It is a new year and I am going to share my tips on how to make this your most successful year ever. I am sure you have read hundreds of posts telling you how important it is to set up goals but unfortunately people rarely succeed with them. There are two simple reason for this. Their goals are unrealistic or people lack a plan on how to accomplish their goals.
How to Shape a Plan
First you need to know that it is impossible to plan a year in advance. A lot of unexpected things will occur and therefore you should only plan for a few months or half a year in advance. I recommend 4 or 5 months.
Sit down with a piece of paper and write down the number of months you want to plan for. Then write down your goals for the final month and move backwards by writing down your goals for every month. Your goals can be everything from a specific number of visitors to an amount of money. Just remember that they must be realistic.
When you are done writing down your goals for every month you should start over with January and write down what you need to do to reach your goals. If you want to get noticed by 20 new bloggers, make 20 blog comments on blogs where the owner answers all of his visitors.
Case Study
This year I am going to spend most of my time working on a Swedish entertainment site named omTVserier and to show you exactly how my method works I am going to show you my plan for this year.
January
- Hire a writer
- Contact companies and ask them for prizes
- Present a new design
February
- Hire a writer
- Add advertising
- Create affiliate-links unique for every TV-show
- Create a page with a short biography about my writers
- List all new TV-shows on DVD
March
- Hire a writer
- Add rating system for all TV-shows
- Write about Swedish TV-channels
April
- Hire a writer
- Present a TV calendar for American shows
May
- Hire a writer
- Present a TV schedule for Swedish channels
All of the above is how I am going to develop the site. But I am also going to add new information and promote it. Here follows a list of things I will do every month to continue to grow it.
- Write about 10 shows
- Write about 5 actors
- Publish 30 posts (1 a day)
- Make 100 blog comments (3-4 a day)
- Make 2 link exchanges
Share Your Plan
Now I want you to sit down and think about your goals for 2010. Then you should go backwards and write down what you need to do every month to accomplish this goal. As I mentioned above there is no point planning a whole year ahead since much will change before then, but plan for 6 months.
When you are done with your list, publish it on your blog and add it as a comment below. I would love to learn more about your plans for this year.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks like an extensive project, hope it works out for you….let me know about exchanging guest posts (what topic you want me to write about)
Hopefully it will be a piece of cake since I’m only going to work with one specific task every month. I will get back to you about the guest post as soon as I come up with something.
I really need to start working on my goals for 2010! Everyone seems to have theirs all sorted already. I love how you have structured your goals, leaving no room for procrastination.
Yes, it’s actually a great method since I always know what I should work on. Feel free to get back to me if you decide to publish your goals for 2010. I love reading others goals since they are such a big source of inspiration.
Wow, you sure got the ball rolling and know what to do. Good luck on that and hope all turns out well.
What I can say is that companies here in south Africa are very tight with giving away prizes. They seldom do things like that unless you are famous or something similar, the small or average guy has no chance. A pitty, but it’s TRUE.
That’s a shame and I felt like we had the same problem here in Sweden for a while. The thing is to know where to look. Sometimes you might want to contact new started companies who are looking for promotion. Sometimes you can go directly to the producer. I contacted every DVD-store I could find and was turned down by all of them. Then I worked my way up in the chain and got in touch with companies who distribute DVDs in Sweden.
I did a somewhat similar post recently. I think 2010 will be a great year, especially for those of us who plan our actions and actually follow through.
Stop by my blog and offer your opinion when you have a minute. Thanks.
I like it Moon, but I think you can benefit from being even more specific. Instead of saying you should leave comments, I recommend you to write down exactly how many comments you should make every week. By doing so you will know exactly what to do. On the other hand you did specify the amount of work outs so I think it will become a successful year for you overall. Do you have a goal on how many visitors you want to have in 6 months?
wow good post and yes thanks to remind me i have to now plan my goals for 2010.
Great list Stefan! I love how you wrote down your goals and did so all the way till May. That is such great practice. As for the link exchange, I would love to be a part of it.