Goals for December 2016

[CCarter]

There is no back button. 2016 happened whether you liked it or not. There is no undo, there is no retry, there is no participation trophy in this arena.

(Don't forget to reflect and update your goals for November 2016, and your overall 2016 goals while making the final push.)

Some of us won, and we won big. Most got distracted by the hot topic of the day and let another could have been productive day slip away. I had days like that too, but when it all sums up in your mind you know the score.

The reality will hit you one way or another - the opportunity to become a more perfected you is always in front of you waiting for you to grasp it. The question is are you willing to step onto the arena floor and go one on one with the best of the best. I am, and therefore that is why even in failure I still win.

December can be your cherry on top or the month you make up for wasting one too many days and night distracted with the latest gossip. Either way it's time to go harder than you've ever gone all year. Anyone can make money in December, people are literally trained to give money away to anyone with a deal this month. Do you have it within you to go for it?

Each generation builds upon the creativity of the previous generation, and they pass it on to their future. It's up to the future to keep it going otherwise there will be no forward movement. It's our turn...

What you do going forward should be about bettering yourself, your family's standing in the world, and leaving a legacy that will last at least 3 generations. All that is possible when you realize you have all of man's knowledge at your finger tips. The only missing ingredient is you, mix it in and move it forward. The future is for those who take it...

 

[stackcash]

- Finish AMA and blogpost for secret sauce
- Push all product-centric keywords for Site 3 into top 10 / 5.
- Get new Project Manager to the point where he's completely independent
- Finish DA stack + ifttt syndication set up for Site 5.
- Be consistent with new fitness habit this month (stationary bike daily)
- Add one new food habit this month (no redbull)
- Finish reading investment book and get through at least 30% of the economics textbook
- Help lady with wedding planning
- Help mom
- Yell at the TV until the Giants win the Super Bowl

 

[Ryuzaki]

Quick Flip Site:

• Letting it sit. Will buy powerful links in the future. It's not priority and I'm not losing anything by letting it age.

Joint Venture Site:

• Took on a project with a friend. It got penalized due to someone else. For 50% profit share, I unpenalized it and am slowly optimizing it. It's already clearing $300 a month now after a couple months with it's rankings coming back. We may flip or hold, depending on my friend's wishes.
  • I plan on continuing to optimize all of the pages, hoping to get that done entirely in December.
  • I also want us to drop a few super posts that will be responsible for 95% of the revenue.

Main Project Site:

• I didn't touch this much in November due to designing a site for pay. I'm about to be about 90% attention on it again. I intend to:
  • Write enough blog posts to drip and be covered through the end of March.
  • Write 3-5 big review posts to finish off all of the big worthwhile stuff in the first sub-niche.
  • Write some more supporting posts in this sub-niche to really finish it off. I can return to it later to fill in gaps but it's time to spread out to the next sub-niche.
  • Do an outreach campaign
  • Get in a few good traffic leaks (to result in links)

These are simple goals. All it will require is saying no to other opportunities and staying focused. Piece of cake.

 

[Nat]

Main project

• Write 20 "the best ___s" articles
• Publish 10 'first hand account' stories
  • outreach to places with this content
• Be the first to report on 3 or more events and have them go viral/semi-viral
• Score links with HARO
• Guest post on 3 sites
• 3 reverse guest posts
• Double site's Facebook page likes
• Start growing other fan pages with different angles
• Double last month's revenue
• Develop/flesh-out a few supporting/legitimizing sidehoe sites

Seasonal side-project

• Play around with paid traffic
• Find new generic forums
• Drop links on some forums

New idea

• Spare time - build out a brand new site in a more buy-motivated niche
• Won't be authority site so less on content and more on experimenting with polarizing content and leaks
• Might not get much done, main project is priority

Personal

• Keep fewer tabs open and limit my distractions
• Get back into a better routine of working out (lost about 10lbs of muscle past ~month)
• Sleep more / stop pulling as many allnighters

 

[eliquid]

Publish 4 podcasts ( weekly )

Drink more water, less soda

Finish PPC ebook

Push 4 blog posts live

 

[contract]

$100 Million dollars in my bank account.

