To help you get a great start toward your internet income goals in 2009, I’ve created a video (and companion spreadsheet) will help you create a more concrete, realistic plan for achieving those goals. In the video I talk about:
- How much traffic you’ll need to reach your income goal.
- What options you have for turning that traffic into money.
- How to make sure your goal passes the “reality test.”
- How to think through whether you’ll be happy owning the business once you’ve made it successful.
If you usually read our posts in a reader or your inbox, you’ll need to click over to the site today to watch the video. Enjoy…
A great overview into the logic of goals. What I’m wondering is when you’re smaller is it easier to sell one of the higher value products or increase your traffic by 1000%? How does one go about improving click through rate?
Thanks,
Bill
P.S. If you ever want some spreadsheet lessons look me up
Hi Bill –
Believe it or not the email you sent me yesterday was the inspiration for the video. I’ll get back to you with specific answers to your questions within the next day or two.
I’ll tell you what – rather than asking for Excel lessons I’m going to give you a product idea. All you Excel geeks should pounce on this. The product is a video/ebook series called “How to do friggin’ everything in Excel without ever touching your mouse.”
I got the idea when I’d sit in meetings with the CFO at my old corporate monkey job and that guy never touched the trackpad on his laptop. Watching him work his magic in Excel was the only thing that kept me awake in those stupid meetings.
Mark,
excellent video. Really helps to put the effort/income ratio in perspective.
Thanks Norm – I wish I could put another column on the spreadsheet called “headache factor,” but there’s really no way to quantify that. Every business model has its own risks and headaches; it’s just a matter of deciding which headaches you prefer.
Love it. Excel makes life simple and organized and i sound like a geek. But it works so well.
Happy New Year from Salt Lake
It’s always great to see someone else thinking the same way you do. This post is very similar to the way I do things
And based on our conversations it seems to be working out for you Chris!
Mark,
Not sure what I am doing wrong but when I download the file and it has no formulas in it. Could you please check the file on your end or is it something on my end? I have opened it in excel 2003 and excel 2007… thanks
MelB
Thank you, Mel. See my previous comments about not being an Excel whiz…
It’s fixed now.
Thanks for the great info. This can seem very overwhelming at times but when you break it down it does become manageable. The whole game is traffic, profit, and conversion. If you nail these then you are successful.
I agree with you Andy. The only way to succeed online is to break down the process to its simplest parts and keeping your focus on those things that get results.
Hi Mark,
I’m a new convert/reader to this blog (and Grizz’s and Vic’s). I must say your sheet presented a very clear road to where I want to be. Now all I need is to rock the method.
Happy New Year,
Buddy
I meant to say GROCK the method. I’m still wrapping my brain around all this keyword/backlink stuff after doing things wrong for so long.
Buddy
Sorry about that Buddy. I changed it to “rock” because I have no idea what it means to “grock” something…? I thought I was editing a typo. Maybe you can enlighten me?
LOL,
It’s the ancient hippy in me. The main character in the Sci-Fi classic “Stranger in a Strange Land” used the term “grock” meaning to understand something fully.
Buddy
PS Did you get my email re:coaching?
Hi there,
What a great spreadsheet. Traffic/Conversion/Pricing…you could write a whole book on each one. But now that I can see it all on one page, I can easily wrap my head around it. Now I just need to do the work
One thing for sure, fiddling with the traffic numbers and seeing how they affect conversion rates for my goal was very educational. VERY.
Big thanks,
Crystal
Isn’t it interesting to see how few people actually have to convert as you get more and more traffic?
Great post! Your spreadsheet analysis exemplifies KISS. I’m not a tech person and it was easy to digest.
I’m interested in your coaching service however my emails keep bouncing back. Please email so I can discuss further.
Health and Profits!
Hi Talani-
I didn’t get your email…not sure what’s wrong with my email account, but I’ll get back to you right away. Talk to you soon.
- Mark
Great info on planning, I hope to put this to use in 2009. Thanks for making the spreadsheet a free download.
My pleasure Bri-Guy. Hope it helps you stay on target throughout the year.
Very nice excel download.
I added a column at the end to find out the amount of transactions I would have to make every day to reach the goal. It really is surprisingly low.
In fact I am thinking of revising my income goal upwards because local clients are clambering to get on my lead gen service.
It’s always good to have clients clambering!
Mark, Thanks a lot. I just downloaded and this thing is simple but very effective to help me get my head around your goals for my business. It’s helped my set my short and long term goals for the year. I copied it to a second tab so I could use it for both. I love it!
Great idea to have short term and long term each on their own tab Mel. Thanks again for the heads up about the spreadsheet not working initially.
Hi Mark!
It’s inspiring to see a video presentation about the same math I did just a half-hour ago in my head! A kinda inner voice is telling me: “Look! It’s all doable! So go ahead and do it!”. But other voices whispering: “It’s still to early to action! Wait, do some more research, read some more posts” etc. etc. etc. Personally for me the greatest challenge right now is to break the curse of apathy, depression and laziness and to start to actually move things out.
Manual link building is still the best way to go;) But I hate it when it takes so long for my websites to start ranking:S Link building automation? Maybe some other time:)