Happy New Year And Resolutions For 2007

Happy new year to all my readers!

Thank you for your support throughout 2006 and I look forward to chatting, meeting and working with more of you in 2007.

It’s the traditional time for resolutions and given my new found devotion to intention manifestation I think having concrete goals for the next year has never been more valuable. Remember you don’t necessarily have to know HOW you are going to get there, you just need to know WHERE you want to go and follow the opportunities which are congruent with your goals when they appear to you.

My New Year Resolutions

I have a few resolutions for the new year but I’ll focus on my business and blogging ones here.

• I want to build up to a consistent $25,000 per month in gross revenue online. This is the next incremental goal towards meeting my long term goal of $100,000 per month online. I have managed to reach a steady $10,000 per month without planning exactly how it would happen, so I’m convinced in the potential for the intention to get you there without foreseeing how you will get there.

To reach my first goal I’ll be testing a few different ways to increase revenue to see what sticks, including:

• I’ve got a couple of new marketing ideas in mind for BetterEdit which I will test. BetterEdit has enjoyed 50% annual growth in the last year in both essay editing and thesis editing customers, and I want to keep this momentum going.
• I’d like to double the income from my current blogs by increasing traffic and testing different advertising methods. In order to achieve this I will need to find ways to increase content output and quality without necessarily increasing my writing workload. I intend to keep my own blogging focused here at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com where I will continue to track my journey and teach others how to replicate what I do. The income from this blog alone has steadily increased to a consistent $1000 per month and I want this to be $2000 by year’s end.
• Last year I brought on a team of new writers to Small Business Branding, which I can honestly say was one of the best things I have done in my short blogging career. It alleviated a lot of pressure I was feeling to maintain content production myself on two blogs and created an opportunity for exposure for a small group of business bloggers. Not everyone I invited to contribute initially were able to continue but thanks to Robert Kingston, Jeff Barson, Danielle Rodgers, Nick Rice, Brad Williamson and Kammie Kobyleski SmallBusinessBranding.com has continued to grow. I couldn’t have kept the site alive without you guys and girls, so thank you so much!

  Several of the current authors have enjoyed unique benefits as a result of blogging at Small Business Branding, with of course the main benefit being the exposure and thus opportunity to promote their personal brand (expertise) and their own projects/business. In 2007 Small Business Branding will be opening doors and inviting applications for new authors. Stay tuned if you consider yourself an expert in small business and would like to enhance your profile online by writing for Small Business Branding.

• I haven’t announced this yet here on my blog because I want to do a proper case study later this year when I have more to say, but in 2006 I did my first AdSense income site purchase. I’ve never been a huge AdSense earner however that doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to be. I know enough about AdSense that I feel confident that I could tweak things in order to boost income, I just needed to find a few sites that were already enjoying some success from AdSense. I certainly was not going to be opportunistic and start building sites from scratch myself - I had enough on my plate - I wanted an acquisition and since I had some reasonably stable income I could afford to invest. I also felt the need to diversify my income sources somewhat.

  I watch the SitePoint marketplace regularly and throughout last year I made a few bids for various blogs and forum based sites that met my criteria for a good acquisition. I didn’t win any for several months because I was outbid or someone snuck in before I found the auction - you have to be quick at Sitepoint if you want the good deals. Eventually something popped up that matched my criteria and because it was an Australian only auction I was one of the major parties interested. I had a few chats with the owner and eventually made a deal for $12,000 AUD to purchase three websites which collectively were bringing in $1000 per month, mostly in AdSense income.

  Part of my criteria when looking for sites to buy was to find communities that didn’t require much, if any intervention from me in order to continue to grow and produce income. I couldn’t afford the additional burden of time commitment - I was looking for cash cows, not opportunities. As such forums were my main targets since the content is generated by the users and the community is sticky, so traffic growth remains reasonably stable - all things I learnt when I built my first community forum nearly 8 years ago now - MTGParadise.com.

