Monetize Your Blog 2: Set Your Goals
Before starting any project, the first, most important step is to set some goals. Since you are reading this, it is logical to assume that you want to start making some money from your blog. This is a good starting place when developing our goals.
- I want to make some money from my blog.
Now, let’s send some basic questions to define our goal. For example, how much money do you want to make? These numbers should reflect your traffic to a certain amount to ensure that your goals are obtainable. Perhaps an extreme example, but hoping to make $1000 per day on your blog that gets only 20 visitors per day is not easily obtainable. For example, a blog with low traffic (<100 uniques per day) may hold the following goal:
- I want to make $100 per month from my blog.
That’s a good start. But a goal should consist of both a what and a when. So far, we have the what, but we need to set a when. Without a time frame to work in, it may be difficult to reach all your goals within a reasonable time
- I want to make $100 per month from my blog by the end of two months
This is a reasonable goal. But what are you going to do when you get there? Are you just going to rest on your laurel and just let your blog take care of itself? Of course not. Set a few more goals, so you know where you want to go.
- I want to make $100 per month from my blog by the end of two months
- I want to make $300 per month from my blog by the end of four months
- I want to make $600 per month from my blog by the end of six months
- I want to make $1200 per month from my blog by the end of one year
Once again, I want to stress that you should adjust your goals to match your traffic levels, keeping in mind that as you develop your blog, your traffic will only grow. At the same time, don’t be afraid to be optimistic - optimism will just mean you have to work a little harder. As with all things, blogging is all about getting a return on the work you put into it.
Hopefully, you now have a rather complete set of goals to achieve. In the next post in this series, we will look at developing a strategy to conquer those goals.
