Aim both high and low? What on earth am I talking about?
I'm talking about setting goals for your online marketing efforts.
It has often been said that too many people are scared of making money! It sounds bizarre, but it's true. They have been brought up to believe that if you work hard at school, you will get a good job, and if you work hard in your job, you will earn a good salary. This is so deeply engrained into peoples' minds that if they find a way of making a lot more money with less effort, they don't believe that they deserve it. This creates a feeling of guilt and as a result, they don't put in the required effort and they fail. They go back to their day job, thinking that they have proved that they can't do it and that it's not for them.
I have a different view of all this. I know I can succeed online. My problem is that I do have a day-job, and I have a family. These both put demands on me and I find it difficult to find the time or energy to concentrate on my online businesses.
So that I don't lose faith and interest in what I am doing, I set myself some goals. I have long-term, medium-term and short-term goals. Here are some examples:
Long-term goal: To become financially independent within 3 years.
Medium-term goal: To match the salary I get from my day-job in online earnings within 2 years.
Short-term goal: To earn £10 per day online.
My long-term and medium-term goals sometimes look hard to achieve, but if I aim lower, I'll be depriving myself of my true desires.
My short-term goal is a lot more modest. I could earn £10 (about $15) per day just by selling one item every day, or a higher priced item every 2 days etc. That sounds relatively easy to achieve, so that is what I am working on.
Multiple Goals
You don't have to have just one short-term, one medium-term and one long-term goal. Here are some more of my goals (in no particular order):
Short-term: To buy a better car before the end of the year.
Medium-term: To be driving a new, top-of-the-range Alfa Romeo before the end of next year.
Long-term: To pay off my mortgage.
Medium-term: To cover my mortgage payments entirely by income from Google AdSense. (Don't you just love the idea of Ads by Google paying your mortgage?)
Another View
I live a long way from my place of work, and it costs me about £10 per day in petrol (gasoline) to drive to and from work. So if I can earn £10 per day online, that has paid for my travel expenses. (Ok, if I factor in the tax that must pay on my £10 per day earnings, it's not enough to cover my costs, but in general terms it is a lot easier to think of it as covering it).
Some time ago I sat down and worked out how much I need to earn each day to cover various expenses, such as car insurance, utility bills, local taxes. It's easy. Just take your bills for 1 year, add them up and divide by 365. Then you can think of your online income as covering that bill, or more than one of them.
Reaching a Goal
When checking to see whether a goal has been achieved, you have to be careful. Just because you earned £10 every day for a week, it doesn't mean you've reached the goal. The next week, you might not make any sales. On the other hand, the week after, you might make £30 per day.
Furthermore, sales are NOT going to be that regular. I might sell 3 items on day 1, not sell anything for 5 days, and then sell 4 more items. The point is that you know when you have reached the goal when the amount averages out to your target figure.
Updated Goals
Once you have reached a goal, there's no point in resting on your laurels. Remember you have more ambitious longer-term goals to achieve. You use the short-term goals as way-points or milestones towards achieving those longer-term goals.
So as soon as you are confident that you have reached your short-term goal, aim at a new, higher goal. But don't just change it to "Earn £20 per day online". Now that you have experience and know how to earn that original £10 per day, you should be able to do much better by duplicating what you have done several times over. So make your next goal considerably higher. How about £50 per day? One that I like to use is a factor of 7. Why? Because I like the idea that I can earn the same amount in 1 day that I used to earn in one week.
Setbacks
Everyone gets setbacks in their online marketing efforts, especially beginners. Modify your goals accordingly if you really think they are too ambitious. Go down to £1 per day, but keep the higher goals in the back of your mind.
Basically, what I am saying is that you need to have real goals otherwise you'll end up bumbling along or giving up. Write down your goals and stick them on the wall over your PC screen. Paste photos of things you desire onto the paper. What do you want? An Aston Martin car? Set a goal and stick a picture up to remind you. A vintage 1962 Fender guitar? Set a goal and stick a picture of it up to remind you. That house with the expansive garden you drive past every day? Set a goal and stick a picture of it up to remind you.
