On my blog, I publicly set three goals that I wanted to accomplish in 2010. (If you’re new here, welcome! I set 3-5 major goals every year publicly on my blog and update my progress every quarter.)
It’s the end of the first quarter (okay, a little bit past it…where did the time go?!) and I’m ready to share with you what’s happened in the past three months.
First Goal: Create and Release 10 Products in 2010
I’ve released three products so far!
Product #1: Guest Post Secrets
The first product was Guest Post Secrets. Through March 31, I sold 58 copies of Guest Post Secrets, for a total income of $2080.00. This is solely to my own email list and on this blog–I haven’t pushed it hard anywhere else. In Q2, I plan to start advertising it and offering it other places. (The affiliate program is up! You can sign up here.)
I used some of the income from Guest Post Secrets sales to create banners (via 20dollarbanners); you can see them inside the affiliate program and place them on your own site or blog to promote Guest Post Secrets and make money!
I’m pleased with the amount of Guest Post Secrets sales, especially since the product will continue to sell for many moons to come, generating a nice stream of passive income for me.
Note: If you purchased Guest Post Secrets, you should have an email invite to the special online workshop I’m doing just for buyers on Tuesday, April 27. If you have purchased Guest Post Secrets and didn’t receive that email, please contact me.
Product #2: One-Day Workshops
My next product is a series of one-day workshops. On March 31, I did a free 90-minute webinar, which I called a “Wednesday Workshop.” At the end, I made a pitch for an in-person workshop here in San Diego in June.
I developed the workshop idea because of the large number of people who are asking me for coaching of some sort. My main concern with coaching is becoming too passionate and getting “sucked in”. When I work with someone, I really want that person to succeed, and I absolutely go out of my way to help that person grow his or her business. But that often leads to me spending hours helping the business owner tweak her website or get “just the right” 30-second pitch.
I love doing that, but I don’t want to pull myself away from being able to help thousands of people at once via this blog or creating an information product. So the workshop, for me, is a good compromise. It gives you, as the business owner, a full hands-on day with me, with at least one hour guaranteed to be about you and your business. It also introduces you to four other small business owners and gives you insight as to what they’re struggling and doing well with. We meet in person, so we can kick down barriers easily. And, because the cost is split between five business owners, it’s far less expensive than straight-up hiring me for a day.
I made the pitch on my Wednesday Workshop and four of the five spots for San Diego sold out right away! (If you want the last spot, go read the details and then contact me. You’ll need to pay from the workshop page. Once you’ve paid, I will be in touch with you to confirm everything.)
Will I be doing these workshops again? Yes, absolutely…but the price is going to go up. I want to take them on the road, too. I’ll announce more workshops via online workshop webinars throughout the year. But if you want in, don’t wait. That fifth spot will fill up. If you’re the right person for it, shoot me an email.
Goal #2 and Product #3: Create and Launch My Startup
Goal #2 was to create and launch my startup. (I’m counting this as one of my ten products.) By now, you may be familiar with it: BestBlogs.net. I ended up hiring a developer to write the site. (I found him on rentacoder.com.)
After a few weeks of hard work, I launched Best Blogs at South by Southwest on Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech. Unfortunately, the project has been relegated to the back burner as I work on another information product, but I plan to get it started back up soon.
My next task on Best Blogs is to hire a VA who can go through and add ~10,000 blogs to the site. This will take a month or two, but then the site will have some great data. I also have some big new features in the works. I just have to start making more time for the site!
Goal #3: Get 20,000 Blog Subscribers
Goal #3 was to get 20,000 blog subscribers to erica.biz. I’m moving along well on this goal. I gain about 13-15 subscribers a day at this point, which is nice growth–although still slower than I need to reach this goal.
The Feedburner counter on the sidebar, which currently shows ~7,800 subscribers, seems to be undercounting subscribers a significant part of the time, so I may need to switch up my goal and just use Aweber’s email subscriber count instead. I currently have ~4,300 email subscribers via Aweber.
There are a few methods I plan to use to increase my subscriber count. One is to continue guest posting on other blogs, particularly on the “become a blogger” type of blogs where my Blog Success Manifesto will go over well. I have a guest post already scheduled for Daily Blog Tips in June.
Another one is to implement a pop-up “subscribe” window when a person reaches the end of a blog post. I got inspiration for this from Chris Guillebeau, who implements this nicely on his site. He cheerfully made an introduction to the developer who did that for his blog, and his developer implemented it for erica.biz a few days ago. It shows up only the first time you visit my site, and prompts you to opt in for my Blog Success Manifesto when you finish reading an article.
Along those lines, I have in the works a new free ebook. It’s going to be about business mistakes. I expect to release it in the next month or two. You all will get first dibs on it as my blog subscribers…so be on the lookout!
