Writing my goals for a new year has always been one of the most enjoyable tasks of the year. I think it’s a great way to get yourself focused about what you want to want to achieve and also hugely motivational to read about what other affiliates are looking to do over the course of the next 12 months.
2011 ended on a great note for me – both November and December were record months in terms of revenue, which has really fired me up for continuing the momentum into 2012. I really think this could be a great year not only for my business, but also personally – so without further a do, let’s have a look at what I want to try and achieve:
Business Goals
- Start and manage two more quality sites – The last 12 months has convinced me more than ever that content truly is king. As much as it pains me to say it, Google has rightly penalised a few sites that I had which were just up on the web to try and make money. Therefore, I have spent the last six months really focusing on BestCasinoOnline.com by providing it with fresh and quality content on a regular basis … and I’m really seeing the benefits now.
The slight downside is that I’m now fairly reliant on one site – so if something should happen to that, I’d be in a mess. Therefore, with that in mind, I want to set up a couple more websites to diversify my income. These sites need to be high quality though, and quality sites take a fair bit of time to maintain. So with that in mind, I’ll be limiting myself to two new income sources.
- Increase revenue to five figures a month consistently – As I mentioned, the last couple of months of 2011 have given me a real spur to move my revenue figures on. So my goal come the end of 2012 is to be earning over $10k a month in affiliate revenue on a fairly regular basis.
That’s going to be a big jump from where I am at the moment and this needs to be a realistic goal so I’m going to say that I want to hit the $10k mark a few times before the end of the year and head into 2013 feeling that I can achieve that on a monthly basis.
- Improve my current monthly reporting processes to gain better insight into my traffic – It has always annoyed me that I don’t know enough about my visitors. I’ve got my Analytics package set up just how I want it and it’s recording all sorts of useful information – I just don’t dig it out and put it to use often enough.
So I want 2012 to be the year that I really learn how to analyse my traffic data and put it to good use so that I know more about my traffic and how to increase conversion rates.
- Relaunch my personal blog and regularly update it with useful content
- Become more professional in the way that I run my business
– Well, I can put a nice big tick next to the first part of that goal – how regularly this blog gets updated and how useful its content is will remain to be seen.
– This is a big one for me. I feel that over the last couple of years, I’ve treated my affiliate work as something which has allowed me to mess around with what I like doing – I’ve always enjoyed tinkering around with websites and writing code and being able to earn money from it was a bit of an added bonus.
That does sound slightly like I’ve been lucky to get where I am today. I haven’t been – I’ve put in a lot of time and worked very hard to get my sites up to where they are today. I just feel that I need to remind myself that my sites are my business and that I should behave in such a way.
In short, I need to ensure that all decisions are made with the sole purpose of driving my business forward rather than treating my websites as an enjoyable pastime.
Personal Goals
I’ve only really got two personal goals this year – the first one involves me getting fitter and getting back into the sort of shape I was in a few years ago when I was training for the marathon.
And the other goal involves me being in a position to buy a house at the end of the year. The price of renting in London seems to be going through the roof (no pun intended) and I’m sick of paying into someone else’s pocket when I could be investing in myself.
Anyway, so those are my goals. I’d love to see any thoughts or comments below.