Setting My Goals For Making Money Online In 2012

I know that a lot of internet marketers have already got their goals for 2012 all mapped out already. December seems to have crept up on me this year and I have to confess that I have only just got to thinking about setting goals for making money online in 2012.

What about you? Have you set yours yet? It’s not too late.

I’m sure you have heard the expression attributed to Benjamin Franklin:

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”

It’s so true. Another way of looking at is if you don’t know where you are going how are you going to get there?

When I first started online I had no clear picture of where I was going. I just sort of bumbled along trying this and trying that not really getting anywhere fast.

Take action and focus

It was only when I made the decision that I was going to create a product for my first method of  making money online and decided what it was going to be that I really knuckled down and took action and focused on that. Taking action and focusing are two steps that many would be marketers fail at.

More tips in my post here about setting goals, focusing and taking action:

Time to reflect if you want to make money on the web in 2011

These are the 5 questions I am asking myself now:

1. What have I achieved this year?
2. What progress have I made?
3. Where can I improve?
4. What do I want to achieve next year?
5. What have I got to do to get there?

Looking back

Firstly I am going to look back at my internet marketing business over the past year.  I am going to look closely at what is working in my business and what is not. What should I scale up and what should I abandon?

One thing I do know is that the traffic to my Detox blog has dropped off massively. I don’t know if it’s because of the recent Google algorithm changes or if it’s just seasonal.

January is the month when everyone starts thinking about detox not December but the traffic has been dropping since October and that was when Google made some algorithm changes.

When I look back at my Google analytics for last year I can see that the figures dropped then as well. But, what worries me is the fact that my traffic had increased substantially around the middle of this year so, relatively speaking, it should not have dropped to the same level as last year.

I post fresh and original content regularly and do quite a bit of blog commenting to get some backlinks and I have distributed press releases but I have not been doing any article marketing for some time.

I am looking seriously into developing a better backlinking strategy.  I have already booked a backlinking package that I found on the Warrior Forum as a Special Offer to start this off.  Plus,  I snapped up a couple of eBooks written by some of the backlinking/SEO experts  that were on offer.

I am pleased that the traffic to this blog is increasing but I know I still have a long way to go to get anything like the traffic that my Detox blog gets but this one is in a very competitive and overcrowded niche.

I am going to map out a plan of action for generating more traffic.  ( Watch out for another blog post on this sometime soon!)

I think it’s good to make a list of things you have achieved over the past 12 months first and and give yourself a pat on the back for the goals you have achieved before you start on next years goals.

Looking forward

One thing I am asking myself is where can I improve?  Here are some of my thoughts in no particular order.

Get out of my comfort Zone

One area I know I can improve on is getting out of my comfort zone. I want to start to use video more. This is a big area that I have largely ignored. I made a couple of Animoto and Stinger videos but I have never make a video of myself.

Part of it is to do with the learning curve that goes with it. Easy when you know how they say. The other part is the fear of getting tongue tied. I know it’s just breaking through that barrier and a matter of practice.

Create a product

One thing that I intend to do next year is to create a product in the internet marketing niche that is truly my own. The UK Gurus Seminar DVD’s that I launched this year and the  Online Marketing Guru Secrets Videos were  licensed products  and not of my own making.

I have in fact started taking a few preliminary steps towards making the product. You will hear more about it in the next weeks and months if it all goes well and according to plan.

Outsourcing

There are so many things I know I want to do but not enough time to do them all myself. I think I should outsource more. I have outsourced jobs to people on Odesk.com and Fiver.com but I would love to have a virtual assistant but I am not sure yet how cost effective it would be. That is something else that I plan to look into seriously.

I have heard many an internet marketer say that they only started to make real money online when they started to outsource a lot of the daily chores like writing articles and getting backlinks.

Social Media

Another area I have not done much in is social media. I created a Google + account but have not started to use it. I do have a Facebook account for business but I am not that active there. I do have a fan page for the detox niche but I have not taken steps to promote it very well.

I joined the Social Networking Academy when it first launched and Jo Barnes has done a sterling job in producing no end of  “how to videos” for every conceivable area of social media you could possibly need and then some.

So, I have no excuse really. Just lack of time to go and study it in more depth.

So that’s another area that I have to map out an action plan for. I will review each goal and find the actions it will take to do that goal.

Reduce my emails!

One thing that is top of my list is to clear the clutter from my email box. I do this periodically but somehow I have signed up to so many lists again that my email box is flooded everyday with stuff I don’t have time to read.

It’s a good idea to sign up to a few lists of internet marketers that you like and who send you really useful information. You can also learn from them by studying how they write emails that convert.

I like to keep a swipe file of subject lines that made me open the email and also of any email copy that made me click through. You can learn a lot from these guys ( I include the gals too, of course).

Well, that’s enough of my goals for making money online in 2012. What about you? Have you made yours yet? Why not share them with my readers by leaving a comment.