Off the hook, finally!

Whew! It took a working weekend, but I finally got caught up and it is SUCH a relief :)

Now I can kick back and work on my own site(s), read my latest issue of Business 2.0 and finish reviewing the Underachiever Mastery Course. I still have my usual workload, but not the overflow I've had the last few weeks, which will be super-nice. Back to MY schedule!

One of the things on my plate this month has been closing out 2004 and preparing to have my taxes done. What a job. Of course, had I entered things in as I went, it would have been a different story. But nooo - I had to wait and do it ALL at year end :p

Dont procrastinate. It sucks. Not only do you stress over it the whole time you're not doing it (because you know you should be)... but then you get stuck working in a rush, or working with a mess. Seriously - let's dont do this again! Deal?

One nice thing about tax time, though, is that it allows you to review your year at a glance. I knew I had met my goals for '04, but it was real nice to see it in black and white. I more than tripled my income from the previous year... and earned almost 5 times more with Affiliate Marketing than I did with my service-based business.

That's a huge turnaround from previous years, as the services have been my 'bread and butter' and Affiliate income was just "extra cash on the side". Changing my business model to produce more passive income (meaning I work less, but make more) was one of the smartest moves I've made yet!

Speaking of which, I'm doing a Teleseminar on the topic (Passive Income) with Lois Carter Fay next month - February 9th, to be exact. I'm also planning to join That Crazy Web Guy (Gary Knuckles) on a live call on February 15th.

I think Gary and I are going to talk about how various Internet Marketing strategies can work together - to produce the best possible results. It should make for an interesting topic, and it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately... so I'm looking forward to the interview.

You've got copywriting, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, web design, email marketing, networking, upsell techniques, backend sales, yada yada yada. But any one of these things wont necessarily make your ebiz successful on its own. They really do need to work together in a complimentary fashion (smoothly, seamlessly) to achieve that desired end result.

I think it's really easy to get sidetracked and distracted, and to never really finish a project so that it tops out in profit potential. And too, they are often given up on before given a fair chance. I've been guilty of both, myself - and let some really great projects go stale.

But if everything that you are working on is part of the cycle that leads up to the ultimate goal, then you are in a better position to stay focused and to continue to improve on the process. Traffic, traffic, traffic - yeah. But once you get it there, you have to guide it through in the right direction and capture the valuable visitors into your "funnel". Once you do, they're yours for life! Unless you drop the ball and never follow up with them ;)

Anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to in February, and I'll keep you posted on the details as they get penciled in. For now, I'm off to play with my new Flash Ad Creator (hoping to get some examples up on the site this week), and maybe catch a good movie ;)