  Two of the sites I purchased are forum based communities and so far have met my requirements - they continue to grow and produce income without my direct involvement. I’ve watched the two communities grow steadily which has demonstrated to me a real niche waiting to be further tapped. I believe there is a good opportunity to strengthen the sites, create more content sources, driving more traffic and increasing income. Later in this year I will work to achieve these goals, and once again I hope to double the income to $2000 per month by year’s end. Until then I will let the communities grow as they are and just make sure things remain steady.

  I promise to reveal more on this blog about what I have been doing with site acquisitions as I realize more results.

• Finally the big one for me which certainly has taken the majority of my time lately yet currently produces no income (hmm, that’s food for thought…) - Blog Traffic School will finally be released in 2007, however not quite as I originally intended.

  I’ve been writing and editing furiously behind the scenes for the last two months on something completely new which is part of Blog Traffic School - a book. The course will still be coming out, but after the book. I realized that I had to make some adjustments to my launch plans because of a few things I learnt. My main concern was launching with such a high end product (the course) with a price tag too big for an entry level product. I also saw a great need for the information on this specific topic, which I happened to know a lot about and enjoy some success with.

  This should help quench some of your curiosity - here’s a little sneak peak of the book cover and title.

  

  How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines

  The Definitive Guide To
  Search Engine Optimization For Bloggers

  by Yaro Starak

  The book is just over 100 pages, is currently 7 chapters long, about 40,000 words and is full of what I have learnt about SEO in the past 8 years and how it applies specifically to blogging.

  In particular there is one technique I use at the moment on my blogs that is bringing some great results yet most bloggers don’t use it. I explain what it is in chapter five of the book.

  I’ve finished writing the book and am currently doing a run through edit before handing over to Blaine Moore for an external edit and proofread. During that time I’ll be recording some camtasia videos to illustrate and teach some of the concepts in the book. I will also be working with my Butterfly Marketing programmer to get BlogTrafficSchool.com ready to distribute the book.

  Once all that is done I will launch the book, which I hope will be in January, but it’s more likely to be in February since I have a trip to Florida for Rich Schefren’s coaching conference and possibly a trip to Mexico to visit my father, both of which will be holidays. The affiliate program will be available at launch, as well as the free members area of Blog Traffic School, which will also be the new home of the Blog Traffic Tips free email newsletter.

  Speaking of the newsletter - I have been producing a roughly weekly edition for many months now with close to 35 editions in the system. Once I get up to 52 editions - a year’s worth of newsletters - I will reassess the format of the newsletter for the future. As I write this the newsletter is nearing 3,000 subscribers, which is not bad for year’s worth of promotion via only Google AdWords and my blogs. Once the book is released I will begin to heavily promote the free newsletter as the front-end to Blog Traffic School - with the book and course further down the sales funnel.

  I have no idea how successful the book will be but no matter what the outcome I will be happy to have a book with my name on it out there. I expect many bloggers will find my advice helpful, however I’m not certain whether I have perhaps been too technical, so with feedback after release I may go back and release revisions. I’ll do the same for any significant changes in the SEO world as well. All buyers of the book will of course receive lifetime updates.

  I am really in the dark in terms of how large a market there is for blog traffic products, hence I’m treating the Blog Traffic School launch as a test. I know it will make some money for me and help enhance my reputation, but the market may be very small or very large - only time will tell. The results this year with Blog Traffic School will determine my blogging future - both as a blogger and as a trainer through information products. I hope things go well, but you never know until you try.

That sums up what is on my plate for the year 2007. I also hope this year I will be able enter the property market and purchase my first home so I can stop paying rent, although I’m not very keen on having a mortgage since I’ve never been in debt in my life - but at this stage it’s the only way to afford what I want.

Now it’s your turn - what are your new year resolutions for your Internet business and blogging in 2007?

Yaro Starak
Internet Business Blogger