Looking back at 2013

Last year, I did something a little different.  Many of us come up with New Year Resolutions.  In addition to doing a few personal New Year Resolutions, I also did some “Business Resolutions” in 2013, and I published them here.

Now, we are firmly into 2014, and it’s time to have a look back and see how I did in accomplishing my 2013 Business Resolutions.

1. Write 20 eBooks. I resolved in January of 2013 to write 20 new eBooks in the year 2013.  I wildly succeeded on this one!  In fact, I went well over my goal, and I accomplished it more quickly than I expected.  By the middle of February 2013, I had written a total of 31 eBooks!  Going beyond that, I also set up a website to market these new eBooks, and my older ones too.  The project was a great success.  The new bundle of 31 new eBooks were great sellers and made me some nice money in 2013.  I am very pleased with the way that this Business Resolution turned out.
2. Set up an Affiliate Program.  I also resolved in 2013 to set up an Affiliate Program for my eBooks and a few other products too.  I completed this in March of 2013 when I set up a completely new Online Bookstore, the Expat Island Bookstore.  An affiliate program was part of the site from day one.  I am happy with my accomplishment, however, the affiliate program itself has not been much of a success, which is what I expected.  I have done affiliate programs in the past, and they have never been much of a hit, so I expected the same, and that is what I got.  But, I am still happy to have it up and running, maybe it will succeed more in 2014, I can’t say.  I think that part of the reason for lower success is because I am already very successful in my niche and most people who buy books from me do it through my sites, and competitor sites get a lot fewer readers than my own sites get, thus fewer sales through affiliates.  That’s OK, though.  I am happy to have accomplished my goal.
3. Cutting Back.  I resolved in 2013 to cut back on the number of blogs that I post to.  I felt that I was spreading myself too thin, and because of the number of blogs that I own, if I tried to post to all of them on a regular basis, it just would not happen, and because of that, it made me post less frequently than I should to the blogs that matter most to me.  I did make the cutback and carried it on through 2013.  Another resolution bites the dust!
4. Step up Posting.  Hold on… didn’t I just say in #3 that I was going to cut back on posting?  Now I am saying that I wanted to increase posting?  What is going on here?  Well, if you think it over, it really does make sense.  What I meant about “stepping up posting” was to post more frequently on the blogs that matter most to me.  I did that, but not to the extent that I wanted to, so I will be continuing to work on the increased blog posting in 2014.  We can’t be perfect, right? 😉

So there you have it, a review of my 2013 Business Resolutions, and how I did with each one of them.  I felt that I was pretty successful with 3 out of 4, and really #4 was partially accomplished too.  That’s not a bad track record.

On December 31, 2013, I came up with an idea along these lines as well.  It was the last day of the year, and I started thinking about what I had accomplished in 2013. Then, I started thinking about what I had failed to accomplish.  I came up with 3 things that I had said to myself that I would accomplish – one major thing and two minor things.  I decided that I would use these three items as my “Old Year Resolutions” and resolved to complete all three items before the year ended, and I did.  The major thing on the list was that I had resolved to put up a website offering turnkey businesses in the Philippines for sale.  And thus… Your Business in the Philippines was born and completed on December 31, 2013.  I hope that a year from now I can say that the site is quite successful.  Early results are that I am getting a good number of inquiries, but no sales yet.  I feel it is on track.  And, I’m happy that I completed the project before 2013 ended.  I felt that I started off with a clean slate in 2014.

Over the next few days, I will be coming up with a list of business-related goals in 2014 and will write about those over the next few weeks.  Some of the goals will be similar to what you read above.. I’ll explain more over the coming weeks!

How about you, how did you do in 2013?  Let me know in the comments below, and let’s see what we can do to increase your productivity – and mine – in 2014!  Happy New Year.