 

[coopreme]

Current Project:
- Cut quantity, increase quality of posts.
- Outsource social
- Get a 2 links from competitor blogs
- Prepare writers for January event coverage
- Close out Journal.

New Project:
- Start a journal
- Study niche, sales, and product delivery.
- Setup mailing lists
- Create lead magnet
- Get 25 opt-ins for future product.

 

[Concept]

Thought I would get on board with this.

By the end of December I will have achieved

• Locksmith Site: At least 310 locksmith leads for the month, with at least 85 leads for the last week.
• Locksmith Site: Multiple agreements with locksmiths that will see at least $3000 made for the month of January
• Locksmith Site: 120 Guest Post Outreach emails sent to relevant blogs resulting in at least 8 new guest blog posts live.
• Locksmith Site: 4 new quality blog posts on my site
• Service Site: Outreached to at least 200 bloggers promoting my content
• Service Site: 120 Guest Post Outreach emails sent to relevant blogs resulting in at least 8 new guest blog posts live.
• Service Site: 4 new quality blog posts on my site.
• Have hired someone doing the guest post outreach for me.

 

[Kimoto]

- Launch the eCommerce website as an extension of the big platforms I was using the whole 2016 - already done
- Try an inteligent Facebook retargeting to achieve significant +ROI

 

[CCarter]

My goals for December:

1. Bring SERP Sightings Online - SAAS #1.
2. Create 3 new SERPWoo Videos and at least 3 new blogposts.
3. Account creation flow for SAAS #2.
4. Project Reporting - SAAS #1.
5. Custom Tags - SAAS #1.
​

 

[Stephen]

Goals for December...
1. Plan 2017 roadmap with Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and H1 and H2 Goals.
2. Avoid Christmas nonsense and excesses as much as possible.
3. Tidy up all my digital assets and organise a system to manage them securely.
4. Decide on a new computer set-up for purchase in Q1, probably a new Macbook Pro and 2 standalone monitors with proper stands mounted to my desk.
5. Declutter.

 

[eliquid]

Publish 4 podcasts ( weekly )

Drink more water, less soda

Finish PPC ebook

Push 4 blog posts live

I totally bombed so far on all of these.

Every.single.one

I got 2 weeks to try to salvage my plans

 

[HiGHPeR]

Well, I'll miss this by a month as it wont be for December.. but I'm building my house in Costa Rica. It will be done in about 30 days I will provide pics once done. Finishing that house is my #1 goal right now.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Well, I'll miss this by a month as it wont be for December.. but I'm building my house in Costa Rica. It will be done in about 30 days I will provide pics once done. Finishing that house is my #1 goal right now.

Niiiice. Please do share. I've spent so much time looking at forum logs of construction builds, from houses to music studios to grow houses to tiny houses, etc. It's so much fun.

 

[HiGHPeR]

Niiiice. Please do share. I've spent so much time looking at forum logs of construction builds, from houses to music studios to grow houses to tiny houses, etc. It's so much fun.

It has been quite the experience A long process, lots of little surprises (we had to get water, electric, etc hooked up) lol.

 

[turtle]

It has been quite the experience A long process, lots of little surprises (we had to get water, electric, etc hooked up) lol.

Count me in. Would love to read how you acquired the lot and how the remote supervision went (that's if you aren't residing in costa rica)

 

[Asad]

I totally bombed so far on all of these.

Every.single.one

I got 2 weeks to try to salvage my plans

What caused the bomb?

 

[eliquid]

Its all kinds of things, but it all comes down to me.

I have someone that tells me that where they live, the people there do nothing all month long pretty much in December. While I don't feel I fell into that trap, I had things come up this month that seemed unavoidable.

Like for one, I got into this habit of somehow not getting into bed until 1-2am and getting up around 10am. While it's the same 8 hours or so as if I went to bed earlier and awoke sooner.. it just sets everything off for the day. When I check my energy levels for when I am productive in the day, things are just waaaaay off. Im not productive middle of the day and when I get up at 10-11am, it's almost a failed day it seems.

