Yesterday I installed dotProject in an attempt to start managing my time working online more effectively.
Despite previously knowing nothing about dotProject, once I discovered the script came packaged with cPanel and Fantastico, it took me less than 2 minutes to install – just like a new wordpress blog.

A dotProject  user manual is available for download and more detailed information is available online – but so far I have not needed to use either.
First I entered my name and address details.
Then I started a new project, added tasks with time, dates and costs.

It took me about ten minutes to complete the first project for one of my new software products and a bit less for each of the next ones.
Adding task dependencies lets me quickly see the order I should be doing things – and probably for the first time has given me a real picture of just how much work I have to do and how long it is likely to take.

After about 30 minutes work, I now had all the project information I needed in a database.
And dotProject has tools that present it in lots of useful different ways – such as to-do lists and gant charts.

In summary, dotProject can do most everything I am ever likely to want for my online project planning.
It also provides so many extra features I am unlikely to need – such as multi-user, multi-company support.

Despite providing heavyweight features, it is so easy to install and start using – just wish I’d have found it sooner.
The one thing I haven’t yet found is a way to print out the results.
Maybe that feature is there somewhere.
Anyway, it’s no problem because I just use my new Clik-n-Snap software to snap a copy of any results I need and paste them into word for printing

Highly recommended – free, quick and easy to get started.

I’ve run successful ‘offline’ businesses and know what how much time, effort and organisation that takes.
So why haven’t I yet been able to do this for an online business?

Last year I attended Chris Freville’s “7 Figure Success Formula” course.
And one of the first things Chris advised was to ‘get organised’ and chunk down tasks into manageable one hour blocks.

Sounds easy.
Just like a training book I read over 10 years ago that started off by saying ‘make $1 passive profit online’ on page one followed by 200 pages explaining how to scale it up! Even today, I haven’t discovered a way to do that without hard work.

There are so many easy excuses I could make – shiny new ideas and toys, far too much for any one person to ever learn etc. etc.
But none of that helps to make me more productive or able use my time to earn more $ cost effectively.

I’m working harder than I have ever worked before – often 12 to 16 hours a day.
But never seem to find enough time to do all the things that are really necessary.

So today, I took a step back and decided to research Project Software.
Like most things online, I quickly became bewildered with all the possibilities and baffled by what software is really ‘free’ or a reasonable cost.

Programs such as Microsoft Project are far too expensive and cumbersome for a one man business plus the work I outsource – mainly graphics.

A Google search quikly led me to a Wikipedia page listing 140 different software products.
Quickly selecting a few free products to investigate further, I wasted a lot of time discovering most weren’t actually free – versions of interest needed to be paid for ant typically $25 a month!
And they had far too many features taking lots of time to learn.

I wouldn’t mind paying a one off fee of $25 or even $50 – but have no interest forking out $100’s or making ongoing monthly payments.

One thing that did surprise me was that almost all Project Software is now web hosted.

Next I focussed on software with open source GPL licenses.
The biggest problem I found was that most of the software was old, no longer supported or wouldn’t work with operating systems later than XP – such as Windows 7.

But in the end persistence paid off!
I found a site that explained a couple of products were readily available for installation using my hosting cpanel and Fantastico or simple scripts!
How I kicked myself for not thinking of that to start with.

Firing up cpanel on one of my hosting accounts, sure enough two open source Project scripts were available for instant installation – almost exactly the same way as a wordpress blog is installed.

Fantastico’s Project Scripts

Five minutes later I had not only installed dotproject but also fired it up and got started using it – just following my nose, without bothering looking for any manuals.

Starting dotProject Installation

I decided to install the script in a folder called ‘projects’ on an unused domain:

dotProject and wordpress Installations are alike

Now I’m busy setting up projects and tasks – already I can see just how many different things I am trying to do and how many hours it will take.

Hopefully this will help me focus on my most important tasks and reduce time I spend on other less important ones.
Tomorrow I’ll let you know how I’m getting on.

When I started out working online, I created lots of niche blogs.
The aim was to get each one ranked on page one of Google for relevant keywords.

What I found extremely frustrating was the amount of hard work needed with no real sign of progress. Traffic was very erratic.
How I would have loved to get some measure of progress and value for each blog post.

Instead, I spent hours checking how each site was ranked by Google – a very rough and ready process lacking any reliable repeatable results.

Last year I invested in Chris Freville and Paul Teague’s 7 Figure Success Formula.
Their recommendation was to monitor progress using Alexa..com
That’s what I have been doing for this site for the last few weeks.

I have not bothered to focus on SEO or any particular keyword yet – not driven any traffic here. So the site doesn’t bother using header tags for keywords – because I am not targeting any yet.
stevemackay.com had nothing other than a virgin WordPress Blog for over a year.
Then on 19 April 2012 I reconstructed the site to follow John Thornhill’s One Month Mentor training course.

Initially I posted new content daily for a few weeks then started posting at less regular intervals.
To date I have posted 37 articles – averaging about one every 3 days.

Here’s what I have found:
stevemackay.com Alexa ranking was about 11,150,000 when I first checked a couple of weeks ago.
Each time I make a new blog post, the Alexa ranking goes up by about 15,000.

Google Analytics reports the small amount of traffic (apart from me!) rises then falls to about half if I don’t post for a day then almost disappears the day after.

There are about 185 million active websites online.
So achieving an Alexa ranking of about 1.8 million means being in the top 1% of sites – and hopefully making the sort of income earned by many of the top sites!

Failing to do anything special – such as adding backlinks or driving traffic – a rough and ready estimate suggests I would need about 623 blog posts to get to a top 1% position. This would take about 2 years with one post a day.
Maybe less posts are needed – because improvements to my Alexa ranking has actually been accelerating as I post more regularly?
Or maybe more posts are needed – because if things start to get tougher as ranking improves and competition becomes stronger.

Either way, Alexa seems to be a very useful and easy way to measure a site’s progress.