A Squid Named SusanVillasLewis

Blew past all my goals for last year, which may mean I didn’t have as much confidence, knowledge or thought as I should have. I thought I was setting my sights high, but maybe not. Makes it a little tough to decide just where to go for this year, though.

My overarching goal continues to be to make enough via all my online endeavors to support myself. Basically, that means enough to qualify as a full-time salary at some job. Managed to do that this last year, so I’m confident I can do it again, but I’d like to see the number a little higher. This kind of goal has made it possible for me to meet most of my other life goals, especially around spending more time with family. The flexibility of working for yourself as well as having that work all be online is just amazing.

Money
I set the goal to average $1K a month in sales commissions last year. I ended up averaging $1682. Huh. Which leaves me wondering just what would be reasonable to set as a goal for this year. This is the one thing where I really don’t have control, where I can’t make it happen. So I’ve pondered just whether it was reasonable to even set a goal. Is that just inviting stress? I’d love to get to $3K average a month, which is almost double from this year. Logic says it’s doable based on this last year, but I have got to consider what tactics I’m missing right now that could make that more likely.

Lenses
Ended 2011 with 654 and would like to get to 1,000 for next year. Which is about 30 a month. Which is entirely doable despite the fact that I have at least 30 that I’m considering deleting. Still, I go back and forth about whether creating that many more lenses is the best use of my time in general. Back and forth. Back and forth. Lenses are the easiest way for me to create a sales channel but … . Argh. Still, shooting for 1K across both accounts.

Blogs
I have about a billion of these, it seems. Have even gotten rid of a few and still have a ton to maintain. Some are sales-related, some not so much. A few could be good money-makers if I could get it together. I don’t even have adsense on all of them and some of that is for darned good reason.

I have two main money-makers, one that maybe could be, one that’s personal, one for a “normal” business, etc. So, it’s probably obvious where I should spend my time. The biggest potential one is my kids bedroom site. I think. I have “ideas” in my main keyword, which doesn’t exactly say buying traffic. That said, I did make a couple hundred bucks in sales from there, so it has potential.

Kids Bedrooms – post twice a week, get to 10K readers a month, build mailing list to 5K, actually do weekly deals mailing
Others – three posts a month to personal blog, three a week to Squidoo lens blog, one a week to Sesame Street, twice a month to personal business, post new lenses to this blog

In addition, I want to finish up my free giveaway (which you get when you sign up for the mailing list) and maybe toy with an ebook idea.

Diversity
Ok, I already mentioned how I’d like to build out my blogs to get more money going there. I feel I wasn’t specific enough in setting goals in this area for last year, so it was easy to just pass by and get nothing done. So, here are more specific goals for 2012.

Build up two lines of designs at Zazzle – I have ideas for tons, but just two will do to get started.
Have 20 hubs (have six right now)
Write something once a month for all of my various article account – wizzley, triond, etc.

And that’s it for 2012. Not much there, right? Ha!