Wow, its been a crazy last couple of weeks.  As of today (Tuesday Sept 7) I am officially back in school… for those who don’t know I am in college taking Business Marketing.  At the start of September I moved into my own apartment (See Pics at the bottom of the post) and have been extremely busy with the move, plus doing some fun stuff to end of the summer.  Last Thursday I went to Commerica Park in Detroit to go see the Eminem/Jay Z concert, which was absolute INSANE – definitely the best thing I’ve seen live.  Me and some friends took a limo bus from London to Detroit and back and it was just an all around awesome time and awesome concert.  With football season starting up things have been pretty crazy for me and I haven’t had an easy time balancing work and other stuff.  Below is a recap of August and my goals for the month of September!

AUGUST AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Find some full time writers for my main site at a reasonable wage – I have found a handful of NFL writers that are mostly all new to writing but have been doing a good job so far, and they are working for a reasonable wage for me to be able to afford them.  They actually have been doing a much better job than some other writers I have hired for nearly twice the $$.

Add 15 static pages to The Sports Geek – Didn’t happen although I did add a few pages.  I got a fair number of news posts up though so I am not too angry at myself for not doing this.

Get one of my newer sites ranking top 3 for my main keyword – Still sitting around #5 and with Google acting the way it is lately I am just glad to still be up there.  I think I can give it another 3 months before worrying about it not moving up any higher.

Launch my new idea for a workout related site as a side project – Haven’t gotten around to this and I’m thinking about pushing it back another month or two until I get everything settled with the NFL season.

5k affiliate revenue – I managed to get a little higher than this number which I was satisfied with!

Keep expenses under 2k – My expenses were around the 2.5k mark.  I really need to look at cutting this down some even though this was my best month in a while.

SEPTEMBER 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Hire a couple of NCAA football writers for a reasonable wage
• Add 5 static pages to The Sports Geek
• Add a few pages of content to a newer sports betting site of mine
• Stay organized with my NFL writers and cut down to my most quality writers while covering as many games as I can
• Get fully prepared for NBA and NHL season
• 8k affiliate revenue
• Keep expenses under 3k

For personal goals, I want to make sure I have some fun in September as all of the college and university kids are back in town and it is usually a pretty fun month.  With the extra partying I need to make sure I eat pretty clean and continue to workout about 5 times a week.  I want to get the last few things I need for my apartment and be fully settled in mid month.  I also want to get another post up on this blog mid month as I haven’t been posting as much lately.  Check out some cellphone pics of my new 1 bedroom apartment below and have an awesome month!

I didn’t get too much work done in the last week of May, as I was having some fun, but overall I had a solid May and it was a good start to the summer.  I decided to try and get my partying and some stuff done near the end of May and start of June, as June will be a really busy month for me with the World Cup starting up.  Below is a recap of my May goals and my goals I have set for June… it is going to be tough as June is usually the first really solid month of good weather, but I need to grind it out.

MAY AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Transfer The Sports Geek + Add Content – This went really smoothly, although it did take quite a while for me to switch it over.  I really like the new template and I think it will help create more of a brand and repeat visitors.  Conversions for my newsletter are already way up which will be good in the long run.  I am going to test with a lightbox e-mail capture soon too.

Organize My Business More + Plan Summer – I did a pretty good job at this in May – things are a little more organized and I have hired a few writers for the World Cup, since I basically know nothing about soccer.  I have a basic plan in place for the summer that I will try to stick to as well.

Video Poker and Slots Sites Going – Yup got these both going with a couple pages of content and a few links pointing to them for now.  I will link to them in a future post, but they are nothing special at all, although I do like the Video Poker domain a lot.

5k in Affiliate Revenue – I actually surpassed this by quite a bit this month, which was surprising after the site sale.  I still have poker players playing under my MGR accounts which adds up and also received a few poker CPAs from past players.

