December is always an exciting month for me. It’s one where I feel the holiday spirit, plan out for 2017, and sprint to the finish line of 2016. I also got interviewed in December, and I think you’ll be interested in what I said about digital marketing. With that said, here are some of December’s highlights:
Udemy Power
I initially had a slow start on Udemy, but since my middle of the month promotions, I’ve exceeded 37,000 students.
I’ve also added two courses to my arsenal giving me a total of 23 courses.
Write 1 Book In Under 6 Hours–the retail price is $40 but I lowered the price to $10 for the purposes of this Performance Report.
How To Accomplish Any Stretch Goal–this course is free for everyone.
While it seems like the end of the year has struck, I can very easily publish two additional courses (both free) by the end of the year. One would be about getting more blog traffic while the other would be a free Twitter course. I’ve done all of the blog traffic videos and am just about done with the Twitter course videos.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to surpass 150,000 Udemy students by the end of 2017. At this rate, I need to gain at least 300 students per day. I’ll reach this milestone by creating more free courses.
I’m aiming for 40 courses on my Udemy profile before April 1st.
TSMD
I am NEARLY done with the Total Social Media Domination membership site. I’ve created the Facebook Group, added dozens of videos, and am working on the final stages.
I don’t have much to say about it now. The suspense continues 🙂
90% Of My Christmas List Consisted Of Books
I got many books this Christmas, and it’s my intention to read them all before the next Christmas. I enjoy reading books because they keep my mind sharp on matters relating to my niche.
Learning new things every day also makes it easier for me to come up with blog post ideas and video ideas. Since one of my goals is to come out with one YouTube video EVERY DAY for the entire year, I need as many ideas as I can possibly get.
In total, I got 21 books and I’ve already read a few of them (more on that later).
New Year’s Resolutions
I have mentioned two of my New Year’s resolutions so far. The rest of those resolutions are all included in this video.
Getting more blog traffic has been a recurring goal. With that in mind, I committed to getting 100,000 monthly blog visitors by the end of 2017. I made this goal public in a video that I can’t take off the web now. It’s too late to back out.
My Commitment To My Readers
At the end of 2016, my blog surpassed 700,000 lifetime views. Based on my goal to surpass 100,000 monthly visitors, I realize that, in 2017, my blog will surpass 1 million lifetime views.
To think I started this blog about five years ago…
As I thought about the milestone, I remembered that YOU are one of the many people who will make this milestone possible. To share my thanks, I am committed to providing a new experience on my blog.
I got comfortable with only publishing 1 blog post every week. While those blog posts were valuable, I know as a fact that publish 1 blog post every week isn’t enough. I will gradually increase the number of new blog posts until AT LEAST 1 blog posts gets published on this blog every day!
Here are some ways I plan on publishing 1 new blog post on this blog every day:
Accepting more guest posts: I like to learn from my blog too. In 2016, I publish two guest posts on this blog. While that may not sound like many guest posts, I started offering this option late into the year.
Do a better job with the podcast integration: Right now, my podcast tab leads people to a very basic webpage. In the upcoming weeks, that same tab will lead people to podcast interviews that you can find on this blog. The podcast interviews and the blog posts will now have the same home on the web.
UPDATE: I just got the podcast integration working yesterday with the PowerPress plugin. Huge hat-tip to Tom Corson-Knowles who I mention again in this performance report.
Write an extra blog post myself. I’m getting much better at writing a large quantity of quality, lengthy blog posts. My greatest fear of writing 1 blog post per day was sacrificing value, but I don’t have to do that since I’ll have help.
I am very excited about providing you with more content in 2017…and that doesn’t even include me publishing 1 new YouTube video every day. You can rest assured that some of those videos will end up on my blog.
My New Productivity Format
My productivity workflow is never set in stone. For about two years, I engaged in the weekly scorecard. With this weekly scorecard, I tallied my way to accomplishing a goal and used a checkmark to indicate I accomplished the goal.
My new weekly scorecard is more advanced.