When I eat or drink, I feel horrible for like an hour afterward. Imagine eating with family for 30 minutes and then feeling like shit for the next hour. The feeling is pretty much immediate as soon as the second bite is down. A 15 or 30 minute meal turns into an 1.5 hour session in the bed bc you feel like crap. I've had this for while and I just use to power through it.. now I can't seem to push by it. I've self narrowed it down just recently to carbonated drinks, but even water does this to me sometimes with my meal. I might have to break down and go through the exhausting process of visiting 20 specialists to find out whats wrong.

The month doesn't let up. Right after Thanksgiving to New Years, it seems like its a non-stop coaster of visiting family or having family visit you. Add on long lost friends to the mix. Add on gearing up for Christmas with the shopping. Then, Oh I need to tackle health insurance ( thanks Obama ) and year end taxes and a few other odds and ins like prepping the house for winter ( outside faucet covers, cleaning gutters because of fall leaves, checking the generator, etc )

Several days each week I got what felt like sinusitis. It's something I get every year and I think maybe its just allergy related. Some days I'm on Claritin D, Allergra, Zrytec, and Flownase all at the same time. It's so bad that every 2 hours or so I'm over the toilet gagging on my own snot and blowing out snot rockets into the toilet. I ain't trying to gross you out, but sometimes I can't even sleep at night or travel away from the house because of it. The constant stopping and starting wears you down kinda.

I watched someone's dog for a week this month. While this seems low key, it's actually not. Every few hours the taking them outside to pee and feed them, making sure they aren't getting into stuff, the constant needing some attention, etc.

While I don't think I need a pat on the back or a trophy, I did take a personal day off each week this month. I just felt like it with the hustle and bustle, loss of sleep, running around, etc.

When you add that all up, its like death by a thousand paper cuts.

While I know many love this time of year, I dread it and while I can blame all the lost time on these things, it really comes down to me pushing through it like a machine if I wanted to.

But that's the thing. I'm not a robot.

I kinda feel like someone at the gym that has hit their plateau and been stuck there for a month or two now. How do you push through the next level? I actually feel like I dropped down a level or 2 down and need to get back to where I was.

This is the challenge you face sometimes.

I read on another forum about someone with SAD ( seasonal depression thing ). While I don't think I have that, maybe the lack of sunshine or vitamin is causing me to feel "ill" and bad. I don't know, but I might check into one of those light therapy things.

I am also going to go on a raw plant diet for a few weeks too and see if anything changes.

 

[eliquid]

One thing I forgot to add....

As you do more and expand more, you start thinking about making things polished and brand worthy.

For example, what got you here... wont get you there

Back in the early days of SERPWoo ( or anything you do ) it was kinda easy to just do a blog post or podcast and throw it up as any ol quality of work.

As you mature in your craft, you realize you have to do the extra, go the extra mile... put the meta description in and put the right pics up to support what you put out. Take the extra moment to comment your code and think about future changes.

That shit takes time. Lot's of time even.

When you write code for your SaaS, you start thinking about future proofing and how it impacts other areas so you code it again and add on to it. What you thought might take an hour ends up taking MAYBE four hours total when all said and done over a few days of testing.

When you make a podcast, what seems like a 45 minute talk actually ends up a day's worth of time because you planned out what you were going to talk about, make notes, do the talk, take out background noises, re-edit and re-talk unclear parts, and then upload to SoundCloud and make an actual post on the site about it.

To make your craft shine, it truly does take time when you get to a certain "level".

You won't see SERPWoo push some lame 350 article about what a meta tag is like you would another service. Or how you need to rank #1 or get no traffic... we all know that lame shit already. No fluff or filler here.

When you get to a certain level, you gotta provide more and it has to be deeper. Not only that, you gotta do the small things that carry on your brand and BECOMES your brand.

Example... CCarter changes up the image in the upper left hand side of SERPWoo after you log in every few months. While it seems petty and small, there are micro things like this happening all the time in SERPWoo and they all take some time to accomplish, plan out, and add to.

That's where time goes too even when your "working"

Some people take a whole month to push out 1 super bang up article that goes viral. While we all know they are doing other things, it takes a lot of time to polish that monster 7k word article with pics and formatting, etc.

Sometimes your time is sucked up into something that seems so trival, but matters in a lot of ways in another arena.