JUNE 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Work hard at the World Cup.  Get one article per each match played in the round robin up on the sports geek. Optimize my Bet World Cup 2010 site
• Be smart with investing in some advertising + content
• Get one of my semi-premium sports betting domains up and aging with some solid content
• 10k affiliate revenue (expenses will probably be around 5k)

As far as personal goals go I want to try and fit in some fun during the World Cup – if it means for a little loss revenue oh well, its my summer.  Need to keep hitting the gym 4-5 times per week to stay in shape.  Make it out to a Blue Jays game or two.

Sorry nothing too exciting in this post, I will try and get a good post up sometime within the next two weeks, check back.

I am a little drowsy writing this, as I just had surgery yesterday getting my 4 wisdom pulled and am on a couple meds but bare with me.  The surgery actually went pretty good and I wasn’t in as much pain as some people had told me they had experienced.  Yesterday I did basically nothing but sit on the couch watching TV and movies with my laptop.  Today I did pretty much the same, except I got outside for a few minutes to read a magazine – I should be back to working a little bit tomorrow.

I am all done school now and it feels unreal! I have 4 full months to work, relax, party, vacay, or whatever I want really.  In my last post I said I had some pretty significant news to share with any friends or other affiliates who read my blog.  If you’ve been following my progress you know that I started off with poker, which has been my main source of income in my close to three years in the business.  The other week I completed a sale selling off all of my poker websites, so I am just left with a few casino sites and my sports betting sites.

I did this for a few reasons.  The main reason being I am not too big of a poker player, and don’t enjoy writing about it as much as sports and casino stuff.  Another reason is that poker affiliate programs seem to be screwing over affiliates lately and it was really annoying.  The last reason was I just simply had too much on my plate and wanted to cut down on the amount of sites i owned.

Anyways onto my April goals recap and goals for May…

APRIL AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Kentucky Derby $$ – This just passed on Saturday, which was technically May 1st, but I included it as April goals because all of the work was done in April pretty much.  I got my two domains ranking decent and got some pretty good traffic on the sites.  Me and Niko made some money off our site, which was my first site I’ve ever partnered on (besides a smaller one with a buddy of mine) and I have to say I’ll probably be looking to partner up on future sites with other affiliates, I really liked how it turned out.  Overall I met and probably exceeded my expectations of this years Derby, and I plan to working on things further in advance next year.

30 pages of content up – I ended up purchases a lot of content in April and got around to some articles myself, so I definitely got this goal done.

Launch UFC, MLB and Nascar Sites – I got all of these sites launched at least temporarily so they can be indexed and start aging.  For some reason my new MLB site I got up maybe 3 weeks ago still hasn’t been indexed, I hope its not penalized from the previous owner of the domain.

Earn 10k Affiliate Revenue – Didn’t hit it this month, but I was over 5k which will always keep me happy.

Cut back on expenses – Errr I did this a little bit compared to the month before, but still spent quite a bit. I spent smarter though, which was my main goal.

MAY 2010 AFFILIATES GOALS:

• Transfer The Sports Geek to the new template, which means I have about 20 pages of content to write for it as well
• Organize my business more as I will be outsourcing more so I need to do some planning
• I am going to try and plan my whole summer as far as work goes, of course things will change but I want a plan
• Get my slots and video poker sites up and going
• 5k in affiliate revenue – yeah half of my goal last month as I cut out a good chunk of my revenue with my poker sites

As far as personal goals go I am still wanting to make it to the gym 4 or 5 times a week.  I am also playing hockey 4 times a week (2 ice hockey and 2 ball hockey).  I want to get out for a few rounds of golf.  I also want to make a trip to Detroit to watch both a Red Wings playoff game (assuming they don’t get knocked out early here by the Sharks) and a Tigers game (maybe May14th vs the Yankees).

Have a great month everyone!

After a pretty productive March I am looking to get a bunch done in April to set me up for my 4 month summer off of school.  I have school until April 28th and then I’m pretty much free all summer, which is going to feel great.  Here is a little recap of March and my goals for April.

