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A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Online everything is so easy to do. It's just takes a few seconds to click over there and add this widget to you blog and a few more to add another friend to a social networking site. Unfortunately, this leads to wasted time and the important things to your business never getting accomplished. If you don't have a marketing plan for your online business, I can almost guarantee you are struggling. In this article we're going to cover some basics on how to develop your own marketing plan and make the internet work for you.

The first step is compiling a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish for your marketing efforts. Online this means things like: blog commenting, social networking sites, forum commenting, using StumbleUpon, article submissions, etc. You should be able to come up with a list of 15-20 ways to market your business online fairly quickly. Google "Online Marketing", if you have any trouble. You must ensure each one is a task with definable objectives. Also make sure they are broken down into their component pieces. An example of a non-task is "Front Page Of Digg" - accomplishing this objective involves a whole slew of other things, writing engaging articles, getting Digged, networking with other Diggers, etc. Put these tasks all in a spreadsheet.

Now you'll rank each task. Rank each one on a scale from 1-5 on how important and effective each one is to your marketing goals. People who are focusing on promoting a site via social networking will obviously have different ranks for tasks than a person who is focusing on blogging. Ensure you have a fair distribution of each number. A list of all ones or fives isn't going to help you plan where to focus your time and effort in the forthcoming month.

On to actually building the plan for the next month. Limit yourself to five day work weeks for four weeks to start. Take the ranked list and start putting the tasks ranked five into your calendar first. I suggest using Wednesday for the fives, with overflow onto Tuesday or Thursday. These days are least likely to be disrupted by holidays or long weekends and thus will increase the likelihood they are finished each week. Tasks ranked five will be done every single week. Once you have filled in the fives, insert the fours and threes more toward the edges of the week and most likely only done every other week. Next come the twos and ones and they will be done on Mondays and Fridays and at most once a month. Once the calendar is finished you should see a clear pattern of spending the most time on the fives and the least on the ones.

Once you have the plan finished, put into practice! Accomplish the tasks for each day before doing anything else. Don't let email, phone calls, pet or other tasks distract you before you've finished. Once it's done, you're free to work on other business related tasks or take some time off. This is just a suggestion, as different people work differently, but the important bit is to make sure you finish the tasks for the day on the day. Work your plan!

Once you've gone through one month of your plan, take a few hours and determine which tasks moved you closer to your goals and which ones did not. Did you get more traffic, sales or leads from some tasks and none from others. Switch around the rankings for each of the tasks and based on those rankings come up with another plan. Other things may factor into your plan, can't seem to get up the willpower to write blog posts on Monday's, but the will is there on Tuesdays? Switch it around then! Keep refining your plan until it's working the best for you. Then start outsourcing the tasks making you the most money.

Making a marketing plan isn't very difficult if you take it step by step. And having a plan is very often the difference between success and failure. So start planning for your success today!

Learn how to start and build your own successful & highly profitable Internet Business in 45 days... 100% Free! I'm Steven Lohrenz and I know from personal experience. Earn Money Online