As the month of November winds down, have you met your writing goals for the month?
I had to go back and assess the writing goals that I made at the beginning of the month. They were very lofty goals. Overly generous goals. Monetary goals.
As the month was winding down, I began to notice that my monetary goal for November was not going to be met. This made me disappointed, and I noticed that as I became disappointed, sticking to my plan became increasingly more difficult. I wanted to give up because I didn’t reach the goal I set for myself.
Then an epiphany struck.
I was watching YouTube last night, as I usually do to fall asleep (you know some of those content creators can be quite boring and their voices sleep inducing) when I came across a video that made me sit up and take notice. Goals need to be tangible. They need to be obtainable. Otherwise, we tend to give up pursuing our goals if we can’t reach them.
Goals need to be tangible. They need to be obtainable.
Hmm? I think that content creator was on to something. They even said that setting a monetary goal was the wrong thing to do. Money is unpredictable. I should have known that. The children’s clothing boutique I run often didn’t not make the same amount from month to month. Some months were great while others would see no sales.
This morning I woke up with a new perspective and a refreshed attitude about my writing goals. Instead of creating a goal that was out of my control (a certain money amount earned by the end of the month), I would focus on what I could control: the amount of content created.
New Writing Goals
Instead of focusing on a dollar amount earned, I decided to go back and set some writing goals. I’m currently working on four blogs, this one included. I have to create content for each of these blogs, especially the brand new one that I only have one blog post created.
All of the so-called blog experts state that a blog needs 20 to 30 blog posts before you can settle on creating weekly content. That means that you should create the bulk of your content before launching your blog, and then you can slow down the content creation to a more manageable schedule. When I set out on this journey, I had content on several blogs with this one being the exception to needing content. I had only one blog with 20 posts. My other blog with content had 3 posts and of course I still had the brand new blog.
I focused my writing goals on the one with 3 posts because it needed to get it caught up to the 20 posts. As I approached the 20 posts, I noticed that it still did not get the traffic that I wanted it to get, but I forgot that it takes Google at least 5-6 months to grab your content. I was disappointed.
For my new focus and new writing goals, I decided that I would create 30 posts for that site, drop down to one or two a week, and then move forward to the next site in line.
I can’t wait to see the results in 5 months. I’ve seen my page rank go from 2 million down to 422,000 in weeks. Not months. Weeks. This just proves that content is key, and new content is key. Setting writing goals instead of money goals seems to be the key to success. I do have a money goal in mind, but I know that it will take some time before I reach it. My overarching goal is to have the blogs replace my teaching salary, so I can focus on things that I want to enjoy.