Build Up To It
Yes, you want the money and the fancy lifestyle as soon as possible, but in reality, you're not going to achieve most of it this year, next year or the year after. It takes time to become financially independent, and the journey there is actually more important. If you won millions on the lottery, you wouldn't know what to do with it. The majority of big lottery winners end up blowing the lot and after a few years of decadence, they're back where they were before they started. Sometimes they end up worse off; their homes and cars are repossesed, they end up in debt, and all their friends have disappeared.
By building up your income gradually, you ease yourself into the higher lifestyle bit-by-bit. You appreciate the value of your efforts and the value of the money that you've made, and you're less likely to squander it.
By setting goals, I now have a vision of where I might be in 1, 2 or 3 years time, and a route map of how to get there. There may be several diversions along the way, but I'll get there eventually.
If you follow this blog, you'll see if I'm achieving those goals as I report on my progress.
For now, my short-term goals are:
- To release 2 sellable products by the end of 2010. (I'll be releasing my first soon)
- To earn at least £10 ($15) per day.
Now, go away, sit down in a quiet place, take stock of your life, decide what you want and what you need to get it, break it down into manageable chunks and set some goals. You'll be glad you did. It makes planning your online marketing strategies a lot easier.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Put Some Effort Into Your Online Marketing
It's been quite some time since I last posted on here, and I'm going to try to get back into doing so on a more regular basis.
Anyone who has been following this blog since the beginning will know that I started out a few years ago with the intention of making money online. I've tried various things, but never really put a great deal of effort into it, which has had a fairly predictable result - i.e. very little in the way of online income.
This doesn't mean that it's not possible to make a lot of money online, but it does go to show that there is no "magic bullet". No "set-it-and-forget-it" method of making money. The bottom line is, just like any job, if you want to make money online, you have to put some effort into it.
Unfortunately, my day-job and family life have tended to get in the way of my online marketing efforts. I seem to have very little free time nowadays, and when I do, I'm generally so tired, that I really don't want to be working on what is effectively a second job. Consequently, I haven't made any real progress towards my goal of being able to give up the day job.
Ironically, if I was able to give up my day-job, I would have the time and energy to concentrate on my online marketing, but until I'm earning enough from my online activities, I cannot give up the day job. Catch 22. I imagine that there are many other people in the same situation.
Regardless of this, I have now decided to ramp up my efforts as much as possible in order to achieve this. I expect it to be many months, or a year or two before I can get to that point. In the meantime, I hope to be building up a steadily increasing income, and that extra cash will be very welcome.
Update
So, what has happened since my last set of semi-regular posts to this blog? Here's a quick summary. I shall probably post a summary like this every 6 months from now on - or more often if things go really well.
Products
In conjunction with another online marketer, I have developed a software product for which we have seen a few sales. We are currently working on version 2 of the software, which we think will sell much better as it contains a new list-building feature. More on that product in a future post when we release version 2.
Advertising Revenue
I got my first payment from Google AdSense. What a great feeling that was. It had been a long time in the making - I had displayed Google Ads on various sites on and off for about 4.5 years and earned the odd few cents here and there. The majority of the income was earned in the last 6 months after I had started to make some more popular websites.
Now, those sites are earning from AdSense a lot more quickly. At the current rate, they should earn about the same amount of money in under a year, but with a lot more effort on my part, I hope to start receiving payments at least monthly.
Affiliate Marketing
I've been a member of Clickbank for about 5 years, and I have still yet to receive any money from them. This is because I have not met the terms of their CDR (Customer Distribution Requirement). They will not release any money until those terms have been satisfied. Additionally, my account has also fallen foul of their Dormant Account Policy, in which accounts that are not active for extended periods are subject to various charges.
Recently, however, I have started to make a few sales, which keeps my account from becoming dormant while I try to meet the terms of the CDR.
The CDR is frustrating - it requires at least 5 different credit cards and 2 different payment methods. If everyone pays with PayPal rather than credit cards, it's difficult to meet this requirement when sales numbers are relatively low.
If you're in the same position, stick at it - you'll get there eventually.
