It was a usual day of being a freelance hero. I was sitting at my desk reading some blogs much like you are doing right now, when I went to the old trusty browser and loaded up my email. ‘You have been invited to beta test our network’ the email read. Apparently I was chosen to be a part of the GraphicRiver.net pre-release. I was allowed to setup an account and get a jump-start before the site went public. This would allow me to build a portfolio and setup shop so when the curtains dropped I would be able to start making some money.

Fill your tank with the right gas.

I did some browsing of the site, and I saw one fatal mistake that 90% of the users were making. They were all uploading every little graphic they have ever made, nothing that could universally used throughout the design world. I went with the opposite, I sat down and created a Web 2.0 Background Designer, a simple, customizable web background maker. You could easily adjust the colors and pump out different backgrounds you would need. Out of the gate it was an instant success. People with 200 items weren’t getting sales, I had 1 dinky item and made 60+ sales the first month.

I had the right idea, that is where I was successful. I had an original file that could be used time and again, so naturally other designers wanted it.

Step on the gas!

So i thought I was going to begin my life on easy street. I thought to myself, make 3 files like my background maker a month and let the cash start pouring in. I mean one dinky file sold over 60 times resulting in $60+. If I could make an average of $54 dollars a month per file, and add 3 files a month I thought to myself:

• 1 file x 54.00 = $54
• 3 file x 54.00 = $162
• 6 file x 54.00 = $324
• 9 file x 54.00 = $486
• 12 file x 54.00 = $648
• 15 file x 54.00 = $810
• 18 file x 54.00 = $972
• 21 file x 54.00 = $1,134
• 24 file x 54.00 = $1,296
• 27 file x 54.00 = $1,308
• 30 file x 54.00 = $1,620
• 33 file x 54.00 = $1,782
• 1 year = $10,594.00

All of this is great in theory, and I knew all things wouldn’t sale so well, but maybe some would be an even bigger hit. Lets not get ahead of ourselves though, for there is one more part of the equation, for this isn’t how I made $10,000 in one year, its how i DID NOT!

Total Engine Failure!

You want to know what that last part of the equation was? It was me. I never did another god damn thing to help build my portfolio on graphic river. Hell I barely even logged into the site for a few months. Call it procrastination, call it being dumb, call it what you want, but needless to say my sales dropped off. At the start since I was getting so many buys and portfolio views that my item was constantly at the top of the list. When you sorted by sales alone I was second to the top, but I neglected my shining star, and the result:

Sales dropped dramatically. So as you can see this adds no where close to $10,000. In fact it adds up to a couple hundred dollars, but the potential was there.

Lesson: Know When to Capitalize

In retrospect it could have been so simple. Have a goal, make a goal-plan, follow that goal-plan, check the effectiveness of the goal plan and tweak it as necessary. All the puzzle pieces were in the right place but I failed to capitalize on the moment. I just had dreams in my head and never put them into action. That is half of the reason I started this blog, to give me an external source of motivation. To have a place to mark my accomplishments. So please, learn from my mistakes and take this advice:

• Keep eyes open for oppurtunity, it is out there you just have to see it.
• When oppurtunity is spotted do your homework and give it your best shot.
• Make a goal and goal plan to achieve success.
• When you see results, CAPITALIZE on them.

Like my story? Have a similar story? Maybe some advice so others do not make the same mistakes? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

*note – this blog post was written for a challenge from SimplyZesty, but is a very true story.

Good, Great, GOAL!

It is not hard to just come up with a goal. It is quite easy as a matter of fact. You can come up with them all day long, but lets pick one apart, in fact, lets pick my goal apart. “I wan’t to make $1,000 dollars of residual income each month.” So we have our goal, but is it realistic? Is it measurable? Here are a handful of key terms that come to mind when goal setting:

• Written
• Challenging
• believable
• specific
• Measurable
• & Have a Specific Deadline

I think these terms sum up a goal rather well, but you do not necasarilly need all of them to make a goal a good goal. Some of the terms like believable and challenging are relative terms that may differ to person to person. While I think all goals must be measureable in some aspect otherwise you will never know if you are making progress. Specific deadlines depend strongly on the goal, it may be a lifestyle enhacement goal that really has no end. A good way to look at goals is think if they have a good plan involved. One that if follwed offers a reasonably high probability of sucess.

Lets break down my goal of “Making $1,000 a month of residual income” and see it attacked by these definitions and see if we can carve a better goal plan for it:

• Written: I have written my goal down here, as well as made a new page on the blog to remind myself what I shoot for by the end of 2010, so I have passed the first term with ease.
• Believable: I do personally believe the goal is acheivable, I read other posts and blogs that have earned and surpassed $1,000 dollars a month of residual income. The key here is the goal setter must believe, and in this case I do!
• Challenging:this will definitly be a challange for me. I have no long record of earning passive income and I am exploring new ways of doing so.
• Measurable:My goal is measurable as I will be breaking down the amount of money made each month and reporting it on this blog. Money can always be measured
• Specific:Now my goal could probably use a little love here. Clearly its specific in the long term, but could probably be a little more specific.
• Deadline: My goal does have a deadline, but in reality if I don’t meet my goal’s deadline I won’t just stop trying, as well as if I meet it earlier then the deadline I won’t keep trying to improve it.

So after looking over my goal I think I can challange myself with taking this goal on, but I am going to need to make a good goal plan that I can follow. This is what tests the true integrity of a goal, for if your goal doesn’t have a plan for sucess then its just a pipe dream.

Create a Goal Plan!

Now we need to make a goal plan that we can follow to achieve our goal. We can do this by breaking down our goal into stepping stones that lead us to our big goal. It is important to make these smaller goals to help us achieve a feeling of accomplishment while we are working on our larger goals. In this goalplan we are going to identify :

• Your Goal
• Starting Date of Goal
• Ending Date of Goal (if there is one)
• Obstacle: People, events, cirumstances & anything that may hinder your progress on obtaining your goal.
• Task: Mini-goals that hurdle obstances as well as other items that help pursuit your goal.
• Obstacle 2
• Task 2

The idea here is simple. Create a formula that you can follow that will keep you on track to your goals. Identify the things that prevent your goal from happening and the taks that will hurdle the obstacles and keep you going. These little goals will help you keep motivation if your goal takes more time then expected. Here is a sample of goalplan for my goal:

• Earn $1,000 of Residual Income
• January 1 2010
• December 31 2010
• Obstacle: Making money with eHow.
• Task: Write 3 eHow articles. (monthly)
• Obstacle: Affiliate Marketing Income.
• Each month research and use one product an create sale page on blog, research keywords and setup adwords campaign(monthly)
• Obstacle: Generate income through GraphicRiver.
• Task: Create 3 items for my GraphicRiver portfolio (monthly).
• Obstacle: Generate More Reader for Blogs
• Task: Create 3 quality content posts. (weekly)
• Obstacle: Monthly Income review
• Task: End of each month review what has been working, what has not been working, make necassary adjustements.

Now I will be following the above formula to help obtain my goals for the 2010 year, but there might be soem hiccups and that is ok, just keep trucking and working on your goals. Remember that it is ok to make changes to your goal and goal plan, review it and fix it and go back after it!

Go make your goals and lets work hard this upcoming year to achieve our goals!

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