How To Make Money | The Definitive Don’ts

Starting The New Year Without Looking Back

With 2008 closer than ever, many bloggers are beginning to reflect back on 2007 to place things in perspective. While this certainly seems like a daunting task, the rewards can be endless. So put down that Sharper Image catalog and let’s get to it! The clock is ticking!

Memory Lane Here I Come

To start the new year off with a clean slate, it’s paramount that you look back on the good and bad of 2007. Look at the things that worked for you and brought loads of cash your way, but also at the things which just ate up your time. Don’t shove your failures aside – you’ll find that they’ll come back to haunt you if you do. If you can, get all these things on a list. We’ll be looking at them shortly.

When you’re compiling a list of your successes and failures during 2007, don’t omit something just because it seems to be a “minor detail”. A small omission could mean thousands of dollars in revenue. Be meticulous and jot down every last detail.

Putting The List To Work

Now that you’ve got your fancy list in front of you, it’s time that we take a good look at it. Let’s start with the failures – the not-so-esteemed occurrences in life. Take each of your failures one by one and try to determine why they ended up being failures. Let’s say that you bought an existing site this year and it didn’t monetize well.

I’d ask myself whether I tried to employ different monetization methods on the site or whether I diversified my traffic sources. If I would find that I didn’t do either, I’d jot that down on a piece of paper. Come any future site purchase, I would be sure to do both of these things before deeming the purchase a failure. Go through the list and tackle each failure using the same strategy. You can compile a nice list of things you should do to avoid any future failures.

Once you’re done looking back on your failures, it’s time that we focus on your accomplishments. In the same manner which you looked at your failures, take each accomplishment one by one and ask yourself how you could have made it an even bigger success. As you might have guessed, this calls for an example.

Let’s say that you wrote up a review about a product and subsequently received a massive amount of traffic. With that traffic came a nice number of Adsense clicks. How could such a situation be made even better? My guess is by adding an affiliate link for the product somewhere in that review. Those hundred or so bucks you made from Adsense could have easily been thousands.

What About The “Minor Details”?

I mentioned earlier that you should be very meticulous when looking back even on very minute accomplishments. You’re about to find out why.

Pretend that you setup a small niche site 4 months ago just for the heck of it. You spent zero on advertising and invested about an hour of work into it. Say by the end of this year it has earned you a total of $50 from Adsense and Kontera. Some of you might say who cares, right? Wrong.

Imagine you invested some more time into content development and marketing. You could easily add a few extra zeros to those $50. Here lies the reason why very accomplishments can be extremely valuable. If you have several, you could draw yourself a roadmap of things you could do in 2008.

In Conclusion

To close up this post, I want to once again emphasize how important it is that you look back upon 2007. Taking a trip down memory lane could mean a happier you in the future. Put some time aside today and start reflecting.

Image: Ben Bishop

new year list failures reflection 2008