Do You Have A Morning Routine?

Okay let’s have a break from the How I Met Your Mother tees! Obviously when you’re working on a ‘new’ lens or niche there’s a temptation to ignore all of your other lenses and I’ll admit to being a little guilty of this at times, but I do have a morning routine (it becomes evening if I have a temp assignment in the CBD) that I follow every day. Earlier this month we had problems with our internet for about a week, but I still only missed one day!

First up is I check my affiliate a/cs to see if I’ve made any sales and if I have I write them in my diary. Then I check Squidoo, now I know people say not to stress about lensrank and I don’t, but I do record it! Every morning I’ll write tier 1 = number of lenses in this tier and then the lens names or shortened versions in the correct order. Under that I’ll write tier 2 and repeat the process. I don’t worry about tier 3.

Next I look at the total on the dashboard and if it has changed from the day before I click on the $ sign to get all of the sales up. When payday comes around I get a clean piece of A4 and write a list of lenses and the sales amount that are showing, every morning I’ll go through and update this list and write the new sales in my diary. As an example this morning I’d made one sale so on my list I crossed out the 8.05 next to Gaga costumes and replaced it with 8.73 and in my diary under my tiers I wrote Gaga Cost 8.73 and on the next line wrote new total $114.08.

Why do I do this? Can’t I just get the stats from my lenses? Well you could do everything online, but I can compare last years diary with this years a lot easier (for my brain anyway) and pick up on trends that may not be obvious. Last year one product in particular sold well at Valentine’s Day and took me by surprise – I’ve promoted that product a little more this year (although I haven’t really done enough prep with Valentines again this year). Last year I missed the boat a bit for Valentines as you really need to have all of your lenses done before Christmas ready to start promoting in January (IMHO). I missed the boat again this year so I’ve noted it in my diary at the end of the year to remind myself to be on the ball – always think ahead!

Watching your lenses every day lets you notice when something suddenly takes off – one of my lenses shot up in visits a few months ago which prompted me to look at why and when I found why I decided to rewrite part of the lens to keep it relevant. If I’d had more time I would probably have written an article or something as it may have earned me a little money for a short time.

If I have time later in the day I’ll check to see exactly what products are selling.If I find I’m selling a lot of one particular thing I may look at other strategies to capitalize on the trend.

After this I’ll check emails, approve any comments and check out the Rocket Moms forum – I usually leave Squidu until later in the day.

So do you have a morning routine?