Things I’m Planning For 2017
It’s the 29th December, and I’ve been thinking about plans and things to learn for 2017.
In 2016, I’ve accomplished quite a lot. The freelancing business is chugging along nicely, I’ve released books, started websites and most importantly; created systems so the above is all easy.
However, next year I want to (and some would say need to) learn more about running all these schemes in a more professional manner and I’ll also need to scale up everything I do.
This will present challenges – and that’s what I’m talking about today. Before we start though;
All Good Plans…
The following article is no guarantee I’ll actually do anything I’m talking about. It’s my intention to try and get all of these things systematised and running full steam by the end of 2017, but all good plans can go wrong.
With the disclaimer out of the way, let’s get on with the article.
Paid Traffic
I’ve flirted with paid traffic this year after reading A Complete Guide To Affiliate Marketing and realising that you can make a huge amount of money if you’re willing to learn about paid advertising.
The early experiments with paid advertising fell by the wayside as I moved on to other shinier objects. I don’t intend for this to happen again.
As I wrote the other day, it’s much easier to buy better customers than it is to sit and wait for them to find you. I think that paid traffic is a key to success online, especially when talking about scaling a business. SEO takes a long time, and organic exposure is great but it’s not something you can necessarily build a business on at a certain level.
Health
Writing is an easy job, and I can’t complain in general. I don’t have to do a long commute and I can set my own schedule.
That said I need to sort myself out in terms of health. I’ll routinely spend nearly all of my waking day sat in front of a screen. This is having negative effects on my eyes, neck, back and all sorts of other body parts.
Essentially, I need to pay more attention to my health – and whilst this section probably isn’t of great interest to anyone reading, it’s something that ranks high on my priorities. It also leads to my next point…
More Optimisation So I Spend Less Time Behind A Screen
I write a lot. I spend time researching behind a screen when I’m not writing. We’ve covered why this is bad above. That said, every cloud has a silver lining: I’m going to try and spend less time at the desk in front of the screen, and that means that you readers are probably going to benefit.
I’ll be writing guides on how to get a ten-hour day business into a less-than-ten hour-a-day business. What’s crucial here is that I don’t intend to sacrifice productivity here; instead I’m going to try and increase it.
In short, I’m building a bigger business with less time commitment.
How am I going to do that? Don’t worry… I’m not going to jump the shark into lifestyle-guru territory. I’m going to think like a business mogul and make everything more efficient though.
One way I intend to do that…
Outsourcing and Hiring
I’ve had some bad freelancer experiences. This has led me to learn to do everything myself.
- Graphic design? Load up Photoshop and get some YouTube tutorials
- Web design? Buy code, templates and learn how to put it together yourself.
- Outsource writing? No way we’re trying that again.
You get the picture. Whilst this has been amazing for my bootstrapping skills and I’ve learned a lot of useful skills, this approach isn’t going to work with the whole scaling thing I intend to do.
At some point, I’m probably going to have to hire people – and that means finding people, managing people and working out the logistics of said people. It also involves talking to people… totally outside my skill set.
Messing Around With Website Auction Stuff…
I found a shiny new toy the other day. That shiny thing is the existence of website auction sites. They’re a treasure trove of good ideas, potential assets and interesting data on pretty much everything web related.
I’ve got tons of ideas from lazy browsing of Flippa.com. I’m planning on looking into this sort of thing a lot more seriously and seeing what I can do with the information as well.
Add that to the scaling and outsourcing, and you can see how everything adds together to the goal which is creating a bigger, better business whilst spending less time giving myself a pain in the neck.
Freelancing – Move Towards Something Different?
I still make the majority of my money from copywriting for clients. However, in order to do the above, I’m going to need to rethink how I operate this side of the business. This’ll include changes to what I do, how I do it, how I price the service and a few other things that are a bit boring to mention.
Needless to say, updates will come in the form of regular articles for the site.
I don’t intend to stop freelancing, because I enjoy it and the potential is there to achieve some awesome stuff with it. I am going to rethink how I approach freelancing and who I work with (and on what I work) though.
Finishing Up The Niche Site Challenge
We all love Niche Sites… they’re fun, profitable and you get to buy yourself expensive gear guilt-free.
The Niche Site Challenge will finish at the end of April 2017. I’ve already started planning what I’m going to do with the Niche Sites later on in the year (more of that on New Year’s Eve.)
Between now and the end, I hope to drop more knowledge on niche sites and try some new niches and run more experiments with the ultimate goal of creating brilliant Niche Sites.
Final Thoughts
This article has probably been more useful for me than it has for anyone reading. That said, assuming I achieve some of the above throughout 2017, you’ll be able to see the genesis of subsequent articles in this one.
That’s probably worth something.
At the very least, you can put a note in your brand new diary and come point and laugh at me in one years’ time.
See you then!