John Melanson

Failing To Plan Equals Planning To Fail

The best laid plans of mice and men…

My guess is that most of you spent yesterday or at least a few moments before the “ball dropped” reflecting on 2008 and resolving to make 2009 different.

The question is, how exactly do you plan to make it different this year?

If you look at each day with the same resolve and retrospect that you looked at the past year last night you’ll find yourself making the changes necessary to ensure that this day, this week, this month and therefore this year will all be better than the one before it.

So what’s the best way to make a plan for the year?

In my opinion (and please comment if you hold a different stance, I welcome discussion), if you consider finances for example; we all want to make more money this year than we did last year or ever for that matter.

If you know that you want to add $25 K to your bottom line this year, that breaks down to adding roughly $480 per week to your income. Now as an Internet Marketer, that is a totally achievable goal. That further breaks down to less than $69 per day. That doesn’t seem so daunting or impossible now, does it?

Even if you’re at $0 per day right now, you CAN get to a place this year that will get you on track to make that goal and surpass it. The irony is that once you get into the habits that will make the $50 or $75 a day income possible, your entire thought process goes through a change and the light bulb over your head shines blindingly….you suddenly “get it” and your income then begins to grow almost exponentially.

Now when you look at that goal of an increased income you believe it to be attainable. The next step is to, well….set up the steps to get there.

You need to look at your existing business/es and website/s and ALL of your projects and ideas and decide for yourself what you need to do in order to “get there”.

For me that meant breaking up my year something like what follows, tho I won’t bore you with the minutiae, you’ll get the idea and be able to do it for yourself.

MY GOALS FOR THE NEW YEAR

1. 100 Subscribers per month consistently on at least ONE of my domains.
2. At least 1 site profiting at least $1000/month in sales, membership fees, etc…
3. 3 Product releases to occur in April, July and December.

So, for me to talk about how I’ll achieve those goals, I will break them down something like this:

1. 100 subscribers per month is only an average of 3.44 per day. Any blog that is properly SEO’d and then socially linked through article directories, Facebook, MySPace, etc, and also socially bookmarked through the network of Tweets and Diggs and so forth should be able to draw enough “interested” traffic to secure at least 3-5 opt ins per day. That’s the plan anyway.
2. $1000 Profit per month is an average of $33.34 per day in sales minus your operating expenses for that site. In that case let’s just round it up to $40 per day, and that’s being very liberal with the operating cost estimate. Whether you’re selling your own products or as an affiliate marketer for someone else, if you can get to where you’re averaging a minimum of $40 in sales per day, that goal looks not only attainable but one easily surpassed.
3. In staying consistent with the above goals, and using each one to build upon the next the product releases will also be a natural progression. Having my “BIG” product release next Christmas, I’ll be setting myself up to step into 2010 in a position to set and achieve even bigger goals. The releases in April and July will both be directing people toward the third and final product of the year and IT will be a natural progression of my product line.

What is YOUR plan?

Remember…

If you fail to plan, plan on failing.