During our last Cross Blog Conversation, Lynn Terry asked a really hard question. You’d think I’d been avoiding her, but I’ve just been busy with the holidays (and a few upcoming projects):

Nicole – If you decided to double your online income within 6 months, where would you start in order to accomplish that goal?

Hey Lynn,

First of all, I really enjoyed reading your blog post about your planning for 2008. I actually have a similar process that I’ll be releasing in a report soon. (Great minds think alike!)

I loved what you said “The nature of an online business makes it easy to work in spurts.” This is exactly how I work. I get the “high” of a new project or a new JV and then blast through it and use a ton of energy and then take a break to unwind. Thankfully most of my clients understand that and appreciate the fact that I work best when I’m inspired.

And, my “Quest for Success” continues this year, as well. Perhaps we’ll run into each other at a conference.
—
Anyway, back to your question…

I would very much like to double my income this year. I more than doubled it last year, so why the heck not, right? Of course, there are many ways to do that, but which ones am I picking?

Hmm… you caught me. I haven’t decided yet. I have a general idea in my head, but haven’t thoroughly sat down to sketch it out.

So, here’s what I’ll do. I will make an overall plan for doubling my income this year, here, live, while writing to you. You may have read in my “Brain Dump” blog post that I often find out how I really feel while writing, so we’ll see what comes out.

So, here goes…

Jimmy D. Brown talks about the three keys to making more money on his page at www.ListandTrafficNow.com (about 1/2 way down “How To Make As Much Money From Your Internet Business As You Want”). It’s great info.

To summarize (although I still recommend you read the whole thing), the three keys are:

1. Find more potential customers/leads.
2. Convert more of those people into paying customers.
3. Get those paying customers to spend more money with you.

I agree. So, I will focus on

1. Getting more traffic/leads.
2. Testing and tracking and tweaking and improving my sales message.
3. Coming out with new products to get those people to stick around and buy more.
4. And I’ll add streamlining, systematizing, and “Getting rid of the baggage.” (Basically cleaning house.)

Now, I know that’s pretty general, and could be applied in any number of ways, so here are the top ways I will do each… of course these could change, as I’m just brainstorming here. (I’ll have to print this out and take notes and plan from it. lol.) Of course, this info will be applied in my own business and for my clients, as well.

Get More Traffic and Leads.

I will focus on a few things here. Writing more articles & reports to increase my expert status, and providing those same articles and reports to my affiliates to turn them viral. And, submitting them to appropriate sites, too, of course. I have used this service to submit my articles for years, and love them.

Speaking of affiliates, I plan to continue to offer my affiliates reasons and resources to promote me.

I am also going to experiment this year with offering resale rights. Either that or I’m going to have some lower price items that I offer a very high commission on to get them into as many hands as possible.

I’ve started experimenting with buying ezine solo ads. I’d never done it before last year, and I’ve found a LOT of “duds” but I also found two sites that I’m having good luck with. The only way one would know, though, is through testing, which I’ll talk about next. Speaking of ezine ads, my estimated taxes for last year were a little scary, so on December 31st, I spent well over $1000 buying ezine ads for next year just to increase my expenses. (And, I bought several other things, as well.) Although ezine ads aren’t free, I do enjoy being able to get my message in front of a whole bunch of targeted leads. It’s quick and can be effective. I use an adtracker to find out which places are generating click throughs and leads, and the number of sales each ad makes. It works well, because it actually can tell me which ads are getting leads (and the number) as well as the number of sales from each ad.

Of course, JVs would be the other HUGE way to get more leads. And, I’m hoping to arrange more of these this year, too.

Converting Leads to Customers.

I love to test my web pages! It helps you to figure out which of your sales pages is winning. In fact, it’s extremely addictive. I love going in and deleting old sales pages because they weren’t selling as well — knowing I just gave myself a raise.

I would also like to improve my copywriting skills this year to convert more leads to customers.

And, of course, continue to add helpful messages to my autoresponder to stay in contact with leads.

Multiple Opportunities for Income from Each Customer.

I will, hopefully, be releasing more products this year, so those who want to purchase my products have plenty to buy. (Again, I have to sketch that out better, by month.)

Cleaning House (Streamlining & Getting Rid of Baggage).

I plan to sell off approximately 1/3 of my sites. It’s just too much to manage, even with my wonderful helpers. I take that back. It’s not too much to manage, but it’s more than I WANT to manage at this point. I just don’t have the desire to be in so many niches. I’m ready to get that laser targeting that Kelly always talks about.
And, I am trying to get better systems into place for my business, in general. I have systems in place for certain projects, but looking at my whole business… well, I have room for improvement.

Now for your questions, Lynn.

Business: Who are your top five mentors? And, why?
Fun: How do you drink your coffee?
I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Nicole

Keep an eye on Lynn’s Blog to read her reply.