I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Kindle publishing over the past six months or so. I have owned a kindle for well over a year and love it. Being able to download a book on just about any topic is a dream come true for a bookworm like me.

I’ve enjoyed reading quite a few business books and short reports by my colleagues. The image on the right is the cover of a report I picked up just this morning by Denise Wakeman.

Each time I go through these reports and ebooks, I keep thinking that I really should get something up there as well. I have lots of content already written that I could easily turn into a report for Kindle.

…And I’m constantly telling you to repurpose everything you write. Yet, for some reason I haven’t taken my own advice when it comes to publishing on the kindle.

I honestly don’t know what my hangup is. But it’s time to step out of my comfort zone and commit to publishing my first book on Kindle. Consider this post my commitment to get that done before I head to NAMS in Atlanta on February 9th.

There are so any reasons to publish on the kindle platform. It’s an easy way to broaden our reach and further establishing ourselves as experts. Plus there’s the Amazon Author pages, something I took another look at today.

I’ve been following both Ellen Britt and Denise Wakeman on their respective blogs and both have a lot of information about self publishing in general and Kindle publishing in particular.

Today I took a look at their Amazon author pages and noticed something interesting …

You can pull both your twitter feed and your blog feed into your author page and thus share all that content with people browsing the Amazon Website.

As people come across your book and your author page, they may or may not end up buying one of your books or reports, but even if they don’t, they may end up reading your blog (and hopefully signing up for your list). The best part… once you have one book up on kindle and take a few minutes to set up your author page, there’s no extra work involved in capturing that extra traffic.

You can click on the respective images and take a look at the full author pages of Ellen and Denise.

So to recap, you can take existing content and repurpose it into a small ebook or short report to be published for Kindle.

Amazon will then take care of some of the marketing (by giving you exposure in their market place) as well as delivery and customer service.

You also get to syndicate your twitter and blog feeds on your author page.

And let’s not forget about the marketing you can do directly within your short report by encouraging readers to sign up for your list, read your blog, watch some bonus videos etc.

I think I’ve definitely talked myself into giving Kindle publishing a try and will report on the progress I’m making and what I’m learning right here. Stay tuned for more Kindle related news.

Today, I’m going to walk you though my thought process of setting goals for the new year. I like to start with the end in mind. In this case that means staring with the type of lifestyle I would like to have for myself and my family. Why don’t you join me? Grab a pen and paper or fire up your computer and plan along with me. If you’d like, leave a comment sharing your own goals, project ideas and challenges along the way. Together we can make 2012 the year to reach our goals and build our online businesses.

Lifestyle Goals

My main goal for 2012 are to stop worrying about being able to pay the bills, even if there is a major shift in this online industry that may make it harder for small entrepreneurs like myself to run an online business. My second goal is to be able to enjoy time with my family. We’ve taken some steps at the end of this year to make sure that happens. We recently bought a house at the beach. It’s old, small and needs some work, but the lot and location are beautiful and most importantly it’s completely paid for.

To sum it up, my lifestyle goals are two-fold. Make more money and have more time with my family. The more time goal will be accomplished by automating more, outsourcing more and setting up new passive streams of income. I’ll share more of exactly how I’ll do this over the coming weeks and months as I plan and work on various projects.

For now, let’s dig a little deeper into financial goals. But first, take a minute to jot down your own lifestyle goals for 2012. Are they similar to mine? Or is it being able to quit your full-time job? Maybe it’s really making it big this year, building a large online business.

Financial Goals

No matter what your lifestyle goals are, you’re going to need a certain amount of money to reach it. For me, this year is all about financial security. There are a couple of things I want to get accomplished.

Goal #1 – The Emergency Fund:

A big part of feeling financially secure for me is to know that we can pay all our bills for at least six months. I know that no matter what happens, if I have about half a year to work with, I am pretty confident I could rebuild to our current level of income. So the first order of business is to build up our emergency fund to a level where  we can live off of it. This will be tucked away in an interest bearing savings account for quick and easy access.

I highly recommend you work on something like this as soon as possible as well. Not only will you sleep better at night, but it’ll give you a cushion to work with no matter what happens down the road.