I have joined various other affiliate programs and promote my links wherever possible, but again, this needs a lot more effort on my part. Some of the programs are for monthly services, so I should receive a monthly income from them. I see that as a key part of setting up an online income - build a nice core of monthly income streams that almost guarantee a minimum monthly income. I would love to get to the point where my mortgage is paid entirely from monthly affiliate income. (Of course, I would prefer to pay off my mortgage entirely, but one step at a time!)
In summary, I can see that had I put in a lot more effort into my online marketing over the last year or two, I would be in a much better financial situation. it's too easy to give up, or put things off because you're too tired.
Having started to see some money coming in, I am more enthusiastic about progressing things further.
Hopefully, my next summary report in 6 months time will show a marked change in my status.
Anyone who has been following this blog since the beginning will know that I started out a few years ago with the intention of making money online. I've tried various things, but never really put a great deal of effort into it, which has had a fairly predictable result - i.e. very little in the way of online income.
This doesn't mean that it's not possible to make a lot of money online, but it does go to show that there is no "magic bullet". No "set-it-and-forget-it" method of making money. The bottom line is, just like any job, if you want to make money online, you have to put some effort into it.
Unfortunately, my day-job and family life have tended to get in the way of my online marketing efforts. I seem to have very little free time nowadays, and when I do, I'm generally so tired, that I really don't want to be working on what is effectively a second job. Consequently, I haven't made any real progress towards my goal of being able to give up the day job.
Ironically, if I was able to give up my day-job, I would have the time and energy to concentrate on my online marketing, but until I'm earning enough from my online activities, I cannot give up the day job. Catch 22. I imagine that there are many other people in the same situation.
Regardless of this, I have now decided to ramp up my efforts as much as possible in order to achieve this. I expect it to be many months, or a year or two before I can get to that point. In the meantime, I hope to be building up a steadily increasing income, and that extra cash will be very welcome.
Update
So, what has happened since my last set of semi-regular posts to this blog? Here's a quick summary. I shall probably post a summary like this every 6 months from now on - or more often if things go really well.
Products
In conjunction with another online marketer, I have developed a software product for which we have seen a few sales. We are currently working on version 2 of the software, which we think will sell much better as it contains a new list-building feature. More on that product in a future post when we release version 2.
Advertising Revenue
I got my first payment from Google AdSense. What a great feeling that was. It had been a long time in the making - I had displayed Google Ads on various sites on and off for about 4.5 years and earned the odd few cents here and there. The majority of the income was earned in the last 6 months after I had started to make some more popular websites.
Now, those sites are earning from AdSense a lot more quickly. At the current rate, they should earn about the same amount of money in under a year, but with a lot more effort on my part, I hope to start receiving payments at least monthly.
Affiliate Marketing
I've been a member of Clickbank for about 5 years, and I have still yet to receive any money from them. This is because I have not met the terms of their CDR (Customer Distribution Requirement). They will not release any money until those terms have been satisfied. Additionally, my account has also fallen foul of their Dormant Account Policy, in which accounts that are not active for extended periods are subject to various charges.
Recently, however, I have started to make a few sales, which keeps my account from becoming dormant while I try to meet the terms of the CDR.
The CDR is frustrating - it requires at least 5 different credit cards and 2 different payment methods. If everyone pays with PayPal rather than credit cards, it's difficult to meet this requirement when sales numbers are relatively low.
If you're in the same position, stick at it - you'll get there eventually.
I have joined various other affiliate programs and promote my links wherever possible, but again, this needs a lot more effort on my part. Some of the programs are for monthly services, so I should receive a monthly income from them. I see that as a key part of setting up an online income - build a nice core of monthly income streams that almost guarantee a minimum monthly income. I would love to get to the point where my mortgage is paid entirely from monthly affiliate income. (Of course, I would prefer to pay off my mortgage entirely, but one step at a time!)
In summary, I can see that had I put in a lot more effort into my online marketing over the last year or two, I would be in a much better financial situation. it's too easy to give up, or put things off because you're too tired.
Having started to see some money coming in, I am more enthusiastic about progressing things further.
Hopefully, my next summary report in 6 months time will show a marked change in my status.
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