What I’m Doing Different in 2010

You know by now that I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, but since blog posts about what people will be doing differently in the new year are so popular, I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Most of these plans come from trial and error experience in prior years, as do most of the decisions I make and new directions I try. Here’s the short list:

1. More JV and Affiliate Promotions. There’s a common myth in the internet marketing world that mailing affiliate promotions to your list will encourage unsubscribes, but I have not found that to be the case. If you maintain a good relationship with your list, they’ll pay attention to you and they won’t unsubscribe. Combine that with the fact that open rates are never as high as we all want, and you can see why multiple promos per month won’t hurt.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to spam my list with endless affiliate offers. Quite the contrary. When I say “increase,” I’m referring to the fact that I normally send no more than one per month. I’ll increase that to two, possibly three in the event of really good offers that would benefit my subscribers. (NOTE: This is not a request for more JV invites! I already have a closed list of marketers for whom I promote and am not seeking more.)

2. More E-Mail Frequency. Last month I moved to a very high-end email server solution, and in the process of tweaking the configuration, my server admin had me sending numerous email broadcasts out over and over to monitor performance. I was convinced I’d piss off my lists, but to the contrary, sales volume was explosive for those couple of days.

From that experience I learned not only will my interested subscribers not unsubscribe, as I pointed out in #1, but they want to hear from me more often and more frequent mailings will encourage them to buy sooner.

3. More Diversified Traffic Sources. When I was “Google Slapped” last month, there wasn’t a disastrous drop in sales and opt-in volume for the period of time that my AdWords account was off. It made me realize that my primary focus on Google AdWords was distracting me from many other quality traffic sources. Therefore I’ll focus much of my energy in 2010 on diversified traffic sources, particularly free ones.

Keep in mind that I’m in the anti-SEO camp due to the fact that I optimize my sites for conversion only and refuse to screw that up by altering my copy to please search engines. However, there are many ways to exploit SEO using other sites that drive traffic to your main site (this blog being just one example).

4. Less Work, More Fun. Having spent all of last week on Mike Filsaime’s Marketers’ Cruise and then spending the first 3 days of this week at home getting over being sick, I hated coming to the office today and would have much rather stayed at home or done something fun with my bride. As much as I love my “work” – if you can really call it that – hobbies and recreational activities are still more preferable. So, as much as I openly criticize most interpretations of “time management,” I’ll have a clear and concise list of things to do each and every day, and will not come to the office unless I have a full days’ worth of activities on my schedule. No more coming here just for the sake of coming.

For the first full year after I became a successful internet marketer and quit my last job ever, I didn’t work at all; contrast that with my time living in California, where I was in the office constantly looking for new ways to make money in order to justify CA’s outrageous cost of living. Neither were healthy; balance is.

This underlines the importance of balance and why it’s so necessary to have a true balance in life if you expect to succeed in business.

5. More Focus On Opt-Ins. I’ve always tracked PPC and other traffic sources for sales conversion, but have recently put a stronger focus on opt-in conversion. Why? Well, first of all, no one is going to buy if they don’t first opt-in. That’s a no-brainer. Second, there is a greater value to opt-ins than in just selling my own product. Like those affiliate promotions that frequently put five figures into my pocket with the sending of an email or two. Just because a subscriber isn’t going to buy one of my products doesn’t mean they won’t buy someone else’s product that I earn commission on.

There you have it … my main new focuses and shifts in direction for 2010. I’ll keep you posted on the results!