I am really looking forward to 2008. I am very motivated to continue down the path I am on. 2007 was a good year for my business – even though it did not develop as far as I had hoped for, but what gives. I think it is always to set lofty goals and works towards those compared to setting small goals that do not pose a challenge. I like challenges. So, my goals will be lofty again for 2008. I want to grow my business further – further than I pushed it anywhere before. My main area I am going to concentrate on will be affiliate marketing. I leveled out on my Google Adsense earnings and I hate the dependency I have on Adsense. I do like Google Adsense as the 4-figure income I make from it almost every month allows me to finance the efforts in other areas (PPC Marketing, Software, Hardware, Education, etc.) of my business. But Google Adsense is very unstable and I would not like to see it again to be my major source of income. The last quarter of 2007 has seens some larger direct advertising sales which gave me some good income and I want to expand that area next year. I am also working hard to expand my affiliate marketing efforts. The second half of 2007 has seen more income coming from that area and at this point I would be able to substain the loss of Google Adsense income if (god forbids) I would be faced with being removed from the Google Adsense program for whatever reason.

I will still be active in SEO for my sites, but I think I want to push my PPC marketing efforts more. It removes some dependencies on Google as well. I have always been a friend of several streams of income and that expands to having several streams of how traffic is driven to my websites. A large forum of mine is pretty much driven by word of mouth and Google in a 50/50 ratio. Considering that Google sends 500+ of visitors every day, you can imagine what that means for word of mouth traffic. The niche this forum is in is not an extremely high paying one, but it is very steady and stable. Anyway – back to my outlook for 2008. As mentioned before I will push my affiliate marketing efforts combined with PPC marketing. I am not handing out some top secrets if I mention here that I am getting ready for the tax return season here in the USA. Last year in February I bought a good domain name and got a small site indexed and listed in search engines since then. For the last few days I have been revamping the site with a really nice design and more unique content that I am writing. I also started advertising the site a little more to increase natural traffic. I still have to design the landing pages for the soon to be out tax affiliate marketing programs. I know, I know – that will be a busy market to be in come mid-January, but I think there is room for me as well and to make some money from it. The nice thing is that this market is really hot for a while and that there are several ways to make money. So, my goal is to make a net profit of at least $2,500 from it. I know, I know – it is small compared to the volume that is out there and if things turn out to be better I am the last one to complain. But I will be working on follow-up projects as well that will cover the time come April. And realisticly considering the time per day I have available for my business is not enough unless I really hit gold with one of my efforts. Another goal is to grow the business to a volume that makes 50% of my income from my full-time job (that’s a lofty goal already since I do not work for something even close to minimum wage). Building up cash at the same time will allow me to make some other decisions down the road eventually.

Another goal is to make it to one of the major conferences next year. 2007 I made it out to Seattle to the SEOMOZ training seminar. For 2008 I might look at one of the affiliate summits or maybe even PubCon towards the end of the year. The chance to do some networking and eventually to gain some knowledge from the conference speakers is something I am really looking forward to. If you can recommend a certain event, please feel free to post in the comments.

Oh, well …. it is getting late. It’s almost Christmas Eve and I have been working the night away. I will not be busy in affiliate marketing for the next few days, but I will not be lazy, too. Anway – Have a Merry Christmas if that is what you celebrate. If you celebrate something different or nothing at all – all the best to you, too. Have a great 2008.

Christoph