Why Did You Fail To Reach Your Goals?

Well, in November I was pulling in $11k from 2 keywords that ranked on page 1 of Google (bottom half), I was pushing for top 3 positions on Google by the end of December and BAM! Google dance! 1 Site dropped to the 4th page and the other to 7th.

My income from those keywords dropped by 80% since most of it I got from organic traffic. I failed to hit my target :/

Although, 1 site is back on the 1st page (only came back 4 days ago) and the other came back yesterday down to 3rd page so now the patience game begins, and I suuuuuck with that.

But hey, 2012 IS gonna be a good year! Gotta stay positive, always!

More often than not it's not putting the hours in and pushing through the pain. Failing to manage myself well enough and keep organized enough. Sometimes it's from spinning too many plates and eventually they all fall.

When things go bad, for me, that's usually the reason why.

I failed to reach my goals because of information overload and lose focus. This is obviously the most reason why most marketer fail. If you're the type of guy who started on their business but keeps buying ebooks about other business model, then you're like me

When I started IM and choose Adsense, then after buying 10 micro niche sites, I go for Amazon affiliate and I didn't even touch the MNS. Then after creating some Amazon product review sites, I go for website rentals. I hired web designer and developer to create 5 local websites and it costs me around $1,200. Then after the websites are completed, I also didn't even look at it since I read another easy way to earn money online.

And 6 months ago, I discover offline marketing and it catches my interests. Then I stop buying ebooks and focus on this business model. And now I'm successful on it and earning decent income.

Being inconsistent was probably my first failure, I was doing really well with a website, began building a list in the blues guitar genre, and then a few people decided to quarrel with one another about the content in my eBook I was giving away at the time, this disheartened me, and kind of scared me. So I ran away from it, and all I really needed to do was carry on building my list and right now, if I had done so, I'd most probably have a decent list in that niche.

But you live and learn, I'm actually very glad I made this mistake so that I could learn from it and now avoid it, if people want to argue over my content these days, I look at myself to see if I've done something wrong, and try to correct it. People get so close to the finish line online, but at the last minute they give up.

Stay focused, determined, and be open minded.

Thanks, great thread frankm!

Jack.

See this is a valuable thread.

I would have to say personally that I over serviced clients when I first started when I could have used that same time to get newer higher paying clients. This is actually significant because it does not only involve time but also energy. In other words, some clients can drain you.

The other reason on that same line is I under priced my value when starting and did not ramp up that price as fast as I should have. We are in a VERY economically depressed area, but I should not have used that as an excuse to undervalue myself (at least not forever).

Regarding shiny object syndrome, I learned a very valuable lesson this year actually and that is the most valuable piece of information (in terms of dollars it produced with action) was totally FREE and still works to this day yet the half dozen WSO's I bought are all out-of-date or no longer get the results they were originally intended to do.

Lastly, my income is 1/2 online (passive) and 1/2 offline local business. Looking back on it, I should have invested more time into building the passive channels that were working more and more to increase the passive side and reduce the "hard work, high maintenance clients" side. That's my goal this year tho and is so far working as January's passive income has once again topped records. It's REALLY nice to have a money machine (even though my family STILL does not get how I can make money doing VERY little work).

EDIT: Actually thought of the biggest reason just now...not being able to sell the monthly maintenance has caused a HUGE slump in income. Am remedying that now with new business model I will not deviate from.

I bought a new video game system.

I wish I could give a more profound reason but the honest reason I didn't hit my goals last month was because I was too busy playing Darksiders and not focusing on my business.

I did well in December so I decided to treat myself to my own system, one that I don't allow my kids to touch. (I've been an avid gamer since Atari )

The downside of uninterrupted access to this system is that for most of January I was in front of it. A few days ago I was reviewing my numbers and realized that my earnings were down by 35%-42%.
The only difference?
The PS3.
Sure some of it could simply be the post holiday slow down, but not that much.

I've already made the corrections so this month will be better. But I'd forgotten how easy it is to get distracted and how important it is not to be.

Distractions can claim the best of us.

I think I never hit my goals because I set the too high. I stick with the theory that in order to hit big you need to aim high. Perhaps I am aiming too hig, but at least if I get halfway there then I make a lot of money!

Great! Thanks guys!

