Goal Setting for 2009

Setting goals is a fundamental part of a successful blog.  By not setting goals, you have no targets to aim for which will undoubtedly result in you feeling demoralized.

…about 15 years ago, I discovered the power of goal setting. From experience, I know its power! I know that when I set goals for the future, I achieve much more than those periods of time when I have not set specific clear goals for myself and for my businesses. The Wealthy Blogger

I had a goal, albeit unrealistic one, during November and December last year.  I wanted to double my RSS readers during those months.  Although I made a post about it on the website, I didn’t do very much in terms of working towards that goal and carried on posting in a haphazard fashion without a clear focus of what I wanted to achieve.

I addressed this lack of focus in my post Quality Posts & Goals for 2009 and wished to expand upon it here.  With my new-found self-encouragement this new year, to post at a continuous rate (currently twice per day), my goals for 2009 are clearly defined below:

1. Post at least once per day
2. Earn £2009 (GBP) from this blog for the year
3. Write one guest post each month
4. Reach 200 Twitter followers

My explanation of each of my goals is as follows:

Post at least once per day – In order to survive, a blog needs to be updated on a regular basis.  Posting once per day that means there will be a minimum of 365 updates during the year.  As well as these posts, I hope to write more on days where there is important news or a new product launch that would be highly beneficial to my readers.

Earn £2009 from this blog for the year – I have given my monetary value in GBP (Great British Pounds/Sterling) as I live in the UK, though most of my affiliate and advertisement earnings will be paid to me in $USD. According to Google: £2,009 is currently equal to approximately $2,976 USD.  I believe that this figure is quite high, yet doesn’t go over the top and make it unobtainable.  This blog currently brings in a few cents per day, with 358 days remaining this year I would have to earn around $8.15 every day to achieve this figure.  At the end of each month I want to keep up with writing up how well I am progressing towards this goal and analyze my traffic building/monetization methods to see which are working out the best.

Write one guest post each month – One great way to gain traffic and new subscribers is by having one of your posts featured on a much more popular blog.  More eyes on your content ensures new followers and a wider readership.  I hope to write one of these posts each month and have them featured on blogs more popular than my own.

Reach 200 Twitter followers – Currently at 34 followers, my Twitter account is looking a little unappreciated.  I aim to continue posting Tweets and promoting my Twitter account to grow this number to 200 by the year end.  More followers means a greater chance of people reading your Tweets.  If you use Twitter, follow me.

I urge each and every one of you to write down some goals for the coming year.  You may also set specific goals by month, week or even day.  It doesn’t matter the timescale – set yourself some goals and work towards them.  You will become more successful from doing so.

If you wish to keep up to date with how well I am progressing, sign up to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

You should follow me on Twitter here.