Another year has come and gone and your still stuck in the same spot when it comes to your business.  You’ve tried to conquer, you’ve tried to dominate your niche, but you just didn’t seem to accomplish much.  What did you do wrong?

Maybe all you need in order to succeed is to create some goals for yourself.  Goals are an extremely important part of having a business, I believe that with all my heart.  Setting goals has helped me push past adversities and laziness and accomplish what I needed in order to reach those goals.  However, if goals aren’t done properly they could very well be ineffective!

Write Your Goals Down!

The biggest and first mistake you can do when you are setting goals for yourself is to not write them down on paper.  In your head may be great, but having your goals written down and posted in a place where you can see and read them everyday is even better!

Writing your goals down makes you define your goals more clearly and also encourages you to state in greater detail exactly what you want by accomplishing your goals!  Also, by writing down your goals it becomes a written contract to yourself which usually causes a personal motivation to appear which causes you to want to achieve your goals!

Be Specific and Tell a Story!

When I write tell a story, I mean putting down on paper exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish your goals.  Too many times I’ve written down goals on a piece of paper that looks something like this…

My Goals for 2009

1. Buy a New Car
2. Increase my Business by 200%
3. Get a Loan and Buy a House
4. Get my Savings Account up to $50,000 in savings
5. etc…

Now, while I wrote my goals down, I wasn’t very specific.  However, by writing my goal list with a little more detail it may provide me with motivation during those hard times by listing exactly what I want, thus allowing me to picture them in my mind!  In fact, you could even include pictures of your goals (if possible) into your list to really hit a home-run!  If I was to add more detail to my goal list, it may start to look something like this…

My Goals for 2009

1. Buy a New Mazda 6
2. Increase my business so that I’m making 10,000 dollars instead of 5,000 dollars a month.
3. Fix my Credit so that I may get a home loan to purchase a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home with a good sized yard!
4. Increase my savings account total from 15,000 dollars to 50,000 dollars by the end of 2009!
5. etc…

As you can see, I laid out exactly what I wanted and was very specific about it. By doing this, when I look at my goal list I can now visualize my goals in my head and possibly motivate myself!  Also, it allows me to see that the goals may not be as hard as I may of originally thought.

For example, in my first goal list, I said I wanted to having 50,000 dollars in my saving account by the end of the year.  I didn’t say that I already had 15,000 dollars in my savings account.  In the second goal list I made that clear which says that I only need to really raise 35,000 dollars in a year to complete that goal!

So are we done?  Is that what your finished goal list should look like?  Absolutely not!  While we are now getting somewhere, you still have some work to do!  Now that you know exactly what you want, you need to lay out a plan and explain to yourself how you’re going to get there!  The more detail you go into, the great the chance you’ll be successful in accomplishing your goal!  So after adding what I need to do to achieve my goals, my list may start to look something like this…

My Goals for 2009

Buy a New Mazda 6

• Get several quotes on the monthly payment for a new Mazda 6.
• Get several quotes on insurance premium on a new Mazda 6.
• Adjust budget to compensate for extra monthly payment.
• Put away 2,000 dollars in a special account in case I have a couple bad months I’ll still be able to pay the payment and insurance for a few months.

Increase my business so that I’m making 10,000 dollars instead of 5,000 dollars a month.

• Take a step back and see what projects are working really well for me and which ones aren’t.
• Possibly get rid of projects not making enough and instead focusing that time on ones that are working well that I may be able to expand.
• Enter 2 new niches a month to try to find some new revenue streams
• Look for opportunities outside of affiliate marketing to increase my income and also diversify it.
• Work 2 hours extra per day during the weekdays and 1 hour extra a day on Saturday and Sunday.

Fix my Credit so that I may get a home loan to purchase a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home with a good sized yard!

• Pay off Capital One Credit Card
• Pay off an old cell phone bill from my teen years
• Pay off etc…
• Redo my budget to allow me to start putting away 1,000 dollars a month into a special account towards a down payment on my house.
• If I’m unable to budget the 1,000 dollars out of my 5,000 dollars a month I have too many bills and need to start getting stuff turned off, extra cell phones, all the extra cable channels, etc (*wink wink*)

Conclusion:

You get the picture!  You need to know what exactly you need to do in order to reach your goals.  When you break down your goals they become much more manageable and it allows you to see that your goal very well is possible with a bit of hard work and dedication!

If your goal list doesn’t look like the last one we just did, you need to get it back out and rework it till it does!  Below is a excerpt from a blog I read that I had saved.  I would link to the original article but I wasn’t able to find it again.

In 1964, all members of the Harvard Business School graduating class stated that they have, at graduation, clear goals that they want to accomplish in life. Among them, 5% took the time to write it down on paper. In 1984, a follow up study was done and it was discovered that 95% of those who wrote down their goals were able to achieve them within 20 years. Among the “lazy” majority, only 5% of them were able to reach their expected goals.

An earlier study in Yale University also had similar results. This time, only 3% of the 1953 graduating class made written goals. Twenty years after, in 1973, it was found out that this 3% of Yale graduates were able to accomplish more goals than the rest of the other 97% combined.

As you can see, writing down your goals can mean the difference between succeeding and failing in your business.  So while it may seem stupid, funny, or your just plain being lazy, you need to get over it and write down your goals!  We are talking about your business here!

Good luck in 2009 and I hope you meet every single one of the goals you write down!

Happy New Year!

