Projects and Goals for 2012

January 9, 2012 in Business

So how is 2012 treating everyone so far? I have to say, we are only 9 days in and things seem to be turning a corner. Personally 2011 was a great year, and a bad year packed full of business and life lessons. AS per the tradition, I wanted to post updates in the latest projects I’m working on, and I’m going to add some goals for 2012. Also, I noticed something interesting at the end of the year, this blog had over 200,000 Unique visitors last year, which is way more than I would have guess. Of course this blog has posts about local events and issues here in Stone County Arkansas. So lots of local visitors.

Note: I will be posting the good, the bad and the ugly here. As you all know, life as an Internet marketer isn’t all sunshine and roses.

Project Updates

The Elite Affiliate System

Well let’s start off with the just plain ugly. After 12 months of development, we launched the “EAS” System with our former partners. We doubled our market share, increased income by 50%, and then it all went to hell. We found out our Rakeupdate Partners were pulling a “Full Tilt” and spending the operating capital. So we called them on it, made some demands, and made arrangements to end our contract together. Before we knew it. Daniel Persson and Amanda Barret, who is the official RU owner vanished with out money, and the4 money of thousands of poker players money.

Luckily we help most of our affiliate partners get their money and their players back. But we have yet to get most of our players back, and of course none of the money. I was so thankful to all the people who supported us, and now the Rakeupdate thieves will have to stay hidden as long as possible. We also know they won;t be able to scam anyone else too. On the bright side of all this, Eric and I took an idea from concept, to development, too launch successfully. So we learned some good lessons because of this project, sure it didn’t turn out good, but sometimes that happens.

The Twilight Website

Another growing project this year is our now 3 year old website which is a Twilight Fan website. At its peak, the site has gotten 40,000 visitors a day. We have learned how to handle that much traffic, and actually profit by teaming up with some of the official clothing companies. We also become one of the largest affiliates of Cafe Press and Hot Topic, which cam with its own rewards. With at least 1 more movie to come, this project has been a success. We have learned a ton of information from this site, and we have teamed up with a partner to run The Mocking Jay which is based on the Hunger Games movies. The first movie will be out in March, and I predict the movies to be even bigger than Twilight. We get to use our experience with PPC, Adsense, and other non-gaming revenue streams with this site. Should be fun, and the movies are awesome!

The New Auction Website

I have decided to take a chance and I’ve bought some ebay Clone software, and has several mods added to it. In short, this will be a very localized Online Auction website. If you have seen the Online Yard Sale Facebook pages popping up everywhere, then maybe you can understand why I think this will work. Several people have told me the market is already over saturated, but people told me the same thing about Poker Sites too. They may be right, but the investment is small, and I’m not out to make millions. Honestly if I can generate enough to pay for hosting, I’ll be happy. If it is a hit, then it can be scaled up, and it will become a new revenue source.

I have some creative ideas to help build this up initially, so I think it has a shot of being something cool.

New SEO Website

Well I have online poker seo, I sorta hate that it seems limited to just gaming. So, after some though I bought SEO Playbook. I don’t plan on this being just another SEO blog, like the thousands of others already out there. This site will have actually Case Studies, Examples, and a number of ebooks. I have no desire to do something useless, so I will add my own experiences and ideas to the site for others to use.

Golf

I found a new hobby, I’m addicted to golf. So far golf has cost me a lot of money, new clubs, country club memberships, and lessons. Like any good website guy, I also found some domains related to golf. Arkansas Golf was my first purchase, and I’m working on a few more now that are up for auction. Not only has it turned into a new hobby, but just getting out of the office has helped me lose 20lbs. So win win all around.

Consulting

As most of you know, I’ve been consulting the last half of 2011, and I’ll be continuing that into 2012. I’ve been lucky enough to work for some very large poker rooms, and affiliates. I have been asked to help out on some local business projects as well. To top it all off, last week I was asked to handle Marketing for a Political campaign. I’ll post more on that later, but I love a good challenge, and this isn’t a local city counsel campaign, its a very serious campaign, and after giving it some thought I decided to accept the challenge.

So that’s about it, I’m sure you noticed I didn’t bother posting anything Gambling related, I still have some large sites and that’s where I get a majority of my income. I have no plans to build anything new, and poker/casino stuff just doesn’t seem to be that interesting right now. Oh I did finally start to move things under my legal company, Felt Media – So that’s one item off my to do list.

So, I’d love to hear about your projects and goals for 2012, so leave me some comments and let me know what you are up to!

Tags: Arkansas Marketing, Arkansas Web Design