Everybody taking the steps to start their own online business runs into on of these two problems at some point. Either they don’t have enough time or they don’t have enough money (usually because they spent their money in the wrong spots).

Yes, you can actually have too little of both.

The question is what to do about it?

This really depends on what you are lacking time or money.

If you are short of time but have money then it simply takes outsourcing some of your work. There are a lot of online services that will do parts of your to do list for you, plus they can do the technical work that you don’t know how to do.

You can find services that will write custom programs for you, create your website for you, create custom graphics, handle your customer support, etc. The prices will vary quite a bit and I recommend that you use a service that puts the money in to an escrow account until the work is done.

Make sure when you do hire a free lancer either directly or from a service that you find out as much as you can about them. Ask for references, ask to see samples of their work and make sure they have done the type of work you are looking for. There are some people out there that will bid on everything but have no experience actually providing this service. You want to avoid these people.

That pretty much covers if you have more money then time but most people starting out are just the opposite, they have more time then money. I’m not going to lie to you this does make it harder and it takes longer to get established but you can succeed if you are diligent about your work ethics.

This does mean that you will have to learn how to do a lot of things for yourself. You will need to know how to maintain your own website, you will have to write your own sales copy, you will have to do basically everything yourself.

But don’t try to do it all at once. Pick one area that you need to get you to the next step and concentrate on that until you have it done. It doesn’t do you any good to learn about Adsense and SEO if you can’t put the code on your site or if you can’t create your own site.

What do you do if you have too little time and too little money?

There isn’t a lot you can do about this you need to have one or the other to make progress, there is no magic button you can push to be a success.

But, I do have one suggestion; form a Joint Venture (JV) partnership. Most people think of JV’s as just some one that will promote your product or site for you but this isn’t the case. A joint venture is any situation where two or more people work together for the benefit of all parties involved.

Let’s say you have some talent in creative writing, maybe (with a little studying) you could start writing sales pages, email, content for websites and even products themselves.

Another person has all the technical background to put the site up on the server and install the scripts and edit and maintain the site(s) but can’t write a word. Wouldn’t this make a good partnership?

This way you can get the technical skills you need and they can get the copy they need. Or you can go together on one site and split the profits 50 / 50

Where do you meet people like this? Good question. There are a number of places online that you can look for people like this such as www.linkedin.com but the very best place to meet people for any type of joint venture is at live events.

I have learned more from the people that I have met at seminars then I have from the presenters!

Yes, that is true and the reason why is that you see the presenters for a hour and a half and the people you meet you can have a relationship with for years. People that you have a relationship with will be more likely to help you then the guy standing on the stage.

If you get a chance to go to a live seminar GO! Don’t think about it! Just GO! Pay attention meet some people and open your mind and your heart to learning. No, I am not plugging a seminar here I am just tell you the way it is.

This is my first post in response to a request from the Tell Me What You Want Post.

The request was to provide help that would keep people on track.

The answer to that is focus!

Let’s start with your to do list. You don’t have a to do list?

Well that is a problem right there. I recommend you create a daily, a weekly and a monthly to do list.

Create the monthly list first and put everything you can think of on this list. If you create the monthly list like I do it will be daunting. I have never finished a monthly to do list in one month. But it is more to remind me what I need to do.

Next break down the monthly list to a week list, the stuff you plan to do in one week. The week list should be what you actually think you can get done in one week plus one or two other items. This list should be put in order of what you think is the most important. This list should be one that challenges you but doesn’t give you that feeling of despair when you look at the size of it.

Next break down the week list into your daily list. Put the most important items first, you should already have these sorted. Now you do the items on your list. Make sure you do one item at a time and only one item at a time and this should be the first item (the most important one) on your list. DO NOT go to any other items on your list until you finish the first one.

Your daily list should be enough to challenge you but not enough to give you a reason to avoid the list. You might know what I am talking about, sometimes you work so hard to get the things done that need to be done that you get “burnt out” and you start looking for excuses to avoid the work. You know like, “I will do it right after I watch my favorite TV show.” Or “I am not in the mood to do this now.”

If you are having those types of thoughts you are probably working too hard and you are probably working in burst.
I know I have done this is the past, work a 20 hour day building a website and get it 90% done but then when it comes time to go back to it I remember all the aggravation from the 20 hour day and I tended to avoid it. I use to have tons of unfinished projects because of this.