MARCH AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Focus a lot of time on my March Madness site and try to make it earn some $$$ – Well my site got sandboxed or something (dropped in the rankings) for the majority of the tournament (it actually just came back a few days ago which was nice to see – should get some nice traffic next year if I keep it up there).  I didn’t make too much money off the site even though I got lots of referred traffic.

Get my MLB and UFC sites going – Well I got my MLB site up and going pretty good.  Really excited about the MLB season, hopefully it gets some good traffic.  The UFC site actually got indexed when I didn’t want it to, now I need to get some content up on it in April.

Invest $2000 into my sites – I invested far more because I sold one of my sites and had lots of funds I wanted to put back into my business.  Hopefully the investing I did in March will show in the next months.

Work on my Poker Bonus site – I didn’t really get around to this, I really should though.  I wish I was better at writing about poker, but I don’t play much anymore.

Earn $10k affiliate revenue – Did it again for the second straight month which I am really happy about, but my net revenue wasn’t very close to 10k yet again because of the amount I spent in March.

APRIL 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Kentucky Derby $$ – One of the biggest sports betting events in the states is the Derby.  This years Kentucky Derby is at the start of May and I am going to see how I can do with it.  Me and Niko partnered up on my Bet on Kentucky Derby domain to try and get that ranking, plus I have a Kentucky Derby Picks site going that I want to try and get ranking too.
• Write 30 pages of quality content spread over my network of sites
• Launch my UFC, Nascar and other MLB site
• Earn 10k affiliate revenue
• Cut back on expenses

As far as personal goals go I want to finish off school on a good note and continue to make sure I get to the gym 4 times a week.  Also want to start playing some basketball outside instead of doing cardio in the gym, we are getting some great weather for April right now.  Oh and I also want to make a trip out to Montreal for UFC May 8th so I gotta start planning for that.

Have a great April!

A couple days late here on my monthly affiliate goals post, but I was on a bit of vacation during my “spring break” week up until Tuesday, and then got sick when I got home.. probably from all of the alcohol and shitty food I ate all weekend.  I will start with a recap of my February goals and then post up my March goals below.

FEBRUARY AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Publish a bunch of Super Bowl articles on The Sports Geek and work on Super Bowl site – I ended up getting like 20 articles posted on The Geek for the Super Bowl which gave my record traffic numbers (like 4x any other day).  I went over what I did with my Super Bowl site in another post here in February.  This goal was completed for sure.

3 Sites to launch (sports betting related) – The one site I had planned to launch and wanted to become a money maker hasn’t been launched yet, but I did manage to get a few sites launched (some not sports betting related).  I don’t mind delaying the launch of the other site because it isn’t really time sensitive like a lot of sports sites.

Create better bonus codes – I got this done at a couple rooms, but still should get it done for every room.  I created some nicer bonus code type images in February which may help conversions a little bit (learning new things on photoshop everyday).

Replace PokerStars with a room that will actually make me money – I got this done on my main site, and it feels good.  Slowly over time I will be taking them down from all my other sites as well.

Invest $1000 into my casino site – Done, and a little more.

Earn $10k affiliate revenue – Woooo got er done by a hair, first time ever so it felt good (was really really close a couple months ago).  I had a shit load of expenses though, but that should pay off in the future.

Other stuff I did in February – I sold a couple sites, put up a couple mini sites, spent a lot on making my sites look nicer, started a fun March Madness Predictions project which I hope can make some money, bought domains (I think I became an addict now), ordered a couple templates for new sites to be launched.

MARCH 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Focus a lot of time on my March Madness site and try to make it earn some $$$
• Get my MLB and UFC sites going
• Invest $2000 into my sites
• Work on my Poker Bonus site some more
• Earn $10k affiliate revenue

My personal goals include getting back into the gym after a week off, make sure I keep up in school except for days when the March Madness is on , figure out if I can make it down to Panama City beach Florida where my mom and her husband have a condo rented out at the end of the month

Hope everyone had a good February, and lets get er done in March!