1-Year Plan

By: 
Tom
 | 
Updated: 
July 10, 2018

“If you don’t design your life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

Jim Rohn

In my first blog post, I talked about passive income businesses and my first business idea.

Today, we'll walk through my 1-year plan, including the vision, goals, and timeline.

First, let's start with the Vision.

Vision: What Does Success Look Like?

I always start a plan with the end in mind.

It's like sailing a ship - you want to know the destination before leaving the harbour.

My Vision

  • To become the most trusted website on acne scars
  • To provide practical content supported by medical studies
  • To improve my readers' quality of life
  • To generate recurring income from affiliate marketing and ebooks
  • To reduce the time I spend on this business so it truly becomes passive income

In summary, I'm creating the "how-to" guide on acne scars that I wish I had.

Now, let's turn to the milestones on this journey: Goals.

Goals: How Will I Measure My Progress?

1-Year Plan - Goals

1. Publish an ebook

My top priority is publishing an ebook on acne scars. Here's why:

(i) ebooks are popular products

You've probably seen ebooks before as study guides, interview materials, or "how-to" manuals, among others. In general, people buy an ebook because of:

(a) Convenience

An ebook provides a concise summary of all the important content. This saves the reader time - and time is money.

(b) Greater Scope

The ebook may go beyond the scope of free content. This includes more details, examples, exercises, tutorials, and audio or video supplements.

(ii) ebooks are recurring and scalable

(a) Recurring

As with traditional books, a well-written ebook can become a "go-to" resource for beginners. This means there is recurring demand as new beginners learn about the topic.

(b) Scalable

Selling your own products generally carries higher margins than selling someone else's products (affiliate marketing).

Suppose the ebook sells for $30 and affiliate marketing commissions are $5 per referral. With just 10 ebook customers, you'd make the same sales as 60 referrals.

However, selling your own products is far more difficult. Readers must trust your site and feel that they are getting something of value.

Ebook vs Affiliate Marketing

2. Write 50+ Blog Posts

The blog post is the bread and butter of most sites.

My plan for writing blog posts is twofold:

(i) Write blog posts using my ebook research

As I learn more about my topic, I'll write blog posts along the way.

This helps me better understand the topic while providing content for the site.

(ii) Reuse blog posts to write the ebook

Once I finish my research, I can reuse the blog posts for the ebook.

3. 750+ Visits per Month

Goals 1 and 2 won't matter if no one is reading my content.

So my last goal is to target 750+ visits per month.

How did I come up with 750? I looked at the performance of two similar websites.

Using SEMRush (an SEO tool), I checked the historical traffic of Super Natural Acne Treatment and Acne Einstein (screenshots below).

Both achieved ~1,000 visits per month in about a year's time. I adjusted that number to 750 as the search volume for acne scars is lower than for acne.

SEMRush Report on Supernatural Acne Treatment

SEMRush - Super Natural Acne Treatment

SEMRush Report on Acne Einstein

SEMRush - Acne Einstein

Timeline: When Will I Achieve My Goals?

I've split my 1-year plan into 3 distinct phases.

Timeline

Phase I: Foundations

In this phase, I'll develop the foundational skills required to build a successful website and work effectively as a solo entrepreneur:

  • Learning WordPress
  • Getting setup (themes, plugins, layout, etc.)
  • Learning basic SEO
  • Developing a daily routine
  • Adopting a productivity system (time management, scheduling, to-do lists) - I'm looking into "Getting Things Done" (GTD) by David Allen
  • Identify skill gaps and how to address them (for example, I lack design skills so I'll use freelancers for logos and graphics)

Phase II: Content Curation

Next, I'll be reading medical journals and writing blog posts. I call this content "curation" rather than "creation" because I'm taking pieces of what already exists and aggregating it.

  • Execute research plan and write blog posts
  • Look for ways to improve my research method and writing process
  • Compile blog posts into ebook

Phase III: Distribution

The final phase is distribution and increasing traffic to the website.

I'll use social media appropriately and learn to optimize SEO.

Last Words

Thanks for reading this post! Stay tuned for more details on my journey!

Cheers,

Tom

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