Today’s wrap is going to be short, earlier in the week I got one of those whiteboards that I had been thinking of getting for year’s and just never got around to doing.

I then put everything I had floating around in my head. “not good”

Not a good idea to fill it up like this.

Bad Idea way too much stuff as I have learnt in the past list’s or whiteboards are there to help you not overwhelm you, with about 6 months work on the board I ended up not knowing where to start and doing next to nothing for a few days.

Anyways I have now wiped it clean and added just what can be done for the day, “I can always refer back to the photo” The board has helped in a few other ways though adding a new product that floats through my mind to sell and needs to be researched. It has also allowed me to see very clearly what I need to be doing now, and that is anything that produces instant cash.

Luckily I have an extensive background with eBay and just a little less with other sales channels. When I arrived in Thailand I started looking for things I could easily sell on eBay “I’m inquisitive by nature and can happily walk around markets for hours” coming from America I had a pretty good Idea what I wanted small, repeatable, and upwards of $15 profit per sale. I found very little nothing fitting this criteria. I’m now looking at it differently and am finding lots of small lines I could develop at very little cost, 10 or so like this could easily be worth $500 a month been in Asia I also dont have to worry too much about the problem with eBay that it can be quite labor intensive, as help is cheap here. Something that makes eBay a very difficult back in the West.

I also spent a some time reading through the reports over at Niche Site Challenge It was interesting to follow some of the main contestants progress, more so as they most all revealed the sites. It’s pretty fascinating seeing just how much effort is put in to building back-links and how it is working well, I do have this nagging feeling that one day a lot of the back linking  methods been used today in mass with these type of sites will suddenly lose value overnight, another reason for me to diversify and get the basics covered by something that is not so volatile.

This last week has been a very good week I launched my new site Staying in Thailand and it’s coming along very nicely I’ve also been reading a lot of other people’s sites and have noticed a flurry of posts with goals for 2012 I normally take a pass on this type of thing and that’s probably why my business has been failing. Motivated by all the guys and gals throwing around such large numbers, it’s made me think about what I should be doing, or should it be what I want for myself, more so as I now know what its like to just survive and travel and be semi retired.

When I was a lot younger I regularly set some very high goals for myself, most of the time I didn’t meet those goals occasionally I would fall a little short or even quite a lot short. What I’m realizing though is that by setting goals I would achieve far more than I would have with no goals at all.

So I have decided to dedicate this Friday’s post to the things that I’m aiming for during 2012 It would be real easy to sit down and add a few financial totals. The simple fact is I have been around long enough to know it is more about setting out a whole bunch of things to do, the financial totals will then pretty much look after themselves if you do those things.

#1 Creating content writing pages, this is not something that I enjoy doing; it is probably the thing that I’m least skilled at. I am finding though that I’m able to create content a little more quickly than I was a year ago and it’s not quite as painful each time.
My first goal is to create at least one new page of content every day for the whole year 365 pages. Simply doing this should increase my basic income by about 50% based on the number of pages that I already have in my portfolio. $6000

#2 Contact at least five other website owners each week, who could be interested in advertising on one of my websites, this goes back to the whole basis of ask and you shall receive, otherwise you get zilch $5000

#3 Finalize launch and promote my new product / service at www.zeromatch.com Keywords with little Competition that I created $3000

#4 Regain the authority that two of my websites once commanded before October enabling my base income to return to more than $1000 a month. $12000

#5 Find and maintain some small consulting jobs. $2500

#6 Start and maintain a small eBay business that generates $2500

#7 Sell some of my websites $5000

#8 Hire a full time VA – $6000

Total for all this is $30,000 for the year.

Whats real weird is just by writing down different things to do, the total I would have thrown out $20,000 on a good day, just jumped by 50% and no one single thing above is in anyway aggressive most are pretty conservative.

On a more personal note I like to get more technically savvy “think Google reader and the likes” I’m still kind of a dinosaur in these area’s only having recently ventured in to the realms of podcast’s, rss and more.

Travel to at least two new countries this is also weird considering that I was expecting to be traveling all over the world when I left America two years ago.

Lastly travel back for a holiday to England and America before June of 2013.

This is a whole lot of goals and feels like a total change in direction from where I was sitting 6 months ago, it feels good though and kind of exciting having a whole lot of stuff on my plate to do, something I’m much more accustomed too. I tried the not having to work and being semi retired over the last 18 months and found it to be not a great choice for myself. Here is to a busy 2012 year of the Dragon.