Starting an online business is an exciting endeavor. However, it also entails a multitude of responsibilities that many individuals fail to recognize. Building a successful online business requires meticulous planning and execution, which can become overwhelming when faced with an extensive to-do list daily. Therefore, implementing a systematic approach is crucial to ensuring that your business operates seamlessly.
By implementing an effective system, you can alleviate the burden of managing multiple tasks simultaneously and minimize stress levels. Additionally, having a structured plan allows you to identify when to delegate certain responsibilities or acquire external resources to lighten your workload when necessary.
This guide provides a weekly plan that outlines the steps you should take every weekday. The plan is designed to help you manage your daily to-do list effectively and accomplish all essential tasks efficiently. You will learn when to update your blog, reach out to your mailing list, and engage with your audience on social media. Moreover, you will discover the optimal time and approach to introduce new products, manage customer service, and develop a thriving affiliate marketing branch.
If you prefer to tackle similar tasks in one day rather than spread them out throughout the week, you can customize the plan accordingly. For instance, you can dedicate one day to social media marketing or newsletter content creation. The choice of how to arrange your tasks is entirely up to you.
Day 1
Blog Procedure: Examine the Prior Content on Your Blog
Kick off your week by reviewing your previous blog posts to identify which ones resonated with your audience and generated high engagement levels. Take note of the topics, themes, or approaches that worked well, and aim to replicate those in your future content.
Access your blog’s control panel to analyze your traffic and engagement metrics. Check how many visitors you had, which pages they visited, and whether they left comments. Respond to comments promptly to foster a sense of community and show your audience that you value their input.
Monitoring your blog’s performance through the control panel is critical to understanding what is happening behind the scenes of your posts. Analyzing the data allows you to identify which posts are performing well and where your traffic is coming from.
A post’s performance on your blog impacts your ranking in search engines, which is why it’s essential to pay attention to engagement metrics. Additionally, analyzing the performance of individual posts can help you understand which social media platforms are driving traffic to your blog, enabling you to focus your promotional efforts.
It’s also crucial to evaluate posts that didn’t perform as well and identify areas for improvement. Poor performance may be due to weak keywords or a lack of emotional connection with your audience. Don’t ignore underperforming posts; instead, edit them to make them stronger and increase their potential to attract traffic.
Email Procedure: Make Your Email Marketing Plan
Also on day 1, one of the tasks that you need to focus on is your email marketing. Go to whatever system you use for automated emails. You want to write an email draft that you’ll be using throughout the week.
To keep this step organized for easy reference, label each email according to that day’s date. So, for example, you might be sending something out on Tuesday, the 17th. You might label that as Tue-17th so that you know when you’re supposed to queue that up to go out.
In the content part of the email, make sure that you use whatever salutation you’ve chosen. Most people use the words hello, hi, or good morning. You can set it to auto input the email list recipient’s first name by using {firstname_fix}!
Then you want to add something about your week or day because this is a way of building a personal connection. Next, share what you have to offer. This could be your own product, an affiliate product, or another item you want to promote.
Explain why they will want this item by showing them the results or value they’ll get from buying and using it. Finish it up with a useful tip or insight that your subscriber will be grateful for.
Once you’ve done that, end the email with whatever closing phrase you’ve chosen along with your name. By having this email plan, you can simply create an extra section or offer in your emails if you end up needing to inform your subscribers about something else.
Social Media Procedure: Grow Your List With Posts and Share Your Incentive
Another task you’ll want to do on this day is to sign in to each one of your social media platforms. On these platforms, you’ll want to mention what incentive it is that you’re offering for people who sign up for your email marketing list.
You’ll want to mention how your free gift can help them. It’s you basically saying what they’ll gain from getting it. On each of your social media posts, you need to direct traffic straight to the offer on your website.
Looking at your incentive, you’ll want to highlight something from it to share that causes the audience to want to know more. Then use a prompt directing them on what they need to do next.
Don’t skip that part. This step is important because it’s what can make people want to do something to get what they want. For many people, it takes several times of hearing a call to action to do what they’re being invited to do.
Product Launch Procedure: Know What the People Need
You can’t sell what someone doesn’t need, no matter what you say. That’s why it’s imperative that you tap into the direct need of a consumer. You can figure this out by examining your audience’s online questions, comments, and purchases.
Pay attention to what people say when they contact you. Sometimes people will email entrepreneurs for advice. You can also check out what your audience says when they respond to your posts online.
See what type of information guides, courses, and books that your audience is buying. Create a master list of what questions they’re asking to solve certain issues. That will tell you what your audience is hungry for.
Affiliate Marketing Procedure: Research Items for What You Can Tell Your Audience About
Part of your plan to build a successful business as an entrepreneur will include research. You need to figure out what you’re going to promote. Decide how many items you’re going to promote each week, then search for that number of items.
