Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2016 has been good to you so far.
It’s funny – when you work for yourself, your routine is generally open and you can do what you want time wise and work wise. Sometimes that’s good – but sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes I envy the 9-5 workforce because it’s such a set routine and you really can’t deviate from it. You just work around it.
I’m always changing the way I work – to the point that it’s become a running joke between my friends and family.
For example – at some point within the last few years, I decided I was going to give myself 4 day weekends. I’d work Tuesday-Thursday and that was it. My theory was hell I deserve some relaxation time – plus it means I will be a lot more productive within those three days.
I think that plan lasted about 2 weeks.
Another one I had was to assign certain topics of work to certain days. So on Tuesdays I may work on my casino sites, Wednesday on another niche, Thursday on an entire other niche and then leave Mondays & Fridays open to do whatever. That one I was really excited about – and I don’t think I even lasted a week.
However there are some things that do catch on – but just require a little fine tuning. I came up with a “Daily To Do List” concept. There are things I need to do every day (ie: clear my inbox, do sports tips for various sites). Then when I am done those items – the day is open for me to do whatever I want. If I want to sit and play video games all day then great or if I want to work on gambling sites or book sites or whatever – great. As long as I can get that daily to do list done.
Initially I had that written on my whiteboard – and I’d stick to it some days but not all days. Then I added it to my desktop background so I’d see it constantly. Again though – I didn’t always stick to it.
Eventually I had the bright idea to set it in my Google Calendar, and for it to e-mail to me every morning. Then when I get it, I add it to a sticky note I always have on my desktop and remove the items as I do it. That worked WONDERS and now it’s a strict ritual I do in the mornings and it works out so well. I feel so much more productive about my day getting all that done and knowing I’ve accomplished what I need to do. The motivation of checking off items always works well too.
So my latest thing is setting a “quitting time” for my work. I’ve did that before actually – said to myself every day at 5pm is when I stop for the day and that’s me done work till the next day. It didn’t work too good that time but that was mostly due to my workflow at the time. I was pretty swamped.
So every weekday since 2016 began, I quit work at 5pm. I decided to also drink a beer every time. Sort of a nice transition from work mode to non-work mode. And while I’m only 11 days into the year – so far it has worked wonders.
I’ve found I am a lot more productive during the day, and my time management is a lot better now time doesn’t seem infinite. And that beer especially is important – it’s really helped the transition and I find I’m a lot more relaxed etc at night now. I go the full hog – as soon as 5pm hits I’m turning off my computer and not even touching it until the next day.
Now of course the question I’m getting is “how long will it last”. And it’s understandable because it’s something I do often in terms of my work, and it’s very possible that after a week or so it will get old and I’ll stop doing it.
But whether it succeeds or fails – I really don’t think it matters. To me, it’s all about evolving my life and trying new things. Some work and some don’t – but it’s essentially split testing my workflow.
Really there’s no such thing as failure – there’s just learning experiences, that you can apply to better yourself and your websites.
Stubhub:
The internet fascinates me. They get so angry about EVERYTHING. When I hear about a web hosting provider going down, or authorize.net having an outage – I literally sit on Twitter refreshing the tweets and laughing about just how absolutely furious people get.
A recent one was Stubhub. Here’s the full story. But in short:
– Person bought tickets to Lakers vs Jazz on April 13th, 2016 thinking it’d be Kobes last game.
– Tickets cost $906.77 for 4.
– Kobe announced his retirement, effectively confirming that would be his last game.
– Tickets he paid $900 for now went for $6000.
– Person got e-mail letting him know his order had been canceled.
He was rightly mad. It’s a tricky situation for Stubhub because the person selling the tickets should get the blame as he had entered into a contract to sell the tickets. Unfortunately, Stubhubs policies allow the seller to do this – and as they are reliant 100% on their sellers, the sellers of tickets have all the power.
Stubhub initially were going to refund his money, and then after conversations with them give the dude some credits. However he was rightly pissed off and used the power of social media.
So this was a big story. And Stubhub eventually posted a tweet which said:
We shot an air ball on this one. Rest assured we’ll take care of Jesse & get him to the game.
Shouldn’t that have been the ultimate end result? Stubhub screwed up, they admit it, and they’re going to take care of the dude. Alls well that ends well.
Except it’s not. That tweet was met with TONS of rage. Just a few examples:
“oops we got caught, now we’re forced to fix it”
“Just the fact that this happened at all is pathetic. I will never use StubHub for tix to anything ever again.”
“Don’t act like this one an accident. This was a strategy. You got blown up online, so now you’re backtracking.”
“”we’re sorry someone actually pointed out out massive fuck up that we hoped no one would notice”
“Too fucking bad it took a public shaming to get you guys to do the right thing. Never purchasing from stubhub again”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’re sorry we got caught'”.
I mean I can’t be the only one that finds this stuff amazing, right? It’s like no-one has ever made a mistake in the past. Yeah Stubhubs business model will allow this sort of thing to happen – as will pretty much all Stubhub competitor websites – but in this particular instance, there was a problem and it’s now been solved.
It’s just amazing the rage people can have over well – anything.
The good thing is everyone is fickle. There are probably a lot of online companies freaking out over a similar issue that could come up – but in reality, no-one cares. Stubhub will continue to do a hell of a lot of business, and people will move on to complain about something else.
I don’t have any real concluding point here – but it’s just something I enjoy watching.
Next time you hear of a web host having some downtime or something – go search the tweets on Twitter. Or look at any brands Facebook page. (Starbucks is always a fun one for some ridiculous rage) It’s just amazing seeing the things people complain about.
And with that – some of us have quitting times! With 6 hours left in the work day I’m off to be productive. Have a good Monday!
This article was written on January 11, 2016 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
