Goals for 2007

Here it is, the last day of 2006. Amazing how fast time flies by, and another year has past. In between attempting to put my house back together after Christmas, I've been attempting to do some brainstorming and work on goals for 2007. I can't say I've done that well (ha ha).

Nothing all that spectacular has come to me as far as ideas go, but I have put a few things in motion which I'm thinking will help everyone in the new year.

The candle site is moving along so well, I really don't think I need to come up with anything "new" to do with it. Just more SEO work like I have been doing, as well as more link work and promotion of the new blog. Sales are coming in every day - I'm happy. ;)

The scrapbooking site is still coming along. New members are joining every day, so it's doing alright in my book. It's going to be put on the back burner for the time being until I see some real results from the work I've put into it so far. The only thing I plan to work on is a few link exchanges.

Idea Queen needs work again, this time focusing on more holidays. Everything was going great from August clear into late December, but now things have dropped off. I had no pages focused on this time of year or until spring for that matter. It's still pulling in a few hundred visitors a day from the recipe pages, but nothing like it was doing with the holiday pages. It could be doing much better, so it's time for link exchange work. Actually, this site never has had "link page" exchange work done to it, so I guess it's time.

My other concern with Idea Queen is the income. It's not even close to where it should be for the number of visitors it's pulling in. Since it's a resource site, I've been using mostly AdSense for an income source. Lately it's been absolutely pathetic. 200 visitors is NOT worth $2 or less. Something definitely has to be done to improve the income on that site one way or another. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it!

Now if you notice on all site the main goal was link work. I don't know if everyone is still on vacation or not, but I got very little response from link exchange requests. I mean VERY little. Three sites and tons of topics, and maybe 3 exchanges total. NOT cool. I mean what gives? I see link exchange requests all the time! Granted I didn't reply to the ones I saw a few months ago simply because I wasn't working on it at the time. Do you think I can find those now? Heck no!

So I thought what we all REALLY needed was some type of database to find link exchange. No, I'm not talking an automated link exchange directory like you see on some sites or a massive link farm site. But rather a private database of sites always looking for link exchanges. It's an ongoing process, right? We need to ALWAYS work on more links, yes? That's why I set up a yahoo group with a link exchange database. I'm still working out the bugs on it before I officially release it, but it's up anyway. Feel free to sign up and let me know what you think of the idea. :)

Last but not least, I have one more small idea in the back of my head which I'm not quite ready to share yet. I bought a few books on Amazon last night that I've had my eye on for awhile, and one focuses on this idea. The idea came when I was asked to think about what I really love to do. I love marketing, but not just ANY marketing. I love SEO. No, this idea isn't SEO services. I wouldn't want to be responsible for something like that, plus Cricket does such a good job with her classes that I just wouldn't want to step on her toes. This idea does involve SOME SEO though, enough to make me really love what I'd be doing. I'm looking for a few "test subjects" before I officially launch this idea, so I probably won't be saying anything for another week or two. ;) Curious yet?

2006 wasn't all that bad, but I'm determined to make 2007 ten times as great!