March 10, 2008

My Online Business Blueprint: eZine Stream

A few days ago, I posted my Online Business Blueprint for Myvirtualpartner.com and promised follow up posts.

Having a clear vision of the end result makes it easier to identify the different segments of your online business. Eben Pagan spoke of having different Pillars or foundations on which your online business should be built. In brainstorming ideas for my online business blueprint, it’s easy to see how those pieces will fit with the pillars a successful online business should have.

The master blueprint I designed the other day is printed and posted on my bulletin board. Yesterday, I decided to focus on one of the elements that has been running successfully and smoothly as it only needs a few more actions steps to be completed to become crystal clear. It’s also an important stream to help build credibility and trust as it’s information that is freely available and will demonstrate my knowledge.

I selected the eZine Stream as my area of focus and have created another mind-map to help break it down into manageable chunks.

As you can see from the mindmap, I have systemetized the publication of my weekly eZine. I have been writing an eZine (in various forms) since 2000 so the system to a large part already exists. I have also been article marketing for quite some time so the system for that process exists as well. It’s just a question of formalizing the system and ensuring that I stick to it. I tend to let my own marketing drop when I get busy supporting my clients so I may have to create some additional strategies to support myself through the process.

I’ve created a weekly calendar to keep me on track and on focus. I’m an online junkie so my preferred calendar method is Outlook. My challenge is that with my own tasks, it’s too easy to click Snooze. I also do my Daily Target praxis but admit that there are days I skip that step or ignore tasks there too. So I’m going to add another step in the process: accountability. I’ve printed my weekly calendar and posted it on the wall of my office which I share with my partner. I’ve asked him to take a look and ask me daily about the tasks I’ve marked off for completion. See the sample below:

This will change as I continue to spec out the action steps in the rest of the blueprint or even in the rest of the eZine sub-topic. Be sure to follow the Online Business Blueprint topic for further updates.