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year 2018 annual review

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.

Table of Contents show

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 😀

year 2018 annual review revenue with cryptocurrency

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):

May-2018-income-report-2-ye

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.

here to find out what the website nicknames mean

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:

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:

real vs projected revenue 2018 no cryptocurrency

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.

here to find out what the website nicknames mean

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.

real vs projected revenue 2018 with 2019 no cryptocurrency

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…

here to find out what the website nicknames mean

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!

 

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