Staying Organized?!

Enigmabomb

Enigmabomb

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Feb 26, 2007
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Than Franthithco
Hey Guys,

I've reached an impasse over here. I've got a lot of projects that I like, and I'm running out of resources to manage all of them. When I had fewer sites I could tell you which had a sitemap, how many back links each one had, and where they were all making money, etc. Here's the problems I'm running into:

1) Diverse revenue streams. I've got 20 different places accruing various amounts of money in relation to my sites. I've got things broken down into campaigns but it's still a disaster to figure out things like ROI or earnings on a site by site basis. I've got an iMacro script to open up and log into my various revenue streams.

2) Severs. I'm managing a few other peoples servers and it's getting out of control in terms of account passwords, cron jobs, etc. Any tips here?

3) Sites. I've been thinking about doing a spreadsheet for each site with a todo list, and a checklist of things each site needs to have (Webmaster tools, analytics w/ goals, dir submissions, backlinks from relevant sites in my network, etc)

4) Time management. As a full time writing student, and a fledgling internet marketer, I'm unsure how to assign the time to projects. I probably have 20 sites I'm actively working on. Big time sinks for me include: Every time wordpress upgrades. That kills a whole night uploading shit. Setting up a new wordpress account. Takes like 30 minutes to make the account, make the db, upload wp, install, setup permalinks, and upload plugins. For whatever reason the autoupgrade feature does't work on my server because of some stupid perms problem that I can't figure out.

5) Password management. It's a clusterfuck.

Any suggestions on any of these facets of organization would be greatly appreciated.
 


Enigmabomb said:
2) Severs. I'm managing a few other peoples servers and it's getting out of control in terms of account passwords, cron jobs, etc. Any tips here?
Click to expand...

My 2 cents: drop the server management, I'm just guessing it's probably your least profitable revenue stream in terms of ROI when compared to your SEO stuff right? If one of your revenue sites goes down you can make a strategic decision as to whether you want to invest the time to correct the problem. If a customer's server goes down you're pretty much committed to getting it back up even if it isn't profitable unless you just want to leave them blowing in the wind.
 
As far as getting projects and such done for school, and organizing that into a timely program, if you're a Mac user in any way, check out iProcrastinate. Works like a dream, no joke.

And for password management, I suggest not confiding all of your passwords into Roboform. I have an Excel document that holds the username's and passwords to the several hundred sites I'm a part of. It's pretty much unhackable, as it's compressed, and you have to enter a long password to unzip it. Also, the file itself requires a master password, and a different one to edit it. It works well for me.

Oh, and I completely agree with justo_tx as far as server management is concerned. If it's a side thing, youre probably not banking all too much from it. let your other 20 streams from your sites do the work, and drop that to get more work done. Or you can always outsource it. But customer relations would plummet.

Human.
 
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I'm facing these same problems. My approach is I'm trying to little by little organize a bit each day and use more spreadsheets to track things.

I also intend to focus on the biggest revenue streams so I can more quickly hire people to sort out the various bullshit things that must be done but don't take any actual strategic thought.

It sounds good hopefully it works out.
 
Human said:
As far as getting projects and such done for school, and organizing that into a timely program, if you're a Mac user in any way, check out iProcrastinate. Works like a dream, no joke.

And for password management, I suggest not confiding all of your passwords into Roboform. I have an Excel document that holds the username's and passwords to the several hundred sites I'm a part of. It's pretty much unhackable, as it's compressed, and you have to enter a long password to unzip it. Also, the file itself requires a master password, and a different one to edit it. It works well for me.

Oh, and I completely agree with justo_tx as far as server management is concerned. If it's a side thing, youre probably not banking all too much from it. let your other 20 streams from your sites do the work, and drop that to get more work done. Or you can always outsource it. But customer relations would plummet.

Human.
Click to expand...

+rep for iprocrastinate :D
 
Password manager like Roboform/1Password is a must. And as far as to-do lists go... old school pen and paper.
 
Hey,

Re #3 and #4 - I'd look into a system for organizing things and then look for software to help you work that system. I think a bunch of people here are proponents of Getting Things Done (GTD). While that's pretty good, I think Zen To Done (ZTD) simplifies stuff a lot more. You should be able to find a torrent of that pretty easily (if you can't PM me). The structure is basically collect, organize, plan, do - http://zenhabits.net/2007/04/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system/

After you have a look through that, I recommend:

Collection: Welcome to your notable world | Evernote Corporation

Organization / Planning: https://www.rememberthemilk.com
If RTM isn't robust enough, you can look into something like Basecamp for project management - Project management, collaboration, and task software: Basecamp

Hope that's helpful.
 
I do a few things to stay organized while multi-tasking several campaigns or projects:


  1. Project folders: Throw up a folder or hard drive that every computer can access through your network and organize each project into one niche/campaign folder
  2. Setup sub-folders for creatives, landers, spreadsheets for traffic sources (and daily earn/spend spreadhseets on each source), spreadsheets for keywords (reports as well if needed), and future sources so I can identify a variable to each which I can use when tracking
  3. Server organization: If you own the servers and they have WHM/cPanel you can setup reseller accounts to manage multiple domains and group them into project/campaign categories.. not much you can do in terms of organizing websites on servers
  4. Notes: Keep documentation of everything that may be of importance and assign a note to a specific project/campaign. I use a notepad and setup simple txt files to remember things i need to do
  5. Password saving: Save all passwords using 1Password or something similar - when saving project/campaign specific passwords, save them with the variable or project name so you can remember later (this saved me a few times)
  6. Make sure you keep and record checks/wires incoming from networks and that it matches up to your spreadsheet numbers as you will forget about them and sometimes these networks make errors and don't pay.. it happens and can be costly.
  7. Time management: I usually just know intuitively how much I can handle over a period of a given day or week but if you can't seem to get used to doing that (it's crazy yes I know) and want something more structured you could setup tasks in to several categories (amongst each of the projects): 2 days to finish, 7 days to finish, 1 month, future plans so you can prioritize tasks and accomplish goals faster..idk
some people I know who are doing a lot of business online and aren't even validating that they are getting the payments they earned.. it's helpful to have the numbers
 
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iProcrastinate looks key rep+

I was trying Last pass over roboform.
I have both, but Roboform is not available for MAC

One note in Windows is great for organizing research. Spread sheets to capture & tag ideas.

Buzan's mind map is the best on the market from a visual & ease of use end. you could torrent it - at least the previous version - non-web based
 
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Human said:
I have an Excel document that holds the username's and passwords to the several hundred sites I'm a part of. It's pretty much unhackable, as it's compressed, and you have to enter a long password to unzip it. Also, the file itself requires a master password, and a different one to edit it. It works well for me.
Click to expand...

Are those additional passwords locked in separate password protected excel file!?
 
rogerd said:
Another for RoboForms, plus check my sig... :338:
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I love Robo, and make use of it for a variety of purposes. It's being ported to Macintosh (or so they say) in 2010, and this is long overdue.

1password is fine, but I didn't like the feature that imposes passwords on the user. I mentioned this to Dave when I was a 1P beta tester, but they kept it in. Robo is also better at filling fields accurately than 1P.

The best software I have used for scheduling is Palm's software to synch with the hand units. You don't need a Palm organizer to download and use it. It works very well as a standalone, and it's free.
 
also, if your server has WHM/Cpanel, then it should have fantastico to help you manage your wordpress installations and updates. should just be able to click 'update' each time there is a new version out. pretty easy if you have it. manually it's a pain in the ass
 
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