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I posted my 2011 Goals article earlier today, but also wanted to get my January plans in order.  Although I didn’t meet my income goals for December (not even close) I still look at it as a successful month.  I worked hard and had more sign ups than normal (my bettors just seemed to have a good month).  Below I have my December recap and January goals.

December Affiliate Goals Recap:

Post all NFL games + college bowl games – Did a good job at this, but had some problems with writers being unreliable.  It’s tough running a team of writers, as I always seem to have one or two writers that make up an excuse for not being able to do their articles last minute (although I know some excuses are legit).

Increase rankings on supplement site + sports picks site – These two sites didn’t budge much in December.  I didn’t really put in a solid effort into this though, but I think they still need a bit of time before they will be able to move up much.

Increase mailing lists + keep connected with the lists – Had a great increase in my mailing lists sizes (beat my goals for both of my main lists) and did a good job keeping up with emails.  Also added some auto responder messages that I hope increase sign ups at sportsbooks.

Try to get on a 9am wake up schedule – For most of the month I consistently woke up at 10am, which was a start.  My girlfriend sleeps over quite a bit and has a random work schedule, so that sometimes affects when I go to bed and wake up.  Overall I didn’t sleep in a lot and got work done in the morning so I am happy.

Add 10 static pages to SportsGeek – Don’t think I did this, but I added a few.

Start new workout blog – I got the site going, and added a few pages.

Have another affiliate mastermind session – We didn’t have one this month… just too busy.  I am going to try to organize one maybe the second week of January (hit me up if you’re interested in joining).

11k affiliate income – Was about half of this :S … but like I said earlier my sign ups were awesome, just had winning players.

Expenses under 2k – Kept expenses just under 2k.

JANUARY AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Post NFL playoff articles, plus other news articles focusing on the playoffs
• 10 blog posts on my workout site
• 5 static pages added to the sports geek
• Mess around with newly bought Camtasia and become good at it
• Wake up at 10am consistently
• Monetize this affiliate blog
• Keep up with NHL picks and add a page of content to the site
• Brainstorm and create a business plan for the “health and fitness” niche
• Add a couple of pages of content to my London Ontario Car Dealerships site
• Have an affiliate mastermind chat
• 10k affiliate revenue
• Expenses Under 2k

Have a great month!

Well now that my hangover from New Years is finally cured I think it is time to write a “2011 Goals” post.  Like I mentioned in my 2010 Affiliate Recap post, it seemed like I forgot to do overall goals for 2010 and had to just go off the top of my head.  This year I am changing that and I am printing out my 2011 affiliate goals and posting them on my wall for a reminder of what I want to accomplish.

2011 is probably going to be a life changing year for me.  At the end of the year I will have been an affiliate for 4 years and will know what direction I will be going with my business and life… below are my 2011 goals:

No New Sites – In 2011 I don’t want to create any new sites.  For two reasons: I want to focus on my sites I am already running and if I want to start a new project I have some seriously awesome domains that I have started but haven’t really done anything with yet.  For me it’s so much easier focusing on just a couple sites and turning them into brandable, authority type sites.  I think trust will become even more important in 2011 and it’s easier gaining trust from returning visitors.  Instead of 5-10 page mini sites that I used to create, I am focusing on building my sites bigger.

Become Authority With NHL and MLB Sites – I have two sports betting sites that get good traffic and I want to turn those into authority sites.  I am trying to make them quality resources that get lots of repeat visitors.  I have already been doing this with my NHL site and am starting to make a little bit more money with the site now.  I am going to get a new MLB template designed and do daily blog posts during the MLB months with Free MLB Picks (that will give me something to do in the summer too).  My goal for these sites is 10 RMPs per month each.

Establish Workout Blog – I recently put up a Workout Tips guide that will pretty much be a personal workout blog that I am going to try and monetize in different ways.  I really like the domain name for the site as it mixes in keywords with a brandable sound to it.  My plan is to build up traffic and then down the road maybe sell my own workout product (workout program or something).  Health and Fitness is a niche that will always be around, and I want to be a part of it.  I have a personal interest in it and would enjoy writing content if I knew I could make money from it.

Monetize Affiliate Blog – I am one of the few poker affiliates who actually blogs at least once a month consistently, and feel I should be trying to make a little bit of money with the blog.  My main reason for blogging here is to keep myself on track and help out others (because I have gotten tons of free help), but if I can do that at the same time as making a couple $$ I might as well.

$200k Net Revenue – This year I want to net $200k with my business.  It’s going to take a lot of work, but I am ready to put in the effort.  I have been slacking too much over the last two years and feel I should have made this amount in 2010.  I am 100% focused heading into 2011 and would be pretty disappointed if I didn’t reach this goal.

Personal Goals – As far as personal goals go it is pretty much same old.. I want to keep working out 5 times per week and eating healthy (will go hand in hand with my workout tips blog anyways), keep donating to a charity of choice once per month, travel and just have some fun!

Good Luck to you in 2011, I hope it’s a good one!

