Step 2 – What did you spend and make this year
Now a warning here – You may not like what you are seeing doing this exercise especially if your business is mediocre to poor. Even if you are doing well though don’t skip this step because you will find things here to be addressed for improvement.
If you have been keeping good financial records this will be easy. If you have not then it is time to start. Some of these things will be specific to what I have found for me but…
You will be able to apply the same items to your business model.
Look at everything you have purchased and see if you are actually using it. If you are not using it should you be? If it fits into your business and you are paying for a service but not using it this may be an easy way to increase your results.
If you are not using it and it does not fit your business get rid of it.
Now depending on your business model these items will be different.
For me I use a variety of PLR products to create additional revenue streams in various niches. One of the things I found when doing this was a new product with a domain that I had purchased and then forgot about it.
Usually I add that type of thing on my to do list on Free Mind immediately but for some reason got interrupted and never added it. So I ended up with the costs of a domain and the PLR pack with no hopes of a return because I had done nothing with it.
Now look at what is working and generating income. Is it increasing each month? Is it a seasonal product that you need to schedule some promotion for next year. I have a few of these and set reminders a few months ahead of time to freshen them up.
Doing this allowed me to find a niche product that did well for 6 months but had been tailing off now. I looked at the web stats and saw that traffic had decreased but as this was a year round niche all it needed was some fresh content to build the traffic up. So something to add to the to do list and easy to outsource because the product had proven to sell if it got traffic so spending for content was an easy decision.
It allowed me to set up reminders to add additional content every few months and check the stats to make sure of the traffic it was getting.
There were other items that had not done anything despite decent traffic. On this one I just set the domains to expire and a note to delete the account when they did. Now if I thought there would be good ongoing potential I may have worked on the site and not set it to delete but in this case for me it was a dud.
As I continue to review all of these items I try to cut wasteful expenditures and add to what is working. I also create items for the to do list and reminders for the coming year.
Next I look at what has been successful and how I can increase it. If a certain niche has proven out what else can I do there to increase my profits. Expanding where you have success and leveraging it can be much easier than trying something new.
Next time I will talk about looking at your systems and improving them.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don't personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
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