Only having 24 hours in a day makes it very difficult to accomplish everything we want to do with our time. For example, I have to balance my time being a mother and a wife along with trying to build an online income.

Without balance we may find ourselves wasting time on unimportant things and not being as productive as we could be. Time management takes a lot of focus to work properly.

According to the Pareto Principle, only 20% of what you do per day really matters. This is why it is important to understand what is important and what isn’t.

Having a set plan for the day allows me to wake up and get straight to work on what needs to be accomplished. I can set a prioritized to-do list so I can make sure nothing gets left out.

Time management is more than just a simple to do list. It is also a great way to track your goals and break them down into smaller daily steps in order to make sure they are accomplished.

For example, in my FranklinCovey day planner I keep track of my daily earnings from each program I am involved in. This helps me to see where I am doing well and what areas need improvement.

I also keep a daily list of all the articles I have written and where I have submitted them. There is also a place for me to keep notes on anything special I have discovered that day that I want to remember for later.

I have a special section in my day planner where I listed all my goals and broke them down into smaller deadlines. My major goal of course is my goal to pay off $72,900 worth of debt by the end of April 2009.

I really enjoy the Values and Mission section that FranklinCovey has in their day planners. From their instructions I was able to formulate my own mission statement, which keeps me focused.

Due to the fact that I am working online, I am a member of a bunch of different online programs and websites. I always had a hard time remembering what my user id and password was for each one.

Thankfully there is a section in my day planner designed for me to write down each website along with my log-in information.

I also have numbered sections in my day planner, which I was able to decide for myself what they would be used for. One of them I use to write down notes from really important things I have learned about working online.

The other sections I am still a bit undecided on, but I am really glad they are there when I need them.

To be effective, everything you do needs to be well organized. It is not necessary to stay busy all day long, you just need to make sure you get results from the time you put in.

Also, it is important to make sure that you aren’t just focusing on one area of your life and ignoring the others.

Schedule time for yourself to relax and to be with your family. There is no point in having a business if you don’t have a life to go with it.

Keeping a to-do list helps keep procrastination away. I had a huge problem with this in the past. I would always want to put everything off until tomorrow.

Now that I write down what I need to do each day, I no longer have that option.

Keep your day planner accessible at all times. I keep mine right here next to me on my desk open to the page for the day. That way it is always visible to me what I need to do next.

Make sure to stay positive. Working on time management is not the easiest thing to do.

You will find over time that you will start to love time management and realize that you can do more with your day than you ever though possible.

Writing articles can be a good way to get some free advertising for your website or blog. I have been using this method the past two weeks and plan to continue using it because it is a great way to get traffic when you don’t have money to pay for immediate advertising.

You can check out highly searched keywords using the Overture Keyword Selector Tool so you can check if the topic you are about to write on would be popular or not.

If you find a keyword you want to write on, make sure that your article is well written with a lot of references to that particular word or phrase.

The more content your write and the more articles you put out there the better. Providing people with information they need will make your website much more valuable and therefore more popular to the search engines.

I think that article marketing is the best form of advertising out there. First of all, it is completely free. No need for an advertising budget, all you need is time and effort to get your name and website out there to the world.

When you include a link to your website in the resource box or about the author section of your article submissions, they will get quickly noticed by search engines such as google.

This will cause the search engines to crawl your site and suddenly your website will appear listed in google, yahoo and the other big search engines.

Writing articles with a link to your website also provides you with very important back links. The more links that point back to your website, the higher your rankings are in google. I am sure this is true of the other large search engines as well.

Last of all, advertising through informative articles is a great way to build your online reputation. When people realize that you truly know what you are talking about, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say and will hopefully come back to your site again in the future to learn more.

Just make sure that every article you write is unique. It is not only illegal, but a waste to simply take someone else’s work and claim it as your own.

Here is a list of the Article Directories I currently use to market my articles. I haven’t written very many of them so far, but I am working hard to get more of them out there.

1. Associated Content (make sure to submit as non-exclusive)
2. EzineArticles.com
3. GoArticles.com
4. ArticleDashBoard.com
5. SearchWarp.com
6. SelfGrowth.com
7. ArticleCity.com
8. IdeaMarketers.com
9. Amazines.com
10. ArticleTrader.com
11. BusinessKnowHow.com
12. ArticlesFactory.com
13. ContentDesk.com
14. ArticleCube.com
15. ArticleBiz.com
16. FreeBlogArticles.com

When you submit your article to most of these sites, you are giving them permission and anyone else who uses them permission to copy and put your entire article on their own site.

You allow them to do this due to the fact that they will include your article along with your name and a link back to your website from the site they put it on. It is a great way to get your self out there.

You want to change up your article a bit every time you submit it to a new article site. This is because Google will penalize you for having duplicate content. I have been using a free program to change up my articles for each submission I do.

It is called Spontent’s Jetspinner. I can write up one article and run it through their free spinner to get over 100 different unique versions of my article.

It is important to understand how Adsense works in order to fully realize how important it can be for your website.

Google’s Adsense program is very easy to implement. You just simply add some simple java script to your site and it is up and running.

Every time someone comes to your site and loads a page, advertisements will show up. Google automatically determines what advertisements best match the content of your site. This is commonly referred to as contextual advertising.

When someone is visiting your website and decides to click on one of your Adsense ads, you will make money off of that click. The more visitors you have, the more clicks are likely to be made.

Google keeps track of all the clicks and posts them to your earnings report on their Adsense website. This is a very easy way for even new blogs and websites to start generating some revenue for their content.

There are plenty of advertisers who choose to advertise through the Adsense program so you can be sure that you will always have a way to make some money.

One reason why Adsense is so essential is the fact that it is completely passive. You do not have to go out and try to recruit people to pay you in order to advertise on your site. You can get a nice variety of advertisers paying you for clicks right away.

You have the ability to choose different sizes and colors for your Adsense ads so that they can blend well with your personal website design.

Having this high level of personalization is what I personally love about the Google Adsense program. You can make your ads stand out to get attention or you can have them blend in so they wont stand out as blatant advertisements.

Google also allows you to set up different ad channels so if you are running more than one site, you can see how each one is performing individually.

You can customize the channels even further if you have more than one ad section on each site.

This channel reporting allows you to see where you are doing well and what needs to be changed in order to optimize your Adsense profits.

By doing this, you may discover that ads placed on the top of your page do better than the ones placed on the bottom of your page.

If you currently have a blog or a website and you don’t have Adsense on it, you are missing out on a lot of potential income that can be gained.

Too many people underestimate the true earnings potential that Adsense can bring. I highly recommend you sign up for a free Adsense account as soon as you can.

I have a link at the bottom left of this page that will get you all signed up with your own Google Adsense account. You will need to have a blog or website up and running before you can apply.