How to succeed on 2 hours a week?

[Scott Ames]

If you only had two hours a week to devote to your marketing efforts, what would you do to leverage your time so that you will make the most of it?

Two hours isnt' much time, but I've talked with some who have had.


1. Childcare issues
2. Hold two or more jobs
3. Have family problems and commitments
4. Have church obligations

etc.etc.

[jhongren]

Hi Scott,

I would list down all my tasks and take note of those which brings in money directly.

It is something like optimising and following the 20/80 rule.

Does this task brings in money or it just gets myself busier?

Some times we just keep ourselves busy checking emails and rechecking them every 10 mins.

I find myself used to do that.

If I know launching product X will bring me money, I will make sure every bit of time is spent on bringing product X to be launched.

John

[Ouroboros]

Write and post articles, hands down!

Then fill in with other tasks as needed.

[jjpmarketing]

Just do what most would do... eliminate the fat, and keep it simple. If you only have two hours a week, your first priority needs to be a military level quality of organization. Once you have that system in place, focus on the basic essentials of what you need to accomplish. Product creation should be first.

This will include web site, sales copy, and all the stuff goes along with it. Break that product creation down into simple accomplishable tasks. If you can't finish a task on the list within 2 hours, break that task down into even smaller steps. Keep doing that until you have a system in place that will allow you to create profitable products based on a 2 hour per week schedule.

Now once you are finished with creation, start focusing on marketing. If you only have 2 hours a week, then you probably will want to alternate weeks with different kinds of marketing. Spend one week on the forums. Spend the next week writing articles. And remember you only have 2 hours a week, because you are not optimizing the time you do have.

You need to set at least 30 minutes a day to work on your projects. You could do that just by using a recorder (water proof) to brainstorm while taking a shower.

Then if you need to learn something try to get audio versions of that material and listen to it on the way to work. If you don't need to learn something, then use the commute for more brainstorming. Even if you don't have any ideas, keep thinking of stuff, because it could spark an idea for a future product.

Do you watch TV? Then don't. Do you check your email every single day? Multiple times a day? Don't. Eliminate all of your distractions and I swear to you, speaking from experience it will absolutely blow your mind at the amount of free time you have available.

Finally, once you have a perfected system in place for product creation and rollout, just wash, rinse and repeat. Keep doing that until you strike gold. Maybe it will end up being good enough you can quit your day job. That will save you 8 hours per day plus commute time.

[SpeedDemon]

My first thought is to get other people to do as much work as possible. You can probably outsource the time-consuming stuff like article writing and submission, social bookmarking, press releases, etc.

Then I'd focus on setting up some JVs to push your product. You can spend your 2 hours a day emailing JV partners and overseeing everything, while they do all the work of selling your product to their list.

[jjpmarketing]

That is very good point, unless you are on a budget. Then you become everything from CEO to Janitor.

[YoYoPro]

See Tim Gorman(TimG), this guy is the best example of someone who utilizes their time to the best of their ability with "military precision."

Sometimes it's hard to stay motivated after a long 10 hour day of customer service work for me as that's my day job, but you just have to keep in mind that every little bit helps as long as you are continually building momentum by adding content and furthering your education within IM and business.

I'd recommend writing articles and daily postings to your blogs, even if it's just one a day!

[jjpmarketing]

YoYo, I have been there. That has to be the most mentally draining job in the world. Hopefully you don't have to deal with too many irates. If I still worked in a call center this would be ideal, because I would work 3rd shift where you didn't get many calls between 2am and 5am eastern time. I could be writing articles and doing all kinds of IM type of work, and actually be getting paid by another company to do it.

[Martha Richardson]

Achieving success with 2 hours per week would be a tough road. I think nearly everyone could squeeze out more time than that if they really try. Success from zero is tough enough putting in MANY hours per week. First thing I would do is to do what it takes to be able to have at least 2 hours per DAY.

Barry

[lakshaybehl]

Just 2 hours a day?

thats possible if and only if you have a masterplan designed by someone who has already sone that!

I don't think that it is possible to do it without that master plan without wasting a lot of resources and money!
.

[YoYoPro]

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

YoYo, I have been there. That has to be the most mentally draining job in the world. Hopefully you don't have to deal with too many irates. If I still worked in a call center this would be ideal, because I would work 3rd shift where you didn't get many calls between 2am and 5am eastern time. I could be writing articles and doing all kinds of IM type of work, and actually be getting paid by another company to do it.

Haha, funny thing is I left a "manual labor" job thinking I'd be fresh after work to do other things, but as you know customer service jobs can be EXTREMELY draining!

I work at T-Mobile, so unfortunately I deal with many irate individuals with little to no common sense on a daily basis... would be nice to have some internet access but they are smart and block that from our grasps.. lol

[jjpmarketing]

Originally Posted by YoYoPro

Haha, funny thing is I left a "manual labor" job thinking I'd be fresh after work to do other things, but as you know customer service jobs can be EXTREMELY draining!