Goal #2 – Get Rid Of The Mortgage:

Since we now own a second property outright, we have two options. Either pay off the mortgage of our current main residence over the next year or two (which is entirely possible if we put our mind to doing that), or sell the house and move into the place at the beach for a while. Right now we’re leaning toward the second option. Either way, my goal is for us to either be mortgage free at the end of the year or at least a whole lot closer to it then we are now.

Goal #3 – The Car Fund

Staying with the debt-free theme, it’s time to work on a “car-fund”. Our current cars are running well and paid for, but sooner or later we’ll need to replace one of the vehicles. My goal this year is to plan ahead and have the funds to pay cash for whatever car we end up buying next.

Goal #4 – The Fun Fund

That one is very important to my. My daughter is growing up fast and I want to make sure we have plenty of time and money for fun stuff. Those could be vacations, going to a show, movie or museum or just heading to the store to buy some new books or video games.

Goal #5 – Thinking About Retirement

This is the year to get serious about financial planning for retirement. One of my goals for January is to talk to a financial adviser about Roth IRAs and the likes and to start putting away more money for retirement. I can’t see us not working at least part-time anytime soon, but you never know what the future holds and the more prepared we are, the better.

Goal #6 – The College Fund

I already mentioned my daughter…. she’s now in 3rd grade and it’s time to start thinking about her college education. Not only will starting this now give us plenty of time to save up, but will also allow us to put away more tax-free money. Ideally I would like us to max out on the yearly tax free college savings amount. As with the retirement fund, it’s time to talk to a financial adviser about our options hers.

Other than working on goal #1 first, the order of the rest is somewhat flexible and I’m planning on working towards reaching those goals simultaneously.

Now it’s your turn. Look back at your lifestyle goals. What will it take money-wise to make that happen?

Work Goals

Last, but not least, it’s time to get to work. We have our financial goals written down. Ideally you want to have a dollar amount assigned to each. Don’t forget about current bills and living expenses as well. Once you have some numbers to work with, it’s time to assign projects to those dollar amounts. You can:

• Improve an existing project.
• Start a new project.
• Sell an existing online property.

Let me give you an example. I know my cable and internet bill will be around $100 a  month give or take. I’m budgeting $120 just to be safe. My goal for January will be to m

Anticipating the Pitfalls

The one problem I see in my plan is that by reducing bills that much and going completely debt-free, is that I might get complacent and not push as hard to grow my online income. It would become very easy to get too lazy and just keep stuff at the current rate (which would be plenty to cover monthly bills and enjoy life).

If you’re getting too comfortable with your online business, I recommend setting some lifestyle goals like the ones I listed toward the beginning of this post. Write them on some index card, or create a vision board and keep them on your desk or somewhere else where you see them each day.

At night, sit down and write down three little things you can do first thing in the morning that will move you one step closer to reaching your goals. This will set the tone for the rest of the day and make sure you stay productive and continue to move forward in your online business.

If you’re a big planner, I’ll share a strategy with you tomorrow that will help you plan out your entire year, what you’ll get a accomplished, how to break it down into monthly projects and then daily to-do lists.

P.S. I’d love to hear what you have planned for the new year. Leave a comment with your own goals and how you plan to meet them. If you have some stumbling blocks or aren’t quite sure where to start, let me know about that as well and I’ll see if I can point you in the right direction.

You can earn a good income this way and it’s much faster than building passive streams of income. You’re working for yourself. You can do this while learning the ropes of more passive income business models.

The downside is that it is not true passive income; you’re trading dollars for hours. That makes it hard to take a vacation and of course if you’re sick or can’t work for whatever reason, you don’t get paid. The less you work, the less you make.

What I ended up doing was working just enough to get by and eventually quitting my “RJ” (regular job), while setting aside some time each day to work on my own sites. As my passive income from my niche sites grew, I worked less for others and more for myself.

Here’s a quick tip. If you’re working as a VA or offering some other service online, spend your first hour working on your own sites and passive streams of income. That way, no matter what you’ve done something even if your service or VA work takes over the rest of your day.

Now to the winners…

Fast Action Bonus:

Patti, Angie, Clara and Loretta all used some PLR over the weekend. As promised, I have an extra “fast action bonus for them. Each of them gets a copy of the Affiliate Shortcut Email Marketing report. Put it to good use :)

Daily Affiliate Tasks Membership:

Everybody that participated will get a free 1 month membership to Daily Affiliate Tasks. Since they are all proven action takers, I’m sure they’ll make the most of those weekly lessons and take some huge steps forward in growing their affiliate income.

