2019 is around the corner and it's about time to evaluate 2018. You can do this as well but let me just share mine first.
And I'll gonna do this in an HONEST, REAL, and PERSONAL way.
I know a lot of folks out there who wanna hype all things out by just showing the great things and hiding their failures.
Actually, even my 7-figure mentor had mistakes and wrong decisions, so if you see people just bragging about their great results without mentioning about their failures, they are actually not completely honest.
Also, I'll not just talk about video stuff but also how my online business went in general...
A year of recovery
I did a BIG bold move in 2017 that really affected the way I did business this year.
At the end of 2016, I enrolled into a premium course that inspired me to go the NEXT LEVEL in my online business.
While that course is amazing and I learned a lot from it, I went "the next level" a bit too much, that almost caused my business to drown.
I was so excited that I made a really big step but I realized I'm not yet ready for it.
I went from earning 5-figures from multiple products to losing a lot of money in a single product.
But I have great reasons why I did that big step.
I wanted to leave the noisy, overly-hyped, underpriced, and crazy internet marketing stuff on JVZoo, WarriorPlus, and the likes, and build my own premium course and focus on more serious students.
While that is still my long term goal up to now, I realized I cannot just jump over there right away.
I realized that I still have to do baby steps for me to arrive there.
In 2018, I started to do those baby steps and recovered from my loss from that big step.
Monthly outsourcing didn't work well for me
A lot of gurus (including my mentor) are teaching online business owners to outsource most of your tasks so you can focus on more important things, which is to manage your business.
However, we (had a partner at that time) tried monthly outsourcing and it didn't work well for us.
I still do outsourcing from time to time, but that's only if I need some special tasks or output that I cannot do, like voice overs.
But when we tried to sign up to a design company that we are paying every month, we had to stop it at some point.
The company is great and they did awesome jobs for our sales pages.
We also were able to save a lot of time and energy because they did tasks that we should be doing.
However, we have to stop our subscription because, honestly, we don't need their service every single month and it's a waste of money paying them during those months that we are not using their service.
Besides, I can actually do their tasks and I have enough time to do them.
Having a team didn't work well too
My mentor talked about building a team and I'm so excited to have one as well.
And so after successfully partnering with a friend in a certain product and meeting my previous fellow video editor back then, we decided to team up.
We had amazing times planning, drinking coffee and beer, etc. and we thought we had a good start.
There are 3 of us and these guys are great in what they do.
However, things didn't work well along the way so we decided to discontinue.
I realized we are not yet ready to have a team and it's still better for us to do things individually in our own careers (which we are doing now).
My partner and I took my previous video editing partner as our designer and planned to train him to do some VA stuff as well.
Again, I personally was able to have a lot more time for myself because most of the tasks I was previously doing were passed to him.
But to be honest, I was not really spending my free time to manage our business.
Rather, it just made me lazy doing almost nothing because anyway, someone is doing things for us.
After a while, we decided to discontinue the team and things actually got better for all of us after that.
Personally, I realized I'm not yet ready to have a team.
Of course, having a team is great, but it's not yet the right time for me as I can still work things out myself for now.
Again, baby steps...
Promoted better affiliate products...
I already mentioned this towards the end of 2017.
While I would like to totally go out from promoting others' products and just focus on my own, I realized I still have to review affiliate offers.
Most folks out there tend to overly-hype things and I should step in and tell the truth (most IM products are actually crap).
And I'll not gonna deny that I also needed some extra cash from some affiliate products I'm promoting.
I needed them during months that I'm not releasing my own product.
But at least this year, I did better in choosing the better quality products.
Released my own products - updated courses and tried stocks
This year, I also updated some of my previous courses and re-released them.
Like the first releases, they worked really well as I always created QUALITY training.
But I noticed there's a bit of a decline with the number of sales this time compared to the previous years.
Well, I realized it happened to everyone when I talked to other marketers too.
But that's alright. I guess buyers now became smarter and they don't just buy every product they see.
So is it now time for me to move out and create more premium course and charge higher? We'll see, but again, I still have to do this slowly.
Another new thing I did this year is that, I release animated element stocks.
I just released courses before and it's only this year that I launched element stocks as well.
They also went well and they are even easier to prepare compared to courses.
However, I'm actually more personally fulfilled with doing courses than releasing a collection.
So next year, I might just return to doing courses again.
Things I learned this year...
- Have a BIG goal but take baby steps to get there. Making a big step right away will just put your business into so much risk.
- Enroll in premium courses and probably even join masterminds because you can learn what really works from people who's been there. However, you still need to take so much action so you'll learn what really works for you.
- Having a team and paying an outsourcing monthly is not yet for me at the moment.
- Creating and selling courses is still the best for me as I'm more fulfilled in doing it. However, I need to create a main premium course where I'll lead my customers to.
- Most internet marketing products sold these days are overly hyped and I have to be there to show the truth about these products.
What lies ahead...
With all these experiences this year, what will I do then in 2019?
Well, I'll definitely create another annual plan and goal, and I'm sure I'll do a more realistic and better one, based on my experience, and not just on what gurus out there are telling.
I'll continue to focus on building my main premium course and start my VIP group coaching as well.
But I know not everyone can join me in that level yet so I'll still continue to create more affordable front-end courses.
Still, my goal is to bring students to my premium course and even to my group coaching so they can become more serious in achieving their goals.
So if you're reading this and wanna be more serious in your video and internet marketing journey, you can join me soon.
You know, buying each of those overly-hyped apps from marketers out there won't make you successful.
Of course, there are some products that are also great (so you always have to checkout my reviews), but it's your taking action by following a program that makes you achieve your goals.
How about you?
How was your 2018? You can share your experience by adding a comment below.
I also want to talk more about a lot more things on what to come in 2019 in a webinar.
And for me to be able to address your needs better, kindly spend just 3 minutes to answer the survey I created...