 

[Rosca]

I made it to Canada.

 

[animalstyle]

@eliquid

I've gone through seasonal depression, I feel the same about the holidays (and this year kicked my ass), and I've taken drugs for colds in the past. What really hit me with your two posts is that you end the first one basically saying the season kicked your ass, you're not at peak health, and your performance is suffering because of it all.

Your fix to all that shit you've been going through:

I don't know, but I might check into one of those light therapy things.

I am also going to go on a raw plant diet for a few weeks too and see if anything changes.

And then go on to the next post about how as your business grows you need to put in massive effort and do more than just the 350 word article to scrape by.

I draw lots of parallels here between personal health and business health. You're basically saying that in order to fix your overall health and motivation you're going radically change the way you eat (I'm assuming) for a few weeks and see if that magically fixes something.

Thats pretty the personal health version of having built your business on 350 word articles and deciding you're going to switch it up and write 7000 word editorial quality posts for the next two weeks and see if the whole thing just magically turns around.

Having switched my eating and exercising habits in the past year, I've learned its all about making small manageable changes one at a time starting with where you are right now. You have to stick with it for the long term to see the benefits. Your body is literally made of the food you eat and needs exercise to run well. My eating habits and exercise habits have made this winter the first in a long time where I am not sick regularly during the colder half of the year.

When I do get sick, its because I've worn myself down and I deserve it. Being sick is your body's way of stopping you, getting you to rest and basically cleaning the crap out of your system so the good stuff has a chance to flourish. It's much like a forest fire.

In my opinion, drugs for a head cold should be reserved for only the most extreme cases. If you're sick - let it run its course and do it's work. You knocked your immune system down and need to rebuild - don't stuff the body with drugs, rest and reflect on what brought you to that point.

Im calling bullshit on your diet and light therapy plan and challenging you to treat your body more like you treat your business. Put nutritious food in your body and exercise every day. Meditate too, that shit is amazing. (I use the Calm app) You're better than a robot when your body and mind are taken care of and the fire to demolish everything in your path is lit.

I can tell you from personal experience, once you start fueling your body with nutritious food and exercising regularly, your tolerance for crap calories is diminished and it becomes hard to switch back to eating like shit. Its like you become hyper sensitive to putting crap in your system and just one high fructose packed soda can wreck you (it should, its total poison). Its really easy to eat, exercise and treat your body well when bad shit actually makes you feel bad.

Fuck the diet - make some long term plans and attack them incrementally so that next holiday season you kick it's ass and not the other way around.

Sorry if I am off base, I don't know your habits I was just reading into what you posted and had to post a response because I want the best for ya.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Quick Flip Site:

• Letting it sit. Will buy powerful links in the future. It's not priority and I'm not losing anything by letting it age.

That's precisely what I did. Zero attention to this project. Will start buying some links in Q1 2017.

Joint Venture Site:

• Took on a project with a friend. It got penalized due to someone else. For 50% profit share, I unpenalized it and am slowly optimizing it. It's already clearing $300 a month now after a couple months with it's rankings coming back. We may flip or hold, depending on my friend's wishes.
  • I plan on continuing to optimize all of the pages, hoping to get that done entirely in December.
  • I also want us to drop a few super posts that will be responsible for 95% of the revenue.

I didn't manage to optimize all of the pages yet. It's just a pain and hasn't been top priority, it'll get done though. One day I'll just grind at it till its done for 18 hours or whatever.

The super posts ball is now in my court. I need to write a guide for the writers and then we'll post them. We narrowed it down to two posts to rank and bank.

Main Project Site:

• I didn't touch this much in November due to designing a site for pay. I'm about to be about 90% attention on it again. I intend to:
  • Write enough blog posts to drip and be covered through the end of March.
  • Write 3-5 big review posts to finish off all of the big worthwhile stuff in the first sub-niche.
  • Write some more supporting posts in this sub-niche to really finish it off. I can return to it later to fill in gaps but it's time to spread out to the next sub-niche.
  • Do an outreach campaign
  • Get in a few good traffic leaks (to result in links)

These are simple goals. All it will require is saying no to other opportunities and staying focused. Piece of cake.

