It\’s a new year and more than likely you have new ideas, goals, and plans for your life. And if you\’re reading this right now, you probably have more than a few goals for your online business. But where are they in terms of importance? Have you prioritized them to take precedence over your goal to lose weight or embark on international travel? Not to take anything away from your desire to be healthy or expand your horizons, but if you are going to make 2011 the year that you take your online business to the limits of what it is capable, then you are going to have to commit and make it your number one priority.
What does it really mean to commit to something?
1. You think about it constantly. Your online business and its various aspects should be something that you think about all the time, not just whenever you have had a bad day at your regular 9-5 job. This doesn\’t mean of course that it should come before family or your health or your happiness, but it should be something that you keep coming back to in your mind. And most of all, it should be something that you LIKE to think about, because ideally it should be something that you LIKE to do and spend time on.
2. You act in service of it daily. Just like other types of commitments, like a marriage or a salaried job, committing to your online business means that you work on it every day. You are writing blog posts, responding to comments, placing ads, tweaking products; you don\’t have to do it all every day, but you do have to do something, otherwise you are putting your business on the back burner, and that\’s not going to break any profit records in 2011.
3. You look at the big picture, plan, and follow through. While everyone knows that action is essential, blind action is not so helpful. Make sure there is an answer to the question of WHY you are doing what you are doing. Develop a strategy, follow through on it, and reevaluate and tweak it every so often to make sure that it\’s getting you where you need to go.
4. You stick with it through thick and thin. You are pretty much guaranteed to have setbacks in running your business. You will have low traffic days, days when you just don\’t care, days when you have no idea what to blog about, and days when you want to give up. But just remember that the difference between people who succeed and people who fail is that the people who fail just fail and then leave it at that. Don\’t accept failure. Learn from it and move on.
Make 2011 the year that you face the facts. Here\’s one: almost everyone loves the idea of earning a great living online from the comfort of their own home, but few people are going to actually accomplish this. Be one of the few who do: commit.