New Year Resolutions – Review Past Year – Week 7

New Year Resolutions

2018 did not quite end the way I wanted and slid rapidly into time for New Year resolutions

Events and the holidays have got in the way of making solid progress on my Internet Profits Certified Program business. I had been hoping to make more progress on journalling my activity BUT have not really found the tools that gel with the way I think. And spending time looking for tools is not really productive time. So I made a video again. I wrote last time that a good bean counter would analyse the tracking link codes. Well I did do that at a summary level for December and will build this into the daily tracking for January.  It is also time to look ahead and think New Year resolutions.

Here is the review video and thoughts for my 2019

The highlights then for December – building a base but not converting

• 632 clicks overall resulting in 110 opt-ins to the email list – one deposit paid on a sale. 17% conversion rate is low because of problems with the autoresponder links on one solo ad
• 3 solo ads completed (one started in November) driving most of the opt-ins
• Steady trickle of 230 leads from LeadsLeap advertising but with low opt-in rates
• Strong interest (111 clicks) from credit mail ads at Traffic Hog advertising on the AntiSelling webinar links (again with low opt-ins)
• Conversions through Internet Profits are poor suggesting a mismatch of the traffic profile to the target profile.

New Year Resolutions – 3 Big Themes

2019 plan is to centre activity on 3 big themes

– Focus – 3 activity areas
– Leverage – stuff that is already built and in place
– Scale Up – do more of what is working.

Focus is on 3 activity areas.

1. I will continue to run my investing activity. However, the massive market selloff has created a huge incentive to get the Internet Marketing stuff to work.
2. I am going to focus Internet Marketing activity on Internet Profits Certified Partner Program
3. The market selloff is pushing me to create a new revenue stream. I am going to add the Launch Pros program in the physical products sphere.
4. Tim Ferris always adds in a health focus – I will continue cycling and bushwalking and photographing Australian native orchids

Leverage is going to be about leveraging the work I have done to date

1. Leverage work done so far on Copywriting and promoting products created by my friend, Pete Godfrey. I will promote his Buyers Frenzy product to my existing copywriting list and to the new Internet Profits list. My target is that by mid 2019 I will have two complete funnels standing side-by-side, one on affiliate marketing and one on copywriting.
2. The 2nd dimension of leverage will be to leverage my existing social media profiles (3,000 on Facebook, 1200 on LinkedIn and 30,000+ on Twitter) as the cornerstone of a free organic outreach program.

Scale Up is all about using paid advertising to drive traffic. I have not decided yet on a strategy as to which platform to choose BUT I am keen to leverage my existing following on Twitter. I will be using paid advertising to drive the Launch Pros physical product business. This could well influence which platform I choose to use for paid ads – not decided yet. What I will do though is target this business at one of my existing niches – e.g., bodybuilding, yoga, coffee, cooking, cycling. The heart of Launch Pros is the ability to bundle products for sale through Amazon – each of these lends itself to bundled products.

Thoughts on New Year Resolutions

I mentioned in the video that I am not really into the New Year resolutions stuff. Hence my step back review has a different theme of identifying what is working (do more of that) and what is not working (change it or stop it). A lot of people write about New Year resolutions. I came across a few blog posts that resonated a little with me. This one from Tim Ferriss talks about forgetting New Year resolutions and conducting a past year review instead. What I really liked was the way he chose to do the review working in a level of detail. I met Tim Ferriss in Melbourne in 2011. I was struck by how methodical he was in getting the most out of every day and every action.

Here are his steps – edited a little bit only

• Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
• Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
• For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
• Once you’ve gone through the past year, and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
  Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work.
• That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2019.

https://tim.blog/2018/12/28/past-year-review/

Keep doing what is working and stop doing what is not. It applies also to people, hang out with people who help get results and get away from the ones that make you feel bad.

Now there is a little detail to doing this that is key (and missing from what I have been doing). Tim works from his calendar – he has written down what he has been doing week by week. I have a diary next to me – it is mostly empty. I do have a detailed journal of my investing actions but not of the other things I have done. Time to fix that and write things down in the diary

Now to Week 8 tasks building on Week 6 tasks

• Conversions: Remodel bridge page to realign with landing page and improve load times
• Solo Ads: Run 2 solo ads though Guaranteed Solo Mails – I can run 8 a month – just keep tweaking the copy and aim one at my landing page and one at a selling page
• Run 1 new solo ad through Traffic For Me – they do get opt-ins
• Make a plan for the Copywriting launch of Buyers Frenzy to the existing copywriting list
• Go through advertising training for one paid ads platform (Twitter ads)
• Set up Amazon Seller Central accounts to be ready to follow Launch pros launch beginning January 7 Glasgow time

Resources

Credit Ads: Guaranteed Solo Mails offers Pro members 8 mailings a month for free with 200 unique viewers guaranteed for each mailing. It also offers range of advertising models which you can buy with cash or credits from viewing mails or ads. It does provide a way to build an advertising budget by reading ads. Use the reading time to learn what copy works to attract you to click a link. Sign up for free

Banner Ads: LeadsLeap works unattended to deliver ads to its members. One can build credits for free ads by reading ads or just pay for a Pro account. It works well for me and delivers a steady trickle of leads unattended. Sign up for free

Grow Twitter Followers: Staged provides a platform for growing Twitter followers, managing engagement with them and sharing content (called stages). Sign up for freeto grow your following and try out the content sharing features

Credits:

Focus and leverage images are by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Tim Ferriss image is edited from his blog https://tim.blog