Noooone of this happened, except one review post (which is already earning!) and one traffic leak which resulted in a lot of social signals.

------

So what happened?

I've taken on ANOTHER web design gig. I've realized that it's worth doing those and then using the cash to outsource for the time being. I've seen my best earning months since my last trip to ground zero (and this is why I don't spam anymore, had to learn this lesson twice), so I need the cash to accelerate the process fast. Google is in love with my main site. The only hurdle is content for now.

Right now, cash flow is the goal so I can be spending massively on these proven concepts. I'll write more in the January thread. I'm not upset that I didn't achieve these goals because others came along and are progressing nicely.

 

[Nat]

Main project

• Write 20 "the best ___s" articles - 95% achieved
• Publish 10 'first hand account' stories - about halfway there
  • outreach to places with this content
• Be the first to report on 3 or more events and have them go viral/semi-viral - fail
• Score links with HARO - success
• Guest post on 3 sites - submitted 6 posts, 1 published & waiting on others
• 3 reverse guest posts
• Double site's Facebook page likes - came close
• Start growing other fan pages with different angles - plenty of pages set up, need to grow
• Double last month's revenue - success (in total)
• Develop/flesh-out a few supporting/legitimizing sidehoe sites - fail

Seasonal side-project - holiday season over, mild success

• Play around with paid traffic
• Find new generic forums
• Drop links on some forums

New idea - fail, not enough time

• Spare time - build out a brand new site in a more buy-motivated niche
• Won't be authority site so less on content and more on experimenting with polarizing content and leaks
• Might not get much done, main project is priority

Personal - extreme fail

• Keep fewer tabs open and limit my distractions
• Get back into a better routine of working out (lost about 10lbs of muscle past ~month)
• Sleep more / stop pulling as many allnighters

Although I didn't finish everything I wanted to, I accomplished several things not on this list. This month flew by with the holidays.

 

[coopreme]

Old Project:
- Cut quantity, increase quality of posts. Done, now posting avg of 2.5k and up. Fired one writer.
- Outsource social. Fail, automated more but still haven't found someone to do this.
- Get a 2 links from competitor blogs. Success.
- Prepare writers for January event coverage. Success, did a prep-article that is ranking on first page and had promotion done by some podcasts and social sites.
- Close out Journal. Closed.
Bonus: Got first amazon affiliate revenue for this site.

New Project:
- Start a journal. Done
- Study niche, sales, and product delivery. Check, I learned I was pricing the product WAY to low and to sale it for how it will change their life, not the class they will recieve.
- Setup mailing lists. Done. Thanks to @Steve Brownlie for the mautic suggestion. Built out platform with autoresponder and SES integration.
- Create lead magnet. Fail, I put up a coming soon page instead.
- Get 25 opt-ins for future product. Epic failure. I spent so much time learning, testing, and building the infrastructure for the site that I neglected working for opt-ins. On the plus side I have a automated system, the downside is no one knows it exists.

 

[Concept]

Month in Review

• Locksmith Site: At least 310 locksmith leads for the month, with at least 85 leads for the last week. - Hit 312 Unique Visitors! Only 71 in the last week.
• Locksmith Site: Multiple agreements with locksmiths that will see at least $3000 made for the month of January - This was postpone to January. No locksmith wants extra work over xmas and new year.
• Locksmith Site: 120 Guest Post Outreach emails sent to relevant blogs resulting in at least 8 new guest blog posts live. - Cancelled. Ineffective use of limit time. Emailed 60 for guest posts. Ended up doing about 40 other outreach emails.
• Locksmith Site: 4 new quality blog posts on my site - 2 only
• Service Site: Outreached to at least 200 bloggers promoting my content - DONE
• Service Site: 120 Guest Post Outreach emails sent to relevant blogs resulting in at least 8 new guest blog posts live. - Cancelled. Ineffective use of limit time.
• Service Site: 4 new quality blog posts on my site. - 1 only.
• Have hired someone doing the guest post outreach for me. - Cancelled. Will hire once we have gotten at least 2k a month in the bank. (so end of this month hopefully

Conclusion.
Not the most productive month. I will put this to not taking into account the holidays season and the hurdles involved.