The Web Wrangler

The other day, I FINALLY had time to sit down and define my goals and develop my strategy for 2011. With January already half gone, I was tempted to let this task slide. After all, I haven’t really done this in previous years, and I’ve still managed to keep my business going. If I’ve set any business goals in the past at all, they’ve been vague and difficult-to-impossible to measure. I have more of a “go with the flow” personality type. Setting concrete, measurable goals for my business, and developing a definite plan for achieving them, are new to me.

So why did I bother? Because I have a sneaking suspicion that this “go with the flow” attitude is what has been standing between me and true success. Sure, I’ve been making a living since launching The Web Wrangler back in 2009. Simply doing good work and keeping customers happy can go a long way toward creating good word-of-mouth and bringing in new referrals. But I realize that this passive approach to marketing and running my business is never going to launch me into the upper echelons of Internet entrepreneur success stories.

If I’m ever going to get there — or even if I’m just going to earn a truly comfortable living — I need to take a more active approach. I need specific, measurable goals, and I need an actionable plan for achieving them. After sitting down for just a couple of hours to think about where I want my business to be in a year, that’s just what I have. Hat tip to Productive Flourishing’s Premium Planners for helping me wrangle all of my ideas into a solid 12-month plan with concrete action steps.

Primary Goal: Triple My Earnings By December

To help myself stay focused and on track, I only gave myself two main goals for the year. My primary goal is to increase my income to an undisclosed amount by the end of the year, with quarterly earnings increase milestones to help me track and measure my progress. I’m not disclosing the amount because it just feels like a really personal goal for myself right now. Suffice to say that it’s a relatively modest, achievable amount that will still provide us with plenty of financial breathing room.

Setting quarterly milestones has effectively broken down the big goal into smaller, less intimidating goals, and made it easier to define monthly actions I need to take in order to achieve them. Call me crazy, but I foresee this as being much more effective than just saying, “I want to earn more and grow my business this year” and then just sitting back, crossing my fingers and hoping for more customer referrals to pour in.

Secondary Goal: Develop Multiple Income Streams

My other big goal for the year is to stop putting all of my eggs into the freelancing basket. Freelancing is great, but even when I have plenty of clients signed up, the actual work–the part I get paid for–seems to be feast or famine. If I want to make a truly steady income, I need to diversify my income streams by offering products and earning affiliate commissions on other people’s products that I believe in.

I’m already making some headway on the latter. Last week I launched my Recommended Resources page, where I list products that I either currently use or have found useful in the course of running my business. Earlier this month I also set up my first affiliate mini-site, but it’s too soon to tell how that will pan out. Again, the key here is that I’m taking a more active role than my past tendency to simply slap an Amazon Affiliates widget on my site and hope for the best.

As for my own products, I’m planning to launch three premium products this year. The first, an e-book detailing how I launched The Web Wrangler with zero overhead costs or startup capital, is slated to be ready for launch this April. The next product will probably tie in to that and launch at the end of summer, and the third still-to-be-developed product is slated for the end of the year.

2011 Theme Word: Action

I love the idea of Erica Douglass’s annual theme word meme. My theme word for this year is “Action.” I’m done sliding by and taking a passive role in running my own business, claiming I’m too busy doing projects for my clients to put myself fully into advancing myself and my career. This year, I’m going to fully engage in my business and take constant action to push it forward and achieve real growth.

Do you have a theme word for the new year? I’d love for you to share it with me and my readers in the comments. And don’t forget: my comment threads run on Comment Luv, which means your comment links count!

Until next time,

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