This past has been amazing. I am amazed at what we have accomplished. This website isn’t just about what I write about, it is about what you want to read, and how you interact with the posts. I am thankful for you. I want to say thanks for such a great 2011, and I hope that 2012 will also be epic.
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.
- December: 4, 190 visits and 8,851 page views. We smashed our goal!
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.
- At the end of December 4,360. Sooo close! I still remember every benchmark. The toughest one was 200.
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!
- December: This was the month of ads and amazon. I sold almost $1000 worth of amazon products! Thanks for clicking on the links.
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.
- December: 73 comments! Again, you rock! The comments are flooding in!
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!
How did you do with your goals for 2011?