You can do this research by looking on well-known affiliate sites like ClickBank, Commission Junction and Amazon. Make sure that you’re looking for items that have a good reputation and offer value.
If you promote items that are lousy, your audience will stop trusting you. The products you promote should directly address their most pressing needs. That may be physical, financial, or emotional in nature.
Customer Service Procedure: Help the Customer
By having “help the customer” as your goal in customer service, you’ll build a reputation as someone that takes care of their audience. Never ignore any correspondence from your customers.
Today, look at the messages in your inbox. Make sure you search your trash in case you accidentally deleted one and look in any “others” folder or spam box, too so that you don’t overlook anything.
Even if you can’t fix the issue that same day, you can still reach out to the customer to let them know they’ve been heard and that you’re working to fix the issue. This builds good will with them and ensures they’ll stay tuned in to you for niche leadership.
Day 2
Blogging Procedure: Study the Market and Outline Posts
On this day, you’re going to want to study the market. By knowing what interests the audience in whatever niche that you’re in, you can create posts that will both help readers and convert them into buyers.
Make sure that your posts aren’t all the same. Not only will that bore your audience, but they’ll start to feel like you don’t have anything new to talk about. You want to create posts that make people regular readers of your blog.
So, offer them a lot of different styles.
Create some blog posts that give them a lot of information and ways to help their lives or businesses. Then create other posts where you’re giving out advice or ways that they can do something faster, easier, or better.
Have other posts where you put together information that you’ve culled from a variety of resources, but all pertain to something important in your niche. Highlight helpful resources that have been shared by experts, or do a Q & A on a blog post featuring someone within the niche community who’s well-known or always gives top-notch advice.
Whatever is important, relevant, or brand new within your niche, you want to be sure that you share that on your blog. Create a rough draft for your posts so that when you go to write them, you can get it done fast, without leaving out any important details.
Email Marketing Procedure: Line Up Your Promos
A task that you want to include on day 2 is to line up what you’re going to promote in the upcoming days.
Type up a spreadsheet of products you plan to offer your subscribers. These don’t have to be posted on your blog but are emailed directly to your subscribers instead.
You’re going to have to do some research to see what new products are about to hit the market. The best way to find this out is to check various places online that offer these products.
Some of them will offer digital items (like plugins or other tools) and others will offer things like courses.
Look around for deals for your audience so that way you can offer them a discount when they buy the product.
This might be a simple launch period or a coupon code you’ve secured for them. Get everything organized so that you know what you’re going to be sharing.
It can be tempting to talk about all the great deals that are releasing, but you don’t want to that because you can cause overwhelm with your subscribers.
Instead, schedule your promotions throughout the week to highlight the best ones you feel will meet their needs. There are many affiliates who promote anything and everything just to make money, but they lose the trust of their audience.
Social Marketing Procedure: It’s Time to Connect
It’s not going to do you any good to find products and set up various business tasks if you don’t connect with others.
These are going to be people who can promote your products or whose products you can promote.
By reaching out to these people, you can create a list of those that you may want to have on your blog, or people that you want to study and emulate. The best way to connect with people is to send them a direct message.
You can do this by reaching out to them on social media or via a direct contact on their website or in an email.
It’s always good to begin nurturing those relationships publicly by engaging on their content first before you hit them up privately.
Product Launch Procedure: Think About and Plan a Launch Item
This task is one that shouldn’t be too difficult because by now you’ve done some research into items that your audience can use. So, what you’re going to do now is to create the product and come up with selling points for that item.
You can scope out what’s already on the market that’s similar and consider what you can add that will improve the actions or results of that item. You don’t have to worry about the success of this product because items that you know for sure your audience needs will sell well.
You can just work up a short visual or written info product to let them know it’s coming or is available. Outline it so that the product creation process is seamless and quick, allowing you to make money easily.
Affiliate Marketing Procedure: Share What the Product Can Do
It’s time to look at the affiliate items you’ve selected and talk about what it’s capable of helping with for the audience. Share a brief introduction of the item, how much it’s going to cost and how it’ll help those who buy it.
Because your audience trusts you, if you’ve found any flaws or things that don’t work as best as it could with the product, then mention that.
You can even create a note or something where you share how to fix that detrimental aspect.
Customer Service Procedure: See If Your Audience Has Contacted You
Open each of your online platforms and search your inbox. You’re looking for communications that you need to handle.
Sometimes, these will be compliments.
Even so, you still want to reach out to the person with a “thank you!” and acknowledge the time they took to reach out.
Other times, you’ll get negative feedback that may be a rant or something unpleasant to deal with.
You still want to deal with it because ignoring it could cause that person to lash out publicly, and you want to protect your business.