Revisiting An Old Goal: What Happened to Making $10,000/Month?
Some of you old-time subscribers may remember that I set a goal in December, 2007 to make $10,000/month in online income from this blog.
I still haven’t made that goal, but I’m making huge progress toward it. In March, I made $4,660.76 of revenue that is directly attributable to this blog.
Next week, I will detail exactly where that income came from–and reveal some surprising statistics! Make sure to sign up for my free business tips, if you haven’t already, and I’ll see you then.
Feel free to post any goals you have or any questions you have about my goals in the comments!
Recommended Reading:
- 2010 Goals. Posted in January 2010. The current set of goals I am working on.
- 2009 Goals. From January 2009; I recap my 2008 goals and set new goals for 2009.
- 2008 Goals. Posted in December, 2007.
Like this entry? You will love getting my free business tips! No spam, and I won't give your email address to any other company.
24. April 2010 at 1:17 am
Hey Erica! Although you haven’t reached some of your goals, I can definitely tell you are on your way.
Glad to see some transparency coming in regards to the earnings from your blog. As you already know, I’m a huge proponent of that =)
Can’t wait to see what you have in store for us next. Keep it up! Cheers!
26. April 2010 at 9:23 am
Thanks, Pat! Yeah, I have to say you are a large part of the inspiration behind this. That and the reams of email I get asking me how my ventures are going!
-Erica
24. April 2010 at 2:28 am
Congratulations to the launch of BestBlogs.net, Erica! You’ve been a real inspiration! I’m aiming to launch my online t-shirt store in a few months time and I’m looking forward to finally being an entrepreneur!
All the best!
Cheers~
Mark
26. April 2010 at 11:53 am
Thanks, Mark! Look for an upcoming product of mine that will help you launch an online business
24. April 2010 at 6:10 am
Erica, all I can say is wow. I have always found your site to be informative and honest. I appreciate all the frank advice and insight. But this post is truly a huge step in transparency and openness.
I can’t imagine there are many people or businesses that feel comfortable revealing so much of the inner workings of their affairs. The value here is tremendous, especially for new entrepreneurs who are just trying to figure out what to expect and how to set goals.
It’s as though every one of your readers is a part of the inner circle, a partner on your advisory board. Your contributions to the online business community are impressive. You deserve every success.
24. April 2010 at 6:49 am
Great stuff, Erica! Congrats on your just-one-away-from-being-full-workshop here in San Diego! I look forward to your Guest Post Secrets special call on Tuesday — thanks for the reminder!
By the way, I saw on Facebook someone said you should write a book and I remember you having that as a goal, too. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to move you along the way to being a published book author.
My best, Donna
24. April 2010 at 7:44 am
Amazing how far you have become. I have no doubt you will reach each and every goal you’ve set for yourself.
Truly inspiring.
24. April 2010 at 9:58 am
I like your popup. I’ve used one in the past which I don’t like quite as much.
I’ll be ready to set a modest monetary goal starting from June: making my rent, which is $1200/month, from product and membership site sales. This is a huge goal for me.
This is the first time I’ve publicly stated a monetary goal. By that I mean this comment here, on erica.biz, right now, is the first public statement.
Back to work.
26. April 2010 at 11:54 am
Awesome, Dave! I see you commenting on a lot of blogs, and know you’re focused and ready to make this work. You can do it!
24. April 2010 at 10:11 am
Erica,
Nice article,
It is GREAT on how you have touched on the subject of how important is is to blog.
Can’t wait to read more about your Blogging Tips
24. April 2010 at 10:13 am
Good stuff, Erica. And when you want to promote Guest Post Secrets with JVs, feel free to hit me up. I’d be happy to promote it.
Coming from you, I know it’ll be good.
24. April 2010 at 11:44 am
I love how you put your info out there like this. So many bloggers are very closed about how they do what they do. I don’t think we are in that competitive of a landscape that we can’t share what works with each other.
24. April 2010 at 12:05 pm
I see that the popup for new readers is in full effect and I like how you did it, informative but not pushy.
To me the keys with this post are two: first, that you are frank in those areas in which you are falling short of your goals and second, that you describe the steps that you are taking to reach them or to put them back on track. I look forward to reading about how you make your money from the blog.
26. April 2010 at 2:27 pm
Thanks, Tyler!
Several people have asked who did the popup. His name is Nicky Hajal and you can email him to have him set it up on your blog at nicky AT tumbledesign dot com.
-Erica
24. April 2010 at 1:57 pm
It’s great visiting your site and subscribing your email update. You are truly my inspiration in my online venture. Thanks for giving advices.
24. April 2010 at 4:28 pm
Love the transparency, Erica. It really reinforces that goals work if you put in the work to reach them.