Easy Link Love Course:

Allegra S. wins a copy of my 13 week beginning link building course. I looking forward to seeing her implement those lessons and watch traffic to her site grow over the coming weeks and months.

Affiliate Niche Pack Of Your Choice:

Loretta wins an affiliate niche pack of her choice from www.AffiliateNichePacks.com. Can’t wait to see what she does with it.

Peg Baron’s PLR:

Angie gets to pick some PLR from Peg Baron’s All Star PLR site. I’ve been ordering a few packs from her site and am loving them.

Tracy’s Easy Affiliate Toolbox:

Last but not least, another prize for Loretta. I just talked to Tracy and we decided that Loretta got so close to getting her product up and running that she deserves a prize. Tracy will write her 1 rocking solo email and 5 text ads to get her affiliate program up and running.

A big huge “Congrats” to all winners. Not only for winning some fun prizes but for taking action!

All winners have been notified by email. Thanks so much for playing along. We’ll do this again sometime.

P.S. Looking for great PLR? Check out my favorite source of quality PLR articles and short reports at http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/easyplr

Right now I’m sitting at the airport in Charlotte waiting to board a plane to Germany. It’s not a fun trip … my grandfather passed away two days ago. I’m heading back to the small German town I was born in to support my family during this sad time.

The reason I’m in this business is because I can leave for 10 days to be with my grandmother, my parents, and the rest of my family. I didn’t have to take a leave of absence or make a quick 3 day dash to Europe to attend the funeral and fly right back. I was able to book a last minute flight and not worry about the cost.

Because of the miracles of modern technology (including scheduled post features in WordPress and Aweber‘s autoresponder features), I can get some work done while I’m waiting for my flight and on the plane that will keep my business running smoothly while I spend time with my loved ones.

We all have days when we question why we’re putting so much time and effort into building and marketing our websites. There are days when things break or don’t work out and I’m tempted to call it quits and get a “real job”. Days like today are a good reminder why I set out to build an online business in the first place.

If you’re having a rough day, or are just getting frustrated because things don’t seem to grow as fast as you’d like them to, remind yourself why you’re in this business.

Let me back up for a minute. At a recent Internet Marketing conference (NAMS 6), I heard Terry Dean speak for the first time and one of the things he mentioned in his presentation was how the Internet is changing our brains and the way we process information. I don’t remember the exact studies he mentioned, but the gist of it was that we have gotten very good at skimming and processing information quickly. As a result our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. We don’t want to read a long article, we skim it, get the info we need and move on.

But it doesn’t stop there… we don’t’ spend a lot of time at anything from reading to building our online business. We hop from idea to idea, niche site to niche site without seeing it all the way through to profitability. I’m certainly guilty of that. How about you? Are you finding it harder to focus on just one thing for long periods of time.

After my “sick-days” I noticed a small change. I was able to concentrate more and focus for longer periods of time. Of course it could be the fact that I got plenty of rest, but I like to think that doing a lot of reading these past few days has made a difference.

What have I been reading? I’m hooked on the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind  for fun (here’s book 1:Wizard’s First Rule (The Sword of Truth)) , and I am also reading two business books at the moment. The first is The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cardone, the other is Carrie Wilkerson’s new book “The Barefoot Executive”.

Note - you can get a sneak peek at the first few chapters of Carrie’s book here: http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/freechapter

What do you think? Is there some truth to the fact that the internet is rewiring our brains? Are you noticing that your attention span is getting shorter?

While I was working on today’s blog post, I came across an interesting article – “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” It’s an interesting read and I was a bit surprised to read that the author is now having trouble reading entire books. Hmm…

P.S. Let me know if you’ve read some good books lately. I’m always looking for something else to read and am setting aside some time each day for reading.

The only difference was the type of list it was. The email that converted at 2%, was a typical free subscriber list. I stay in touch with them regularly both with content (including links to blog posts) and special offers.

The second list, the one converting at 30% was my customer list. These are people that ordered various ebooks, reports and affiliate niche packs from me.

By the way, the conversion rate refers to how many people ended up buying the product that I recommended in the email (it was an affiliate offer).

Lesson Learned - Paying Customers are much more likely to buy again, be it another product of yours or something else that you’re recommending (and hopefully getting a nice affiliate commission on).