Be sure to also check your blog posts or anywhere else where you’ve posted. Make sure you address what the audience is saying in the comments section of those posts.
This not only appeases that individual but shows others you’re not absent from the conversation.
Day 3
Blogging Procedure: Making Visually Appealing Posts
On day 3, you want to spend some time working on your blog. One thing that you want to make sure of is that all your posts aren’t just filled with text. Most people won’t even read blocks of words.
You must make the post visually appealing. You can do this by adding a photo or a graph, or include visual media like a video. People are more likely to read through blog posts that have these items.
Use a graphic design tool to make your graphs or to create a video. Whatever images you do add to your blog, make sure you have the license to do so. Look up sites such as Canva Pro for images or something like Dreamstime or Unsplash.
Email Marketing Procedure: Show Your Worth and Highlight Products
Now it’s time to set up the emails you’ll be sending out. Go into whatever mailing list program that you’re using and tailor them to your audience. You want to make these more personal and then talk about whatever it is that you’re selling or affiliated with.
Mention what the audience will be getting, any deals that are offered, and then give them the direct URL for them to click on that’ll take them straight to that item. Don’t forget the conclusion of the message, such as sharing some advice that’ll help them or letting them know about a strategy you found helpful that they might like, too.
This prevents your message from being one that’s “salesy.” It’s important to always provide value in your email. It doesn’t matter where it is, but usually, it’s a good note to end on.
Social Marketing Procedure: Make a Variety of Media Content to Share
This task involves creating media that you’re going to upload on whatever online real estate you’re consistently on. You’ll want to include this content on sites like your Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.
If you don’t have anything created, you can share things specific to or helpful about your niche like pictures, other videos, audio and more. You’ll want to talk about whatever it is you’re sharing if it’s not your own work, and tell the audience the purpose behind sharing it.
End by prompting the audience to comment (so that you’re interacting with them), like or share it. Make sure you’re checking back for engagement so that you keep the conversation alive.
Product Launch Procedure: Buy or Make Your Item Design
What you want to do today is to either buy or make your launch designs. It’s important that if decide you want to get someone to design it for you that you hire someone who has good reviews and gives a professional looking design.
This is representing your business, and you want it to look good. You can use someone from one of the businesses to buyer platforms but check out samples of their work first. If you want to make it yourself, then you can use graphic design programs online.
You’ll find several free ones that also offer upgrades to the pro use version. Because you want your product images to look clear, and you want to get a preview before you use it, check out sites like Book Brush that let you do that.
Affiliate Marketing Procedure: Get Acceptance and Direct Links
By midweek, you need to reach out about the items you’re going to want to promote. Just because you want to do so doesn’t mean that you can. So, get acceptance so that you can share the direct links with your audience.
Your odds of getting accepted by the vendor go up when you create a connection between you and the other party. Let them know your plans for the promo and how you think it’s going to help those you share it with.
This helps them to see that you’re professional and really want to promote the product. Some affiliates spam people, and it ends up not converting, which lowers the conversion rate for the vendor, so they only allow serious affiliates.
Customer Service Procedure: Gather Information to Better Your Business
Information from consumers is extremely important in business. Create a list of research questions where you ask your audience how they feel your business could do better. You might get answers that’ll show you things you didn’t realize were lacking.
Or you might hear back about some things the consumer wishes that you offered and this can lead to product ideas for the future. Think about what the consumers are saying and see what concepts they have that you can implement in your business.
Day 4
Blogging Procedure: Prepare the Content for Your Blog
You need to prepare the content for your blog on this day. Make sure that you create posts that are going to connect with the audience. You want to think about what topics to talk about that will draw readers in.
Never miss an opportunity to level up the interaction with your audience. Every time you write out a blog post, prompt them to do something. This might be to download a report, to tell others about the post or tell you, their thoughts.
Email Marketing Procedure: Schedule Your Emails
Much of what you do in business can be automated, and your emails are one of them. Determine where the messages are going to go and when they’re going to go out. Then you can set the scheduler so that the email is sent on that day and time.
Don’t just set it and forget it. You want to check them by having a copy sent to your email first. This way, you’ll be able to see that it arrives correctly without anything that you need to fix before it sends to the audience.
Social Marketing Procedure: Find Valuable Content to Share
You don’t just want to share your own content with your audience – you also want to share what others are teaching.
You can search for information among the people who you follow on social media and share that.
Be sure and give credit to the person who taught that or originally shared it. Make each post relevant. You want to make sure that it has value for your audience. It could be some tips, expert interviews, or something like that which can help those who follow you.
Product Launch Procedure: Develop Items for Your Audience
On this day, it’s time to take the ideas and outlines you’ve worked on and develop products that your audience can use and that you’ll be able to promote to them. If you’re relatively new to this part of having an online business, it might take you some time to do the first product, but you will get faster as you go along.
