Are You Going to Make Next Year Different Than This Year?

November 16, 2009 By Jackie Lee 83 Comments

A couple years ago I was standing in the kitchen with my husband. We were having a heated discussion about money and he finally looked at me and said “I think you’re gong to have to go get a job”. I had a one year old baby at the time, was still breastfeeding and getting a job was NO WHERE on my radar. It was not even in the realm of my possible futures.

I burst out crying.

I was doing everything I knew how to do and it just wasn’t working. I was in front of my computer more hours a day than I would be working if I had a J-O-B and still had nothing much to show for it. It was at that moment I knew I was at a crossroads. I could feel it. I could feel the decisions I made that day were going to paint the picture of my future, and I had better choose well.

I decided there was a piece I was missing ~ there had to be, I WAS working, I WAS doing something online every single day, but it just wasn’t coming together. At about that time I saw an ad on a website I read quite often offering personal one on on coaching. The person offering the coaching was very successful, and I liked his teaching style, very down to business and straight forward. Even though the coaching was VERY expensive I decided to go for it. There had to be a piece I was missing, and if I could just get that piece, then I could break through.

I took this coaching program, it happened to be about making adsense sites, and while I realized adsense sites are not really my cup of tea I did learn about KEYWORD RESEARCH. I made some money (not by any stretch what I expected, but some) and I gained confidence. No, it was more than conifidence. I gained FAITH, that this could really work.

That confidence and faith pushed me to develop my own product based on keyword research and it started to sell pretty well, then I found Andrea and we put together LearnItStepByStep.com to help people walk through all the little pieces of One Week Marketing. It is still an active website over 1 year later ~ which is pretty exciting.

After the content creation and the big launch for Learnit was over things settled down and I began to realize just how important focused daily action is. I started thinking about my success and realized it was when I had a specific goal I was working on that I had my most success. Creating the book, creating the membership site, working on this blog ~ all of those goals helped me move forward and find success.

Now I hadn’t really done that all on purpose and it got me thinking. “What would happen if I did this on purpose??”. It was a pretty exciting thing to think about, and I’ve decided to make it next year’s challenge.

It doesn’t matter what project or internet marketing strategy you’re using, it’s about being clear, concise, and focused. It starts with a big goal ~ a fairly medium to long term goal. Just about everyone has goals, but what I ‘ve realized is those big goals alone just won’t cut it.

When we decided to start the membership site, neither Andrea or I had ever done anything like it. It was a huge goal, and with a pretty short deadline. If we had looked at it closely it might have just overwhelmed us and we might have quit! (if it had been me alone, I’m pretty sure I would have lol). What we did was break up the overall goal into sections. Set up the membership software, set up this, set up that, write this piece, write that piece. We gave each piece a bit of a time frame ~ ok this week I’m going to work on “this”. Then we broke that down even further. What’s it going to take to get this piece done? Find out this, learn that, find someone who can help us do this etc, until that piece was done. Each piece built on the last, and finally ~ actually quite quickly we had it all put together.

I know for some of you building a membership site may seem completely out of reach, and that’s fine, you don’t need a membership site ~ you could choose to focus on building squidoo lenses, or wordpress niche sites, whatever it is, just decide.

Making a decision is huge in this business because there are just so many other things that can distract you. You try this method for a week ~ don’t really give it your all, see something else that claims it will make you money quick and easy, and you jump ship. You try that for a week, don’t give it your all, and then see the next shiny thing come through your email.

It’s a VICIOUS CYCLE and the only person this cycle serves is the person you keep paying money to for every new shiny thing you see. It does not benefit you at all. You are not getting involved deep enough, thoroughly enough in any given thing to give it time to actually work. Yes, this is where that faith I talked about earlier comes in. You have to on some level have faith that whatever internet marketing strategy you’ve chosen IS going to work, if you work it. You have to make that decision, and stick to it no matter what.

Here’s your mission ~ should you accept.

