I don't know how many of you are paying attention to the calendar, but January has all but come and gone. There are only a few days left in the first month of the year, and it's almost time to order flowers for St. Valentine's Day. Guys, it's very important that you don't forget the flowers. My wife is Superwoman, so she gets the giant flowers every year.

Anyway, earlier this month most of us were all fired up about our goals for the year. A year seems so long, especially when you're trying to set a goal. Because of that, many people recommend that you break your goals into monthly sub-goals.  In fact, I try to do that.  So my question for you is, did you have a goal for January and will you meet it?

As it happens, I set two kinds of Internet Marketing goals for January.  One set of goals is income related, and one set of goals is task related. To be honest with you, I hit the income goal completely by accident and totally missed the task related goal. This is basically a horrible performance on my part. It's "seat of the pants" performance, and that is not a good thing.

All is not lost, however. There are still a few days left in January for me to make some serious progress on my task related goals that will no doubt spill into February.  From my point of view, attaining my Internet marketing goals is very similar to sailing a ship across the ocean in stormy weather using only a compass. The winds really blow you around, but that's okay as long as you stay pointed in the right direction and constantly move toward your destination.

So, tell me about your progress against your big dreams for 2009. I'd love to hear how things are going. Leave me a comment, and let's hold each other accountable.

Have a great day!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem of being a "Jack of All Trades and a Master of None." In that post, I talked about how challenging I found it to work on Internet Marketing (IM) part time. IM can be all-consuming. I complained in that post that I had not actually "finished" anything. That post was written at 32,000 feet over the pacific ocean on the way to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. I guess the air in the passenger cabin must have been thin, because in the same post where I was complaing about how busy I was, I also argued that I should buckle down and increase my post frequency. Go figure.

Garry Conn Warns of Blogger's Demise

Last night, Garry Conn brought all of this back into focus for me with his outstanding post entitled "Is Making Money Blogging Killing You?" In his post, Garry argues that blogging for dollars is a cut-throat competiton, and that it can totally consume you. He compares the blogging mindset to six-man chess, and argues that this 24-hour-a-day competitive lifestyle can impact your relationships, your health, and your mental state. I often say "Blogging Ate My Brain." I think that is what Garry is talking about. To make matters worse, I am not making money blogging. I am not trying to build a blogging empire. I have other plans, and the blog (which I love) is just a small part of the revenue strategy. So, why in the world do I want to redouble my blogging efforts? Answer -- I don't.

Really, Garry makes the strongest of two arguments for a reduced post frequency on MasonWorld.com. Garry's argument is that when you are building readership, you need to allow enough time for people to find your post. Based on my experience on this blog, that is at least two days. The other strong argument has to do with my long term business plan for my internet marketing hobby. Long term, I am interested in getting onto the information marketing end of the internet marketing business. Josh Spaulding warned in a post about information products last November that you need to be careful not to spend too much time blogging when your business plan tell you to work on other things.

MasonWorld Business Plan

So, what is my "business plan?" Well, I plan to have this blog as a resource for people coming after me. It is a journal of my experience. It is not intended to be a big profit center. I am experimenting with four "niche super-sites." The public example of these is the "Elvis Site." These niche super-sites are sites that are more than just MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. They are inteded to contain valuable information, market affiliate products, have user formus, etc. I intend to create and market information products (although I have not identified my ultimate niche yet). I can say that I find viral reports interesting, and I have been checking out Butterfly Reports. I am not sure where that will lead. What I really want is a solid product like Article Marketing Domination -- but not necessarily in the IM niche.

Ultimately, Garry Conn is right on the money -- If you are not careful, blogging will kill you and your business plan.

New Post Frequency

So, effective immediately I am changing my post frequency to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will try to post in the morning on those days. In the mean time, I am planning on increasing my efforts on other core businesses. That will give me even more to write about -- which will be great. Look for those musings here in the coming weeks.

Best regards,
Mark

One of the biggest challenges for me personally working on Internet Marketing part time is focus. As a part time Internet Marketer, I have a very limited amount of time to spend on tasks related to my new hobby. In fact, I try not to spend more than a couple of hours a day on Internet Marketing related activities. When I started out, my goal was to demonstrate that I could make some money on the Internet -- inspired by a segment I saw on the Today Show.

Since that time, I have started several blogs, a link directory, a couple of niche sites, some forums, switched blogging platforms, switched hosting companies, done some business/administrative tasks, read books, listened to podcasts, read and commented on blogs, studied marketing, joined countless affiliate programs, hired writers, won contests, built a mailing list, made friends, hired programmers, purchased software, written php code, changed blog themes many times, chatted on GTalk, and hung out on forums. The one thing that I have not done much of is make money. Go figure.

Speaking of distractions, I am writing this post on a plane bound for Hong Kong using ecto, which I mentioned earlier this week. I think this software is a keeper -- but I have not quite made up my mind. (Too bad they don't have an affiliate program). It does have some limitations that are annoying, however, For example, you cannot add a category or contol the post slug.  My friend Garry Conn likes Blogdesk.  I need to check that out.

Back to my story.  Don't get me wrong. I am having a blast, and I have learned a ton. The problems are that I haven't really finished anything - and the learning is not well documented. As it happens, my wife will tell you that this "unfinished project thing" also happens around the house. Great at starting projects; less great at finishing them. So, I thought it would be interesting to list all the current projects that I have underway or in my mind and see if I could prioritize them. Once again taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook's book, I going to create a Projects page to document all of this so I can keep it straight in my own mind.

Another thing that I plan to do is increase my post frequency on this blog by making sure that I document what I did that day. After all, the value that I am trying to provide is an account of my experience. I am not trying to claim that I can teach people how to make $4B on the Internet this week. I'll categorize the posts by project. So watch for the post count to go up in the coming weeks.

So, what are all these current projects about? I'll work on a list tonight and post it tomorrow.

Best regards,

Mark

It’s that time of of year again – time to take inventory and set some goals for the new year. New Year’s resolutions sound so great in early January, and can be such a beating by the time Spring rolls around. To be honest with you, I don’t even remember my new year’s resolutions from last year. This year, I am determined to make them stick.

I think the way to do that might be to blog about them. After all, if I am blogging about them, I am thinking about them, right?

So, here they are?

• Get Fit
• Get Organized

Sounds simple, right? Well, we’ll see. Look for some post to appear in the coming days! You can track my progress and offer some encouragement.

2008, here we come!