Around a year ago, I wrote a post titled Resolutions and Targets For 2007. Like most entrepreneurs, I set goals that I wanted to achieve for the rest of 2007, which I could then take the time to reflect upon at the start of 2008.
I’m happy to say that I completed 5 out of the 7 goals that I set myself. Here they are below, with little explanations behind how I completed some of them, and why I didn’t complete the others:
1. Increase my online earnings from $100 per month to $200 per month - Tick!
I managed to complete this goal within 2 months, registering a March 2007 income of $241.80 using only Text Link Ads, Adsense, Adbrite and ReviewMe as my income sources.
Since then, I’ve gone on to make $600 per month from only this blog using around 10 streams of income. Developing income streams is so important - and I would definitely recommend everyone to do it.
2. Build traffic and RSS readership to Blogtrepreneur to 200 RSS readers within 2-3 months and 500 RSS readers within 6 months - Tick!
I also managed to achieve both of these goals within a few months (let alone 6), and have gone on to rack up over 900 RSS subscribers. Unfortunately, I’m unable to access my Feedburner feeds at the moment due to their server being extremely low - but the graph shows nice, sharp increases in subscribership - and I owe that down to producing some good content over the past few months.
3. Completely finish The Golf Chum program and launch the software on the site - Incomplete
Unfortunately, after creating a desktop RSS widget for the latest golfing news and stats, I lost all enthusiasm for the project, so much so that I didn’t renew the domain name (which has now been taken over by some German folk). I did manage to have a Beta round (showing people like Travis and Ray) but the actual product didn’t come to fruition.
One important lesson I learnt here, is that you must take the plunge to see how successful a particular idea, product or service will be. If you don’t, you’ll begin to lose enthusiasm and will keep delaying the launch - so get out there and release it.
4. Combat SPAM on my ChipandChat forum and replenish it with posts - Tick!
After having seen ChipandChat over-run with spambots, I finally decided to sell the site on DigitalPoint - and managed to get $35 out of it for doing pretty much no work at all.
The new owner cleverly redirected the traffic from ChipandChat to his own forum - and I wish him all the best with his network.
5. Successfully flip Teentrepreneur - Incomplete
After having created Teenage Entrepreneur as a sister site to Blogtrepreneur and loaded it up with content, I felt like I wanted to sell it as an experiment, to see how much it would fetch.
As a result of sheer laziness, I ended up keeping the site - but in a twist of fate (and after having done a bit of SEO), I managed to gain the number 1 spot on Google for the term “Teenage Entrepreneur”. I’m pretty chuffed about this, and the term brings a nice amount of traffic per day.
I’m attempting to monetize this traffic at the moment with Adsense and Affiliate Programs, so I’ll keep you updated with how it goes.
6. Create more flipper sites - Tick!
Whilst I’m not prepared to give away the details of one of my site purchases, I can tell you that I bought a complete site package (courtesy of Gary), and remodelled it in Wordpress into an email capturing website. Unfortunately, the domain has been sandboxed for the time being, but I’m feeling big things for when I get out.
Hopefully, smaller sites like these will require less maintenance in the long run, and should produce some nice, residual profits if managed properly.
7. Continue to meet people online and share knowledge - Tick!
This was my best goal for sure, as it’s not about what you know, but who you know. I came across some truly magnificent people in 2007; including bloggers, entrepreneurs, boostrappers, marketers, web coding and programming gurus, and some real-life heroes. Thanks to all who have been in touch and who I continue to chat with on IM - you guys have kept me in the blogging game for nearly 2 years!
So there we have it. 5 out of 7 isn’t too bad, and I’m pleased with myself for setting easy-to-reach targets - this past hour has made for a pleasant looking-back session!
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll be making some new goals for 2008. So I’ll conclude this post by asking what goals did you manage to break in 2007? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or by email.
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14 responses so far ↓
1 Alan Johnson // Jan 4, 2008 at 1:19 am
It’s funny actually, even though my blog has only been live since December, I’ve managed to reach quite a few goals such as:
*hitting the Digg frontpage (I’ve managed to hit the frontpage on the day of the launch, with my second blog post - the first one was an introduction
) and being featured on a series of SU tags
*achieving an Alexa rank of under 100k
*averaging over 1k unique visits per day
Best wishes and looking forward to reading about your goals for 2008,
Alan Johnson
2 Website Translation // Jan 4, 2008 at 2:08 am
Congrats on the goals for 2007. I need to write some goals for 2008 myself. Most of my efforts have been offline businesses but this year I’m going to make a serious effort to develop some of my domain names.
