Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Well 2014 is now here. While I’m not a big resolution guy, do I enjoy taking some time at the end of a year and the beginning of a year to map out some goals. It’s a great time to take stock of your life, and really lay out what you want to do over the next year.
Plus it gives you something to think about during those horribly boring Christmas family dinners! I thought I would share these goals with you and maybe it will help some of you guys.
Get My Shit Together:
I’m a pretty organized guy – but despite that, I still lose track of a lot of stuff. For example the other day a friend asked me how many websites I own. I said “About 50”. This is my JOB. All of my websites contribute to my income. Something as basic as that I should keep track of.
On Jan 1, I got a notice that an old domain was expiring. Now the domain is useless – it’s dedicated to a poker room that closed over 2 years ago. But what have I did with that website? NOTHING. It still gets a couple of hits a week, it still has quite a few nice backlinks, and about 50 pages of solid content on it. And for 2 years I’ve let it sit stagnant being of absolute no use to anyone.
At the very least, I should have 301’d it to one of my bigger websites. It would’ve helped that site due to both the backlinks portfolio and the content. Even if the content is not relevant anymore – adding 50 pages of articles to a website is nothing to sneeze at, and helps when it’s a big brandable site.
So I’m going to be getting my shit together when it comes to that. Going through every website I own and setting up goals for each of them. If they’re making no money then either look at making money from them, or 301ing them to a brandable site. If they’re making some money then look at optimizing them better etc.
Expanding From A Niche:
One of my favourite articles on here is Think Big, Start Small – the whole point being that while you have grand plans for a website then start slow focusing on one section at a time, building it up before moving onto the next.
I’m going to be doing that in 2 different ways this year. One is CasinoAnswers.com. While initially I adopted that Think Big, Start Small philosophy it sort of lost it’s way as time went on. I have 200 Microgaming Slot Reviews, yet only 5 articles in the scratch card section for example. So I’m going to be going through that site, cleaning it up and then working a section at a time to really make the whole site better as a whole.
The other one is my forms website, DIY Landlord Forms. Initially when we started that, we aimed purely for landlord forms. However now is the time to expand – a goal we always had – and start covering more forms as well. Now everything’s running smoothly, it’s time to start covering everything else. So I’ve recently launched Simple Forms which will work on a larger scale and cover a variety of other forms.
A PPC Campaign Outside my Comfort Zone:
Many people believe the best way to teach someone to swim, is to throw them right in at the deep end. This is something I’d like to see many of you do – set a budget, and start rocking a PPC Campaign on a topic you know a little about.
It’s a method that will force you to learn – FAST. Because you’re throwing money at something and if you aren’t figuring out how best to optimize it you WILL lose that money. It’s a great learning experience and one I am really looking forward to.
Apps, Apps, Apps!
I really want to get into app building this year. This is something I’m sure EVERYONE has wanted to do at some point – probably around the point they heard of the iPhone Fart App making $10,000 per day.
Unfortunately as a Blackberry user, I wasn’t able to fully experience all of the apps out there. I did make money running a Blackberry App website and that got me more into it – but I really wanted to be on the front lines, actually producing the apps.
I got a Samsung Galaxy S4 earlier this year mainly for that purpose, and I’ve spent hours going through the apps and checking them out and getting ideas. Also studying how they make money – Candy Crush Saga in particular is amazing for that.
Plus it’s addictive as all hell.
I’ve spotted a few holes in the App World where I think I can make some good money. I also want to create some apps purely for a resourceful point of view – for example, anyone who wants sports tips I provide can download the app and be notified when they are posted.
I’ve actually already started this process with a Royal Rumble Trivia App. It sucks – but the point was to learn the process of listing apps on the Google Play store and how it all worked. It’s quite fascinating seeing the backend for something like this, and it’s really got me excited about the apps I’ll be developing later this year.
Do More Contests/Sweepstake Promotions:
Really – this is the easiest bloody thing ever. Run contests on your website. You can give away anything – like a $50 gift card, or $250 worth of books or whatever. It kills me I don’t do it as much as I should because there are so many benefits.
For example some of the contests I ran last year:
- Increased loyalty and friendship amongst my visitors, to the point I was able to talk privately to about 50 of them and convert them to a different sportsbook than the one they were using.
- Got a ton of backlinks from various contest websites and forums.
- Got me a ton of extra content when I asked them to submit 200 word reviews to participate. I spent $50 for about 10,000 words of unique quality content.
And those are just a few. Nothing compared to the things I used to do with poker. Really need to run at least one per month and possibly more.
Help Out A Small and Local Business:
I actually did this last year and I’m going to be doing it again.
My barber doesn’t have a facebook page, or a website or anything. He practically has no online presence bar your standard Yellow Pages mention and any listings from sites that scrape that.
So free of charge, I’m going to create him a website and then market it online and get him a really strong web presence.
I did this last year as I said, and it was a tremendous learning experience. As affiliate marketers, we usually focus on a really broad range when it comes to marketing – focusing on countries or even continents. There’s so much you can learn from the small business world and localized marketing. Honestly it was probably my best learning experience in many years, and I’m looking forward to taking a lot of what I learned and apply it forward.
Plus he said he’d give me 4 free haircuts so you can’t beat that!
Summary:
I’m sure some of these won’t apply to many of you, but hopefully it gets your brain churning. I know mine is – I’m really excited about sitting down and looking at my portfolio of websites for example, and really streamline it. Not only will it help my business, but it will give me a much stronger sense of control and organization.
Finally, I aim to write many more Affiliate Bible articles! I’m targeting 3 per week; a T_IM, an article like this, then a personalized affiliate program review. So yay – 2014 is the year where you get to read 3000+ words from my mouth every week of the year!
Ain’t life great.
This article was written on January 8, 2014 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