With 2010 coming to an end I have decided to make a blog post recapping the 2010 year for me as an affiliate.  I could have sworn I made either a blog post or a post at PAL with my 2010 goals, but I can’t find it anywhere.

Oh well, I pretty much have an idea of what my goals were and I am going to post a general recap of the year below.

Income

I definitely hit my goals income wise in 2010, but that was mainly due to selling off my poker network in April.

I can’t really say if I would have hit my income goals without the sale of my poker sites, because I went from like 90% poker affiliate to 90% sports betting affiliate over the course of the year and I invested a lot of what I got from my network sale back into my sites – but I think I would have hit my goal either way.

The last couple months of 2010 have been bad revenue wise due mainly to sports bettors winning, but at least I have a lot of active accounts under me.

Overall I was happy with my numbers income wise in 2010.

Work Ethic

I think I could have worked a lot harder in 2010, and I seem to always say that.  I do work pretty hard, but not hard enough yet to be where I want to be quick enough.

I am sure I work just as hard as a lot of affiliate marketers out there, but I want to be out working other affiliates.

My main let down was the summer.  I did shit all pretty much all summer.  Because I sold my sites I didn’t feel stressed for money and I think I felt like spending that money on SEO and content was “work”.  With MLB being basically the only sport going during the summer that was another cause for me being lazy.. instead of getting prepared early for the other sports I pretty much sat around and didn’t do much to get ahead of the game.

Overall not too happy with my 2010 work ethic.

Direction

I am think I set myself up nicely in 2010 for my future in the affiliate business.  After my poker affiliate network sale instead of blowing the cash on  random things  I actually invested quite a bit of it back into my affiliate business.  Some of the investments haven’t really worked out, but a lot of the investments are already proving to be worth it and should help my income get back to where I want it in these early months of 2011.

In 2010 I also learned a lot.  I have become a better marketer overall and have a lot of ideas for 2011 that I think will take me to the next level as an affiliate.  Only time will tell but I think some ideas I have for 2011 will be pretty successful.

Overall I am happy with the direction I am going.

Personal Stuff

I wanted to throw in a bit of a personal recap for 2010 too.  Right now I am pretty happy with where I’m at in life.  I live in a nice apartment and own my car completely after paying it off.  My goal is to buy a house in the near future and I have been setting aside money for that.  I have started to donate a small % of my monthly income to a charity at the end of each month.  I have done a pretty awesome job with getting to the gym quite a bit and eating healthy most of the time.  I am working on improving on a few things, but overall 2010 was a great year.

I am going to make a post early in January with my 2011 affiliate goals… I will make sure I do it this year!  How was your 2010?

Just wanted to get a quick blog post up to say Merry Christmas to all the affiliates that read my blog from time to time!  Hope you have a happy and safe holidays!

My Christmas will consist of going to my mom’s house later today for a big dinner that I am obviously looking forward to.  That is followed by gifts and drinks with the family.  Then on Christmas day I will have breakfast at mom’s and head on over to my Dad’s house (only a 10 minute drive – it’s nice to have split up parents that live in the same city… never really think about that!).  Gifts at my dad’s, usually followed by some board games and drinks and then a nice dinner.  Me and my buddies usually get together Christmas night and get pretty wasted, always resulting in a fun time.

This time of the year is awesome as an affiliate.  You can pretty much take off as much time as you want from work and spend time with family, friends and just relaxing. Enjoy it!

I felt like sharing one quick tip I’ve been doing lately that will surely help you increase your affiliate income.  I have been in a little rut lately, mostly due to my sports bettors winning money the past month and a bit, so I have decided to get back to the basics.  This one tip literally takes about 10-15 minutes per day and should boost your income almost instantly.

The Tip – Update your top trafficked pages throughout your affiliate site network.

For me this has started with my main sports betting tips site.  Day one I log into Google Analytics and check what my top 10 trafficked pages are on the site over the last 90 days (I exclude any news posts that won’t likely receive traffic in the future).  I then open dreamweaver and pull up all 10 of those pages.

Once the pages are up I simply go through each one and spend a few minutes trying to monetize the page more.  This includes more CTA’s, reading over the page to make sure everything sounds good, updating the content, and interlinking with other new pages.

This should take about 10-20 minutes and you are done for the day.  The next day you move on to pages 10-20, and so on, until you have completed the XX or XXX most trafficked pages on your site.  And then if you are like me and have a bunch of sites going you can move onto the next site.

If you are like me you will be amazed of some of the pages you have stale content on, don’t use a single CTA, or don’t interlink with other relevant content on your site.

I figure after completing doing this to just my main site I should increase my income by at least $500 per month… not bad for 20 minutes of work a day.

Are you like me and have lots of pages up on your sites that you didn’t work hard enough when first putting them up thinking you’ll go back and do it once they receive some traffic?

Hope this post helped a few of you boost your income! Oh and Merry Christmas if I don’t get another post up! Quick shout out to Dave or (Doovde on PAL)  who got a new Bingo Reviews website going that should be a hit sooner than later, good work man.