Goals, goals, and more goals: November Update

It’s great to have goals.  If you don’t have goals, how do you know if you accomplished what you wanted to do?

I wrote an article on why I decided to create life goals in the post titled, “Why I created a life plan (and why you should too!), ”  If you are looking to organize your life and establish goals for life try checking out Michael Hyatt’s Life Plan.  Having goals helps clarify your life, and your purpose in life.

I think it is also great to have a youth ministry strategic plan.  I wrote a post about having a plan for social media in your youth ministry titled, ” 5 ways to communicate effectively in a digital world“.  Social media can consume all your time if you don’t have a plan for it.

With all that said, I have a love/hate relationship with Goals.  Writing goals down on a piece of paper is easy, but to actually do them is the hard part.

I have a few goals for this website, Youth Ministry Media, and here they are.

Goal 1: Get 1000 hits a month on the site.  Status: Completed.  Maybe this goal was too easy, but about a month ago I was getting over a 1000 hits.

• August roughly 1500 hits.
• September 2,500 hits – The growth has largely being to people retweeting content like rethinking youth ministry and many others.
• October 3,253 visits and 6735 pageviews.  I am constantly blown away by this number.  It looks like I have hit a plateau at the moment.  I am going to keep this goal until the end of the year, and the I will switch it up.
• November:  3,273 visits and 6,604 pageviews.  Again, I am surprised by this.  I am stoked that people are reading my site.

Goal 2: To have 5,000 twitter followers by Dec.

Status:

• August: The number of my Twitter followers is 2,194.  Almost halfway…not bad.
• September to now: 2, 682
• At the end of october: 3, 160.  Not bad, but I need to do some work with this if I am going to get it to 5000.
• At the end November 3,775.  Getting there.  I don’t think I will get to 5, 000.  It will be close.

Goal 3: To have the site self sufficient.  I am not looking to make a living off of this website.  It would be nice to make some money eventually off youth ministry media.ca.

Status: Completed!

• August: I have made on google adwords roughly 5 dollars a month.  Need to figure out a plan for this.
• September: I ditched adsense.  I might go back eventually.  I am now with beacon ads.  This month I am going to make $28 from the site.  Almost half way to having the site self sufficient.  It took forever to get the ads to work, and for them to look decent.
• October:  Goal accomplished! I have made roughly $66.00 with beacon ads, and $35 as an affiliate.  I do wish my beacon ads would sell better. I am an a affiliate with evernote essentials, elegant themes, and twibooklet.  I only promote stuff that I actually use.  I feel comfortable using these products, and promoting them to other people because they are the best!
• November: The company who purchased my ad in september continued it for November!

Goal 4: To have at least 50 comments per month.

Status:

• August: Roughly 5 per month.  I am working on a plan for this.  The idea is to have a monthly give away of books that I think you should read.
• September: I had 37 comments!  woooooo….We are well on our way!
• October: 40 comments!  Soooo close, yet so far away.
• November: 56 comments!  We finally made it!  Awesome!  This was so hard.

Sidenote:  I did have a goal to get my email list to 100 by the end of the year.  Currently, I have 130 179 people subscribed.  That means that 130 179 people have downloaded my ebook.  That is great!

That is really it.  Simple Goals that are hard enough, but I think are attainable.

It is definately time to start thinking/planning next years goals.  This will include facebook, another ebook, and a email marketing campaign.  Stay tuned!

Do you have goals for your website?  what are they? 

Check out our free ebook! The ebook is titled: 5 Ways To Communicate Effectively in a Digital World. Did I say it was free?

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