Internet Marketing in 2015 v.s. 2014 ... Your Difference?

Every year people say they are going to go to the gym and the never do. Just because its a new year doesn't mean things are going to change. Im going to do everything the same.

SEO is Becoming Content Marketing.
Content strategy refers to the planning, development, and management of content

Not as much as I should have done, probably; and you're asking a really good and very timely question, here.

In one way I'm in the very lucky position that my main business's main traffic-generation method is a timeless and more or less unchanging one which continues, year by year, to become slightly easier and more productive (it's non-SEO-dependent, and it existed before the internet, but the internet opened up and gradually continues to improve/increase the availability of its execution and profitability).

I think the main things I want/need to do are probably (and maybe even in roughly this order) ...

(i) To diversify further;

(ii) Successfully to recruit, train and employ at least one more reliable, skilled full-time VA (though hugely beneficial in the long run, this is sometimes so difficult and time-consuming, that I keep managing to "leave it for another month or so" );

(iii) To identify, select and get working on a tenth (and maybe even an eleventh) niche for my affiliate-marketing business;

(iv) To continue to investigate and consequate the upgrading of the security of all aspects of my business (i.e. not only the websites);

(v) To think about and probably do something about "my whole hosting issue", perhaps even so that I don't continue having hosting in five different places and manage to increase overall security and reliability at the same time, though I'm not really quite clear, yet, how to combine those objectives;

(vi) (Maybe) to switch to a self-hosted autoresponder service (a huge task and not one I'd look forward to!);

(vii) All the other things I haven't even remembered, at the moment, to put on the list.

How about you, Kelvin?

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Goal for 2015 is to double what I did in 2014.

I also want to diversify my website portfolio. It's never a good idea to have all of your eggs in one basket.

I'm also planning to generate 300 new high-quality content rich articles for 2015 that will generate some high-level traffic.

In 2015, I want to capture more good quality leads and build good relationship with them in long term.

For strong relationship in long term, offline marketing is always better than the online marketing. If possible, I will meet them directly. In online marketing, I hope that I will find prospects / potential customers. So I use both online and offline marketing.

I'm not happy about past 325 days, but, they remain 40 days yet. With IM, Anything can happen.

2015 is right around the corner. But I'm not thinking about next year. I'm trying to figure out how to expand business TODAY. The actions you make now determines your future.

2015? Oh gawwwd. Why'd you have to remind me? We're still in our last-minute holiday crunch! If I could "un-thank" you for a post I would!

Actually though I already do have lots on the 2015 To Do list, just not any well-defined plans. Those will be set at the 2015 Founders Retreat (and Post-Holiday Sanity and Sleep Recovery Tour) in an as-of-yet undisclosed (but very warm) location (one with very cheap flights going to it!)

Here are our 2015 To Do Highlights:

• Redesign. We need to completely redesign the website, making it better looking, easier to navigate and responsive
• Hiring. We plan on hiring at least two people early, hopefully more later in the year (though I'm definitely feeling Alexa's pain just thinking about this one!)
• E-commerce/drop shipping experimentation. I think we could be making a lot more money selling direct vs selling as an affiliate. But I'm not sure. I'm also not sure how much of a pain in the rear it would be or how my current customers would respond. We plan on running a few tests to try to answer these questions and see if a shift in our monetization-strategy might reap dividends.
• Leverage our brand by developing merchandise. People love our site; people love our logo. There's money to be made if we can figure this out
• Blog expansion. We want to make our site the go-to information resource for our niche on the web; we'll use more guest bloggers and make sure the content that we are already writing is better presented
• Go to India. OK, this isn't a huge game changer, but my partner and I have been invited to India by the US State Department to speak about the topics on our website. Probably close to zero business value, but it should be fun!
• Re-architect our web infrastructure. There are some great new AWS features I want to take advantage of in order to streamline our deployment process, boost performance and increase our security
• Develop better reporting systems. The affiliate reports we get from our partners is mostly pretty weak and it's all very disjointed. We have a pretty good idea what sells, when it sells and how to sell it, but I want this to be backed up by data. I also hope to tie our sales data with data from our social media, email campaigns and other activities so we can run experiments and make sure that we're optimizing the return for our efforts.
• Run some PPC experiments. So far almost 100% of our traffic has been free traffic and I know we'd do well to run some targeted ads. I just need the time to figure out how best to do so. Part of that will be linking those campaigns to the data I referenced above.
• Sleep more and take at least one day off per week. Looking at the above, somehow I think this might be the most challenging thing on my list!

Anyway, thanks again for this post -- you've succeeded in making me feel even further behind than I already do!!!

I sold my main business off earlier this year because I fell in love with writing fiction for the Kindle platform.

It has simplified my life because even though I'm writing new business ideas on my white board for 2016, my main focus in 2015 will be writing, writing, writing, and promoting my fictional works; as well as helping other authors along the way since it's more fun succeeding that way.

Yes, I plan on cranking out 3 to 4 quality novels in 2015 and promoting the heck out of them. I plan on writing 4 to 6 days a week, depending on what's going on in my life during that week.

During times that I'm not writing, I'm jotting down business ideas on my iPhone and on my large White board in my home office because I'm looking at my options on what I want to do in 2016 and beyond.

But 2015 is going to be a serious content production year for me.

RoD

Once you create a good foundation for yourself and stick with the basics I don't feel you have to worry to much about changes. Yea you might make little changes but always come back to the basics.

..because we're pretty much in the thick of the final quarter now, I always get that feeling it's that time of year to reflect on whats happened and to see how we can improve on next years campaign.

But one thing is a must for 2015... don't stop learning!

..as my dad would always say to me "if your standing still, your getting left behind" onwards and upwards Kelvin all the best!

Same thing i'm doing now will be the same thing i'm doing next year - just with more money everyday. As far as setting business goals... i dont. I just make sure my profit level is where it needs to be, and if i want to increase it at anytime, i know what to do to make it happen. I know i should be saying things like, "get more consulting clients" or "throw my own seminar". But those wont happen. Everyday imma wake up late, check sales, eat, chill with girl, chill some more, then sleep. Holla.

My goal for 2015 is to make $5,000,000.00

In 2015? Sell more services (with a system in place) and write amazing content for my own brand

Every day is a new day, a new start for me and for my business.
For me, it's just the same, so I don't really need to wait for another year just to set goals.
IM is a continuous process.

Yes another year has ended and for next year I plan to really get serious with my goals and these are:

1. to come up with a doable business plan (something that should be done/completed within 3-month time)

2. Improve my existing websites in terms of content and of course sales conversion

3. Have more time to spend with family and myself. Perhaps I will try to at least find a good way to balance work and personal life

Do more in mobile, more responsive sites.

Avoid being at google's mercy, and recruit new affiliates ;-)