(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on January 15th, 2020. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while.)
Or, Juggling Multiple Site Projects
As I wrote a couple of days ago, Big Challenges require you to optimise.
(Speaking of optimising; I’ve changed the font on this blog. Not so much a conscious design choice as much as it is that I received multiple not-quite-complaints about people not being able to read the site. So Courier is gone. Replaced by a reasonably elegant looking Google Font. More changes to come on the design front.)
After a rocky couple of days struggling past recent barriers, (namely, we told ourselves to write thousands of words, and having spent a year failing at doing so, we’re getting back in the groove,) we’re already into an optimisation phase.
Namely, I said I wouldn’t renew a domain without having a plan for it.
That meant today I had planning for about ten domains that I have currently parked and empty.
When you’re faced with the prospect of building ten websites out for which you have no plan, you quickly realise that optimising involves the following things:
- Creating a skeleton site (or set)
- Having some idea for content
- Creating the content
- Listing all the monetisation avenues open to you
- Either creating, sourcing or otherwise collating the various products you’re going to add
… and about a dozen other things that you don’t think until you realise you’re building out a site and you haven’t done them.
Like, for instance, header images or fonts that somewhat suit your brand. Who thinks of those?
And then you add something like creating products or sourcing them; now, if you’re talking something like info-products, it seems easy until you realise that most info-products are terrible, sell very few copies and you don’t want to be one of those people, right?
And if we’re talking physical products, you’re going to be either a daft dropshipper or you’re going to do something serious, which involves lead-times, product manufacturing and finding a supplier who isn’t a complete time-waster. (The physical product business moves so incredibly slow as compared to the online world I’m unsure how these businesses continue to exist. But there we are.)
And it all boils down to processes, optimised processes and having the right structures in place so that you can just do it.
Of course, a large amount of the Direct Response Newsletter thus far has been devoted to these ideas, and I’ve tried to give subscribers the deep, secret tools to do all this and get it to work every time.
And an admission; I promised two bonuses for Direct Response Newsletter subscribers in the form of courses that covered everything. The problem being that creating a task list consisting of everything to do with copywriting or e-commerce is a nightmare.
As such, I’m behind trying to get this stuff working.
Moving on…
Task lists, to-dos, systems and more.
We’ve covered this numerous times, but there are big differences between to-do lists and systems.
Systems include variables, and plot for getting to the goal. Most “systems” that you read about online are simply to-do lists.
And there’s nothing wrong with that; because a to-do list is essentially something you can do without thinking.
Systems are far harder, and honestly they’re a slow-moving slog of a process while you’re creating them.
The issue you run into with a to-do list though is when things go wrong; this is what a system seeks to solve.
And finally, once the slog is over, the whole point of a system is that you get exponentially faster results on the other side.
Which, fingers crossed…