24. April 2010 at 6:03 pm
Best Blogs looks great! I’ve already added my Music blog to it and I hope it gets added successful. I love the fact that you are walking the path of Transparency, like another commenter said earlier it’s rare to find bloggers who do, and sometimes this can cause an uproar among critics of a blog, which is really kind of sad, because we should be all on the same side at the end of the day!
I would like to make money from my Blogs, not much, because I have a career in the IT Industry I’m very happy with, however I want to develop some entrepreneurial nous and help provide for my family. Thats one reason why I started reading your blog, as they say, ‘Success follows success’
Anyway, Thanks again.
25. April 2010 at 7:06 am
What ever happened to inspiring innovators?
26. April 2010 at 11:55 am
Hi Susan,
Good question! The Amember/Wordpress combo was seriously broken, and was confusing for everyone who signed up. I’m working on porting it to a new server today. I plan to eventually re-launch it with Wishlist Member as the back end. As to when the re-launch will happen…sometime this year?
-Erica
26. April 2010 at 8:07 am
Loved this post and how well you are doing on your products and goals. You continue to inspire.
I thought I’d tell you, that your pop up continually shows up when I visit your site. (I’m using the latest version of Chrome if that helps.) I’ve have a few computers that I use and have visited it multiple times from each one just to check. Not too much of a big deal since I really read from Google Reader mostly, but thought you might like to know that it is affecting some people this way.
Not a frustration though…I can hit that little X in the top corner fairly quickly. LOL
26. April 2010 at 11:56 am
Hi David,
The script sets a cookie, so if you’re blocking cookies from erica.biz, it will continue to show up.
-Erica
26. April 2010 at 9:30 am
Thanks so much for this post! It is very inspiring to have someone willing to be vulnerable and post their own goals, and be transparent about their own business. It really in a concrete way, inspires someone like myself to be able to believe these things are possible. Also, as someone who is seeking to express her authenticity as much as I can on my own blog, I really appreciate you sharing your authentic self so much. This gives you so much personal credibility (as I’m sure you know), which is valuable in a much deeper way than monetary.
I really appreciate all the information on your website, and look forward to reading as much as I can to help me get on my way with my own website.
Thanks again for being you!
Kara
26. April 2010 at 11:09 am
Hi,
i love all that above really and i really like the way you work and care for others. Can i say something? Goals are goals until you get the destiny. I think you skipped the chances of failure. If some one face hurdles in the way to achieve the goals what should he do??? Hope listen back from your side 
. Keep it up love your smile 
Erica,
26. April 2010 at 11:56 am
Hop over the hurdles?
27. April 2010 at 1:18 am
hey Erica,
its the first time i visit your blog but it wont be the last
keep up the good work
28. April 2010 at 9:36 am
Hi, Erica,
Great site, and thanks for sharing your earning. Very helpful.
I’m wondering: do you think you might be doing too much? It seems that you’re going for the volume strategy — launching a lot of products over the course of one year. I’m actually taking a similiar approach, but I wonder if I’d be more effective if I focus on 1 or 2 products, and really hit them out of the ball park.
Keep up the good work.
2. May 2010 at 4:10 pm
Well, you want to make sure that your product is done before you start on the next one. For instance, in the promotion area, I’m just focusing on Guest Post Secrets right now. My goal with each product is to get a steady income stream, whether that be from PPC, other blogs, affiliates…
Sometimes I work on product creation and sometimes I work on promotion, but as long as I get both of them done in a given week, I’m ok with it
-Erica
2. May 2010 at 3:35 pm
That’s what was on my mind, as well Bill. I’m more interested in evolving and building 1 or 2 core products or ideas than launching for volume. I would be concerned about not having time to devote to the intense pre-launch and ongoing marketing. I’m interested in being known for a few, memorable products.
Not that Erica isn’t necessarily doing some, or all of that, but just piping up that I’ve noticed the volume involved. It seems like moving onto the next product before one is complete. I’m curious how it all works, borrows, and draws from one another, it’s pretty fascinating. But then again, Erica has always seemed to have lots of endurance! So am assuming she knows how to work at warp speed.
2. May 2010 at 11:52 pm
So I was wondering if you have a book that shares your tips and hints for growing an online business, or if this is what you discuss in your seminars. How can I get more information? Also, I don’t know if you share this, but what was the business that you sold for 1.1M?
Thanks for all of the great information!
7. May 2010 at 6:09 am
This was wonderful! Thank you so much for solid information. I’d never heard of oDesk. And you are completely right about the cost of living and the lifestyles of those in Third World countries.
I visited the Philippines 9 years ago on a volunteer trip. The people were sweet and the dollar was worth a fortune. I have kept in touch with a young woman I met there who is a single mom with twins. She was selling rice from a stall she set up on the streets, but couldn’t make enough money.
She signed up (with the help of her church) for a computer course so she could do just the type of work you describe here. She’s doing so much better now.