Decide: What is your goal? What do you want to accomplish in the next 6 months? Is it a monetary figure? Is it $100 a month? $1000? $5000 a month? Decide what you want.

Choose: Choose 1 internet marketing strategy you will work non stop, in a focused, diligent, and consistent manner for the next 6 months.

I don’t care what it is ~ but you have to pick something. Whether it’s building squidoo lenses, wordpress niche sites, 1 authority blog, a membership site, article marketing for affiliate products ~ I don’t care, but you have to choose 1.

Plan: Create a plan for yourself, break the strategy down into pieces that you’re going to have to accomplish. Smaller pieces that aren’t quite so overwhelming.

Take Focused Action: Everyday take action. Break your pieces from the plan phase into even smaller parts. Action steps, if you will, and every single day do something.

I personally like to write down what the action steps I’m working on for the day are on my calendar, which sits right in front of my keyboard so I can easily stay on track, focused on the specific steps I have to take today.

So what do you think? Are you game?

You know I’m not one to tell you to do something if I’m not willing to do it myself, so of course I’m playing! Here’s an outline of my plan:

Decide: I decide to increase my income by $5000 a month by my birthday which is April 30th. This will be a consistent and passive income stream.

Plan: I am going to build niche sites based on one niche, with many related and relevant keywords. I will build these sites consistently and in a focused manner, as many as I need over the next 6 months to reach my goal.

Take focused action:

1. keyword research.
2. Identify domain name.
3. Install wordpress on domain name
4. Add necessary plugins
5. Create content
6. build links
7. Rinse and repeat

This is the basic outline ~ and of course they can be this wide because I’ve done this before and those are good sized chunks for me, if you need things lined out even smaller, cool, go ahead and do that.

I will be blogging about the process, and about my journey with this challenge as time goes on, so if this sounds like an internet marketing strategy you might want to work on, I’ll be here to help.

Here are a few resources I recommend depending on the strategy you may choose. If you’ve chosen another strategy that I don’t mention and wonder what’s available on it, let me know and I can tell you if I know of one.

Mini niche wordpress sites: Commission Ritual ~ I just picked this up last week. It offers both ebooks and tons of videos to cement the learning. It is excellent.

Larger niche blogs: Niche blogger. I took this course last year, and it is excellent. Amy Bass does a fantastic job of helping beginners learn how to set up a niche blog and how to get traffic to the blog. She uses a lot of text and video to help you understand how to do things. Very good step by step stuff on working with wordpress.

Squidoo marketing campaigns. One Week Marketing. If you want to stick with something that’s free, but works I totally recommend One Week Marketing by PotPieGirl. This is a great method to dominate a niche with squidoo.

If you already have OWM and you’re having trouble implementing I recommend you check out LearnItStepbyStep.com. It will walk you through each step of the process. I wrote the content, so if you like my teaching style, you’ll like Learnit. Just like here, we are very on top of questions, so if you have them we will answer them.

Short Reports: Small Reports Fortunes Learn how to write 7 to 15 page short reports on any topic. Sell them for a profit. This is one of Jimmy D Brown’s courses, it is quite good, and a very doable internet marketing strategy for just about anyone.

Authority Blogging: Blog Mastermind. If you want to build a big blog on one topic ~ like this one, but on any topic, it certainly doesn’t have to be on internet marketing, I recommend Yaro’s course Blog Mastermind. It is very good, his teaching style is easy to understand. He provides many extras including monthly Q and A calls that are live, and many audio recordings of interviews he’s done and information.

These are just a few of the internet marketing strategies available, but there are many more. Here’s a fun book that will show you 10 different ways you can make 10K a month online. It’s free. If you don’t really have an idea of what you’d like to do online, check it out, it’s pretty enlightening. Remember this is just to help you in the plan phase. Once you’ve chosen a strategy you’ll have to stick with it for the next 6 months ok?

So I showed you mine… now you show me yours! What are you going to do to make next year different than this year? Tell me your plan in the comments section ~ let’s do it together!