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This is the time of year where I spend some quality time going through the various subscriptions I have joined the previous year, as well as the different products and courses I have acquired. I usually find a few that I bought with good intentions but never used, as well as a couple that overlap one another. Another resolution I have come up with for 2009 is to take a hard look each month at the expenses for the month and determine where I am investing in my business and what kind of return both monetatrily and intristically I am recieving on that investment.

There are a few essentials, that we have, that are crucial to the operation of our business.

1. An Autoresponder - Our choice is AWeber.com for there reputation for deliverability
2. Hosting - Currently we have two dedicated servers through Versaweb.net. Our hosting requirements have gone down over the past year, so we are looking at phasing one of those out. I also have a reseller account through Hostprince.com at only $10/month, but we haven’t done anything with it for the last 2 years. $10 seems to be one of the key price points where I don’t seem to take action too quickly.
3. Internet Connection - My connection is through Comcast
4. Domain Reseller Account - We have a Domain Reseller Account through Wild West Domains at FirehorseHosting.com. That way we are able to buy discounted domains through ourselves and promote our domain registration as the preferred registar to our clients. If they are going to buy domains anyway, they might as well buy through us and we make about .25 - .50 a domain.
5. Affiliate Elite - Brad Callen finally got smart enough to start charging a monthly fee for his software so we are now locked into this one for a while.

Monthly memberships that we have that are not essential to our business are:

1. Nicheology - It is so hard to get into, we hate to give it up
2. Reese Report - John Reese’s newsletter, great content, but we are spending less time reviewing the information each month.
3. Nitty Gritty Marketing - I was at Russell Brunson’s event when this was prelaunched. Jermaine really know’s his stuff, but it is becoming a distraction for our core business.
4. Content Goldmine - Another PLR resource from Ryan Deiss, great content as well but not being used by our core business
5. DomainTools.com - We have a silver membership again here in order to watch a few key nameserver to “spy” on our competition. I will probably cancel this one in February.

What are you paying for each month that you are not using? now is a good time to reassess your assets and expenses in your business and cut the fat. If you haven’t used it in the last three months, it is probably not essential to your business and a good candidate.

Now is also a good time to plan out your seminar schedule for the year. What events are you planning to attend? I am planning to go to Big Seminar again this year. We have taken a year off, and now it is time to get back out there and meet all the new marketers on the scene and reconnect with some of our old friends.

Take your online business serious and run it like a business. You will be suprised how much of a difference little changes can make.

To our online success,
Kevin