David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

As Christmas draws near and sales (apparently) have peaked, it's time to think about what went "wrong" in the lead up to Christmas and what the plan of action for next year will be.

Yippee :-(
 
1) Focus On Specific Sectors

Rather than try and be the jack of all trades, 2009 will see my efforts concentrated onto a handful of niches. Regular, unique and fresh content is the order of the day in a variety of diverse, but niche, areas more so to combat my own boredom than for any other purpose.

2) Develop Communities

Social networking sites have proved that people like to belong to groups. They like to express their opinions and chat to friends and family. My sites have proved that getting such users to comment is a right royal pain in the behind.

Nevertheless, this is an area that I can see growing and worth looking into so long as it's handled correctly. Social media savvy users tend to be able to spot advertising, no matter how discreet it is.

3) Update Neglected Sites

There's a couple of sites that really need updating and despite saying this for a year, I've always found excuses not to.

Along with this, it's time to rationalise the links and make sure that I'm using the most logical networks for each merchant. I'd like to concentrate my links to 3 or 4 networks rather than the oodles that I use at the moment.

4) Remember To Start Christmas Activities Earlier

In September I thought about Christmas. In October and November I also thought about it so more. The problem is I needed to actually do something. Next year, I need to think about this in July so that by September, I can action anything that needs to be done. Having said that, I'm hoping that Point 1 also doubles up as the "thinking" part.

5) Forget Competitions & Incentives?

I need to concentrate more on getting more content out there. Whilst some competitions and incentives are great (especially a certain holiday which came at just the right time), I've been suckered into some that were just plain pointless and some I believe have yet to be drawn, despite closing in Summer.

I read somewhere that sales based competitions are there to reward the big boys for doing what they do normally whilst making the smaller fish work harder in an attempt to win something. Perhaps there's some truth to this?

Therefore, it may be worthwhile to ignore such incentives and competitions. Having said that, every New Years Resolutions list needs something that can be broken so this may well be it. After all, I'm a sucker for freebies.

6) Set Some Targets

I'm considering a return to the time planner idea that came and went. Whilst it was here, I got way more work done than when it was not. Seems like a worthwhile thing to do in that case.

7) Peek At The Analytics

I've got mind boggling amounts of keyword data and other brick-a-brack that could be very useful indeed. The only problem is that it rarely gets used as I rarely have time to use it.