Creating Goals for Your Poker Affiliate Business

Poker Affiliate Goals

Poker Affiliate Solutions has crafted our goals for 2008. When planning, we kept in mind the SMART method, and think that is valuable and necessary for anyone planning out business objectives.

S: SpecificAn overall vision is a necessary place to start, but goals need to be specific. Get more business is not enough. Continue to grow is not enough. So we have put specific targets on each of our business lines: Raketracker.com, YourPokerCash.com, and Poker Affiliate Solutions. We would like and have said things like: Maintain a top three position, be again known as the industry leader, equal our top competitor, etc. But these things are not enough.M: MeasurableBecause they are not enough, we put numbers on these things. A top three position is not measurable for certain. Neither is great customer service or being equal to our top competitor in this area. However, just because your vision and “specific” goal doesn’t equal measurable doesn’t mean you need to find a new goal – it simply means finding a new way to make it measurable.

• CS Email response time.
• Search engine rankings
• Forum posts – by us and by others about us
• Overall customer count broken out amongst various product segments
• Overall revenue and revenue by product line
• New initiative roll out time

A: Attainable”One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.” – Albert EinsteinThey key is to not set the bar too low. We should rather set it very high and miss by a little than set it too low and lose motivation somewhere along the line. However, incremental goals, which must also be part of the plan, must be relatively sure attains.The next R is relevant, but it could also be realistic. We aren’t going to master everything tomorrow. Constant progress not just in hitting goals, but in improving our process and outlook is a must.R: RelevantRelevant actually is realistic to some degree. We must focus on what we do well. Our goals must be aligned with what we are doing now. There is no need to veer off unnecessarily.This isn’t to say new ventures, new products, or new business lines aren’t important or shouldn’t be part of an overall plan. It is simply to state that goals for those things should be relevant just to them. Goals for specific areas of the business should stay within their area. Once each is defined, it can be put together with a SWOT analysis to determine which has priority and where resources should be allocated. Then, the list of goals can be redefined in order to help out the relevant and attainable pieces.For example, we know we are the best at providing software solutions to poker affiliates wanting to offer rakeback. That makes it far easier to create relevant and attainable goals.T: Time BasedWithout a due date for both overall, and for incremental pieces, a goal might as well be a dream.Good luck with your goal planning.