Very often we begin a project with a specific goal in mind, only to find ourselves sidetracked. It happens every day in every way. The phone or doorbell rings, one of the kids needs help, or your spouse hollers something unintelligible from the basement. Anything can and often does happen to break our concentration. Murphy's Law is alive and kicking.

However, one can stay focused on the current project. Focusing on the current project to satisfactory completion will enable you to move on to the next project, without that nagging realization that you didn't finish this one. Returning to a previous enterprise in order to tweak or fix something is actually a waste of your time. Whereas, if you had been focused, you wouldn't have to "do" it again. Isn't it amazing how often it is that we have the time to do it again, but often don't have the time to do it right the first time?

In order to stay focused, one should prepare an outline. Preparing a written outline is a surefire way to stay focused on your project. You can prepare different plans for separate projects, with several projects ongoing at the same time. During some projects you may encounter "waiting times", for any number of reasons. Having different project outlines available will ensure that "waiting time" does not necessarily mean "wasted time".

When writing an outline, it's important to cover each aspect of your project, from start to finish. Always ask and answer the Who, What, Where, When and How questions. This may sound elementary, even redundant, but it works. And no-one can fault what consistently works.

While preparing your outline, ideas will pop into your head. The "what ifs", and "could be's" will enable you to see a great many possibilities to incorporate into your project. Or not. Whether or not you use those ideas will determine the completed product. Those ideas and their quality may or may not be incorporated into the final product, but having those ideas now is certainly better than wishing you had planned for them, when it's too late. You may need to revisit some aspect of your outline. It's much easier and less costly to revise the plan, than to revise the project after beginning. An outline will enable you to "see around corners", so to speak. To look ahead and foresee possible problems. It all comes from writing it down. Most of us don't plan to fail, but very often we fail to plan. Failing to plan is tantamount to planning to fail.

Your outline doesn't need to be fancy. Depending upon the intricacy of your project, a numbered or bulleted list may serve your purposes. Of course, the more intricate your project, the more intricate your outline will become. You can even incorporate check boxes, so that when those distractions come, as they usually do, you'll know exactly where you stopped.

Your outline should flow from beginning to end just as if you were actually working on the project. This will help you keep the various phases in perspective. You may need to plan the various phases in detail. These phase plans will become part of your overall plan. For the purposes of building your outline, pretend you're building a house. The foundation would naturally come first, then the walls, finally the roof. Your outline should follow this "building code". All worthwhile structures follow this example. The fleshing out of your outline would be the same as the landscaping and decorating of your house. Save them for last. In other words, start with the basics: What, When, Where, Why and How,(the foundation). Then move on to the tools, resources and knowledge, (the walls). Next would come the finish (the roof).

The "outline" stages of your project is where you'll do most of the learning required to reach a successful conclusion of your project. For example: What tools do you need? Where will you find those tools? How much do they cost? What resources can you find to help you? What resources do you have? Where can you go, or who can you see to gain the necessary know-how? These questions and many more will need answered before you can expect to be successful in your project. When you ask yourself these questions and get them answered, often you'll find the project is within your capabilities. When you write down and follow your plan, one step at a time, the project becomes less daunting. The longest journey begins with one step. When you write your outline and re-read it a few times, your memory will be "unlocked" and sometimes you'll be amazed at what you already knew.

Now you're ready to go back and flesh out your outline.(The landscaping and decorating.) This is where you can get bogged down with the details if you lose sight of the "big picture". Take your time with the details, after all, quality is also part of your project. But put together the details in such a way that they can be changed. This is an outline, not a plan carved in stone. You can make revisions, additions, deletions, substitutions and corrections. Easier to make those changes now, than later.

Open ended projects have a tendency to stay "open". So unless your project is collecting Manchurian artifacts, or some such, it should have an end date or time. You may need to extend the completion date or time, but you'll be much closer to the end if you have a completion schedule, than if you don't.

