Yup, the short break I’ve been taking is finally over. My wife left town last Thursday morning but she spent Wednesday night at a friend’s house. She’s still out of town, not coming back until Saturday, but since I’ve basically rested until, well, yesterday I figured it was time to get back to my regular schedule, of sorts. And I figure it’s a good time to see how I’ve done on my goals for this year, which I posted and talked about at the end of December.
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To save some time, in case you don’t want to go back and check out that entire post, let’s see what my goals were for 2011:
1. Earn $5,000 on the internet overall.
2. Earn $500 on this blog.
3. Get this blog up to around 50,000 on Alexa.
4. Write at least two pillar articles.
5. Increase my influence through this blog towards helping other business goals long term.
How have I done? Actually, I haven’t done bad I have to say.
For #1, I’ve actually earned around $2,300 in the first half of the year. However, I’ve had a couple of affiliates not pay me so that means I’ve probably actually banked closer to $2,000. That’s still not bad, as it means I’ve probably already tied my best year of making money online and I still have half a year to go. Most of it has been made through Adsense on my medical billing site, but I’ve also had advertisers on my finance blog and my anti-smoking site.
For #2, well, I had a feeling that one might be a pipe dream anyway. Adsense took away my right to earn anything through them on this blog, although I pretty much made nothing from them in the years I had it here anyway. Since I stopped adding products with every post I took away my opportunity to make money that way. I have made a couple of product sales of my products, but I’m not sure if they were made by people coming from the links here or not so I’m not giving it any credit. So, that might be a pipe dream goal since there’s few things I market only here that I’d know for sure were responsible for sales.
For #3, I was cruising along for awhile there when Google put its Panda update through and my Alexa ranking started to tank. Right now I’m hovering around that 100,000 magic mark again, so my actual goal will be to get to at least 90,000 by year’s end at this point.
For #4, I actually wrote a pillar post, my two-part series on Better Blogging. I’m actually probably going to turn that bad boy into a small book, adding other things I’ve written to truly flesh it out, though I’m not sure when that’ll come as I have another project to work on first. At this juncture I’m not sure what other topic deserves to be a pillar post, but I really enjoyed writing that one. It’s too bad that it didn’t get the attention I feel it deserved, but that’s how it goes sometime. If the guy who inspired me to write it is correct, by this time next year it could be one of the most popular posts ever on this blog; we’ll see.
For #5, I realize that it’s not really a measurable goal so I can only think about what I’ve written and what I’ve done to see if I’ve at least taken a shot at it. And I think I have actually done it. Though I’ve yet to get a speaking engagement or any other work out of it, I’ve made a small difference in a few posts. I’ve talked about race already more this year than I have in the past, and a couple of those posts ended up being well read and shared. A couple of these posts have been shared on Facebook and got a pretty good response as well. And if I believe Post Rank I’ve had some posts do really well this year. Did they make a difference in someone’s life? Only others can really answer that one, but I know I’ve done my part.
So I still have a ways to go for some of these goals, I’m on the right track for others, and I still have half a year to tackle it all. It should be a very interesting second half of the year; I appreciate everyone who sees where it all ends. For those of you who planned some, how are you doing with your goals so far?
Hey, at least you have goals Mitch 😀
Still, I reckon you’ve done pretty well so far. That $2000 puts you well within reach of your $5000 goal.
$500 on this blog? Well, I wouldn’t give up just yet, you never know what’s around the corner.
True Sire, but I’d have to find the real thing and right now I have no idea what that might be. lol
Goals are great and I am chasing some of my own online money making goals. I have had my best year to date too but been in debt means I am paying out the money as soon as it comes in so thats not a real motivator for me!
I find that rather than working and slugging away at specific its more useful for me to change habits. If I want to make £5k online in total I will hold that as a goal but I wont work towards it, I will instead create the habit of building 20 back links a day to my money site. Chasing a long term goal makes it easier to say “not today” for me.
Do you just slug away at the end goal or do you have a planned route to get there?
Good stuff Danika. I have plans for different things, some that I complete, some that are on the back burner. I don’t have a money site, if you will, but I do have some products that I mention from time to time. Matter of fact, those on the left side of this blog are just a sample of them. I’m kind of a planner, but sometimes I don’t let those plans get in my way. lol And, as you see, not all my goals were about money, only a couple of them.
