Revisiting My 2011 Goals – The Results

2011 Goal PostThree-hundred and sixty-four days ago I published My 2011 Goal Post - and as the year 2011 comes to an end, it is now time for my performance report.

Setting goals is extremely important, but it’s even more important to evaluate your performance toward those goals so that you can understand the four W’s of self-evaluation:

  1. What went wrong…
  2. What went right…
  3. Why, and…
  4. What’s next.

To quote myself from a year ago: “Some things in 2011, naturally, will happen unplanned.”

And of course – they did.

I met a lot of my goals, and some – I completely missed.

Here’s a recap of my goals from one year ago, what I learned and where I stand now. Click Here to Read More about Pat’s 2011 Goals

SPI 030 : Pat’s Top 30 Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing

The Smart Passive Income Podcast

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In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I go over my top 30 tips for successful affiliate marketing, which involve a wide range of topics – all the way from the approach and mindset of affiliate marketing, to the little details of where links should be placed and how often.

As many of you know, especially if you’ve recently glanced at my monthly income reports, affiliate marketing has become a major portion of my earnings over the past year, which is why I wanted to end the year with a hold-nothing-back type of session that will definitely help you and your online business one way or another – whether you already promote products as an affiliate or not.

There are 30 different tips here – all based on my own experience – so I hope you enjoy!

Oh, and you’ll notice that during the session, my voice starts to “go away” or change a bit. The reason is because I’ve been sick the last few days and I guess my vocal chords were just not ready for an hour long recording session yet. All good though – I got through it and the information is there for you.

If you’re at work and can’t listen to audio or you just aren’t into podcasts, I recommend you open up the transcript at the bottom of this post so you can read through the tips instead. The transcript is already available for you.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items mentioned in this podcast include:

Please let me know what you think of session #30, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it!

Thank you all for making the SPI podcast such a major success. It’s just a few downloads away from 1,000,000 downloads since session #1 and the response from you has just been incredible. I couldn’t ask for anything more. :)

2011 was amazing, but 2012 is going to be even better!

Happy New Year, and look out for a lot more from me in the new year!

Cheers!

:)

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 30 (PDF)

Atypical Tips for Writing Awesome Blog Posts

Blog Writing TipsWhen I started blogging, writing didn’t come naturally to me.

Not at all.

It took me forever to craft a single post and sometimes I’d be halfway through an article when I would decide to scrap the entire thing because I didn’t like where it was headed.

It was rough – but over time I’ve had a lot of practice and picked up a ton of tips that I’m happy to share with you today.

I’m no CopyBlogger, but these are the things that help me write more efficiently.

Before Writing

Before the fingers hit the keyboard, there are some things you can do to increase the chances that you’ll have a great writing experience. Click Here to Read More about Blog Writing Tips

How to Make an Electronic White Board for Your Videos

Electronic White BoardA lot of people have been asking me for a more detailed explanation about how I create my electronic white board videos, so I decided to create a video that explains it better than any blog post or podcast episode could do.

If you’re not sure what an electronic white board video is, it’s a video that records a person drawing on the screen, which mimics the idea of a teacher drawing on a dry-erase board or chalkboard.

Here are some videos I’ve created in the past that utilize the whiteboard effect:

Electronic white boards (EWB) videos work extremely well because: Click Here to Read More about Electronic White Board Videos

Productivity Hacks – Making Time by Shaving Time

Productivity TipsIf there’s one thing I learned in 2011, it was how to be ultra-productive.

I’ve discussed productivity in detail before here on SPI, namely in podcast session #12: Mind Hacks, Physical Hacks and Work Hacks for Better Productivity and Getting Things Done (which was actually posted almost exactly 1 year ago) however, during this past year there was one major factor that contributed to my going beyond just being productive, and becoming ultra-productive:

My son.

With a kid, especially one who was in his 2nd year of life (from age 1 to 2), the time I had available to work dramatically decreased, as did the time I wanted to spend on work.

My son has become the center of my life – in more ways than you can imagine unless you have a child of your own.

With random nap intervals and various things that happen during child development between the ages of 1 and 2 (e.g. teething, learning to walk, learning to walk into things, learning to talk, learning to talk back, and general craziness), I had no choice but to become extremely efficient.

Obvious productivity tips come into play, of course, such as: Click Here to Read More about Pat’s Productivity Tips

My Monthly Report – November 2011

passive incomeWelcome to my November 2011 monthly report!

Each month I publish a highly detailed report sharing not only what I’ve been up to during past month, but also the income I’ve earned as a result of my online businesses, down to the penny.

I do this for a number of reasons:

  1. To help me keep track of my progress and focus on improving the numbers each and every month.
  2. To help you understand the kinds of ways one can generate an income online.
  3. To share what has and what has not been working for me. And most importantly…
  4. To be transparent and real about what I do.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to pull it off.

A lot of people attempt it and a lot of people fail – but I absolutely know that it’s possible. I struggle through trial and error every single day – but as long as you have a goal and constantly work towards it (and fall down towards it too), you’ll give yourself a chance.

I’ve got a lot to talk about today, so let’s get right to it.

I hope you enjoy this month’s report! Click Here to Read the Rest of My November Report

Desire, Taking Action and Getting Results

Striking Match

This is a guest post by Jeff Rose from Good Financial Cents, a personal finance blog and hub for Jeff’s CFP business in Illinois. Jeff is a great friend of mine and a long time SPI reader and supporter (we became friends through the blog), and it’s been great to watch his progress online over the last few years. We met in person for the first time at the Financial Blogger Conference this past October and he’s just as genuine and nice offline as he is online.

This particular post is about his experience with taking action, diving right in and making things happen even when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. He also shares his success with an “old school” strategy that still works in order to get more traffic and better SEO rankings, and ultimately in his clase, more clients.

My November monthly income report will go live this coming Monday, but in the meantime, please enjoy this post by Jeff.

“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” -Napoleon Hill

When I launched my blog in 2008, I had a mission.

The mission of the blog was marketing myself online, gaining more exposure and reaching potential new clients.

When it came to the technical aspects of blogging: SEO, keywords, backlinks, I was clueless. (Pat’s blog had just launched about the same time so I didn’t have his epic backlinking post to lean on). In the beginning I wrote a few articles a week and waited for the new clients to come in.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

It finally dawned on me what I needed to do. Click to continue…