Go big or stay small is a question which has been on my mind for a while. I could not verbalize it until yesterday but this pretty much sums up a lot of things with Internet Marketing. Its really a question we all should be asking ourselves in this life. We all have choices in our life and our businesses and those choices come down to this one phrase.

So do you grow big or stay small. Its really a simple question, but many people never answer it. And if you do answer it are you prepared to follow through on that plan. For example I don’t know anyone who would not say they wanted more traffic or more revenue in their internet business, but are they prepared for the more work. Most people are not prepared for this and in my opinion its the reason many people do not reach their full potential in Internet Marketing or in life in general.

I know this has been a problem of mine from time to time. When  I was in college I had some courses in psychology and sociology one term that was introduced in these courses was the concept of reference groups. According to the terms we all have reference groups of people we strive to become like. These are the people we admire and want to become part of. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to hang out with the groups we want to become a part of in hope that the group will accept us.

Now in the Internet Marketing world this is not as straight forward. Many times the groups we wish to become a part of are not really part of our lives. We see websites or web businesses that we see are successful and we desire to accomplish what the people behind those web properties have accomplished. I see this on forums all the time where someone asks how someone created a specific site. People will even reverse engineer a site’s design or programming in hopes of creating the same type of site, but the design is only one piece of a web business. The keywords they use or the way content is presented is not the whole site. You may can reverse engineer these items, but you can’t reverse engineer the thought process behind the original idea. Even if you could figure out what they where thinking then you would not be 100% the same as we all have our unique experiences in life which have brought you to this point in your life.

So what is my point? My point is when making decisions for your business don’t try to copy someone verbatim, put your own spin on the plan. And decide from the start if you want to grow big or stay small. There is nothing really wrong with either choice, but each path requires a different path to accomplish. Anyone can stay small, but to grow big takes planning and investment.

Do you really want to be just like one of the big gurus, do you want to own a site like Amazon.com or Ebay. What ever your reference group is or in this case reference site, then pull it apart and figure out how they got that way. You won’t be able to duplicate them 100% but you would not want to anyway as you want to make it your own.

So do you want to grow big or stay small? Don’t answer big unless you are prepared to do what is required to create a big site and in term create a big business from that site. The money is there for people who are willing.

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Linking building should be an important part of any website. Not only do links provide multiple avenues for people to find your site, they also are one of the most important factors search engines use when ranking your pages within their search engines. I’ve always worked at building links as I can but I’ve been thinking lately it would be useful to develop a strategy for building links.

I’m a fanatical reader of DailyBlogTips and this post on Blog Goals for 2008 is what has gotten me to thinking about where I would like to see this blog go over the next year. I’m too late to win the theme that was being given away in that contest, but I already own a developer license of the theme being given away anyway so that is not a big deal. But setting goals is really a good activity for any blogger

One area where I’m really weak in is the amount of backlinks that Google reports for this blog. Google never reports the actual number of links, but it should be showing more than I currently have showing. Yahoo is actually a better resource for determining the number of links you have to a particular site. SO one of my goals for this year is to create and follow a link building strategy. I currently submit links every chance I get in the form of Comment posts and on other sites that accept link submissions. I also utilize the social sites to help drive traffic and create backlinks. While this is effective, I’m sure I can do a better job in this area. I’ve been using Google Docs a good bit lately and this platform works out nicely to help monitor my link building. I will set up a spreadsheet and list any websites where I can obtain links. I also need to do a better job of contacting other webmaster in similar niches and request link trades. If I monitor my progress and make good choices then I should be able to build up a significant number of new avenues into this blog over the coming year.

Another of my goals is to increase my subscriber count into the 4 digits. I’m sure this is an obtainable goal. The first step to obtaining more subscribers is to write frequent content. As long as I keep posting regularly then I’ve noticed my count continues to rise.

Contests are also an excellent method to increase the number of subscribers to your blog. Winning the Web has an excellent post on how a contest can help your subscriber count. I will be watching the progress of this site over the coming months as he has some really good ideas on how to effectively market a blog. Another method that is effective in building of subscriber counts is to submit your feed to RSS directories people will locate your feed and some will subscribe. This practice also has the added benefit of building additional links to your content.

My third goal is to increase my page view counts. We currently run about 50K page views per month, but I’m sure I can do better than that. I would like to see that number doubled at least in the coming year. I’m sure if I accomplish goal number 1 and 2 then this goal will take care of itself.

I neglected this blog a little this past year as I was working on other money sites and just did not spend enough time on this site as a result my numbers for this site did not grow. I’m now changing my focus as many of my other sites are now on auto-pilot and won’t require as much care to continue to bring in traffic and revenue. This gives me more time to work on this blog which is what I will be doing. I will post at minimum of three times a week on this blog with cornerstone articles which should really help to bring in more SE traffic and to gain more subscribers.

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It’s been at least an year since I found Steve Pavlina’s excellent blog and read his post on why you should never get a job. I totally agreed with Steve’s assessment of how it was more risky to depend upon a certain person for your lively hood and quite a few other points that I could not do justice so if you want the rest then read his blog post.

Even though I agreed with Steve, I did not really think it was all the pertinent to me. After all I had already gotten a job so it was definitely too late for me not to get one. I’ve been working since I was fourteen and working on Hollace Carter’s farm in the afternoon. For the past eight years or so I’ve been employed in a state position and I’m safe, right? No wrong.

I’ve seen the current trend of outsourcing tech jobs to other countries, but this would never affect me because after all I work for the state and even bad employees get to keep their jobs in the state. I’m a good employee. I’m good at my job and I do everything that is asked. Well I’ve been living in a fantasy world, because I have not been safe either. This came home to me earlier this week when the Governor announced a new initiative to outsource all the tech positions within Georgia within ten months. This will mean approximately 1100 workers will lose their current position and either retire, move to the outsourcing company, or be eliminated. Guess what I’m one of those 1100. I could go into all the reasons why I think this would be a mistake, but to dispute the logic behind the move would be a futile exercise.

I’m not old enough to retire and I’m not crazy about working for an outsourcing company. If I move then I lose the retirement and seniority I have built up over the years. I have turned down many jobs over the years, just because I wanted to vest in the retirement plan. I turned down an interview one day before this announcement that could have meant a position with a hundred thousand yearly salary( I’m not making $100K currently), but I thought it may not be a good move. Hindsight would tell me that I probably should have taken the interview.

Steve Pavlina would say this is all a result of the manifestation of my desire to quit my day job. Thinking about it then Steve may be on to something. I do not really want to work for anyone any longer and I could view this announcement as a motivator to accomplish my goals. I have a few sites in my portfolio that have some potential for growth and higher earning power. I also have several domain names registered for ideas that I’ve never gotten off the ground. I can use the next ten months building up those sites to a point where they would allow me to support my family utilizing only the web. In my previous post I never posted a timeline, but I had a timeline of one year to realize my goals. Its Ironic that the Governor announced this would be in place by October of next year. If you read the date on my previous post then I made that post in November. Perhaps this is divine intervention setting the date for me.

I may start posting less on this blog, because I’m sure I can earn more from other niches than from this site. I’ve got a couple of sites that earn fairly decent, but I have ran out of ideas for new posts. Seems the Universe has stepped up again and provided resources since there was just a post on ProBlogger about how to generate ideas for posts. I followed the directions for a few minutes this afternoon and came up with several ideas for niches that I’ve been stuck in. Now I just need to write the articles. I’m viewing this entire announcement as something positive and a natural progression of the path to my goals.

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