As for school: our internet their cannot be accessed by a personal laptop and the school computer filter every website that you can imagine :/
All that being said, I have the ability to focus. Once I get started on something I am focused but it's just so hard to get going on something.

The "too many ideas" phenomena is very common among us entrepreneurial types, i know it has been a problem of mine and i solved it by always always having a notebook with me or a means of jotting down ideas. Normally i would advice a small pocket book but even making notes on your smartphone is still good, if that feels more natural to you. i have been making such notes for the past 4 years which is also the time i have been trying to make an extra buck, hehe, not much luck with that but i cant complain because i have learnt a tonne of things along the way. i can mostly attribute the learning to making notes, i have always had the habit of making short "insight" notes whenever i come across a nice wise article on the web. or trying to describe an idea on the notebook in as many necessary words as possible (some of my first notebooks arent worth much to me today because i made brief entries that seemed brilliant at the time, but when you look at the same entry weeks later, it seems. . . dull. but the trick is to use more words to create a better picture of what is in your mind, sometimes its note the idea that is so brilliant but something inside of it, or that something will help you later in your business as you will have it recorded)

Another thing i noticed is that as you keep recording your thoughts and ideas from your brain you will notice that your thought process will become more refined, in that you will be getting better ideas and just more (unrelated) ideas (more better ideas?). if you don't write it down your brain will repeat the idea in different forms, writing the idea down and addressing it will give your brain closure and sort of allows it to generate other ideas.

also have a habit of mapping your idea into a Google search. every time i do that with a slightly detailed idea that i have turned into a 5 - 10 Google-search query, i always get some pages that connect so sweetly with my subconscious (which has been analyzing the problem for some time and once it gets information that fits into that problem it builds you and your idea, in small but solid ways that will help build your business knowledge and perspective as time rolls on.

all the best with finding focus, and as i always tell myself, don't despair you're on the right path.