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The Fear Factor
March 02, 2005
You'd think with all this time in front of me this week, I'd be sitting here creating Web pages like crazy.
No, not me. Instead, I've been doing things by fits and starts. Literally dragging myself to do things. It's been okay, but not great. I wrote out a huge to-do list (problem no. 1) and faced immediate overwhelm. The idea of working on all sorts of sites is a good one for me, but I've got to revamp that to-do list because everything on it is just way too big.
One of my sites will have a ton of pages. There really is no point writing "get pages written" for this site - it's kind of like saying, "Okay, get really stressed, feel totally like you can't do this and go have some chocolate".
So I've been spending some time dealing with the fear factor. Telling myself that it doesn't matter, that it all takes time, and - just what my writing background knows only too well - you just put up the pages and start working on the next thing. There's no way to know whether a site is a success or failure until a good six months down the road.
The waiting is pretty hard. The site I launched last week has been up for all of seven days and already I find myself checking the stats to see what's happening, who's coming and where, oh where, are those bots? To make things even worse, this site is one that I know for a fact has to be in there for the long haul before I'll see any real benefit out of it.
I know this, really I do, but do you think that helps at all? Not a bit.
Tomorrow? I'll be breaking down that to-do list into more manageable chunks of work. Definitely.
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Posted by BJ at 12:42 AM in Internet Marketing | Permalink
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Comments
It helps me if I break down the to-do list into bite size chunks. I write down exactly which pages (topics) need to be done, and on which day. I use a small spiral and put each day on a separate page, it's less overwhelming when you can't see the entire to-do list!
Hang in there BJ, your hard work will pay off!
Posted by: Sandra | Mar 2, 2005 3:04:21 PM
Thanks, Sandra. I like the small spiral book idea but I've never had luck with a day-to-day to-do list. It gets frustrating on those days (lots of them) when I have to carry-over items to the next day. But I think I will try and put the to-do list in a small spiral book as a "running" to-do list - you can't squeeze in very much on each line and that might work!
- BJ
Posted by: BJ | Mar 2, 2005 3:15:33 PM
I know how you feel - my first site was finished on Dec. 15th and I'm still wondering when it'll get some real visitors! But I just stick to my "baby steps" of writing 5 articles/day - and know that it's GOT to pay off sometime!
Posted by: Jenn | Mar 2, 2005 3:40:21 PM