Why Does Your Conversion Rate Go Up With Customer Lists?

Let’s talk for a moment why you can expect to see much higher conversion with customers. I think there are two different things that come into play here: Trust and Commitment.

You’ve earned Your Customers Trust

You have already build a lot of trust with someone that decides to open their wallet and pay you some of their hard earned money. Then you deliver with a good product, some surprise bonuses and stellar customer service. What happens next? Your customers like and trust you. This makes them much more open to take you up on any offers or recommendations you have in the future.

Your Customers Have Committed To You

While trust is probably the more obvious emotion at play here, commitment is also working to our advantage. Our customers are very committed to us, simply because they had to jump to quite a few hoops to get to the point were they make it on the customer list.

Think about this for a moment. Your customers have to discover your product one way or another, read your sales letter, click the order button and then fill out a form, enter either their credit card information or move on to paypal to complete the transaction. Then they are busy downloading the product and hopefully spend some time consuming it. That’s a lot of work!

The people that make it all the way through, didn’t “X” out of your sales page, didn’t abandon the shopping cart etc. have shown a commitment to you. They like you and trust your recommendations as we’ve already established and chances are much better that they will click the order button again – be it for another product of yours or an affiliate product you are recommending.

That’s why customer lists will outperform free subscriber lists.

P.S. Ready to start building your own high-converting customer list? Find out how quick and easy it is in this short report. Download  How To Create Small Info Products To Make Affiliate Sales for only $17. But hurry, this introductory price will expire soon!

It starts with just missing a day or two, and then before you know it a week has gone by without a new post. At that point I’ve gotten out of the daily blogging habit and even more devastating, I start to think that I have to come up with something exceptionally good to make up for the lack of posts. It’s silly, I know, but I’m sure I’m not the only person that feels that way about adding new content. It’s a bit like working out. As long as you’re sticking to your regular routine, you’re good, but once you skip a few days, it’s hard to get back to working out regularly.

Here’s how I’m getting over the “Lack of Posts” thing. I started by reminding myself that not each post has to be an epic one. It’s ok to just share some quick tip (like how to get back into blogging today for example) and the most important part is to just do it.

I also signed up for a class on content creation that my good friend Alice Seba from Contentrix just opened back up. If you’d like, you can join me. It’s a 18 week class on content creation that covers everything from what and how to write to copy writing, using ghost writers and PLR, even how to create short reports that will help grow your business. The main focus is on using good content to create more sales, build your subscriber list and get more traffic to your site. I really like this focus on results from the content.

P.S. I’d love to hear how you are overcoming blogging challenges or getting back in the habit of creating any type of content.

The conference is put together by David Perdew who does an amazing job. He invited me to attend as an aide this time which helped me realize just how much work goes into an event like this. Here he is with Nicole Dean, instructor, friend and my roommate. I recommend you take a look at her blog at http://www.nicoleonthenet.com/

Nicole and I have been friends for years and had a great time brainstorming during the event. Which brings up a good point:

Put some thought into who you want to share a room with at an event. You will have some time to connect, work and brainstorm with this person.

One of the reasons I highly recommend the NAMS workshops is the fact that it is broken down into different tracks or rooms. This go around David put together 4 different tracks (beginner 1, beginner 2, intermediate and advanced). This helps make sure that you learn exactly what  you need to move forward no matter where you are at with your online business.

Being an aide in the beginner rooms came with an unexpected bonus. I ended up watching some presentations and workshops that I probably would not have otherwise. During past NAMS conferences I spent most of my time in the Advanced Room, which certainly has helped my business, but I was pleasantly surprised how much I learned in the beginner rooms. It’s always good to be reminded of basic skills that we all let fall by the wayside as we tackle more complex tasks.

Two of my favorite presenters this go around were Lynn Terry and Denise Wakeman.

Denise talked about basic blogging skills including writing compelling titles and posts that include a strong call to action.

Following her presentation she led us in a brilliant workshop that walked us through a content idea exercise that resulted in an editorial schedule with 35 blog posts titles. It’s a simple strategy that I’ll be using regularly. In fact, this blog post was one of the ideas I came up with during the workshop.

Big Lessons Learned:

• Plan your posts ahead of time so you can focus on just writing them.
• Don’t overextend yourself. Writing just one or two posts per week is fine.

