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Everything in life cost something! It may cost money, effort or time. Every day, you have to invest something to get what you want. Depending on your goals, you’ll take some decisions on what you are willing to pay for the desire results. However, this is often gambling because you never exactly know what will be the real outcomes. How will be your return on investment (ROI)? Do your money/effort/time worth the benefits you harvest?

Try and experiment!

The most common way to know the benefits you’ll get from an investment is the trial and error method. You must try to know the results. And I want to insist on the fact that the results may vary from person to person. It is unrealistic to assume that a similar entry will give the same results. I use the word similar because an entry could never be exactly the same when the actor is not exactly the same. You are unique and you create unique entry to any process. It could be similar to someone else, but it could never be exactly the same. Your personality, your experience, your attitude will have a direct influence on what you create.

Of course, if you get terrific for a minimum investment, this is the best case. If this is repeatable, just do it as long as you can! However, if the results are acceptable or poor it may be interesting to experiment other strategies. Sometime, even minor changes in the strategy will bring big changes in the results. It will always be a good idea to experiment other strategy. There is nothing more powerful than the experience to really learn and understand something!

Document. Document. Document.

There are so many things you will try on your blogger’s life! How could you memorize all the data? What you really need to do is document! Keep an up to date document of what you try with the related results. Maybe you’ll try some variant of the entry, just to know how it will influence the results. This is something very valuable to properly understand the process. Then you’ll have enough information to make a strong conclusion on the cost/benefits ratio. Do the benefits worth your money/effort/time investment? The answer must be inline with your personal goals. It will also be a subjective answer because, everyone have a different perception of what a particular result really worth.

What Should be Documented?

There are many essential elements you should document for each thing you try:

1. The Time. You should document the starting date and the ending date. Both are very valuable because it gives an idea of the duration and the overall time frame. The duration of a process could have a big impact on the benefits.

2. The Description. Of course, you should also make a small description of what you are trying. Is it a new traffic generation strategy? Is it new ads on a particular network? A small, but complete description is useful information to keep.

3. The Strategy. Documenting your strategy is critical, because this is what will most influence the results you’ll get. This is also a good place to introduce some changes if you want to experiment some variants. Don’t hesitate to experiment and make some changes to your strategy; you may be amazed by the new results!

4. The PageRank. Your PageRank may have some influence on the results you’ll get. For example, this is something that may influence the results you’ll get from some moneymaker opportunities. It’s always a good information to keep.

5. The Number of Visitors. Your visits may also have some influence on the results you’ll get. Obviously, depending on what you are trying, the number of visitors may be critical.

6. The Cost. If you really want to have a good idea of your ROI, you’ll need to carefully note the cost of what you are trying. As discussed above, the cost could be in term of money, effort or time.

7. The Process Trends. This would be useful to know how the process is progressing. Does it grow regularly day after day (linear)? Does it grow more and more each day (exponential)? Does it grow irregularly? This is great information, because you will be able to compare the process trends with every variant you’ll try.

8. The Results. Obviously, the results is a must have information to document. Along with the cost, you’ll be able to judge of the real worth of what you have tried.

Of course, you may also add a comment field to your document. It will allow you to take some additional notes. This may be very useful in the future!

The Summary.

For most of you, resources are limited. Time and money are precious resources. Maybe you have a day job or you have school (and maybe both!). Maybe you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a husband or a wife and beloved children. Maybe you have a hobby and maybe you are a sports fanatic. You need time and you need to balance it in your whole life. This increases the price for every minute you spend! Take the time to document what you do. This will help you to increase your ROI or, at least, discard every worthless activity.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 4:34 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.