“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
― Plato
Before doing anything online the first thing you need to consider and implement is to organize yourself from the beginning. All the files, pages, emails, and all the tools you need and use must be in the correct place. Have access to them when you need them. Below I will describe the tools and methods I use personally for my setup. These techniques can be used whether you have a blog, youtube channel, and in general, whatever you do as an online business. I hope you will find them useful.
1.Organize your emails
In your online journey, you will register to many sites, purchase some tools and services, and the list goes on. Everything that is related to your business must be in a place where you can reach it fast whenever needed. You don’t want to lose an email that has, for example, an id, a receipt or some login details from a registration. For this reason, you must create a folder in your email (every email I think has this choice), name it, for example, mysitename.com or something related to what you do. Usually, you can create a folder in your left side of your email. Inside there you will move all the emails that are important for your online business. When you register a domain name or buy a hosting service you will receive emails from the service providers that maybe has important details such as client id, payment, number of receipt, log in details, etc. I don’t keep the welcome emails and some promotions but I do keep for sure whatever I may need or asked to provide in the future.
2.Organize your files
Secondly, you must create a folder in your computer in which you will store all the files you use or will need. I have created a folder I gave it the name of my blog, and in there I have several folders: photos, icons, articles, mytheme, youtube, Pinterest, Facebook. Whatever is related to each of those I save it in the appropriate folder. I download for example some photos I like or maybe will use in my blog and save them in the “photos” folder. Also in there, I have another folder called “uploaded” which contains all the photos I have uploaded in my blog. Tip: my folder has the “_” symbol in the start and end (_MoneyOnlineResources_) so it will be first in my drive since it is the most important I have. 😉
This way I don’t search a lot when I want a file I go straight to the source and find it. Every article written here I save it in a word document as a backup. It only takes a few seconds to do it but it can save you from a lot of trouble if something goes wrong. With this way whatever happens to my blog, I can set it up again since I have all the materials needed. Of course, is essential and wise to backup your whole blog once in a while.
3. Organize your steps, tools, and webpages
My last resource is an online tool called trello. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. It is free to use and you can create boards, lists, cards and organize your work, resources and all you need related to the topic you want. Your boards can be personal (seen and used only by you) or public and you can even create boards and share them with others to execute a teamwork. For instance, I have created a board called “Money Online Resources” (my blog). Inside this board, I have a list called “Royalty free images” . I have another list called “steps” . Down this list, you can create cards with everything you want: notes, websites, photos, etc. You can move cards to lists, or lists to other boards. Below you can see an example of how it works and how a board looks like. Don’t be confused as all these may sound complicated. Trello is a very simple and effective utility. You can visit the website for more information by clicking >here<.
These are the tools and websites I use every day for my blog and my online business overall. I have trello opened always in my browser tab and use it when I need to. This is an excellent habit to have and in general, you can create a board and store all the notes or useful staff you want. Write them down on a card and access them from anywhere when you want. I am saving notes, and webpages all the time.
What are your thoughts about the above methods? Do you have any suggestions about other useful tools? Write them in the comments so I can add them to this post.
Thanks for reading!
George 😀