Did 2011 go by super fast? I know it did for me and there was a lot of things that I learned this year as I always do every year when it comes to my business and personal life. I am going to recap my mistakes, success, and lessons learned. 2012 will be a great year!
- Focused on Software Creation - 2011 I started to shift a bit of my business in the software creation vertical. Creating sites like SplitPiston.com and OfferSnitch.com. I find it fun to solve the problems I have encountered in affiliate marketing and creating solutions to my problems. I have had these softwares for my own use for almost 2 years and in 2011, I decided to share it with everyone.
- Partners, the Bad and Horrible - This year I went through multiple partners and it was hard to keep momentum going if the other person is not sharing that same passion. It is a good thing I have contracts with these partners where I can void and cancel their partnership with me if I feel they do not perform. It has been a struggle to find good working partners that share the same goals as me, even the passion to make money online. Good people are always hard to find.
- Gained Weight, Damn it! - Sitting in front of the PC for almost a full day has developed a minor gut. Even thought I work out during the week, it hasn't stopped the growth of this mass in my mid section. I plan to adjust my business around a healthy environment by trying to do less in front of a PC and being more active. Let me know your solutions to this mid gut section crisis.
- Hang Out Groups in NJ - After I have created the IANteract Meetup in NJ. I decided I should have something separate from the meetup. A group of marketers where we can just hang out and meet at bars and talk about life and business, if it does come up. I have surrounded myself around more people like me and I want to grow my mind as well as my business, so I had to filter the time I spend with my friends I grew up with to my affiliate and entrepreneur friends. These hang outs created a strong bond among the Jersey affiliates such as Gabriel Cano, Rohail Rizvi, Justin, and many others from the group. We actually can go out and no one complains about the use of money.
- Started Local Consulting - Since working in at the co working space at Launchpad, I have created a good relationship with 2 other offline marketers. Since they specialize in the offline space, their clients ask about online marketing - that is where I come in. I help their clients with their advertising campaign from Google Adwords to starting a social influence program. In many cases I ended up helping their client grow on the internet.
- Top 25 Influencers in Performance Marketing - In November I was surprise to learn I was one of the top 25 online influecers in performance marketing. I was honored to find my name among other performance marketers in the space.
- Traveling and Conferences - I haven't done much traveling in 2011 nor have I attended much conferences either. I always attend Affiliate Summit as it has proved to be one of the best conferences to be at, as well as ad-Tech. I also will be slowing down my attendance to these shows this year and in the coming year. I also want to expand in the Internet Marketing conferences space more and attend other conferences geared towards that vertical. Even though I love the affiliate and performance space, I think I need to expand a bit more.
- Learning the Advertisers Side - I have met up with my buddy Rich Gorman a lot this year and talked about the advertising side and the legal issues that have been happening. He has showed me a big deal of the advertiser side and how he has been running his business. He also introduced me to his circle of friends, which have proved to be a great use to my own business.
- Focusing on too many things - In 2011, I think I focused on waaaaayyy too many things from my own internal campaigns to creating my own offers to attempting to learn seo. 2012, I want to just focus on 2 things and that is it and kill those 2 things for this year. My problem, I always lose concentration on one project and then when an idea posp in my head - I work on it for 3 days then continue or catch up what I was doing 3 days prior. I want to complete these 2 goals for 2012 and do a great job at it. I think multiple projects are good, but focusing on 1 or 2 things will yeild better results. What do you do to help with your focus?
- Shifted Servers Multiple Times - I moved my sites to 3 new servers and took them off Storm on Demand. I went back to WiredTree and also put some sites on SolarVPS. I also took the rest of my domains from 1and1 and bluehost and put them on Name.com and NameCheap.com. It took some time for the transfers and the merging but the headache is done and they are now in places where I want them to be. If I only knew how t do this when I first started in the online space.
- Working with way too many Advertisers - Focusing on too many things also brings up working with too many advertisers. Every advertiser is looking to get a share of my traffic and it has been hard to filter who I wanted to work with. I felt advertisers and affiliate networks act the same, always finding to get your traffic. Towards the mid year of 2011, I decided to only work with 4 advertisers direct. In 2012 I want to shrink that as my business will be shifting in 2012.
- Creating Virtual Real Estate - Beginning of 2011 I started to learn SEO and create virtual real estate. I have been buying a lot of domains over the months of 2011 and now I need to grow them. I went through several SEO specialists, VAs, oDesk employees, etc and have yet to find someone worth to keep on for more than 3 months. I did find one person and I will be meeting him at Affiliate Summit to see how we can work together on helping me create my own set of online virtual web properties.
