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!

July was a fairly slow month, but I did get more work done than any other month this summer.  I also even got a couple posts done on the blog here, and will look to continue that in August as it seems to help my motivation as well.  Below is a recap of my July goals and my new goals for August 2010!

JULY AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Get 2 premium sports betting domains up aging and my poker domain up and going – I decided to change plans for my semi premium sports betting domains and even listed them for auction (although I had a couple interested I didn’t have any buyers).  I am already spreading myself too thing right now and developing those would make it worse, although if I got them aging I could probably double the asking price if I wanted to sell, but I don’t want to spend the time on that.  I started a really small Sports Picks Buffet site instead.  And I did get my poker site going and even linked to it from my last blog post.

Post purchased content – For the most part I got this done, although there is a bit of content I am saving for future projects or for blog posts.

Add 15 static pages to the sports geek – I am pretty sure I got this done, half of it being purchased content and half content I wrote myself.

6k Affiliate Revenue – Barely achieved this, but my expenses were way more than I thought they would be.  I ended up with a net revenue in the negative for the first time ever – hopefully the re-investments pay off soon.

AUGUST 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Find some full time writers for my main site at a reasonable wage
• Add 15 static pages to The Sports Geek
• Get one of my newer sites ranking top 3 for my main keyword
• Launch my new idea for a workout related site as a side project
• 5k affiliate revenue (I anticipate this is going to be even slower than July and one of my worst months in a while)
• Keep expenses under 2k

For personal goals, I have a few fun things planned for the weekends in August (only 5 more weekends until I start school).  During the week I want to workout more and harder, and eat healthy again, as I had a brutal month in July for both.  I am getting ready to move into a 1 bedroom apartment September 1st so I need to do some shopping for the new place… living completely by myself for the first time ever should really help with productivity and I’m really excited.  I plan on buying a new big screen TV and already purchased a nice lazyboy couch so I will have to get some pictures up on the blog when I’m all settled in.

Here is to a good month in August, Cheers!

Just as I figured I didn’t get any posts in on the blog for June as I was busy enjoying summer!  I ended up not doing as much work as I would have liked, but was pretty strict with getting my World Cup articles posted up.  Traffic was great on both my World Cup Predictions site and The Sports Geek and I had a lot of repeat visitors which is always nice.

JUNE AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Work Hard at The World Cup – Did a pretty good job at this with getting articles posted and updates on my sites. Revenue was around what I expected with the World Cup and I hope these bettors stick around to bet on a variety of different sports now, as I am mainly on MGR.

Be Smart With Investing – Meh, I spent a lot of money this month and make a couple purchases I regret a little bit, but overall I did a pretty solid job.  I invested in content which is always good and got a couple solid links towards my sites.

Premium Sports Domains Up and Running – I am in the middle of doing that now, but wish I would of got it done in June.  I might even try and find a partner for the project as I’m not sure I could handle it myself.

10k affiliate revenue – Yeah I hit this again, which included a couple paid advertising spots for my World Cup site, and expenses were around where I thought near the 5k mark.

Overall I am satisfied with how June went, but I am probably going to regret not working hard in May and June as it’s just going to get harder in July and August as I get closer to the school year.

JULY 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS

• Get 2 “premo” sports betting domains up and aging, and my other poker domain going with a few pages of content
• Post purchased content
• Add 15 static pages to The Sports Geek
• 6k affiliate revenue (expenses around 3k) – I think it will be the slowest month of the year possibly for me

As far as personal stuff goes I am heading to Calgary on Thursday for another vacation … heading out to visit a buddy who moved out there and going to the Calgary Stampede!!  I also have a ball hockey tournament the following weekend and a few parties on the weekend so it will be a fun month but I need to make sure I get work done during the week.  Also continue to workout 5 times a week.

Have a good month! You might see another post in July from me, but if not the next will be a recap and August goals.

I had a very productive week in my second week of summer (first real week because of my Wisdom Teeth surgery last week).  If I can continue to work like I did this week all summer I think I will be very happy in the winter when the hard work would start to show.

To start things off I never slept past 10:00 am, any my average wakeup time was 9:00 am – I started waking up with no alarm by the end of the week at around 8:30 am.  Getting up early plays a huge role in me getting things done for a few reasons.  When I’m up early the sun isn’t out yet, so I don’t have the need to sit outside in the sun, and don’t mind sitting my basement working.  Also my roomates aren’t up to much in the morning (if they are even awake), so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything fun.  I also go to the gym around 4 with a friend, so if I were to sleep in it would be right in the middle of my working time, but this way I can get everything done before I head for a workout.

Another reason why I had a productive week was the fact that I don’t have as much income coming in since I sold my poker sites recently.  It pisses me off when I can’t check my stats and see that I got a CPA or two for my poker players each night, and I use it as motivation.  Of course I remember how good it felt getting a couple sign ups each day, so I am working to get that feeling back sooner than later.

Besides launching two smaller sites (that I am confident can produce some revenue if I get them ranking), I also got my main sports betting portal TheSportsGeek.com switched over to a completely new template.  Whenever I get a new, better look for a site I get excited and I really want to get it switched over so I work extremely hard.  I spent like 6 hours straight Wednesday night and then woke up early and spent all day getting the new template up.  The work is very boring in switching over a template, and I had a few problems, but now that it’s done I am extremely happy and excited.

I made a post at PAL asking for a review of the site, and most people seemed to really like the layout and design I got done for it (Eduardo did another excellent job for me).  I set up a split test for my Aweber newsletter sign up button, which was the main criticism I received.  I love asking PAL members for reviews of sites, because I always get something pointed out to me that I wouldn’t have really notice myself.  The next step for me is to work on calls to action and continue to put up solid content.  I added a bunch of new pages including the Sports Betting Articles section which I filled with 12 or so new sports betting articles, and I changed around the URL structure completely to something that made a lot more sense.

Anyways, overall a great week and I want to keep that up – of course I want to have a little fun soon as I haven’t done anything exciting lately at all – looks like me and my roommates are holding a Kegger for this upcoming May 2-4 long weekend

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!