setting a goal

A new month has begun and most people are setting goals on how much money to make or how much traffic to achieve. But in my opinion many bloggers are missing important things when settings goals. They say "I made $y last month and i wanna make $x this month by blogging". That of course is a goal but if you achieve it or not often seems to be determined by chance. If you set yourself a goal you should always focuse on the following items:

• the goal
• a timeframe until you want to achieve it
• a plan of action to get there
• (constant) reflecting if you are still on your way

the goal
The goal you want to achieve should be set realistically but as high as possible.Never set easy goals for yourself. You don't get anything for achieving easy targets besides an ego boost. If you miss a goal that was set to high you still achieved something. If you set yourself a target that's impossible to reach it is also impossible or very hard to reflect on what you actually achieved.
In my special case I got a blasting 146 visits on this blog in the last month. While I was not very active. My goal for this month is to have 1000 visits by the end of this month.

the timeframe
In this scenario of course the timeframe is already given. But if you wanna achieve other goals like a certain amount of money or something else you still should always set a fixed date by when you wanna reach this goal. Otherwise people always tend to get lazy and do things "soon".

plan of action
This is what must bloggers seem to miss. They want to achieve something but it often seems just like wishful thinking. They always miss that they have to do something to reach their goal. Of course if you set your aim at the same result as last month you only have to continue what you are doing. But that's not having a goal...
You should have a plan on what you want/have to do to achive your goal. That can be a whole list of items. And if possible you should already estimate how that will help you to reach your goal.
In my current case my list of actions is:

• Be active on entrecard => this should gain me about 10 visits each day (310 total)
• Implement a new design for the blog => longterm
  
• Do a contest to get backlinks and visitors => longterm + approx. 400 visits
  
• Post more often (at least once a week) => +5 visits from blogger (160 total)
  

reflecting on your progess
Using the plan of action you can also trace your progress:

• What have I already done and how much did I achieve by doing it?
• Did a certain action really "gain" me as much as I thought?
• Am I still on pace to reach my goal ?
• Are there other actions that might help me to reach my goal ?

I will write a post about the progress of my goal in two weeks from now (17th of august) and reflect on all these questions. And see if my actions are working and if I estimated some of the traffic correct.

Even though this post uses my personal plan to gain more readers I think it shows the important points for all kind of goals someone tries to achieve.
Hope this helps others to achieve their montly goals too.....