Making Goals For 2008
In 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 past couple of months).
In any case, I think that it’s really important that everyone makes goals – and not only yearly ones. These goals should be as frequent as you like, and should incorporate every aspect of your life, to make sure that you’re not focusing solely on one of your potentially many routes.
Last year I wrote a post called Resolutions and Targets for 2007, and because it gave me so much joy to break those goals, I thought that it would be wise to write up some goals here for the blogosphere to see (and to keep me on track). However, whilst reading Maki’s post on 2008 Goals, I found an interesting paragraph that I wanted to share with you.
Goals are pathway markers and destination points. But they are also simply thoughts, conjured up and made concrete in one decisive moment. You can change them as easily as you flick a light switch. It takes less than five seconds. Try it.
I found this really thought provoking, and actually started to wonder about the benefits of making goals in the first place. So I came up with some reasons to support the notion of me jotting down some targets.
The Advantage Of Making Goals
- It keeps you focused
- It concentrates your brain energy on a few important targets
- It helps to influence and improve other areas of your life indirectly
- It can lead to greater efficiency when working
- It will inevitably cause you to be more organised – something which can make you feel less stressed out and more relaxed
Are there any more that I’ve missed out?
Without getting to deep, I wanted to list down some of my own personal goals for the coming year, so that maybe I can look back in a year’s time to see how well I’ve progressed. Please bear in mind that these goals are all to do with the online world – I’m yet to decide on some offline targets!
1. Increase blog earnings to $1,000 per month
This is my first goal, because it’s probably the easiest to measure (given that I have an income spreadsheet which I update every month). At the moment, I make $600 per month from my web efforts, which include blogging, consulting and a tiny bit of affiliate marketing. However, I know that I’m leaving money on the table, especially with this blog.
Therefore, I plan to increase my monetization efforts (like how Tyler Cruz has done), and initially lower advertising rates to increase demand for the blog advertising space. I think that within a year, and with continued blog growth, I can be pushing $1000 per month solely from this blog pretty easily.
2. Increase PPC Affiliate Marketing earnings to $500 per month
Whilst I expect affiliate marketing income from this blog to increase by a big margin, I also want to become a reasonably good Pay-Per-Click Affiliate Marketer using Adwords, Yahoo and MSN Adcenter. I’ve only dabbled with these so far to produce minimal profits, but I can see this becoming a fun way of earning some more money. I would suggest reading forums like Wickedfire to really gain some knowledge in this area – I’m sure it’s a topic that I’m going to talk a lot about this year.
3. Build RSS readership on Blogtrepreneur to 1000 readers within 1 month and 2000 readers by the end of the year.
Reaching 1k in RSS readers shouldn’t be too hard considering that I’m on around 930 readers at the moment – but it will definitely be great to finally reach that 4-figured marker. Gaining an additional 1000 readers on top of that will be a good challenge, and I’ve got several ways of accomplishing this, including using the true power of virality and social media to gain readers quickly.
4. Build an email list of 500 double opt-in subscribers
Again, lots of people like Yaro have explained the benefits of having an email list – especially when it comes to monetization and affiliate marketing, and I think I can use this blog as a means to gaining these subscribers.
Possible software programs I might use in this could be Aweber, GetResponse or iContact (which is run by a fellow young entrepreneur named Ryan Allis).
5. Continue to build small niche sites
I think that there is a lot of potential for these smaller niche sites (which can be monetized through affiliate programs) if you have the right SEO knowledge. Fortunately, using WordPress has allowed me to get an insight into what’s needed to gain top rankings in Google for certain keywords and keyphrases.
Teenage Entrepreneur is a great example of a site that’s achieved some awesome rankings, and I think that this strategy can be repeated with a more popular niche that can drive some good traffic.
6. Continue to meet people online and share knowledge
I know that this is a repeat from last year, however this is one of my most important goals for 2008. In 2007, I met some great entrepreneurs all over the world, and they’ve provided me with sources of inspiration and determination. I would like to give everyone who’s been in touch with me some linklove, however that would take up at least another blog post, so thankyou if I’ve spoken to you or emailed you.
I really want to do more of the same in 2008, as I feel that there are a lot of people on the net who have great ideas, some great skills and a real entrepreneurial mindset. Sharing knowledge is also very important to me – as it will allow others to reach the stages I’m at now in a shorter time frame. Hopefully Blog Consulting will help me achieve this.
Whilst these are 6 goals, this is definitely not the end of my list. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, it’s important to keep re-examining your position and to adjust your goals appropriately in order to get the most out of your year and to become an efficient worker. Meeting goals at the end of 2008 is the best part, as it really allows you to reflect on how far you’ve come, so go on and write some targets for yourself.
Like before, I want to open this post up for discussion – what are your goals (both online and offline) for 2008?
