An Affiliate's New Year Resolution
As 2009 heralds itself into our life, I think I have to share what my new year’s resolution particularly as an affiliate. There are a number of things that I would like to see improve in my affiliate campaigns – number 1 of which is increase in revenue$$$. So here it goes!
1. Put up that niche-targeted websites that I have been planning last year. It is easy to be distracted by a lot of opportunities which is unrelated to my current affiliate campaigns. As a result I have been missing out on some things that matter most in my current affiliate business – like the niche-focused marketing campaigns.
2. Develop some routines and habits in life that will help achieve my goals. As I mentioned above, it is easy to be distracted. The difference between the guy with lots of energy and a great physique and me can be boiled down to one word: habits. The guy who’s in shape has habits of exercising and eating right. I have habits of lying on the couch, gaming and eating wrong.
Imagine if I would train myself to change these bad habits and convert the time to more efficient use. If, instead of spending my early evening lying on the couch, I would devout that time to writing 3 pages of content every day, then I would have a 1000 page website at the end of the year. If I have a habit of posting on five different forums and setting up corresponding signature links every day, then I’ll have 1,825 new links to this year.
3. Expand experimenting activities for various online marketing strategies. Sometimes doing things wrong can teach you how to do other things right. I launched a page about a particular casino this year, and I decided to handicap myself by not using the casino name in the title tag or the URL, and then see how well that page would rank for the casino’s name. Just engaging in that one tiny experiment, I got a better idea of how important title tags and URL’s are. I also learned some serious on-page optimizations skills from getting the page to rank.I made it to the top 30, in case you’re interested, which felt pretty good. I’m convinced I could have made it higher before I concluded the experiment.
4. Read more books and magazines. If the only reading you do is on the Internet, then you’re really limiting yourself. The more you read, the better off you’ll be. You’ll think better, have more ideas, and be able to make better decisions. Every time you read a book, it’s like building an extra room onto the house that is your mind.
5. Participate in an online community that is NOT related to your livelihood. Lots of readers here participate in poker affiliate forums or other webmaster forums. But participating in an online community that’s not related to how you make your living will teach you more about how to participate on the web without being an obnoxious self-promoter. And there are lots of communities besides just the obvious message board type communities. There are volunteer-edited directories and encyclopedias, social networking sites, and email discussion lists you can participate in. They’re not just places to drop links, and the sooner you understand that, the better you’ll become at marketing your website online.
6. Start thinking about retirement money. My focus had been on getting revenues on the way to getting rich but I have not taken a good consideration of coming up for an exit strategy for how much money I would need retirement. I have a simple formula for this. In order to retire at any age, multiply your desired annual retirement income by 25. Put half your money in stocks and half in bonds, then live on the interest.
If you want to have a post-retirement income of $100,000 a year, you need $2.5 million to retire. You should never have to touch your principal, so you can even leave a legacy for your children, if you’re into that sort of thing.
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13 January 2009
02 January 2009
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