3 Arthur Chaparyan // Jan 4, 2008 at 8:15 am
Off topic a bit, but I thought “breaking” a resolution meant not doing it…
4 adnan // Jan 4, 2008 at 9:58 pm
@ Alan: wow congrats on all those achievements made within the past month - getting a Digg can really help give a new site a boost of traffic and links. Can’t wait to see how your site progresses.
@ Aaron: thanks mate - yeah I would definitely recommend writing down a few goals (even if it’s not on a blog post), as then you’ve got something to look back on when you enter 2009 to assess how you’re headed.
Yeah - I bet if you turned all of your domains into small sites, monetized with Adsense/Affiliate links, you could make some serious bank!
@ Arthur: I don’t think I mentioned breaking a resolution anywhere in the post (I mentioned “breaking goals”). I shouldn’t have put the word “Resolution” anyway in the post at the beginning of 2007, as it sort of implies to stop doing something that you’re already doing.
5 Alan Johnson // Jan 5, 2008 at 2:15 am
Thanks Adnan, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this blog as well
Looking forward to productive 2008 for both of us,
Alan Johnson
6 Simonne // Jan 5, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hey, congratulations! My biggest goals for 2007 were to manage to make a living from internet and to meet more people online. Both were accomplished, and now I’m looking forward to a better year 2008, more contacts and more interaction.
7 adnan // Jan 5, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Thanks Alan
@ Simonne: thanks a lot and congratulations on managing to make a living from the net. Which areas do you make most of your revenue from (blogging, aff. marketing, services, e-commerce etc?). Good luck with 2008!
8 Making Goals For 2008 // Jan 5, 2008 at 6:58 pm
[...] my last post, I wrote about how I managed to break most of my goals for 2007. These occurred out of hard work and continued perseverance online (despite a slow down over the [...]
9 Simonne // Jan 5, 2008 at 8:25 pm
The best so far is the income from internet marketing clients, followed by the income from blogging, which includes also affiliate marketing, as I’m using affiliate links in many posts.
For 2008 I hope to further develop my websites, because working for clients is not so smooth, when they don’t really understand why they need this and that… and all that programming, I must admit it is a pain in the ass, because I’m not a programmer and I have to google for everything for days in order to make that bloody code obey my clients’ wishes
10 Justin Nowak // Jan 5, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I make a point of setting goals every year now. I would be lost without them as they help guide every move I make.
YGG would not have been possible without the goals I had made last year. One was to aquire a significant online investment during 2007. Just so happens that was right at the end of the year.
This year I am focused on building YGG and my property development company. As well as spend a lot of time with my 6 month old son.
Cheers!
11 adnan // Jan 6, 2008 at 1:12 am
@ Simonne: That’s very cool - I find that client work (whilst quite stressful at times), is definitely the most rewarding financially. However, as you mentioned, the key is to start making as much “passive income” as possible - which is what I’m hoping to do in 2008.
@ Justin: I’m still really pleased that you’ve taken over YGG and given it a new lease of life - although Travis and Eric will be missed :).
Good luck with building it - can’t wait to see how it goes.
12 Alan Johnson // Jan 6, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Simone and Adnan, I definitely agree that selling your time is not the bst option. Sure, it’s almost impossible to talk about 100% passive income, since there will always be some work required on your part, but trying to aim for the type of income where you don’t only earn by selling your time is something I always recommend.
Alan Johnson
13 Hair Loss Cure // Jan 9, 2008 at 11:18 am
Well, you made gaols that is more important. hadn’t you made them how would have you accomplished two also. So instead of a keeping the heading as “Breaking 5 Out Of 7 Goals In 2007″, it should be
“Achieving 2 Out Of 7 Goals In 2007″
That’s just a positive way to look at the whole thing. So that next time you make goals you don’t get upset that I don’t land up achieving them so what’s the point in making them.
14 petimi // Jan 28, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I’m just getting into this whole blogging, let’s-make-money-out-of-it thing. Write goals. Whoah, should have done that b4.
Thanks for the inspiration you gave me with this post.
rgrds
petimi
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