This is the post that I wished to write from the end of last year. It happens today.

As a professional blogger, I have some specific goals this year that I already set for me. But I never published my personal goals on my blog before. There are some reasons for that.

Actually, I was not very much active on my blog before. The main reason was – I was mostly occupied by my main job software development and got little time to spare for my blog.

Nevertheless, my Bogging Journey was Good so far – it was rather Impressive

I wrote nearly hundreds of blog posts or articles on my blog – most of them were not bad and ranked at the top 5 on Google even for the most competitive keywords.

They are still bringing fair amount of targeted traffic to my blog everyday and most importantly they are bringing fair amount of money every month for me. It’s not bad – right?

Regular comments on my blog suggest that I am not a bad writer as well. My readers are satisfied by the quality of the content of my blog posts and they want more from me. It gives me the rare satisfaction of being able to contribute something to my community.

Above facts actually prove that I know blogging quite a bit and I can improve my performance as a professional blogger quite easily if I invest some time in it.

That’s why I decided something different This Year

This year I made an adjustment to shift my focus significantly to my blog and wanted to invest more time in it. I made up my mind to delegate a significant part of my software development workload to my team and manage some free time to work on my blog and strengthen my blogger entity.

The main reason for making this new shift is that I am influenced by some of the great bloggers like Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, Brian Clark, Seth Godin and many experienced and young smart bloggers across the globe. It’s not possible for me to mention all the names here.

All of them have massive fan following and their contribution to professional blogging and online business is enormous.

Actually I was interested in online business mainly by two wonderful guys long time back when they were in their early online careers. They were Shawn Casey and Frank Kern. There were some other big names like Terry Dean, Yanik Silver, Jay Abraham etc. But that time I was not able to invest significant time in online business.

I am influenced by all of them for not just the big money they make each month but for the contributions they make to the online community.

Many young fresh people as well as experienced people from different industries, different backgrounds are coming forward to take blogging and online business seriously and becoming successful online entrepreneurs.

As I have some sort of knowledge and online experience why don’t I share that experience to the people?

This is the question that made me take this decision.

That’s why I am serious now, serious about blogging, serious about making some sort of contribution to this online society, serious about earning good amount of money from it.

From the last statement, you might have misunderstood me. You might have a notion that contributing to the society is reciprocal to making money for yourself.

But, practically speaking – when you make a good amount of money everyday, every month, and every year from your work and your contribution – only then you can prove your worth.

Money shows that you Know what you Talk

Money shows the standard of your success. It provides the best testimonial of your work. It assures that you are able to impress others and that’s why your work sells. It proves that you are following the right path and doing the right thing and that’s why you are making money.

Most importantly people will listen to you because they will understand the money is the outcome of your good work. They will believe that you know what you talk.

Making money from your work signifies that you are successful. People will see your success, watch your growth and follow what you share with them.

Success comes Automatically when you Achieve your Goals

Success requires some commitments – commitments to execute some predefined day-to-day tasks. Those tasks when finished in a defined sequence give you some kind of expected results. A set of results when combined logically makes you reach a milestone or a goal that you want to achieve.

How do you Identify those Tasks?

If you want to identify those day-to-day tasks, you have to identify your realistic goals. Goal is not just the dream of making million of dollars in a year without even knowing how to earn thousand dollars in a month.

Setting Realistic Goals that is Achievable

Goals are the milestones that you wish to achieve in a certain period of time by making it possible to achieve.

So, set some realistic goals for you, and make plans to achieve your goals in certain period of time. Planning is nothing but breaking up your goals into the lowest possible number of tasks arranged in proper logical steps.

It might sound heavy, but it is not that much complicated if you are serious about it.

If you are reading this post till now, I will not make you wait any more. Here are my goals for this year.

The Goals that I Set for Me this New Year

These are only my blogging goals that I already told you. These goals don’t include the goals for my other major activities i.e. software development.

If you keep on reading this post till the end, you will notice that I didn’t set unrealistic goals for me.

Goal 1: Write at least 2 posts per week on my blog – i.e. 8 posts per month

Yes, I want to write 8 top quality articles for my blog readers in a month. I will surely want to write more posts but I don’t want to set any unrealistic goals that I might not fulfill in any case. First, I need to achieve my realistic goals.

I know many bloggers write at least one post per day or more than that. It is because of the fact that they are fulltime bloggers or they have appointed other bloggers to write for them.

In my view quality always wins, not the quantity.

Goal 2: Write only quality articles for my readers relevant to my blog niches

I want to restrict myself as a professional blogger who writes only on the topics relevant to my blog. Those are the topics about blogging, online entrepreneurship and all aspects of online business. These are my current niches of my blog. So, I don’t want to cross my limit.

Goal 3: Write at least 6 quality posts in a month for the benefit of my readers

In one of my previous blog posts I wrote an article about how to write premium blog content. I want to provide that kind of content to my blog readers. I am confidant that articles of this quality will have a positive effect on my blog. I hope my blog readers will enjoy reading them.

