Gadooney.com

I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about the upcoming year. You never know what life will throw at you, but I feel like many different factors are perfectly aligned for 2007 to be a pretty exciting (and profitable) year.

2006 was a pretty interesting year for me, especially on the affiliate side of things. More so in the “May you live in interesting times” sense of the word, with everything chugging along nicely until October kneecapped me, then kicked me in the groin, then stood there, laughing at me writhing on the ground in pain. But it never quite managed to kill me, and I suppose there’s some truth in that which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.

I think setting goals is always a good thing, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to what they should be, either for this site or in a more general sense. My first impulse was to set a monetary figure to shoot at as far as net income for the year, but that can be a double-edged sword. I’m pretty good about scrambling around and finding ways to make cash in the short term, but have fallen on my face at times in the past as far as taking bigger picture concerns into account, which sometimes require different actions than what might maximize the money you make in any given month.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for challenging yourself. It’s easy to hedge and say that I can’t know the future, that I can’t predict what sort of affiliate work I’ll be doing 12 months from now, and/or that I can’t fall into the trap of setting myself up for failure by setting unrealistic goals. That’s a lot of can’ts. Why not instead simply blurt out what I want and then force myself to find a way to make that happen?

• I want to end the year making $3,000/month in net income from affiliate and freelance work. Any Web-related work I do that is outside of my day job goes into this column, but it doesn’t include any income from real estate or income investments in stocks, precious metals, options, etc.

That’s going to take some work, but it’s not impossible. $36,000/year from something I’m doing part-time sounds ridiculous but I’ve easily surpassed that each of the last two years. It’s going to take some scratching and clawing, as far as building up new sites, as well as a lot of work on some of the existing assets I have, that I can squeeze more money out of.

• I want to end the year with either $50,000 in net income from flipping real estate or holding properties worth at least $250,000 (exclusing our primary residence).

This one is more doable, but it’s also connected to the first goal. My wife and I are lucky enough to have decent paying jobs, substantial savings, no kids, very simple tastes, and no debt other than mortgage debt. My plan is to immediately sink every penny I make on the affiliate side into real estate. I finally have all the levers I need to make a fortune in real estate, and the only thing stopping me is fear of the unknown and a fondness for complacency. Screw that. If there’s ever a time in my life to roll the bones and leap, it’s now.

• I want to make at least $1,000 during the year selling art and other stuff I make.

This is kind of a tangent, but the point is that I really enjoy the metalcasting stuff I’ve been doing, and have some cool ideas for welded furniture and bathroom vanities, as well as more mercenary projects to make money such as casting custom hood ornaments and replicas of vintage cabinet hardware, switchplate covers, etc. It’s also something my wife and I do together, so including this is a reminder that I need to fight the tendency to focus too much on the things that make me money, at the expense of other fun things that are much more meaningful in the long run.

Will I hit all those goals? We shall see. I imagine in the end I’ll get pretty close, as far as the overall number you get if you add them up, but I might fall short in one area but make it up elsewhere.

One thing to note, before you accuse me of possessing a time-generating machine, is that I’m in a unique spot as far as my day job goes, which makes some of the seemingly crazy goals above more feasible. I telecommute two days a week, sit at my desk in the office for the other three days with absolutely no oversight at all, and, frankly, have thrown in the towel as far as maintaining any loyalty to HyperGlobalMegaCorp, as far as feeling obligated to give them a dedicated 40 hours+/week in return for a paycheck. I wish it were me being petty and/or selfish but sadly they’ve completely run the company I work for into the ground after acquiring us, pretty much looking to suck the soul and life from everyone at every juncture, with malice aforethought, so don’t feel too badly for them. Long story short, I’ve got a good bit of free time, even when I’m on the clock at the day job, and plan on taking full advantage of it.