Instead of giving myself weekly goals, I give myself daily minimums. Here’s how a daily minimum and a weekly goal differ:
Weekly Goal: Create 35 videos
Daily Goal: Create AT LEAST 5 videos
The weekly goal results in 35 videos that I can do at any moment I desire. If I really wanted to, I could do all 35 videos in two days. It would be stressful, and missing one of those days would spell “Game Over” for that goal.
The daily minimum makes video creation a habit. This form of goal setting made me feel more comfortable with creating videos. On some days, I find myself doing over a dozen videos in one sitting.
At the end of the week, I’ve created AT LEAST 35 videos. On some weeks, I create exactly 35 videos. On other days, I create over 45 videos. If I feel up to the task, I have no problem with creating additional videos.
The weekly goal structure got me focused, but I limited myself to 35 videos. With the new daily minimums, I can create as many videos as I please as long as I create at least 35 videos.
Books I Read
This portion of my performance report should get broken down into two sections: books I read before Christmas and books I read after Christmas. This month was my first semester of college finals so I didn’t do much reading before the break.
I only managed to listen to Find Your Extraordinary by Jessica Dilullo Herrin. While I don’t like only reading one book in one month, I’m happy I digitally picked this book up.
And the books after Christmas? Oh, I’m glad you asked. These are the books that I read from Christmas Day to the time I published this performance report.
The Kindle Publishing Bible by Tom Corson-Knowles
Secrets Of The Six-Figure Author by Tom Corson-Knowles
Email Marketing Mastery by Tom Corson-Knowles
What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin
Content Machine by Dan Norris
There was one day in which I read two books. That made me feel great considering I had been slacking for the entire month. It’s also worth noting that I am also in the middle of reading The Success System That Never Fails by W. Clement Stone.
Blog Posts I Wrote
5 Social Media Lessons Pool Taught Me
23 Lessons I Learned From My Podcast In 2016
How I Went From Zero Books To Reading 10 Books Every Month
I’m honestly not very impressed with the quantity of blog posts. I know that each of them are valuable, but I want to provide more content for readers like you. I address this issue later in my performance report.
Podcast Episodes I Published
A glitch from UpWork combined with an inefficient workflow only resulted in two episodes this month. This is the last month that I will forget to do a weekly episode.
Episode 17: How To Host A Successful Event With Ramon Ray
Episode 18: How To Get Customers To Eagerly Buy Your Books With Tom Corson-Knowles
Both of those interviews are jam-packed with value. In terms of my workflow, I would do the interview, send it to my audio editor, and do the outro a few days later. The problem is that this would cut too close to the episode publication date.
I literally saved my outros for the last minute, and that didn’t go well since my audio editor was given very little time.
Now I do the outros immediately after I finish every interview. It saves me from frustration and the inability to serve my audience with my podcast.
January Goals
For most of my performance reports, the goals for the next month were rarely connected. The great part about coming out with a New Year’s resolutions video is that I am now very clear with what I need to do from now until the end of 2017. With that said, these are my goals for January:
#1: Surpass 1,000 Blog Visitors In 1 Day
I have achieved this milestone before, but I honestly don’t remember the last time I achieved it. To enlighten my memory, I’ve decided that I will accomplish that goal in January 2017.
My email list will be a critical factor that allows me to surpass 1,000 blog visitors in 1 day.
#2: Get My 1st TSMD Sale
I’m virtually ready to launch TSMD, and I’m getting its first sale this month. I will promote TSMD through Facebook advertising. Since TSMD is a $47/mo membership site, I expect to have a strong ROI from the Facebook ad I run.
#3: Have Videos Scheduled Past March
I currently have videos scheduled through January, but I want to strengthen my buffer. Creating videos isn’t a problem for me anymore. With a minimum goal of five videos per day, I’ll create 150 videos this month. That gives me at least 90 videos that I can dedicate to training courses and TSMD.
To achieve my other video related goals, I envision myself doing well over 10 videos on some days.
#4: Get 20 Guest Posts In The Queue
Every day, for the rest of the month, I will contact at least four people and invite them to write content for my blog. Getting guest contributors will allow me to learn from my blog and provide you with a better experience.
By following this plan, I’ll contact at least 124 guest bloggers by the end of the month.
