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My New Blueprint to Online Success
October 26, 2006
It occurred to me today that I've been blogging here for over two years now, chronicling my adventures in online publishing. And really, it's about time I revisit my goal, which is to work online full-time.
It hasn't been an easy ride, but it's been a fun one. And mine's definitely not a get-rich-quick success story. It isn't even a "get rich-slow" success story. Yet.
But when I take a good hard look at the numbers, I can see that even though I'm still doing this part-time, and even though I still have to take on offline assignments, I really think I'm past the halfway point now.
What exactly does this mean to me?
Well, the main thing is, I've crossed the point of no return. I can't see myself giving up on all of this at any point in the foreseeable future.
Another thing I've learned is that the longer your sites have been around, the better the potential for making tweaks for maximizing profit. I have a LOT of sites that have passed the one year mark.
It's kind of like planting seeds. And after two years of off-and-on diligent work, some of them have sprouted and are leaning towards the sun.
On the other hand, I seem to be kind of stuck at this "past the halfway point" position. Everything's remained steady but in this case, steady feels rather stagnant. There's so much potential to grow, it seems to me, but it's obviously not going to happen with me doing what I've always done.
So I've decided there are a few things I need to commit to doing, in order to quit straddling this "just past the halfway point" - I've been hovering here for the past couple of months and it really is time to change some things.
1. Sharpening my focus. I can see that I've done my fair share of bumbling around these past two years, latching on to any and every idea that inspired me, and lagging behind on completion on a great many things.
I do know that one way to success is to focus on one thing at a time. But that truly doesn't work for me. I always need to have several projects on the go, or I get burned out, like I did with the 50 37 affiliate sites challenge, when I really applied myself to that one idea of launching a bunch of affiliate sites.
But that doesn't mean I have to be scattered, or jump too impulsively. Sure, intuition plays a role, but so does purpose.
2. Leveraging my existing sites. To put it bluntly, none of my sites are really in the fully completed stage (and I'm not even thinking about the 37 affiliate sites I launched over the summer - they are on the meager side, to say the least).
On the other hand, I'm not too sure a site ever IS fully completed. I mean, you hear of people talking all the time (by that I mean, in the forums) about having sites that they never have to touch, which generate six figures for them each and every month.
I really don't think this is possible. I'm not saying a site that generates gazillions in profit each month isn't possible. Of course I think it is, otherwise I wouldn't be here blogging and dreaming. But I can't see how sites like that can be maintenance-free. There is just so much that needs to be done to make sure you keep up your rankings.
Anyway, I do have a nice portfolio of existing sites and blogs, and I also have a mental list of what I like to call "bright ideas" that, if implemented, I'm pretty sure will add a few dimes to the Adventures coffers.
The main reason this list has remained a mental list is because each idea might add a dollar a day, and until I started playing around with my spreadsheet that charts my online income, I never fully realized the value of adding as little as a dollar a day.
Now I do. Nice feeling, that.
3. Every site will have a vision I'm no longer going to jump into a niche because I think it has profit-making potential. I've tried the "get lots of sites out there" approach, and while it works to an extent, getting me to where I am now, I'm ready to try a more focused, purpose-based way of building my Web business.
So while I'll always welcome my new ideas, the only ones that will be implemented are ones that pass my "vision" test. Before I write even one line of code, I want to know where I intend the site to be in one year, in three years, in five. I want to know exactly how I plan to monetize the site. How I'm going to get traffic. What kind of content it will have. What value it provides visitors. What I want my visitors to actually do when they're on the site.
This visionary approach has always worked for me in my offline business, and I think it's time to apply it online. I'm happy with the idea of leveraging my existing sites to grow my income incrementally while I'm launching new sites for their long-term potential.
4. Make Adwords a strength. It's about time I did more than play around with Adwords. After spending two years relying on search results for traffic, I'm ready to add PPC to my traffic kit for some of my existing sites, and develop additional income streams while I'm focusing on building long-term "sticky" sites.
5. Use my talents fully. My strongest talent is my writing, and I really haven't been using this to the best of my ability. Most of my affiliate sites don't challenge my writing skills - the content is pretty boring on them, actually. But this will change with my new focus on sticky sites.
I'm also very good at generating ideas, but to use this particular talent fully, I've got to start doing more with my ideas.
And finally, I live with a certain enthusiasm and passion for most things that I do. It's time to inject some of that into things, as well.
So there you have it. I've finally sat down and given the "big picture" a good hard look, and this is what I've come up with.
I want to grow way past that halfway point. This is my new blueprint for success.
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Posted by BJ at 12:17 PM in Web Publisher's Life | Permalink
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Comments
Hi, i find your blog very inspiring.
Like you, i work online on many projects and i have more projects idea than i can do.
some projects:
- I worked many month to build a virtual synthesizer to sell online. sold for over 1000$ the first month
- i have a stock quote web site but lost real time data from my provider last month (lost some Adsense income)
- Started my ppc template for Adsense
My goald: 20% increase each month
-Juin 25$
-July 67$
-August 87$
-September 235$
-October will probably reach 170$
(Decrease because i lost real time quote on my stock quote web site but still in my 20% goal)
- Sell my ppc template scripts (doing well)
- May start a blog for my next one year project (may be on-line or not)
2 or 3 new fully developped website.
What i find these last days, it's you have to get a precise goal for the years, the next month, today. You should have goal every day to reach and take action.. everyday.
Good luck with all your project.
Posted by: Gino | Oct 28, 2006 2:27:49 AM
Here's a good AdWords tip for you. This is probably the best thing you can do to sell products as an affiliate with AdWords. I think I saw that one of your sites is about iPod accessories. Even if I'm thinking of someone else, let's use that as an example. So you've got all these iPod accessories, a little blurb about it, and a purchase link. Your goal with AdWords, then, is to get people who want to buy these products to visit your page and use your link. But you have to pay for all these clicks, so you don't want to take any chances by advertising on general terms like "ipod accessories." What you want to do is, catch people later in the buying stage, when they've already done their search for "ipod accessories" and now know exactly what they want to buy. You advertise on, say, "iskin green ipod case," which takes a user directly to your blurb about the green iSkin iPod case. These clicks tend to convert much higher than clicks for more general terms. It does take a bit more work to set up your AdWords account this way, but we're talking about a conversion rate of 1-5% versus 10-20% on average. If you've got a good pre-sell for the product coupled with a compelling AdWords ad, you'll make a killing with this tactic.
Posted by: Ryan Cole | Nov 1, 2006 12:10:22 AM
Setting goals is a great idea, Gino. Like you, I've always found that when I do set a goal, I usually end up achieving that goal. But when I wander around in an unfocused way, I never get anywhere.
Thanks so much for that Adwords tip, Ryan. So the more targeted my keywords, the better - that's a good thing to know.
Posted by: BJ | Nov 2, 2006 1:32:57 PM
