If you work online as a web developer of an SEO, then one of the challenges you’ll face is remaining motivated and productive even when there’s nothing stopping you from just kicking back and watching TV. Working on projects online as a freelancer or running your own small business puts all of the responsibility squarely on your shoulders and this requires you to remain focussed, productive and efficient at all times.

If you struggle with that then, you need to make changes to your workflow and your set up to try and address the issue and improve your output. Here are some quick life hacks that any internet entrepreneur can employ to start working faster and more efficiently and to start putting out a higher quality of end product.

Hack 1: Use IFTTT

IFTTT is a great web app that can save you hours as a webmaster or social media marketer. That’s because it allows you to set-up relationships between your various online services and social media accounts allowing them to communicate and work together in a smart and automated manner.

You do this using ‘recipes’ – one recipe for instance being used to automatically copy any videos you upload to YouTube into your DropBox. Another recipe is to automatically post your Tweets to Facebook. There are many others too and all of them will help you to run your social media empire much more easily without having to spend ages on each different site posting the same thing multiple times.

Hack 2: Use Buffer

Another great web app for automating your social media efforts is Buffer. This apps essentially allows you to ‘buffer’ your Tweets on Twitter, which in turn means that you can write them all at once in one afternoon and then set the site up to gradually post them throughout the following months. This way you don’t need to worry about posting at all, and if you use IFTTT as well then you can get Buffer to work with all your social media accounts.

Hack 3: Set the Right Homepage

If you’re like most people then you will probably start your day with good intentions, planning to work solidly and get lots done; only to then start surfing Facebook or YouTube and find yourself wasting hours. The problem is that it’s very difficult to actually start work, so a great solution is to set your homepage to your WordPress login, or your work e-mail. That way as soon as you boot up you’ll be greeted with work and it will be much more difficult to put it off and procrastinate instead.

Hack 4: Write One Paragraph

Another way to get over this reluctance to start work is to write just one paragraph to begin with which could be on anything. What you’ll find though, is that once you’ve written that one paragraph, you then actually feel compelled to write the rest of the article. That’s just how the brain works – we don’t like unfinished business. This way you can trick yourself into doing a lot of work when you really can’t face beginning a whole day’s labour.

Hack 5: Set Rewards

Another useful motivator is yourself rewards throughout the day as you tick off various tasks on your to-do list. That doesn’t mean setting yourself really fun rewards either necessarily – it means changing the things you’d normally take for granted into rewards that must be earned. For instance, you can’t check your e-mail until you’ve written two articles, or you can’t make tea until you’ve updated your Index page. Often you’ll again find yourself working longer than you need to once you complete your goals.

Hack 6: Use Notepad++

Notepad++ is a tool that can make writing HTML much more enjoyable for any designer by highlighting code and allowing you to switch quickly between tabs. Best of all though is the ‘find in files’ function that allows you to replace strings across multiple files at once to make site-wide changes a complete doddle.

Author Bio:

Nancy Baker, the author of this article, is a freelance blogger who is currently writing for, Webfirm, a firm that helps its client design mobile website for their companies to make them more accessible. As an avid car enthusiast, she likes to go on long drives during the weekend. You can also follow her on Twitter @Nancy Baker.