Have added the following items to the list:

Over-serviced existing clients vs new higher paying ones
Under-priced my value
Not enough time invested in passive income channels
Not selling the 'monthly maintenance'
Bought new video game system!
Set my goals too high (eg Aim for the stars, hit the moon)
Lack of intense focus and desire

Great thread

Thanks everyone!

Frank

Changing of plans.

That's what I do often. I follow a make money plan for a weeks then I find this is too hard for me and not working, so I change to another money making plans, another week later, I feel tired of this plan because I need to do too much work, then I search for another plan.

Biggest thing I see is people not following through, finishing projects and getting them up and running. I am guilty of it myself. Can't make money with when you don't have anything up for sale. So,

Lack of action/Lack of finishing.

I also think another is not having multiple income streams. As others mentioned, you can lose ranks and your money, for example. With multiple streams, you won't lose everything. I've learned that one the hard way too many times.

I am in this field for years and what I have found behind the failure is we want money quickly and don't show passion.Another issue is we dont have a good plan.

Because my goals are too high.

I tried to focus on too many things at once, and so never followed through properly on anything (such as backlinking) as I was always too busy. I also have quite a few sites floating around in cyberspace, sadly neglected!

I have learned to focus on just one thing and concentrate my efforts on getting that working.

sometime I can easily losing focus... lol.. I have to put priority to make my tasks done a lot faster without less distraction..

Great Post. Quite hard to keep yourself motivated in IM, there's no deadline to meet and we have to take COMPLETE responsibility for our projects.

Thanks all, great stuff being shared here! I'm on my phone so will update the list later when I'm home.

Keep it coming

Frank

Ok, wow, the list is updated... thanks everyone, this thread has been very useful!

Failing to realize that I can't do it all!!! I'm haunted by experiences where people have dropped the ball when I was counting on getting something done, so its made me take on too much too often, but I'm working on the whole "trust" issue....

The only true failure is giving up. Everything else is just finding ways that didn't work.

remember put immediate action to see results. not waiting for results

Thanks

Added to the list:

Not realizing I can't do it all
Unable to trust other people
Giving up
Not enough focus on creating value
Not enough immediate action

Frank

I too suffer from the next top WSO and being inundated on which one to focus on.
So far I am focusing on two and everything else I am leaving.
It is all about focused actional passion for me from now on.

TL;DR ALERT

My first big failure came in those struggling early days. Myself and my former partner made a product and a duo of major affiliates (if you know your Clickbank affiliates, they're up there) loved it and were set to give it a big launch.

The opportunity we were offered was massive but said affiliates loved the passion and heart we put into it so much they asked for us to expand it significantly. We were young so we just said yes yes yes to everything and eventually our task size grew so big we were working 80-100 hours a week each and still missing deadlines. We were doing the workload of 10 people and sleeping in regimented shifts.

We created a $600 upsell that was a 16 week video series, each episode/week video was around 8,000 to 10,000 words and we wrote the entire thing (roughly 120,000 words) in around 10 days.

As we got closer and closer to the deadline, we pushed it back and back until we were taking the piss. But in our young naivity (we were 20 at the time) we said "Next time we'll be on time" rather than being frank and expressing the workload was too big. We figured if we missed this opportunity there'd never be another one. As time ticked away and we missed more deadlines we started stealing content as we didn't humanly have time to get through the word count that was needed of us. Huge chunks of it. You've heard of swipe and retype right? Well this was swipe and.... swipe again

Eventually we had a higgle-de-piggeldy product (that was still absolutely outstanding) that was the end result of months of neglecting family time, personal time, relationships, friendships.

We sent it to them and they ran it through copyscape and saw we had stolen huge chunks of content and they were gutted.

We spent a month cleaning it up and tidying things up and gave it to them and they're going to give us 2.5% each or something. They're going to launch it later this year.

This was my first big failure. In ways I'm glad. The months of only seeing my girlfriend for a few hours a week and going nearly 3 months without seeing my Mother really depressed me. It wasn't like the money or the status that pushed us, it was just fear of losing something we'd put heart into. So we knocked our values, stole content and it effed us which in ways was much worse.

Now, things are much better. I'm a lot happier and doing things I really want to do. I think it's important to pace yourself and do things properly instead of quickly.

"Fail, fail and fail again"

I have not succeeded at my goals simply because I have not found the right strategy... yet.