With the outline you've created, you can go on to create a formal plan with all the diagrams, drawings, measurements, etc. All an outline really does is give you a starting place. If your project is fairly simple, maybe this is all you need to use as a guide to finish your project. In any case, you now have that first step.

Michael Paetzold is the owner of MP Marketing and specializes in helping people to earn an income on line. You may reach him at mike@mpaetzold.com.

News of interest

Focus 4 will be sponsoring free web seminars to promote their Thanksgiving "No Limits" Seminar in Charlotte, NC the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Tonight's speaker is Gary Ambrose.  He will be talking about auto responders and non delivery of your e-mail.  You can download the room here.  it will start at 9pm edt.  To hear about future seminars that I recommend sign up here.

Speaking of Focus 4 the Future.  They offer Focus 4 points and I have decided to start offering them in some of my promotions.  This program an on line Green Stamps type loyalty program.  You collect the points and can convert them into different products or services that they have.  As a thank you for being a subscriber here are some for you.  This is something that you may think of using in your own promotions to set your offer apart from other people.  You can sign up for an advertisers account here.  (Just a note - The link for Focus4 points is only good for 3 days so if you are late opening this or reading it in the archives it may have expired.)

You will see some changes below in our recommended programs.  Empowersim has been dropped and after using Site Sell for the past 9 months I am adding it as a recommendation.

Program Updates

Profit Rally - I am extremely excited about the changes coming to Profit Rally.  Axel will be adding a web tools script for Pro members any day now.  Having seen and played with this script it makes it extremely easy for anyone to create a professional web site, add Google Ad Sense adds in, offer Amazon products,  have a blog attached and even draw content from your Profit Rally and Quickadz accounts that will be viewable on your site and even spiderable.

Kiosk - Now offering the ability to host up to 8 domains on their Platinum account with a conference room, access to their new web design tool and much more.  Add in their support (absolutely first rate) and training along with their other features and you can't go wrong.

Site Sell - Ken Evoy has put the total package together to build an online business.  You don't need any technical skill.  All you need to succeed with them is to supply the effort.

Niche Marketing Tools

It is always good to hear from my readers.  Received this from someone who has started to use the products below to work on his niche sites.

Infogoround - Continues to be an excellent source of private label articles.  This and blogger together can allow you to create a niche site with very little effort, minimal HTML knowledge and quite quickly all for $24.95 a month.  To see how this can work for you check out this article here.

Click Spy - Knowing which of my niche sites are getting Google clicks, which Click Bank, Amazon, Commission Junction and Link Share links on which pages are being clicked is invaluable.  If you are building niche sites this tool is invaluable.

X Site Pro -  This is a phenomenal tool.  It allows me to update my various sites with a point and click feature.  Ad Google Ad Sense ads or links anywhere on a page with automatic wrap around.  It will create a Google site map for your site and an actual site map for your site with no effort on your part.  It checks each page and gives you seo tips.  All in all despite being a bit pricey I have found it more than worth it if you are serious about creating niche sites.

Web Log Expert Lite - This is a free program that will allow you to download your access files and get some really good stats to see where exactly your traffic is coming from.  Remember that knowledge is power and this will allow you to see what is working.

Freebies and Specials

Occasionally I come across free items that i can recommend or a friend of mine will make a special offer for subscribers of mine.  This time there are two.

First, a good friend of mine Patti Ballard has just bought Snow Lake Express Safelist.  She has offered a free upgrade to to Pro for any members of this list that join it.  Just send an email to Patti at  patti_ballard@coolgoose.com with Old Bald Guy in the subject line and your user name in the body.

Joe Cooper is offering free access to his "Niche Profits Course".  Always looking for more information to improve my efforts and have just started going through his course.  Seems to have some good information and definitely easily readable.  Course the price is right too. <wink>

Thats all for this time but I am considering increasing the frequency of these newsletters from once a month to twice a month.  Please let me know how you feel about that or if there is anything I can do to help you grow your business.  Contact details below.

Michael Paetzold
938 E Center Street
Mahanoy City, PA 17948
01-610-871-0546
mike@mpaetzold.com