How I did in 2016 and what I'm going to do in 2017
2016 has been a year of ups and downs for me, but more importantly a learning experience. I came into 2016 with the pedal on the medal so to speak and earned revenue on my first website for the very first time.
No, it was not from affiliate sales, but it was from Google AdSense ads. My sum total for 2016? $6.00. I know that is not a lot, but it is revenue and it was the first time I ever earned revenue from a website in my life.
It shows me that everything taught here at WA works. Another thing I did as well was start a second website geared towards promoting Wealthy Affiliate. I also started the Affiliate Bootcamp as well.
Third, I started freelancing for the very first time and earned the most money I have ever earned from being on the internet. It showed me that what I learn here can also earn me money in other things as well. This was all mostly in the first half of 2016. Everything kept getting better and better right? Wrong
Why am I saying wrong? Simple. I let my foot off the pedal, got comfortable in my day job, got distracted by other things and completely lost my focus during the second half of last year. I lost my consistency, kept making excuses and putting things off that I shouldn't have, and even put the brakes on freelancing. Guess what? I got a MASSIVE wake up call nearly a month ago with the news I was going to be losing my job in 2 months.
When that news was broken to me, regret came rushing to me. I had gotten too comfortable in my day job thinking it was going to always be there and lost focus on the things I should've been doing that would've lessened the impact of that news. I missed a MAJOR opportunity to earn revenue on my website. I did not do ANY kind of holiday promotion especially on Black Friday. NONE! Major opportunity missed!
I kept thinking of the things I should've done here at WA, but didn't in the latter half of 2016. Some good news though is that after my 2 week vacation, when I came back to my job last week, I found out a new (but only temporary) client signed a contract and was moving in to replace the one that is leaving and also has the same position that I have now. The thing is though, this client is only temporary and in 5 to 6 months I could be in the same situation again.
All this means now is that I have some time to try and work very hard here at WA to get into a financial situation in which I don't have to rely on a day job so heavily and get to a point one day where I can fully rely on income from both of my websites. I'm also looking for another job as I'm tired of being in the call center world, working my but off to advance and get better pay and then suddenly face the threat of losing my job and it is starting to increase in frequency.
So what are my plans for 2017? Simple, work hard and consistent ALL YEAR! Not just a quarter of it, not just half of it, the ENTIRE year! What have I done to ensure that? I have written down a plan of action and things to do each month to stay consistent and reach my goals. That is something I did not do last year. It's good to have a plan and that's what I did while I was on vacation is to come up with one.
I've laid out what I'm going to do this year and each month on both of my websites, but especially my first one as I really want to get revenue to massively increase from what I earned last year. I've already done a lot of what I have planned to do in January which includes a brand new look on my website, adding new product reviews, one of which I've already done, and getting ready to relaunch a newsletter that I completely lost focus on. This is what it takes and I'm determined more than ever to reach success.
Believe it or not some people in my life doubt I will be successful at this. That's fine, I'm going to prove them wrong.
Recent Comments
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Great attitude Brian. Keep working at it and have faith in yourself, you're the only person you need to bend over backwards for. Blessings to you :-)
Seems you have already prove them wrong by making some income. All that is missing is consistency. Congratulations Brian.
Thank you. I'm getting back on the consistency road and already have started seeing some positive results from it.
I was pretty much the same way, I joined WA and started learning, I built my two websites and warned a few dollars through adsense. I've also been freelance writing for content mills like Textbroker but the pay was insulting for the work I did (lets say aTextbroker is like a sweatshop of the digital age). My day job is secure and I'm protected from layoffs, but the job is getting more and more dreadful and we've been under a salary freeze for several years.
I also have the plan of working hard and diligently throughout 2017. That is, get my websites some traffic, and getting more products added to my Shopify store. I am planning a vacation later this year, and when I think of that, it motivates me to increase my income.
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I admire you for all that you have done!
The steady revenue is a goal also for myself.
Thanks for sharing this
Cheers
Ovidiu
Thank you Ovidiu! Things are definitely improving as my revenue from Google AdSense is increasing and I now have 2 sales from Amazon which is the first ever for me. I'm going to continue building upon that.