Be sure to create New Folders on your PC and keep track of where you put all the files for your business and personal stuff. This is one of the biggest mistake made by people who haven't used PC's for their jobs. Name the Folder something that makes sense and be sure to name the File something that makes sense too. Finding the information later is the whole reason for writing it down.

Analyzing Your Customers

After you start selling stuff, you will want to know more about your customers so you can target new products and your sales copy for them. This is a big part of being successful. You can use Internet survey tools, like SurveyMonkey.com to gather more information on your visitors, members and customers.

Time Management

It is so easy to get caught up in the daily tasks that are obvious from the email and mail you receive that you might forget about other tasks you need to do. In most corporate businesses in the past 20 years, there have been efforts to teach employees time management skills. You can formalize your efforts using the Daily Planner tools available at any office store.

I once read, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" by Akin. I used to keep the book around and am sure I lent it to someone and can't find it. Now I've even forgotten the author's full name. Of course he advocated the use of ToDo Lists and I've always used them. In the corporate world, every white collar worker was introduced to the Franklin Planner system in the '90's. They provided us with free planner books and pages.

The strategy is all rather obvious though. It goes like this:

Good system. Do it. Just don't spend all your time working on your planner. Make that a simple task, referencing where your actual data is, like filenames, and paper files. Just be sure to add any new tasks as you think of them. When you complete a task, be sure to cross it off and start the next one. Every so often you will want to review your priorities and sometimes even cross off a task because you decided it wasn't "worth" doing anymore.

Of course, you still need to work on the MOST IMPORTANT things. And don't forget about outsourcing some tasks. Maybe you can't do it all yourself!

Motivation Tips

Don't underestimate the need to stay motivated. While I have seen how the emails from all the experts I follow tend to keep me motivated, I know it can be just as discouraging to have so many emails and daily tasks, like paying bills and entering new data into your spreadsheets and accounting software, that you can tire easily from just that menial work.

Sometimes it seems like you can't get anything new done. That's when you should try to get motivated again.

Consider these ideas:
1. Take a break from work. Revitalize yourself so you can work harder when your break is over. Consider taking family time, vacation, watch a movie, or take a nap, do some Zen meditation, whatever.... Hey, your can Play Cool PC Games at CoolGamePlace.com, my fun website!
2. Take a moment to do something on your ToDo list that is more fun and not your next priority. You are still getting something done, and it might spark some ideas for marketing or new products. You wrote it on your ToDo list for a reason after all.
3. If you have a few bonus pdf or mp3 files that are essentially about Internet Businesses, it might be a good time to read or listen to some. They always attempt to be motivating because they want you to buy more of their products and learn more of their tools. Or NOT. They might just be TOO much at this point. I have about two dozen of these Bonuses sitting in a Folder and when I get to them, I find some of them are just more of that same old HYPE about how great it is to make money online. You KNOW that already - geez!

That said, there is a great article I have reprint rights for. It's perfect for when you need to listen to your inner voices, maybe take a new direction. Read it here.

Products - Suppliers

Always be prepared to add more products or change some products that you sell, or suppliers that you purchase them from. You might find you can save money on your inventory, entice more customers with alternate products, and/or interest current customers with new products.

Make notes (ToDo list again) immediately upon finding out about some product that you find that interest you, especially if it fits into your niche area.

Product research can be fun, or simply a necessary chore. Just do it.

Continuous Improvement

Everyone who ever took business courses in school or worked in a corporate business environment knows about process improvement projects. It is part of every employees and managers "goals" to think of ways to improve their jobs or department's services.

Plan on it for your business too. Don't let your websites or product offerings get stale, or your profits are likely to decrease. Be sure to review them, and have your friends and family review them for ideas on improving them always. You might even want to close some websites down and create new ones. Visitors and customers will tire of the same old information on your websites. That is one reason the search engines are always happy to find new content and will increase your rankings when they find more interesting related information.

Even if you publish a great e-zine or add new product to your website, you want to consider a re-design or change of colors or graphics every so often.

Internet Marketing Campaigns - Both Ongoing and Discretionary Expenses

Remember Traffic and Conversion? You will want to continually improve your sales and keep adding to your marketing efforts and budget. Perhaps you want redesigns involving website programming for new content, specials or improvements, artwork/graphics, etc.

A Marketing expense is ANYTHING you aren't doing yourself for free, so it costs money. You may want to do whatever you can yourself, at least at first. Read more about Internet Marketing tools and methods.

Of course, you could just pay a Marketing Consultant and spend your time elsewhere and your money here. Get as good a consultant as you can afford. I have no experience with professional Marketing firms.

Whatever you do, BE SURE to keep your expenses under control in every area at all times. If you go broke or max out your credit before you get profitable, you will defeat your purposes in starting your own business.

But you always need to manage a budget for and probably decide to spend at least a certain amount regularly until you have built your business traffic level to be self-managing, if you want to.

All money transactions should be entered into the accounting software. Regular expenditures to expect include:

As needed expenditures:

Enter the catagories in the Chart of Accounts that your CPA recommends and build them into your accounting software Chart of Accounts. Then you enter the transactions so they are in the proper catagories. It is a double waste of time moving transactions around later, as I learned.