If you don’t like the idea of doing it yourself, you can always hire someone to make it. Or you can buy a private label rights license to use and sell something like an eBook or video course as your own production.
Affiliate Marketing Procedure: Talk About Your Opinion of an Item and Share That Information
You’ll want to give your opinion about the items that you’ve researched and gotten approval to promote. There are so many ways that you can do this. You can write it up as a product review – much like what you see on Amazon, but more in depth.
Or you can create a podcast talking about it. Some entrepreneurs make videos of themselves unboxing and using the product, and then talk about what they liked or didn’t like about it.
Once you do write out your thoughts on the item, you’ll want to talk about it not just on your blog, but other places you hang out online so that it directs traffic back to you. Some platforms allow you to link directly to the product with your affiliate link, but others will only let you link back to your blog post review.
Customer Service Procedure: Reward Your Audience
People always like to get something extra at no cost. You can give something to your audience that they didn’t anticipate getting. It doesn’t have to be something complicated or expensive.
Customers love to get something for nothing. You could send items like free journal printout pages, a mini-course, or whatever else you feel like they could use.
For entrepreneurs who are too busy to come up with these extras, you can outsource it or buy pre-made PLR products that you can rework and tailor for your followers.
Day 5
Blogging Procedure: Ready Your Blog Posts and Queue Them Up
This last day, you want to ready the posts so that you can get them lined up to publish for whatever date and time you’ve selected. There’s no set amount of blog posts that you must line up at the same time.
You can do what works for you – but regular content releases resonate best with an audience as well as with search engine bots. Use headings, and short paragraphs that are divided by visuals like images or videos.
Some people use bullet points.
Practice good SEO habits by using the right keywords and phrases. Always check each post before it goes live so that you catch any mistakes you may have accidentally made.
Email Marketing Procedure: Look at Your Dashboard and Tighten up the Subscriber Numbers
By checking your dashboard, you’ll be able to see what held your reader’s attention and what pages made them move on. You can see whether your messages were even read.
You don’t want to waste your efforts on people who aren’t bothering to read your information. Remove any email addresses where you’re not getting any kind of engagement you need, such as opening your emails.
Also look for messages that aren’t going through. Sometimes people sign up for stuff using old email addresses and when those get full, the email server will kick them back where they came from, but technically, you’re still charged for them as a subscriber if the system has incremental charges based on subscriber numbers.
Social Marketing Procedure: Provide Information that Earns
On this day, a good way to make money is to tell your followers across all your online social profiles about something you have that they can buy. You can tell them about your eBook, about courses or even your paid coaching or mentorship programs.
You can share details about your checklists or guides. You can even mention an item for someone else that you make money from.
Create content that will not only entice your followers, but have the potential to be shared virally by others.
Product Launch Procedure: Create a Sales Letter, Create a Listing and Recruit Affiliates
Create the persuasive sales letter where you talk about what your item can do for the audience. This sales copy should contain the narrative, bulletpoints and call to action that prompts the viewer to react.
Once you make the sales copy, put that on platforms like ClickBank, JVZoo, Warrior Plus and more. Let people know that you’ve listed the product by notifying those who’ve promoted it for you in the past as well as people that you want to promote this time around and then send them the information, they need to get their links.
Affiliate Marketing Procedure: Spread the Word About Your Opinion on a Product
Wherever you’ve shared your opinion about an item on your blog, you want to copy that URL to send it to your email subscriber list, as well as put it wherever your niche audience hangs out online.
This is a service that you’re doing. Other people enjoy seeing what someone has to say about a product. It can help them determine the value of the item in their own life. Don’t bother to put the URL where there’s no demand for it.
You know by now where your customers are at online. You wouldn’t want to waste your time talking about a product on Facebook if your audience is mainly on Instagram. You can tell if they are by looking for keywords or metadata on whichever site that you’re on.
Customer Service Procedure: Respond to What Your Audience Mentions or Points Out
When someone from your audience gives you their opinion about an issue, you’ll want to pay attention. This can be constructive criticism that, if it’s useful, and you heed it, can improve your business.
You might have someone reach out to you and tell you that your font is too light. Or they might point out that there’s too much text or that the posts are too wordy. You could use a darker font and see how that works.
You could also try streamlining and shortening your posts or switching to a different format, such as using bulletpoints. If someone tells you something they’re struggling with, it might make you think of something you can create based on that issue.
Mention to those who do take the time to reach out that you appreciate them. Share what they’ve said and you could even turn that into a blog post pointing out what steps you took to address that issue.
Send the person who reached out a surprise that’s relevant to the topic. When you have a plan to handle your business, it can help you stay organized so that all your tasks are done well and in a timely manner.
