I keep telling myself that I need to, want to, will, take my Ebay business more seriously but today I actually want to sit down and evaluate just how I am going to go about measuring my success. After all it is one thing to say you are going to do something and quite another to actually buckle down and do it. I work from home where there are plenty of distractions and no one but the cats and dogs to give me a performance review. And lets face it as long as the food and water dishes are full you don't really get a lot of feedback. So it is left to me to keep myself motivated and more importantly working.
At the beginning of this year I told myself that I would put in a minimum of 20 hours per week. That is the only real measurable item that I have given myself. It doesn't sound all that demanding really and yet here are my actual numbers.
Week 1 = 20
Week 2 = 20.5
Week 3 = 14.25
Week 4 = 20.75
Week 5 = 15.5
Week 6 = 17.75
Week 7 = 17.5
Week 8 = 17.5
Week 9 = 19.75
Week 10 = 18.75
Week 11 = 19
Week 12 = 12.5
Week 13 = 13.75
Week 14 = 9.75
Week 15 = 15
Week 16 = 16.75
Week 17 = 21.25
Week 18 = 14
Week 19 = 13.25
Week 20 = 11.5
Week 21 = 22.5
Week 22 = 22.75
Week 23 = 6.5
Week 24 = 10.75
Week 25 = 10
Week 26 = 6.5
Week 27 = 9.5
Week 28 = 19.25
Week 29 = 10.75
Week 30 = 18.5
Week 31 = 10
Week 32 = 6.5
Week 33 = 10.5
Week 34 = 16.5
Week 35 = 6.5
Week 36 = 16.75
Week 37 = 19.75
Week 38 = 12.5
Sorry to put you through that long list but it is the first time that I have actually reviewed all the numbers together. Not surprisingly they suggest that I could use a bit more discipline wouldn't you say? This week I am currently at 19 hours so sometime today or tomorrow I need to put in at least one more hour. So I may make 20 hours this week because I am writing a blog post about putting in the hours that I promised myself I would work. But what happens next week? How do I stay committed to making sure that I put in a solid 20 hours every week for the rest of the year and how do I measure the success of that effort?
First to address the matter of putting in the time. I have been keeping track of my hours in my day planner which I will continue to do but I also will now post them on Sundays on my Clothesline Apparel and More Facebook page. Just for th sake of clarity I do not count the time I spend on these blog posts toward my "Ebay time." Even though I am hopeful that in some way writing about my business will help me to improve it. I have read that sharing your goals publicly helps you to stay more committed to them so maybe this will help.
As for measuring whether my efforts pay off, I do have some systems in place for the year to year and month to month comparisons but I imagine this will always be somewhat of a work in progress.
The first order of business seems to be to get myself on track with the one solid measurable goal that I set for myself at the begining of this year. So I had better go and put in that last hour.
Happy Ebaying,
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