I work at T-Mobile, so unfortunately I deal with many irate individuals with little to no common sense on a daily basis... would be nice to have some internet access but they are smart and block that from our grasps.. lol

Ouch. That sucks. I used to do Tech Support for Charter Communications about 4 years ago. When I worked 2nd shift there were a lot of irates. Irates didn't bother me too much... Then I switched to 3rd shift. That job was cake on third shift.

[AndrewCavanagh]

I think your best chance might be brokering joint venture deals between different parties where all that's required from you is bringing the 2 parties together.

This is not as hard as it sounds.

Just find an aggressive marketer who is looking for people to promote his product (an excellent product of course), call potential JV partners on the phone, tell them you're a joint venture broker and you want to get to know them and see where you might be able to help them.

Then when you set up a JV partner for someone arrange in advance that they'll pay you a fixed percentage of the sales created from the deal.

2 hours of phone calls a day to serious players in a niche should make you a whole pile of money this way after a few weeks.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[YoYoPro]

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

Ouch. That sucks. I used to do Tech Support for Charter Communications about 4 years ago. When I worked 2nd shift there were a lot of irates. Irates didn't bother me too much... Then I switched to 3rd shift. That job was cake on third shift.

whoops.. back on topic... haha.

[trafficwave]

When I started getting in to online marketing, I was working two jobs during the day. One was as a janitor. The other was doing phone sales.

I also worked at night as a musician (when I could get gigs) and I would clean boats out at the lake on the weekends.

I was also married with five small children.

Forget the 2 hours stuff.

Give up some sleeping time.
Give up some TV time.
Give up some doofus time.

There were times when I didn't sleep all night. I would come home, start studying and/or applying marketing strategies, and before I knew it, the sun was coming up and it was time to go clean up poo.

Some nights, I would squeeze in a few hours of sleep.

One thing I knew for sure was that the jobs I was working were NOT going to take care of my family. So I was willing to lose the sleep, miss the TV shows, and do whatever had to be done to learn.

Today, I work from home and I absolutely love it.
I haven't had a "boss" in years.
I still have my wife and 5 (now considerably older) kids.

Today, when someone whines to me about, "You don't understand... I work all day and by the time I get home, there just isn't enough time to learn all this stuff.", I really let 'em have it!

[kfount]

Originally Posted by Scott Ames

If you only had two hours a week to devote to your marketing efforts, what would you do to leverage your time so that you will make the most of it?

Two hours isnt' much time, but I've talked with some who have had.


1. Childcare issues
2. Hold two or more jobs
3. Have family problems and commitments
4. Have church obligations

etc.etc.

This is pretty much the situation I'm in. (

But basically, when you don't have as much time, you're going to have to really hone in on finding good keywords. Or, you're going to have to pay for traffic by Adwords, Adbrite, etc.

[WinsonYeung]

Originally Posted by Ouroboros

Write and post articles, hands down!

Then fill in with other tasks as needed.

Agree! Same with me

[Michael Dominic]

I would write, post, and bookmark a bunch of articles then write a blog post.

[Always-A-Warrior]

Unless you can outsource your work and just maintain a close watch at your business then may be 2 hours is possible, but for many it takes two hours just to clean out the spams from their email account. lol

[Kyle Tully]

You guys have got to be kidding.

2 hours a week and you're telling him to WRITE ARTICLES?

There are people on here writing articles 24/7 for months and they're still barely making $1.17 a month.

Let's get serious for a moment.

Andrew has given by far the best advice. Broker deals.

It's a dead simple business model you can implement in 5-minute bursts whenever you get a free moment. And just 1 deal will make you more than a years worth of writing articles.

[Amy Bass]

I would spend those 2 hours getting new orders put in for outsourcing work to others. If I don't have the time to do it myself, why not hire people who do? As long as I know I will make my investment back and more in a reasonable amount of time i'd outsource as much as possible.

[AaronJones]

Originally Posted by Scott Ames

If you only had two hours a week to devote to your marketing efforts, what would you do to leverage your time so that you will make the most of it?

Two hours isnt' much time, but I've talked with some who have had.


1. Childcare issues
2. Hold two or more jobs
3. Have family problems and commitments
4. Have church obligations

etc.etc.

Scott,

I started out with 2hrs or less a week to work on income building activities.:-)

I outsource anything that requires time or skill development to someone who already has those skills, and time to do it for me.

Plus I use tools that allow me to automate or speed up any tasks I personally do.

You start small, and slowly scale things up as you have more time and money to do so.

Aaron

[Jack Bastide]

Originally Posted by Ken Nubo

If I had 2 hours a week, I would hire Indians to work for me.

What about Cowboys?

Jack