Goal 4: Write at least 2 posts in a month that will bring best possible money for me

Yes, money is absolutely essential for a blog or a blogger to survive. I already told that. In my mind, money is one of the topmost motivating factors that drives you do better, work harder and earn respect from others. I don’t want to ignore it in any circumstances.

But making money from your blog is not an easy job at all. It depends on many factors like quality of content, SEO, marketing, traffic, number of readers, number of subscribers, referrals and many other technical things. I don’t want to elaborate those things here.

Goal 5: Start creating Audio and Video posts

I am not at all comfortable in public speaking. That’s why I always preferred to work sitting at my desk. Conversation with your team members is different but public speaking is a nightmare to me.

But I need to take this challenge positively to diversify my content and explore new channels to grow.

I decided that I would take the advantage and my experience of addressing classes and product presentation skills in this regard.

Goal 6: Connect with respected bloggers and online entrepreneurs

Yes, this time I will definitely do it. As of now I didn’t take blogging seriously for the time constraint though I wrote plenty of quality articles that are still bringing a respected amount of targeted traffic to my blog everyday.

Though my blogging frequency was not high, but I regularly visit all respected blogs I know, read their articles and learn many important aspects of blogging, get inspiration from them and study technical aspects to keep me updated.

But this year I want to connect with them to make good personal rapport.

Though I have good relationship with some of the top bloggers and online marketers of the world but I want to be known personally with other respected probloggers and enthusiastic young online entrepreneurs too.

I believe this kind of relationships make me feel better, help me get more confidence and enrich my career as a blogger.

Goal 7: Maintain a right balance between the content and monetization

I know that just grabbing all possible monetizing opportunities is not good for a quality blog. It might seriously hurt my reputation. I have to be careful while selecting products and services that I offer to my blog readers.

They should be of highest standard, suitable and relevant to my readers’ want, and most importantly help them grow. This could be a brain storming process for me.

The best offer to my people could be those products or services that I personally use, get best possible responses and deserve automatic recommendations.

Goal 8: Be socially active to make relationship with like-minded people

Yes, it’s true that I am not active social networking user till date. But now, I want to be an aggressive social networking user not exactly for just promoting my blog or products or services that I affiliated to.

I want to use social networks to come closer to the people, share personal thoughts with them and make good relationships. That’s why I already created my Facebook like page and iFrame application on it and want to promote it for my blog readers too.

If you like this post, you are welcome to my Facebook fan page and feel free to say me a ‘Hi’ and make your honest comment. I also have my twitter account that you can use to share something with me.

Goal 9: Want to increase my newsletter subscribers to the highest possible extent

I don’t want to set some silly target like this – at the end of this year I will have 100,000 subscribers. It is totally unrealistic goal for me. Instead of that I want to use all sorts of opportunities to increase my subscribers to the fullest extent.

I already made an exclusive eBook Insider Secrets Of A Successful Internet Business, which is available free at my blog and incorporated a list building tool to increase my list of subscribers. The fact is that it is doing pretty well for last couple of years.

What I need to do now is to promote it more aggressively on my blog’s important positions. I need to test it’s performance by placing it in multiple positions like sidebar, at the end of the post or at the footer or I can use pop-up domination – a bunch of 11 high converting tools made by a young smart blogger and entrepreneur Michael Dunlop.

So, all of the combinations might be my best possible arsenals for increasing number of subscribers rapidly.

Goal 10: Earn a certain amount of money that ensures me living online

I already earn money from my blog on a regular basis but I want to increase my earning to a level that make me feel confidant, comfortable and get enough motivation to do better, work harder.

I am not telling you that I want to make one million of dollars from my blog this year. But I want to earn an amount of money, which is sufficient for the living of my family although I own a software development business and it is giving me well enough for my living.

But in any profession, earning your family living is considered to be a benchmark. At least my effort should be able to achieve that benchmark.

In this year my aim of earning is $5000 a month for the next twelve months. I hope this is a realistic goal that I should achieve to survive as a blogger without compromising my living standard.

Conclusion:

I know my goals are not attractive. They don’t have any hype. They don’t create any buzz. They are not even complete. There are so many things that I missed here.

But these are the simple goals that I primarily want to achieve as a professional blogger and make a simple but solid foundation to move forward as a professional blogger.

These are the projections for my blogger entity for this year. I want to get as close as possible to these projections.

If I fail to meet my target, there will be no regret from my part. If I go beyond that I will be happy. What I really wish – make something Valuable, contribute something Acceptable and become someone Respectable.

If you find this post meaningful and it is able to make a positive impact on you, do a favour making a comment in this blog.

I also want to know about your New Year goals too. I hope you will come out positively to share your goals with my blog readers and me.

Happy New Year,

Debabrata Dhar