If 16.2% of the guest bloggers I contact submit a quality guest post, then I have achieved my goal. This small approval percentage is the fuel behind my goal.
If I only contacted 20 guest bloggers in January, I’d have to hope that all 20 of those guest bloggers submitted quality guest posts. The margin for success is very small. Contacting 124 guest bloggers in January greatly expands my margin for success. The bigger my margin for success is, the better.
The cool thing is that as I get more guest posts on my blog, more people will submit their guest posts. Eventually, at least four people will submit their guest posts each day. That will be very cool.
#5: Publish At Least 16 Blog Posts
This is a big step for me. I’m slowly getting back to publishing 1 blog post per day. In one month, I will go from publishing 4 blog posts per month to publishing 4 blog posts per week.
I’ve made bigger leaps before 🙂
But enough blabbering. Here’s how I’ll publish at least 16 blog posts this month:
1: I write and publish two blog posts every week. These are the blog posts that you are accustomed to reading on my blog.
2: I complete the podcast integration. I publish new episodes on my podcast every Wednesday. So far, all podcast episodes exist on a separate entity. I will bring them to this blog to provide a new method of consuming content — audio. Previously I’ve only offered written content and videos.
UPDATE: I literally just figured this out. I apologize for an update on the same topic, but now I can focus on the artwork for each episode and using pictures to highlight the guests better.
3: Publish one guest post each week. I currently have no guest posts in the queue. If you know someone or would like to contribute following these guidelines, I’d love to have your guest post. I do have several guest bloggers who are interested in writing content for my blog, so I need at least four of them to give me quality posts by the end of January. If I get more guest posts, then I simply publish more content.
And that doesn’t include the fact that I’ll be publishing 1 YouTube video every day of the year.
#6: Create My 32nd Udemy Course
As of writing, I currently have published 23 Udemy courses. By the time you read this, chances are I’ve published a few others. While the New Year is rapidly approaching, I’m squeezing out as many valuable courses on Udemy as possible before 2016 comes to a close.
My goal for the end of 2017 is to have at least 50 Udemy courses. Publishing my 32nd course at the end of January means I only have to complete 18 courses to reach my minimum goal. 18 Udemy courses in 11 months is very doable for me…especially when summer rolls along.
Also, I’m still in the middle of my winter break. I will capitalize on the extra time to make this goal a reality.
#7: Surpass 50,000 Udemy Students
Between now and the end of January, I will have added nine courses to my arsenal. Those nine courses will be pivotal for me to surpass 50,000 Udemy students in January 2017.
Accomplishing this goal is dependent on my creating the additional courses. I know how to promote them. It’s just a matter of having new training courses to promote.
#8: Read 10 Books
I got a lot of books during Christmas. Now I have to read through them. I am currently researching to discover which method of speed reading will allow me to achieve the best results without blurring my vision.
I am excited to go through them. I’ll set a time at night to read through books. That way, it’s easier for me to fall asleep afterwards.
#9: Reassess How I Use Twitter
I believe a few small tweaks to my Twitter strategy will double my traffic and save me money and/or time. Here’s are some of the things I’ll reassess in January:
Outsourcing Costs—I think I could find five minutes in my day to do the bulk file uploads. If adding an extra task on my plate makes me go crazy, I’ll outsource it. I can also take on more work for my Twitter strategy and outsource more tasks in exchange.
The Tweets—I need to share more of my new content more often. Expect more tweets about my podcast episodes too! I might even tweet once every five minutes. I’m back to experimenting with new tactics. I also need to get better at including pictures within my tweets.
In Conclusion
This performance report is my last performance report of 2016. I wrote this performance report with my New Year’s resolutions in mind. I don’t fully know how to accomplish about half of them, but I’ll figure them out as I go.
Each performance report in 2017 will focus on my resolutions. All of my goals excite me, but the most exciting thing will be revamping this blog with new content at a more frequent rate.
Now that I think of it, a weekly Q&A blog post doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. 2017 is going to be a great year in my journey, and I hope you’ll stick with me to see its completion.
What were your thoughts on this performance report? Have any tips on accomplishing New Year’s resolutions? What are your goals for 2017? Sound off in the comments section below.
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