Now I make my daily list smaller instead of having the one item building a website I break it down to things like:

• Get Graphics
• Install script
• Upload Products
• Start Sales Copy

Then I set my time limits by deciding how long I am going to work that day. Some days it is only one hour other days I will actually schedule a 10 hour day (that is because I like what I do and I take pride in the fact that I answer almost all the emails that come to me but I limit my responses to 2 hours per day. You add that 2 hours to 8 hours of work and you will get my 10 hour day)

Start with the first item on your list and don’t do anything else until that is done. Then go on to the next item. When your time is up, stop working, and whatever you didn’t finish will go to the top of the next day’s list.

If you are almost done with one item on your list it is OK to work past your time limit a little. Please note the little part. Don’t put in an extra 2 or 3 hours or you might end up in the “burnt out” category and dread going back to work on it. But an extra 15 or 20 minutes won’t hurt.

Tell people what you are doing and when you expect to be done.

By declaring to other people what you are doing you are making yourself responsible for achieving what you say. No one likes to be taunted with, “You said you were going to do this and all you did was sit on the couch and watch TV”

You would be surprised at how effective this is to keep you on track.

Get an accountability partner!

An accountability partner is just finding someone, preferably someone that is doing a similar project, and getting in touch with them every day or every other day. This can be a short phone call or email all you do is ask what are you doing, what do you plan to achieve and what did you do.

I would go something like this:

(Jerry) Hi Randy, time to be accountable, the last time we spoke you said you were going to get the script set up on your site. How are you doing?

(Randy) Hi Jerry, the script is installed but I haven’t tested it yet.

(Jerry) Ok, so I will assume you will be testing the script before our next call. What is your next step toward reaching your goals?

(Randy) Besides testing the script, I need to start rounding up JV partners.

(Jerry) OK that sounds good. How many people do you plan to contact before the next call?

(Randy) I will contact 5 people.

After this Randy would ask Jerry similar questions. The next call would follow up on the script testing and the contacting people.

As you can see the question asker doesn’t set the goals, you set your own goals, but they are there to remind you that you have these goals and that you need to take the steps to reach your goals. Again when you are accountable to another person it has a tendency to create a greater desire in you to achieve.

Remember: Desire + Action = Success

The simple answer to this is no you don’t need to know HTML to make money online but there is a rather large caveat or two.

If you don’t know HTML, at least a little, you will have to hire someone to do everything you want to do online. This means you have to have:

1. Money – at least enough to payout to get every thing done until you start making money.
2. A Techie – this has to be someone that understands HTML and website creation that you can contact at any time to change or create something for you.
3. Some one that knows enough about HTML and the internet to tell you if you are being ripped off by the techie above.

You should be #3 above. If you know at least the basics then you will be able to tell if you are being ripped off by the “techie”

It also helps if you know a little about it so that you can tell the techie what you want in a way that THEY will understand it.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert at HTML, PHP or CSS but you should know enough about it to know if the information you have is enough for the person to create a website and again I will come back to the MONEY issue.

For example you want all the links on your site to have the same look and feel. For this reference we will say that you have a 5 page site that the techie created for you and about 20 links on it.

You tell the techie that you want all the links to be blue and when you put the mouse over them you want a yellow background to appear.

The techie thinks about this for a second and says, “We will have to create a cascading style sheet and create a class for the links to do this. Then we will have to go in and manually update all the links on each page individually. I can probably do this for you for about $150.00.”

Is this a good price???

If you don’t know then what is a good price?

$250

$350

$50

To me for this type of work it should only take them about ½ an hour and $50 is more then adequate. You could probably find someone on RentACoder that would do it for less then that.

If you have an unlimited supply of money and you don’t mind getting ripped off then don’t worry about knowing any of the mechanics behind a website. But if you are like a majority of the people out there that is just starting out and don’t have the money to pay some one to do the work then I suggest you learn at least the basics.

Remember there are only two things you can use as leverage to get your business going they are time and money. Which ever you have the most of is what you will need to spend.

And now for a shameless plug. I have a site called Marketing Beginners that will gie you all the basics of HTML and some CSS and some PHP and it is free. You can sign up just by clicking anywhere on the site where you see the words Marketing Beginners in blue. Or use the link to the right under My Sites.