Well the end of the year draws on

is it what you expected?

[Essex_boy]

For me the year turned out to be totally diffrent to what I thought it would be, I expected a year of stable boredom only to have a massive change brought on in May that has just stopped affecting me now.

Apart from that I didnt envisage an adsense line of money, which is encouraging and has encouraged me back to ecommerce once more.

So, darling, how was it for it for you?

[jecasc]

What? End of the year already? Don't even remember what I did the whole year. Nothing happened. Just the same daily grind as ever.......

[weeks]

I started looking for a change in April. I got one in July, when I was dismissed from my job for talking with the competition. But, I wasn't, which I later was able to prove. But, as soon as I was free, I certainly did call the competition and, lo, I found out why my employer was so fearful. I'm now in a spiffy new office, with a spiffy budget and almost double my salary. And, my new employer has a very, very good plan which should make him a lot of money. And, I have a written agreement that he'll share some of it if I prove right. I don't think I've ever been this happy in my career. Of course, it's the honeymoon in this new venture, but only a fool doesn't enjoy a honeymoon for whatever fun it might offer.

[BertieB]

For reference: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum9/8444.htm [webmasterworld.com]

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I find the accuracy of some of the predictions amazing (these people know what they're talking about! :)). Looks like some people could already guess what 2005 would hold - so I guess it was expected for them!

Time Warner will sell their $1 Billion Google stake to Microsoft.

Then again, maybe not :P

On a speculative and topical note, I think although Brett didn't say anything about it, he either did or could have predicted (at the start of 05) the problems with the bots; and he fought tooth and nail before being forced into implementing the tough measures we see now.

At least, that's how I imagine the motion picture will portray it...

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For me, the year involved trying to stay creative and motivated; forking new sites from themes on my others; and taking on my first real paying client.

From a personal point of view, the year was a leap in terms of my understanding and use of different web technologies. Here's to another year of learning!

[Essex_boy]

Not so sure of 2006 could go anyway at the moment, fingers crossed for a good one.

[MatthewHSE]

Kind of funny reading over that old thread, pretty accurate for the most part. For 2006, I'll venture to predict that my second-grade teacher's vision for the future will finally come true:

• We'll all be driving hovercrafts next year, and
• The killer bees will finally make it this far north! ;)

[ska_demon]

I never expected to see my white hat sites lose 90% of their SE traffic. I also never expected them to not return either. It's amazing, the unexpected.

So, as a result I never expected to be this skint come xmas. Still, things can only get better I suppose.

Next year is gonna be different!

I intend to use every possible black hat technique I know of. I'm going to cloak, java redirect, hide text, keyword stuff pages, no scroll, php redirect and maybe a bit of link farming to boot ;oP

If they don't like clean and unique then maybe they will like 2 000 000 000 useless MFA pages. Woohoo!

Seasons Greeting to everyone and I hope you all do well with whatever venture you undertake next year.

I'm going to enjoy wearing my new xmas black hat.

Ska

[wheel]

I spent a lot of money and time on a project in 2005 that flopped miserably. I targetted 200 users by year end, hoped for 500. I've got about 20. lol. It's a community thing, so it still has potential to take off, just not as fast as I'd have hoped. I think it needs a salesperson but was reluctant to delve into that.

In light of that, and a few other lessons in 2005, I'm rapidly trying to move my business model away from being client centric and instead building projects that depend on no one but myself for revenue.

I've got a couple of new tricks up my sleeve for 2006 :).

[Essex_boy]

Ska demon: Had that happen to me once knocks you for six

[shigamoto]

Well 2005 has been kind of a steady year for me. As for my web projects they have been up and down with my adsense sites not making much while the ECommerce sites kept me above the surface and then some. Now at the very end of the year I've come to realize certain things and I believe that 2006 will be a very good year.

On a personal level I met the love of my life this year so all that has been good, and it kinda influences the business as well.

[bobothecat]

2005 turned out much better than 2004. I'm expecting 2006 to be even more robust.

[HRoth]

It wasn't what I expected, because I got sick this summer and still am. I thought seriously about just giving it up and trying to get a "real" job with health benefits, but who am I kidding? I would hate it and I'm unemployable anyway--too old, too educated, too much of a crank. So instead, I am changing my biz, spreading out into things I wouldn't have considered before, like doing a book I can sell online and setting up some real-world classes.