Darren has just posted about Blogging Goals, and it’s perfect timing for me. After reading his post, I realized that I’m ready to start setting some goals for one of the two new content blogs that I’ve been working on.

I’ve semi-outed this blog for a while by linking to it from here, and from my affiliate marketing blog, and in fact, it uses a domain name that I had up and running last year. I revamped it totally earlier this year, took down all the old content, and started it up as a completely new blog.

I ran into a hiccup when I had some server issues but luckily this hiccup took me into a new direction that was in perfect alignment with this new blog.

And now, thanks to Darren’s right-on-time prompting, I’m ready to start outlining my blogging goals for this new blog. I liked the three areas in which Darren customarily would set goals: Posting Frequency, Traffic Targets and Income Targets.

Blogging Goals for New Blog

1. Posting Frequency. This is the area where I normally trip up. So I’m keeping one of Darren’s caveats in mind: Be realistic. I’ve decided that I will post to this blog a minimum of four times a week. Ideally, of course, I would post every day, but it’s all original content, and I don’t really want to start watering down my posts because of some misguided pressure to write a new post every single day.

2. Traffic Targets. This blog has been slowly picking up steam, and I am up to an average of 50 uniques a day. I would like to double this to 100 uniques a day by the end of May. In six months time, I’d like to be up to 500 uniques a day.

3. Income Targets. My short-term focus for this site is not on income at all. After two years of problogging and putting out affiliate websites, I’m ready to begin building value-added, content-rich sites. I know that this new blog has the potential to fill this gap in my “website portfolio”. It’s also in an area in which I have a very strong and very passionate interest. It’s how I live my life, after all. So my short-term focus will be on building my readership.

In the long-term, I’ll be open to any income opportunities that come along, but for now, I’m fine with whatever Adsense might net me. So far, it’s been about $1 a day, and I would be happy to reach just $10 a day there within the next three months. Although, given my Adsense placement on that blog, I’m not sure this is that realistic! (Update: I couldn’t resist. I’ve changed my Adsense placement to a more “blended” approach. :) )

Goalsetting Feels Good

Darren writes:

Putting aside time to think strategically, set some boundaries around topics, putting some targets out there for posting frequency, traffic and income are all useful things to do.

And now that I’ve set out these goals, I feel quite good about it all. I’m setting my intentions, and sharpening my focus, so I’m feeling pretty confident that everything will fall into place just as I’m intending.

As for treating myself when I reach my milestones - I’ll have to think about that one for a while. I’ll keep you all updated.