Archives for December 2007

Despite much success in 2007, my biggest downfall, by far, was not staying on task. I worked in fuzzy mode, bordering on chaos mode. I jumped from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, without finishing the sentence. Each day, when I woke up, I really had no freakin’ clue what I was going to do. I just did what seemed most pressing.

This fuzzy, chaotic, haphazard work pattern wasn’t all bad. I did, after all, far exceed my goals set last January and within a year came to hire 7 employees. Last January, I couldn’t have imagined generating the sort of revenue that I’m now generating…not to mention having a plan to generate it.

Now that I know what works, I’ve decided to put more structure on my time and those of my employees in 2008. The idea is that my company can increase cash flow by being more intentional about the way we use our time.

As a model, for your benefit, here’s an example map of a 40 Hour Work Week that I might implement for myself:

1. Eight hours per week creating a highly-linkable resource

Examples:

A. Replicate the Dog Guide photo contest on RideLust -> Car Photo Contest
B. Create a photo-history resource for HipHop Crunch entitled “The History of Funky HipHop Clowns in Pictures”
C. Create listbait called “The 10 Most Dumbest, Dorky Celebrities of all time”

2. Ten hours per week of social voting

Example Schedule:

A. Twenty minutes each day at 10am
B. Twenty minutes each day at 1pm
C. Twenty minutes each day at 3 pm
D. Twenty minutes each day at 6pm
E. 3+ hours per week of miscellaneous social networking

3. Twelve hours per week developing links

Example Schedule:

A. Three hours, emailing other niche bloggers about articles that may be of interest
B. Three hours, developing a blogroll inter-niche link exchange
C. Three hours, participating in relevant forums
D. Three hours, soliciting links from other SEOs

4. Four hours per week writing articles

Example schedule:

A. Three hours researching and doing an SEO related article for the company
B. One hour writing a more conversational, basic article for the company

5. Six hours per week brainstorming and consulting

Example schedule:

A. Make concrete suggestions for ways to improve company properties (title tags, bait suggestions, etc.)
B. Weekly report that includes 1) SEO suggestions, 2) content suggestions, 3) a summary of progress and successes, 4) goals and plans for the forthcoming week 5) company action-list
C. Any external consulting work

Directory submission was all the rage when I first entered the linkbuilding space. It seems to have died off quite a bit. But the consensus among those linkbuilders that I respect is that there is still a place for directory submission in your linkbuilding strategy.

What NOT To Do

Don’t sumbit your blog to hundreds of spammy directories. Don’t spend $100 for 100 links in link farms posing as directories. Don’t blindly pay someone else to do your directory submission for you. Don’t waste your time submitting your blog to hundreds of irrelevant or worthless directories.

What To Do

Submit your blog to about 10 good directories. I like to recommend that you find 3-5 general directories and 3-5 niche directories. Finding good niche directories to submit to can take some work. But why not start by doing searches on “your niche directory” or “your niche directories.” If you’re lucky, you may even find a legit article discussing the best directories in your niche.

When it comes to general directories, I tend to prefer sticking with the oldies but goodies, though there are some good startups out there too. Here are a few that I’d recommend:

Yahoo Directory
EatonWeb Blog Directory
Best of the Web (they have a general directory and blog directory)
BlogFlux
Blog Catalog
Open Directory/Google Directory (if you don’t mind waiting a couple years)
Business Directory (if your blog has a business theme)

I used to recommend Microsoft Small Business Directory, but they seem to have gone out of business. Any other directories you’d put on this list?