Double Your Residual Income in 2011

Have you set your goals for residual income in 2011? I did -- my reach-for-it goal is to double my monthly residual income within the next 12 months. If it sounds a bit impractical, especially since it's taken me three years to build to my current level, here's why I think it just might be doable -- and how you can do it, too.

Why I Can Double my Writing Income in 1 Year

Since I already have niche websites, blogs, and articles and profiles on revenue-sharing content sites, doubling my current residual income should take much less time than it did to get to the point where I am currently. Three years ago, I was starting from scratch -- any niche sites I had were brand new and not on Google's radar. Now, I have the advantage of domains that are several years old, and hundreds of articles that have already been online for years or at least several months.

This means that any new articles I add to my established sites in the coming months should theoretically  earn more, and faster, than previous articles. As I've shown recently, I can increase my earnings on existing eHow articles by adding backlinks.

Furthermore, I am aware of what niches, topics and affiliate products have been profitable for me and those that have shown promise and need more exploration. I wrote plenty of articles for eHow.com that earned very slowly and, conversely, dozens that have been great earners -- all of these give me an idea of what works, and how to duplicate success.

My skills in setting up niche sites, creating attractive, informative blog posts, researching quickly, and incorporating adwords and affiliate links with quality content have all grown over the years, putting me in a better position than ever to leverage my abilities to build long-term residual income.

Hopefully, much of what I've just described applies to you, too.

The Plan: How to Increase Your Passive Income by 100%

Double the amount of residual-earning content you have online.

Will it be that simple? I think so -- but will it be easy? Probably not -- it takes effort, discipline and dedication to work every day toward your passive income goals. This is especially true when you have a primary full-time job, whether it's as an employee or a stay at home mom to young children.But if you break it down into monthly goals, weekly lists and daily action items, you may be better able to follow the plan.

For starters, add up the number of articles, website pages and blog posts you have online -- even if you don't have an exact number, get a rough estimate. For example, someone who has 100 eHow articles, plus 20 at Bukisa, a blog with 52 posts, a niche site with 20 pages, three Hubs and four Squidoo lenses, plus 10 ezine articles, is looking at a portfolio of just over 200 pieces of content currently earning residual income. Adding 200 more in the next 365 days should certainly be doable.

Focus on building the niches and sites that are earning the best, adding more keyword-targeted pages and quality backlinks to your best-earning sites and pages. Don't try to start three more blogs in the coming year -- work on building your current sites to perform better. If there's a niche you just can't resist trying, build a Squidoo lens and a Hubpage on it and use them to test the market before diving into a new property.

If You're Just Getting Started

If you are new to making money online from writing, you'll have a different goal -- there's not much to double at this point and you need to get started and build, build, build in 2011. Use sites such as HubPages and Squidoo to experiment with writing and marketing, exploring different niches. When you find something that interests you enough and shows promise as a money-maker, start a blog or niche site on the topic, adding a page or a backlink every day as you work to gain traffic and eventually, affiliate sales and advertising revenue.

For those who really don't know where or how to start, as well as those who are serious about taking their online income to a higher level, I recommend that you look into WealthyAffiliate and give it a try. This is the only service (other than web-hosting and ejunkie checkout) for which I currently pay money to use. They have an amazing collection of resources, including step-by-step action guides, all in one convenient location. I've attended several recent WA Webinars on affiliate marketing and backlinking and those have been very helpful to me.

Using the WealthyAffiliate Article Club method to build and promote a new niche site, I was able to earn over $1,000 in affiliate commissions from a niche site I built in 2010 -- it has been hugely successful for me so far and I have to attribute much of that success to what I implemented after taking the WA course.

However, if you don't have the money for that right now, don't worry about it because you CAN make a go of this on a shoestring budget. It make take longer and there will be more trial and error to find what works best, but it can be done -- it's how I started out and so did many other work at home moms.

Best of luck in 2011 -- will you try to double your residual income this year?

Wealthy Affiliate Progress: Goals & Tasks

My blog posting has admittedly fallen to the wayside as I've concentrated on my niche sites over the summer. A big part of the Wealthy Affiliate approach is to set goals and create related tasks to accomplish these goals, periodically checking in to ensure you're still on track. The goals are an important way to envision success and articulate what you hope to achieve.

Written goals give you a way to measure your progress, and your successes or failures along the way. For example, one of my goals is to earn $800 per month from my three mini cooking-niche sites combined by September 12, 2011. Since they are currently earning just a few dollars each every month, I have a good amount of work to do to see the achievement of my goal. That's where tasks come in.

The tasks related to each goal are the specific ways in which you will work to achieve the goals. Tasks are set up on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, depending on your level of motivation and time available. One of my current tasks is to add three posts or pages to each of my cooking sites this week, and create one new backlink for each.

My Wealthy Affiliate control panel includes a user-friendly section for Tasks & Goals where I can stay organized, and create or delete these items as needed. Of course, actually doing the work is still up to me ... but having both my goals and self-created tasks staring at me is totally motivating and I am accomplishing much more than I was without a written plan.

An unanticipated benefit to my membership there has been the tools to promote Wealthy Affiliate and earn commissions on referrals made. To date, I've earned $394.50 from WA commissions, just by discussing WA on two of my blogs and in a few emails. Everyone who joins has the ability to see this kind of success and better. With the tools and instruction provided as part of your membership, you can use WA to pay for itself at a minimum, or provide another income stream to further diversify your online income.

What are your current goals for making money online? Have you set up specific tasks to help you reach those goals?

P.S. After writing this post, I noticed that fellow WAHM blogger Felicia at No Job for Mom is dreaming big with a  long term goal in the six figures annually ... I have no doubt she'll get there, and you can, too!