Keeping Yourself Motivated in the Beginning

Before the Big Checks Come in...

[Livenomadic]

About a year ago (when I first came to WebmasterWorld and didn't know jack) I started a very nice little site with about 100 articles. (No SEO of any kind)

It's been steadily making about low $X a day for about a year now. I haven't updated it in months. My ranking is 330s in google and has been holding steady for more than 6 months.

The reason I havent been updating it is because I've been learning so much in WebmasterWorld (I knew NOTHING when I came, from hosting to xhtml to css to SEO etc...) that I realized i needed to remake the whole site concept on a much more professional scale:

Lots of SEO work
600 Articles
SEF Forum
CMS with SEF Urls
Custom Database
Links Directory
Photo Gallery
Store

Now I'm about 2-3 months from releasing my new site 2.0 but I'm having problems keeping motivated. I've been writing articles, but since they will not get published online for months I am having trouble keeping up my work load. I am finding myself drifting to other things (such as computer games) instead of working on the thing that I really really want to make happen.

When my new site gets released the sky is the limit, and I'm pretty sure that when larger(ish) checks (I'm a student, more than $300 a month is awesome) come in every month from google I'll definitely keep working on it, but until then I need something to keep my eyes on the goal.

What did you do to keep yourself motivated before the checks start coming in?

[skipfactor]

>>What did you do to keep yourself motivated before the checks start coming in?

I would start publishing some of those 600 articles on your old format (with new pages) then switch the text to the new design when you launch it. That way you can get a head-start on ranking and reward yourself w/ stats analyses on the new pages' rankings.

[kodaks]

I had the same problem when I started my first site. What I did to fix that was plan more efficiently.

Instead of just having the attitude "I'll work on my site today", say to yourself "I'll finish part A of my site today". This will make your work more productive.

[killroy]

I've had similar problems. Over the months I've created tools so I can more effectively prototype. Today, from idea to life site is a matter of minutes. After that I can incrementally apply the materials and products I planned for to teh life site, continuosly improving ranking and traffic, until, finally, the cash starts coming in.

So the trick might be to have the atrticles up in a low-key format so google can take a peek, and then later switch hte design and layout to your final, complex version.

SN

[universetoday]

Maintaining your site should be like a heartbeat happens regularly. The best incentive is when you've got regular readers who're expecting you to keep maintaining your website day in and day out. I actually get a surprising amount of work done every day, following a routine that keeps the content fresh and brings people back on a regular basis.

Figure out what work you can do on a daily basis and then structure your site content around that. You want things to get to the point that you feel nervous if you can't get to work on your website.

[karmov]

I've had similar problems with motivation on new projects. But the key is, as already mentioned, to set very specific goals. For example, complete article A by Friday rather than work on article A when I have time. This also has the nice side effect of making sure you're focused on only one component at a time rather than have your mind wadering about all of the different parts of your site. I know that often distracts me quite a bit.

[Watcher of the Skies]

You could, of course, fail miserably. ;) But seriously, barring that, many people often run over in their minds what they'll do if things don't work. The greater danger is in not knowing what you'll do when you're a success. PLAN for how you'll maintain and grow your accomplishment once your ship comes in. :)

[dan_popescu]

My motivation was simple: if other people can do this, so can I.

[LifeCoach]

There are three basics to motivating yourself to get down to it:

1} Have WRITTEN goals, both long and short term (with definite timescales).

2} Have a WRITTEN plan that has everything that you need to do to reach the goal.

3} Visualise in your mind achieving each and every goal (both long and short term) - if this doesn't motivate you, then you have bad goals and need to find some others!

Good luck.

LC