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Revisiting My 2011 Goals – The Results

Three-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:

What went wrong…
What went right…
Why, and…
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

86

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:

GreenExamAcademy
Keyword Research Webinar
SPI Podcast Sessions #10 and #22 (with Chris Guthrie)
SPI Podcast Sessions #08 and #23 (with Corbett Barr)
Affiliate Marketing for Beginner’s Course
Amazon Affiliate Marketing Course
Mark Mason from Masonworld.com
GoToWebinar
Article on FTC regulations and disclosure (from Social Media Examiner)

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)

108

Atypical Tips for Writing Awesome Blog Posts

When 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

213

How to Make an Electronic White Board for Your Videos

A 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

105

Productivity Hacks – Making Time by Shaving Time

If 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

234

My Monthly Report – November 2011

passive income Welcome 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:

To help me keep track of my progress and focus on improving the numbers each and every month.
To help you understand the kinds of ways one can generate an income online.
To share what has and what has not been working for me. And most importantly…
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

90

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…

66

Are You Giving Instant Results? You Should, and Here’s Why.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the mall with my good friend Chris Ducker from Virtual Business Lifestyle. We had just finished an awesome weekend in LA at Blog World Expo and we were headed down to my hometown of San Diego when we decided to stop at a mall in Irvine to grab a bite to eat and explore.

Chris lives in the Philippines and I wanted to give him a taste of the Orange County lifestyle here in southern California, something I became very familiar with when I worked in Irvine at my old architecture firm.

While strolling through the mall we randomly walked up to a mall-cart (those product displays that stand in the middle of the mall) that had some interesting looking merchandise.

I pointed at one of the electronic devices and asked the guy who was there, “So what does this thing do?”

Then, he did a little demonstration for us, which I’ll show you in the video below (and look out for the surprise at the end!):

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube)

And for those of you who can’t watch or listen to the audio, the transcript will be available right here very soon, although I recommend you watch and listen sometime because the demonstration has to do with an audio device. Click Here to Read More about Instant Results

57

SPI 029 : How to Conduct (and Master) a Webinar with Lewis Howes from LewisHowes.com

The Smart Passive Income Podcast

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In this session of SPI Podcast I have the privilege of welcoming Lewis Howes from LewisHowes.com to the show, an ex-football player turned entrepreneur who many people know for his success with utilizing LinkedIn to grow his business from scratch. He actually published two books about his success with LinkedIn not too long ago.

This session isn’t about LinkedIn though – it’s all about webinars – what they are, why they work and the best way to approach and conduct one.

Lewis is a master at conducting webinars. This I know because I’ve seen him in action, and he’s amazing – and his results are amazing too. He kindly shares his results and all of the techniques, tips and tricks that he uses during this interview.

I’ve actually conducted a few webinars before with some degree of success, however after chatting with Lewis (and actually jotting notes down during the interview), I realized I wasn’t even scratching the surface of what was possible.

In this session you’ll hear Lewis describe:

Details from his first webinar experience which generated $6,300 (without a finished product to sell).
Why webinars are the best way to conduct business online.
How to get more people to sign up and attend your webinar, which are two completely different things.
The various types of software that can be used to host a webinar, including some free options that I hadn’t really thought of before.
The structure of a webinar that works best (aka – the 4 Phases of a webinar)
The one thing you should absolutely do with your audience before your webinar even begins.
What to do (and what not to do) if you plan on pitching something.
The top ways to engage with your audience within a webinar.
The things you should do after a webinar is over.
Plus much more…

The recommended paid software to use for webinars that both Lewis and I use is GoToWebinar. You can try it with unlimited use for free for 30-days by clicking on my affiliate link here.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items mentioned in this podcast include:

I hope you enjoy this session!

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

Transcript (by Speechpad):

Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 29 (PDF)