To learn more from Denise, visit her blog at http://www.buildabetterblog.com/

Lynn Terry talked about her powerful “From Start To Profit” strategy which takes us all the way from ideas and market research to a profitable website.

Big Lesson Learned: Don’t get distracted by too many new ideas and strategies. Stick with one until it becomes profitable, then rinse and repeat.

To learn more from Lynn visit her blog http://www.clicknewz.com/

The downside of having 4 different presentations/workshops running simultaneously is that you will not be able to attend all of them. I would have loved to sit in when Karon Thackston talked about copywriting and Jeff Herring about repurposing content.

By biggest personal highlight was overcoming my fear of public speaking (which is kinda important since I was invited to be an instructor at NAMS 5 in January).

It all started innocently enough when David asked me to work with a small group of beginners teaching them about setting up a squeeze page. It was a very informal setting in the lobby as you can see in the picture.

Being able to share some of what I’ve learned over the years in an informal setting outside of the presentations has always been one of my favorite parts of going to NAMS conferences.

Next, my good friend Nicole Dean startled me into being on the “Affiliate Marketing Dating Game”. At the end of day 1 of the conference, David set up two “Dating Game” type activities.

First up was Kathleen Gage who asked 3 affiliates questions about how they would promote her product. It was interesting to see all the different approaches people took in promoting an affiliate product from blogging and tweeting to more traditional methods like writing reviews and sending an offer to their email list.

Next up was Nicole Dean in her role as super affiliate. Her task was to ask 3 product owners questions about their affiliate programs to determine which one would be the best fit for her. Right before the game she asked me to volunteer as one of the product owners with an affiliate program.

I as a bit nervous (particularly about not being able to hop on the barstool in front of the whole room), but since I was “just” talking about my affiliate niche pack affiliate program and one of my best friends was asking the questions, I quickly overcame my fear of public speaking and actually had a pretty good time playing the game.

As with the previous one, it was very interesting to hear the different approaches to affiliate marketing and we ended up sharing quite a bit of knowledge about different systems, cookies, commissions and such.

Most importantly though, it gave me the confidence to be part of a Keyword Research Panel the following day. Karon Thackston, Lynn Terry, Dan Morris and I spend 90 minutes talking about anything from the importance of keyword research to what tools we use to how we approach the research in the first place. David Perdew lead us in this discussion and then turned the audio into a product that workshop attendees could sell as affiliates. Quite a few people made their very first affiliate sales this way.

I ended up buying it myself to be able to listen with a pen in hand to what Karon, Lynn and Dan (all of them brilliant online marketers and researchers) had to share. You can order your own copy of the recording for $17 at http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/keywordresearch

Big Lesson Learned: When you step outside your comfort zone you will seem amazing growth both personally and in your business.

Overcome your fears, try something new, learn and apply a new skill. Take some action and watch your business grow.

What can you do this week to step out of your comfort zone?

P.S. I hope I’ll see you at NAMS 5 January 27th – 31st 2010 in Atlanta GA.

P.P.S. If you attended NAMS 4, I’d love to hear what you thought about the conference.

I guess I could start by introducing myself and letting you know what I do and what my plans are for this new site. I’ve actually owned the domain for quite some time now. I’m sure I bought it with some sort of purpose in mind, but to be honest, I don’t remember what it was for. Up until this point I purposely stayed away from building any sort of web presence in the Internet Marketing or Affiliate Marketing Realm. Just figured it was way overcrowded and the sites that were worth-while were created by people who knew a lot more than I did and were making a lot more money as well. The last thing the Net needed was another wannabe shouting out about the latest and greatest tool out there.

What’s changed? I’ve spent the past few years learning, applying and building a web presence and now run several successful websites that allow me and my family to live very comfortably. And I’m ready to give back and share some of the things I’ve figured out along the way. I recently went to conference in Atlanta (NAMS 2) and had a great time talking to other people in my industry. By far my favorite part was being able to share and teach some of the things I knew. After I got back (and played catchup on a few other things), I decided I liked it enough to share on a more regular basis and this blog was born. I hope you will find some useful pieces of advice in here that will help you grow your affiliate or internet marketing business.

Warmly,

P.S. I’m planning on attending the next NAMS (Niche Affiliate Marketing Systems) Conference in Atlanta January 29th – February 1st 2010. I’d love to meet you there.