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My Year 2018 In Review: Successes, Struggles, And Plans

At the end of each year, I always try to take some time to reflect back on the previous year.

I used to do it at the end of “my” year that was counted from the moment I started my business. It happened in September, which seems to be a bit odd time for a year review. Since this year, I decided to do it like everybody else, at the beginning of a new year.

In this blog, I write about what I am doing to create various income streams that come from online endeavors. The yearly reports let me take a look at my business from a distance.

The reports also motivate me.

I tend to forget my achievements… and posts like this one won’t let me do it  Apart from that, they help me to remember how much I have progressed and how much I have already invested in my business and. It’s a motivation to push even harder 

Here’s what happened in 2018 – and here were my goals for the past year. Let’s see what I achieved and where I slacked.

Successes and accomplishments

Let’s look at the first of the three achievements.

Making money

My biggest achievement in the year 2018 was generating revenue. It was a good year in the financial sense.

It happened thanks to my almost accidental investment in cryptocurrency, more precisely, Ethereum.

If we look at a 2018 revenue chart from this perspective, my real income overcame all my wild expectations 😀

Also in 2018, I had 2 months with the best revenue if looking at the last 2 years. It was in April and May and here’s the chart from the May 2018 income report (see 2 last columns):

Quitting my day job

Finally, at the end of 2018, I got the courage to quit my day job!

My last day at work was October 26, 2018. I feel I did it in the right moment when I was psychologically (and financially) ready.

January 2019 is already the third month I am doing my online stuff full time. So far, I do not have either regrets or fear. I am just doing what I need to do and feel good.

Realizing the importance of focus and selling 🐎 Website

In 2018, I realized (again!) the importance of focus and felt the fact that all the resources including time are finite – even if you do not have a day job.

That’s why I decided to consolidate my niche website business and focus on the niches that are relatively close to each other.

The idea to sell 🐎 Website first visited me about a year ago when I was approached by one of the readers of my blog about such a possibility. Back then, the sale fell through and I did not think about it that much since then.

Later in 2018, I tried to work on it without much success.

Once I started working on my business fulltime, I got more time to think and started seeing more clearly the business and the strategy. Aaand 🐎 Website was increasingly not fitting into it. The decision about selling was lingering on the back of my mind for about a month and then, in December 2018, I decided to act on it.

Finally, 🐎 website is gone!

Other achievements

Here are some smaller achievements that are worth to be mentioned:

• got into cryptocurrency trading
• did a lot of learning including digging into courses by AuthorityHacker, both for the beginners (TASS) and the advanced one (AuthorityHacker Pro)
• got into Pinterest with 🐘 Websites
• successful delegation: hired a great VA who’s still helping me a lot
• produced tons of instructions for the VA
• resumed working on 🐀 Website
• resumed working on this blog and even publishing two articles!

Struggles and failures

Not making money

Yes, the year 2018 was a good financial year overall. However, if we look at my “core” business, which is “blogging for money” as I define niche websites, then the picture looks bleaker.

In 2018, I made more money than in 2017 but I still missed my projections by about $3,200. It should have been $17,000 but I made only about $13,880:

I am clearly struggling with my core business.

I am not sure how exactly to fix it… except maybe hustling and investing in it even more and trying other directions of growing it.

Unsuccessful pivot of 🐘 Website

Partially, the missed revenue can be addressed to the unsuccessful pivot of 🐘 Website.

It overgrew its fairly narrow niche a long time ago… and what’s more importantly, Google does not anymore see it as an authority in this niche.

As a result, the revenue plummeted.

I saw it at the beginning of the year and needed to develop a new plan of actions. My mistake was to go too broad and since that, I got a firsthand experience why weak websites need to be tightly focused. Representing a narrow set of topics makes it easier to achieve an authority status in the eyes of Google and helps a lot with SEO.

Niche Websites 101 that I learned from my own damn experience! 😅🤣

So I had to change my strategy.

And I did.

And what do you think?

I am already having some concerns about it 🤣🤣🤣

Other struggles

Here are my other struggles:

• not taking enough risks: I am still quite cautious and reluctant to invest into my business; the break-through only came in December 2018
• not being enough efficient and wasting my time on unimportant tasks
• time is always scarce even if I work on my business full time
• as a result: A feeling I am failing with my niche websites or at least, not succeeding as fast as I would like to (or comparing to the others)

Top lessons learned

The lessons I learned are nothing new – even for me 🤣

But I lived through them and it makes this experience very valuable to me:

• for both your actions and your business, the focus is so extremely important that it can make or break it
• knowledge is worth it investing into so don’t hesitate to buy (good) courses (as long as you really go through them)
• be effective and efficient: Cut off everything that does not fuel growth

Plans for 2019

Revenue projections

All the time I have been writing these reports (this one is number 3️⃣), I always made my revenue projections way too high 😒

This time, I decided to be more realistic and to lower my expectations 😱

I predict that in 2019, I will make less money comparing to 2018!

This comes from the fact I do not have 🐎 website anymore. The revenue from selling it accounted for $2,100 in my 2018 income. Also, the website was bringing in about $1,300 per year and this will be also gone.

So the $12,000 number I came up with this time actually represents a growth in my niche website business.

Selling my 🐘 Website family

I am again thinking of selling my 🐘 website family.

It feels like the niche they are in is too difficult for me and I am struggling to find my place in it. This is an example when a lack of focus can break a business. I am tired of it and even successful Pinterest strategy seems to be not enough for me to keep it going.

But, again, we will see how it is going. I had the same doubts and plans last year…

January along with December and February are the worst months for these websites so I just might be naturally having a negative outlook on it.

In March, this outlook may change 😅

If I sell the websites, the revenue number I was talking above will definitely be higher. But again, if I sell.

Other plans

• Increasing focus and effectiveness of my actions
• If 🐘 Website family is sold, getting a new website, either by starting from scratch or finally buying one
• continue working on this blog
• not giving up 😆

So, how was 2018?

For me, 2018 was a tough good year full of learnings, some successes, some failures.

It could have been better for sure, but I am quite proud of my two achievements: Making a lot of money from cryptocurrency and quitting my day job.

As of the lessons I learned, the most important one was about the importance of focus.

How was your year 2018? What were your top achievements and lessons learned? Let me know in the comments!