Planning for 2010

Planning for 2010

Feb 26

I know, I know – we’re only two days shy of the end of February and suddenly I’m writing a post about planning – but it’s better to document goals late than never!

I’ve met some other IMers over recent weeks via their blogs and being able to follow the real life activities of other ‘normal marketers’, rather than hyped posts from so-called gurus has made be realise that making money online is possible especially if you treat it as a proper business. So I sat down and thought about what I enjoy doing and how I can work most effectively in the few hours I have each week to dedicate to my ‘information publishing’ business. I like many other people have a full-time job so I grab time in the evenings and then mainly on weekends to really work on my own business.

This year I am going to dedicate my time and effort to the following areas

1. Travel authority site
2. Travel membership site
3. Book Reviews authority site
4. Building and maintaining a number of smaller information sites
5. Creating and selling PLR article packs

1. Travel authority site

This site has been around since January 2008 and started out life as a personal blog. In the first couple of years it grew organically with no thought to keyword research or monetisation. It began to rank well and sees a reasonable amount of traffic.

The income streams I will drive this year will be from Adsense, the sale of an ebook and via commission from my travel partner. I’m going to aim to generate £200 a month from this site over the course of 2010 for a year end goal of £2,400.

2. Travel membership site

This site is newly built this year and is a membership site where content is delivered weekly in a course environment. Essentially it teaches people how to plan a vacation. The course is 17 weeks in length and I’ve written nine-weeks content so far. So for now I’m focusing on getting the content complete which will take another wight weeks. After that I can focus on promotion.

The income stream will come from the weekly course fees and I’m going to aim to generate £50 a month from this site over the course of the year for a year end goal of £600.

3. Book reviews authority site

Again this started out life two years ago as a personal blog. I was simply keeping a record of my thoughts on the books I’d read and suddenly I find that people are reading them!

The income streams on this site will be Adsense and Amazon commission; the other kick back I get is free books that are sent to me by the publishers to feed my book addiction I’d like to think I could generate £30 a month here for a year end goal of £360.

4. Building and maintaining a number of smaller information sites

I’ve been dabbling with IPK and Xfactor information sites to drive Amazon and Adsense income, so far with little success but its early days! I’m also just going through Steve Crooks’ Adsense 101 Bootcamp. I want to come out the other side of that 10 week course with a sturdy information site under my belt and the skills to build more over the year. My aim is to build a number of information sites throughout 2010 to increase my Adsense and Amazon commissions. I’m going to aim for £100 a month from these additional sites for a year end figure of £1200.

5. Creating and selling PLR article packs

I’ve tried to step up my article marketing efforts recently and remembered that I’m a darn good writer, so I’m going to try and earn some income by creating and selling PLR packs. I need to think of  a strategy for this, what kind of packs, how much to sell them for etc but I’d like to think this part of the business could earn £900 in nine months if I aim to start selling in April.

Of course all of these figures are complete guesstimates and the monthly figures are averages which is a bit silly really as I should hope to see my earnings grow over the year but it’s a good way for me to track my progress until I can spend some time working out a more realistic budget.

The figures also don’t sound all that high with a total forecast for the year of just £5460 but I need to remember that I only work eight to ten hours a week and this is year one. If I were working eight hours a day that would equate to £27k a year which isn’t a bad annual salary!

Expenses

As far as costs are concerned I don’t plan on outsourcing anything this year so it will be purely hosting, domain purchases and any training courses/tools I purchase as the year progresses. Each month I’ll make a note of how much I’ve earned versus how much I’ve spent and hope the first exceeds the last!

Have you written your goals for 2010 yet? If you were efficient then I’d love to hear how you’re getting on, and if like me you haven’t got around to it yet why not challenge yourself to write your goals down before March shows her face on Monday?