Tiffany Washko

I was reading my review of 2008 this morning and had a few thoughts. I started out 2009 all gung ho and really didn’t end up doing as much as I wanted to. 2008 was really the year I found out what worked and where I needed to go but all in all 2009 was not as big of a growth year for my business as it could have been.

My income went up by 30% yes but not because I did very much that was new… older projects and web sites just had time to marinate and get better with age. I did not not add any new info products to my line up.. I just have the three ebooks and they continue to amaze me with steady sales. I still giggle when I think how I hoped the sales would at LEAST be able to pay for the shopping cart I use to sell them. Those books were one of the single best things I ever did business-wise.

I guess a big part of why I didn’t really reach all of my goals would be because we moved to a new town. Our expenses doubled and it made us more reliant on my income for mundane things like bills. Instead of spending time dabbling in new income streams I had to stick with what I knew would pay the rent. I also moved away from my extended family and starting spending nearly every weekend traveling back to see them.. that took 3 days off my normal work week… since I usually do work (a least a little) every day.

But I did accomplish some new things. I added a new niche site that did really well. During the peak for that niche I earned $450 a month from that one site. In off peak months it makes anywhere from $20-$60 so I am really happy with it and have already added a similar site that was earning money from the first week.

I also revamped my Squidoo efforts. At one point early in the year I got discouraged with my Squidoo earnings and I sold off half of my lenses. Then a few months later I got an invite to an exclusive group within Squidoo called Rocket Moms. It was basically a group project to give Squid moms a special place to house their lenses and encourage them to make more. I made some new lenses during the Rocket Moms challenges and they started to do pretty good. I decided to try and become a Giant Squid… which meant I had to have at least 50 quality lenses. I bought about 10 lenses and reworked them and I made the rest.. about 30 in all! Anyway I am a Giant Squid now and I am working my way to the Giant 100 club.. I have about 70ish lenses right now. I am making MUCH better money than before and my lenses direct traffic to my other blogs. I am a happy Squid.

Now at about 6 months or so into our new house I am finally getting down to business with new growth projects… better late than never right? Last year I bought a site for $500 and pretty much just sat on it. I re-did the design and added articles sporadically but that’s about it. Even with that teeny bit of attention though it has earned a modest amount of money via affiliate sales and the list attached to it is over 2000 strong. This past month I converted it to a blog and I hope to dedicate as much time to it as I have my other blog. It has the potential to be just as big, if not bigger… I feel it in my bones.

I also created a couple new blogs in an entertainment niche that I am passionate about. I finally made that leap after I started to see how well my Squidoo lenses on those topics were doing. Squidoo is an excellent place for market research too!

My love of seasonal affiliate sales has only grown as well. In addition to having another great xmas season, I also had a great Halloween, and a great back to school season.

Going into 2009 I know that I need to take some risks and work a whole lot harder if I want to double my income again. I plan to create a new ebook and have the topic picked and the cover designed… I just need to write the book! I am going to really focus on blogging for 6 blogs… 3 in the natural niche I love and 3 in the entertainment niche I love. I want to add a few more static product sites since those have performed really well for me. I have big goals again this year but let’s see if I can generate the steam to see them through.

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Kelly at Sparkplugging has asked people to participate in a meme and “Spark an Idea About Something You Want So Bad You Can Taste It”.

I have something I want so bad I can taste it…

My goal is to be able to travel with my folks when they retire in a couple years. They want the kids and I to spend summers with them in various parts of the country and world and I want to be able to do that with them. I need to be making enough in income and have enough saved to pay for extended travel for months at a time basically. I also want to be able to take a couple 4-7 day cruises each year. Add heck I have to be able to spend time my brother and nephews who will be moving to Indonesia in a couple months. AND I have to be able to afford to offset my travel (carbon) emissions in some way so that is an extra expense.

When I look at what I REALLY want… it is to travel and I used to be quite the jet setter until my second child was born. Always has been and always will be what I want most in life… it is about time I start making that happen again.

My goals this year are to get a rewards credit card and start paying all my bills with it so I get airline miles BUT I will pay off the card with my debit card immediately so I don’t ever carry a balance. I will also be opening an ING account so I can start adding to a travel fund. I plan to create more niche sites since I am doing so well with the ones I have now… passive income rocks. I also plan to add two more info products to my line up since those too perform fantastically for me. I would love to find a way to make money off my photography too…

I figure I need to be making about $1000-1500 more a month to be able to do this AND keep paying my bills at home. This amount is VERY achievable so I need to get on it….

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2008 was a very good year for me business-wise. I am REALLY happy with how things went. I had a couple of goals for the year: to unseat Google as my top earner, to create my first info product for sale, to create even more new affiliate income streams and to double my income. I have accomplished all of it.

Google was my main source of income for a long time and I still make good money every month from them but it always seemed too “up in the air” to me and I did not feel comfy having that be the check that paid all the bills so to speak. I didn’t want my Google earnings to go down I just wanted my other income to go up and top Google…and it did. But I also did take a hit with Google as I sold one huge Adsense site that was earning several hundred a month. I ended up buying a car with the money from the sold site so I guess I can hardly complain about the drop in monthly income. Now though I make consistently more than Google from other affiliate sources like Amazon and Shareasale.

I created my first info product and I am still reeling from the success. Seriously I thought I might sell 20 books in the first month and then maybe 1-2 books each month thereafter. That was my prediction. I am averaging around 25-30 sales every month with some of these recent months being even better earners than the first. I worked for about 4 days straight to get the book done and the site up. That one decision and popularity of the niche I chose has resulted in an extra $300 (est.) in my pocket every month. How cool is that? Imagine if I had a dozen products like this??? Ooooh yeah…2009.

My third goal was to tap into new affiliate streams and programs. I did that as well. I have started getting checks from Commission Junction, Vita-Mix, and a few others.

My fourth goal to double my income has been met as well. At the end of this year I realized that I am now making more annually than I did when I was in advertising and marketing. I also have been making more than my hubby. For 2009 I am hoping to double it again…might as well dream big!

A new goal would be to step up my activity in the celebrity niche. When I started a couple actor fan sites this year just for fun I never imagined how well they would do. I now have 4 of them and I would not mind adding to that number.

2009 will be my lucky year.

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