November was a quiet but productive month for me. I spent a lot of time adding new pages and coding (including email opt-ins) to two of my main sites as well as going through all the highest traffic pages and improving them.
For example, if I saw 10% of all traffic was going to a certain page then I’d install WP Easy Columns to build nice navigational links and images to deeper posts to encourage page views, similar to how this is presented: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cvs_and_cover_letters.htm
I also had a very successful PR campaign for one of my gambling sites that picked up natural editorial links form more than 15 authority sites (including CasinoMeiaste.com and CIOL.com).
I came close to buying a new PR tool and setting up my own PR agency at Tabloids.co.uk (offering professional PR as well as reduced-price press releases) however I decided the market probably wasn’t big enough yet. I don’t know many people or affiliates who take advantage of PR on a regular basis.
One of the things that really upset me last month was missing out on an auction for Markets.co.uk that sold for £1k with a snipe bid with 15s remaining. I was the highest bidder all day and had tried buying the domain directly from the owner, however after offering me a BIN she then decided to start an auction without telling me and bundled the entire process up. For example, I knew at least 2-3 people who would’ve paid five times what it sold for if they were given warning of the auction.
Other then that, I managed to start a small side-business that isn’t dependent on SEO and I was asked to be on a panel at the financial affiliate conference in London in February, which I accepted.
December Goals
Rather then coming up with a new strategy at the beginning of each month, I decided that I’d be better off creating 12-month business goals based on re-investing x amount of profit each month.
Therefore, my business goals to invest around $5k per month back into my business with the majority of that going towards great content, PR and design/coding. I’ve basically stopped investing in frivolous things such as domains until I get my two main sites to a self-sustainable level of growth. This means developing the sites so that they produce enough revenue to hire an editor, writer and coder. This would leave me in charge of project management, marketing and PR.
End of Year Review
If you were to ask me on a scale of 1-10 how well the year has gone based on my original annual goals, I’d probably say 6.5/10.
I accomplished a number of primary goals this year including writing for a major newspaper, working on my first ever partnership with a highly experienced businessman, generating consistent revenues with my sites, learning new skills (including PR, social media and more fixed fee deals) and starting my own agency.
The downside is that it’s been a very stressful year, I haven’t produced even close to the same revenues in white hat SEO and CPM deals that I had done with blackhat SEO in the past, and while I feel that my business has grown slightly I feel like I’ve missed out on several opportunities. I think one of the main things I’ll do next year is invest in faster hosting and mobile-responsive websites.
In any case, I’ll probably provide a more detailed end of year review in the beginning of January.
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