Hey, Mitch,
I appreciate your honesty with goals and being so precise about their description. I find weird that most of bloggers avoid talking about how much money can they make, and, yet, you reveal your achievements without any problem. It’s as if the others want to seem like people with super powers that make millions with their bloggs, which is hard to believe, anyway. But, ok, I know, this is a whole new topic for discussion. Anyway, I think you done quite well, and I hope you are happy with the results so far. By the end of year, you will most likely reach your goal on the internet overall earnings.
Wish you all the best!
Thanks Kristina. I used to post a monthly report of what I was making but the amount was so low it was embarrassing. However, I figure people know the figures I’m giving them are real, and if they’ve followed for awhile they know that I’m getting better at it, though I couldn’t tell you why. But it’s the overall goals I want to try to achieve, and actually I have 15, putting 5 goals on two other blogs I have. And this month I’m working on one of them, hoping to spring it by the end of the month. Probably won’t mean as much to people on this blog but on one of my other blogs… well, we’ll see.
Slowly but surely. That’s how you doing Mitch, I think. For sure, you won’t stop until you reach or surpass your goal.
Ron, I don’t see me stopping ever; that is, as long as I can help it. 😉
Just a quick comment (for a change!) to say ‘congratulations’ on what you have achieved this year, Mitch.
As for me, my goals have been mostly health-orientated and I’ve just achieved not needing sedation for dental treatment – something I’ve been having for many years. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a big thing for me!
Val, if I’d had it available to me I’d have always had my dental treatments sedated. I hate going to the dentist, even having my teeth cleaned, but I guess it’s better than the alternative. lol
6 months term is pretty short to jump in Alexa ranking and double and triple the profit. However, I am sure that you are one of the most influential figures in blogging. I believe that you will achieve this goals around September (remember my words). I am getting back to my goals from a year ago, gong into insane investments on my internet business, but things are moving into right direction and I think if I have done that a year ago, it would be possible failure.
Carl, my site dropped 50,000 points in 2 1/2 months when that Google thing went through and it’s been slow growing since. Luckily I’m not beating myself up over any of it but I’ll admit it was irksome.
There was a fluctuation in Google SERP during the updates in March and June, but I don’t think that you are doing anything that can be affected by this. Probably I can suggest something which you may have not consider. This was announced by Matt Cutts just before Panda 2 update. Websites with own IP address with get benefits of latest algorithms. I think this blog is currently hosted by 1and1 with shared IP with another 2000 websites. It is small investment. Another thing is website speed, you blog is fast, but there are some advanced option you can do for free like self hosted CDN, we discuss this in one of the previous topics. Another thing related to SEO, you are starting with “related post” your page which is wrong this is so called “first link”, the first tag in this post is “December” which is technically wrong, it would be much better to be “my goal 2011”, higher probability for extra traffic from search engines.
Carl, I thought about where to put that link for the first article and then I just added it to December and moved on. As for the other stuff, I might think about going the other route one day, but at this juncture I don’t want to pay for 8 individual IP addresses. And I did take a hit immediately but I think things have been better since that time.
Hi Mitch,
Nice to know that you are doing very good in 6 months and I think your post encourages many bloggers like me to achieve their goals.You shared your earnings here and it is really appreciating.
Hi Mitch
I would forget about trying to earn adsense from an IM blog – it just doesn’t work so I wouldn’t worry about the adsense thing with this site – but I hope you still have an adsense account for other niches.
And 2000 $ in 6 months is prob more than 99% of people doing the same are earning – so yr on the right road!
Thanks Peter. Actually I’ve never worried about it on this blog or my business blog, but I’m somewhat surprised my finance blog doesn’t make more money, though it does generate some Adsense sales. I really need a true product for that site of my own, but it’s not really my field of expertise. I’ll figure something out.
Mitch, congratulations on your earnings thus far!
To answer your question, at the end of 2010, I vowed not to make resolutions. That worked out well since, by February 2011, I had totally shifted gears. I decided to stop freelance projects (Guru.com) as well as getting off the blogging treadmill.
I’m focusing on developing software, so my goals now are to first, create useful stuff and two, build up a fan base.
They are humming along. Okay, they’re sputtering on a pot-hole filled gravel road. But I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone.
Cheers,
Mitch
Nose to the grindstone is something we can both appreciate, and it’s going to pay dividends for both of us fairly soon Mitch. 😉
You seem to be doing great on your goals! Way to reset some of them by seeing where you are now.