Click Consultants Inc.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Pretend that you enter a niche and you want to be able to test the niche quickly and test multiple offers extremely fast in the niche, however, you worry about being hit with quality score issues if you just simply direct link to the affiliate URL you’re given.  What should you do?  In my opinion one of the best way to direct link is to simply buy a domain name and perform a 301 redirect on that domain name to the URL of the offer your promoting (your affiliate URL).

This task is actually quite easy to perform and hopefully this little post will explain to you exactly how step by step.

The most efficient way to perform a 301 redirect in my opinion is to use a htaccess 301 redirect.  It’s extremely easy as well as quick to do!

Step One - Buying a Domain

Uh this is quite obvious, you need a domain to do this, so for the sake of this example we’ll say that I own the domain weightloss.com and will be using that domain name in order to 301 redirect to my affiliate offer I’m promoting.  If you don’t have a domain…get one…again, duh!

Step Two - Creating the .htaccess File

The next thing you’ll need to do is open up Notepad (windows) or a similar program if you’re not using windows that will allow you to create a word document without adding any type of extra information to the file.  Programs like Microsoft Word will add extra info to the document you save.

In Notepad you’ll need to enter the following code:

redirect 301 / http://www.affiliateurl.com/subid=example

The first part of this code tells your server that anything from the top level of this domain down should be 301 redirected.  The URL is the URL that you want it to 301 redirect to.  It’s really that simple!

Step Three - Upload to your public_html Folder

After you’ve created your file you need to save it with the file name .htaccess  Make sure you put in the . at the beginning.  After you’ve named it and saved it, you need to upload it to your “public_html” folder inside your ftp.  It may be your “www” folder depending on your host.

Step Four - Make Sure you Test it!

The last thing you need to do is to make sure you test that it’s working properly.  More than once I’ve setup a 301 redirect and didn’t check it only to find out hours later that I’ve been sending costly traffic to something that wasn’t even working correctly!  Make sure you test it, even once you get use to doing it all the time, still check it every single time…get in the habit of checking it all the time now when you first start using it!

Popularity: 10% [?]

What is the best SEO toolset available online today? What is the best free SEO toolset?

I don’t use alot of tools, if you read anything about me, I’m very keen on promoting that you use your own brain and some manual work.  Also, your question is very very vague…Best SEO tool for what?  Wordpress?  For rankings, I really like SEO Digger.

What are the fastest ways to get a high ranking for certain keywords on Google?

There aren’t really any extremely fast ways, at least not that’s whitehat methods to where it won’t be a short term high ranking.  The best way to get high rankings is to simply work at it, getting links back to your site with your keywords is the quickest way in my opinion…and I mean quality links to your site, not a bunch of directory submissions.

Derek,
What are your favorite affiliate networks and which do you work with the most?

I’d recommend using MarketLeverage, AzoogleAds, or even NeverBlueAds.  All of these CPA Networks are top notch in my opinion and the affiliate managers seem to work with you.  I’ve never had a problem with any of these three.

Have you heard the need PPC.bz single “Get Money + Get Paid”?

Yeah…it was gay…

Popularity: 17% [?]

Sometimes as affiliate marketers I think we forget that bigger isn’t always better!  Too many times I belive we try to build these huge massive keyword lists when we are first entering a niche and while I appreciate the effort, I think it may hurt us more than help us!  In the video below, I discuss my approach to building a keyword list and what it would entail if I was a new affiliate.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I think we sometimes forget as affiliate marketers just how much the small actions we do can increase conversions or click through rates when it comes to our landing pages.  We always worry about split testing the main headlines, the big picture at the top, the call to action phrase or button, etc.  We focus on these huge things because just by increasing one of them we can possibly raise our conversion rate or CTR by 5% or even 10%.

However, there are only so many big things we can change.  When it comes to small things though, we have tons of little settings we can fool around with like colors we can change, or certain words we bold, italicize, or highlight, etc.  Each of these small things may only raise our conversion rate or CTR by 1% or even .5%, but if we do 30 of these small things we could raise our CTR or conversion rate by 30%!!!

So what exactly are some of the small things that we can test?  Did you know that certain fonts convert better than other fonts?  Did you know that certain background colors convert better?  How about the fact that by bolding or italicizing a couple words throughout your landing page could increase conversions?

Have I sparked your curiosity yet?  If so, then hopefully the list below can kinda be a checklist for you to help you remember to check the little things when you are split testing your landing pages…

Things to Split Test on your Landing Page:

• Split test what font you’re using!
• Have you split tested your background color?
• Have you tried to bold or italicize certain words or phrases that could help sell users?
• What about underlining certain things?
• Are you linking to the offer page throughout your article?
• Are you including a Go Back To Top Link at the bottom of your landing page or another Button or Link at the bottom to take your user to the offer page?
• Don’t forget to add testimonials to help build trust with your visitors if your niche allows for them.
• Can you include any endorsed by, affiliated with, or as seen (in, on, at) buttons?  For example, As seen on Oprah or Endorsed with the Good Housekeeping Seal!

The list above is just a couple of the “small things” you could be doing and adding to your landing pages in order to increase conversions and CTR’s.  If you aren’t doing them, you need to start!  If you are using them then good for you!

If you have any other “small things” that you know of that work well in increasing CTR’s and Conversions I’d love for you to share them with me in the comments below.  It’s the smalls things that sometimes make huge differences!

Popularity: 18% [?]