Progress Review - February 2008
Screenshot from gordasm
Well, it’s time for my monthly progress review. Unfortunately, I didn’t accomplish as many of my goals as I wanted. But let’s take a look at each goal individually.
February Goals
1. Add 60 more RSS subscribers to my blog
Rather than growing, my RSS subscriber numbers actually dropped a bit this month. I attribute this to the fact that I actually wrote less this month, and what I did write wasn’t stumbled as often.
2. Write 4 more guest posts
I wrote one guest post this month, though it hasn’t been published yet.
3. Obtain at least 2 guest posts from other bloggers
I had an awesome guest post from Jarkko Laine on Seven Tips for Creative Reading, as well as a smashing interview about partnership with the Men With Pens.
4. Optimize my AdWords campaign
I rewrote both my ads and my landing page, which resulted in a higher click-through rate. Now I just need to get a higher conversion rate.
5. Release a free WordPress theme
While I have most of a design ready, I realized as I worked on this project that I really needed to study a bit more about WordPress before going any further.
6. Outline an ebook and write one chapter of it
I drafted a bit of an outline, but unfortunately didn’t make time to write a chapter.
Analyzing February
As you can tell, February was a challenging month in terms of accomplishing my stated goals. The news isn’t all bad, though. Part of the reason more wasn’t accomplished was that I had a good bit of business distracting me for part of the month. Of course, being sick last week didn’t help either.
So, how am I to make sure that I accomplish my goals for next month? I plan to scale back slightly. But I also think one of the reasons I had a hard time staying on track was that I didn’t have a specific time at which to review my goals and progress. So from this point on , I will plan to sit down and do a quick review each Monday morning to help stay focused.
March Goals
1. Review my goals and progress each Monday morning
This is probably crucial to the success of the rest of my goals. Fortunately, it should be quite easy to implement. I’m going to set up an email reminder which I will see when I get on my laptop each Monday morning. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes or so to determine what actions have the highest priority for the week
2. Add 40 more RSS subscribers
This is scaled back to January’s goal, but would still be a fair bit of growth. I plan to accomplish this by upping the quantity and quality of posts from February.
3. Write 4 guest posts
I think that this goal is quite achievable. I just didn’t put in the time I needed to last month.
4. Obtain at least 2 guest posts
If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please contact me.
5. Get feedback on my free WordPress theme and incorporate any suggestions
For this, all I need to do is blog about the current state of the theme and solicit feedback, then follow up by adapting the design.
6. Write one chapter of my ebook
I need to make the time for this. I think my Monday review will help.
What about you?
What sort of goals are you working toward right now? What sort of things do you do to help you reach them consistently?
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Good luck on your goals.
One suggestion I have is to combine your blog writing and ebook writing. Write about the outlined topics of your ebook in your blog in a blog format (not as detailed etc). Then at the end of the month you’ll have 20 posts that provide you with a richer outline to your ebook. Then you need to edit/combine and fill in your thoughts. Keep improving your ebook each month and add in more of your blog content before you know it your blog will have written much of your ebook.
That’s a great idea, Summy! I’d actually thought about it a bit, but wasn’t sure whether to actually follow through or not. My main concern was whether that would make my ebook content less valuable. Thinking about it a bit more, though, I don’t think it would.
Now to kill two birds with one stone.
Your concern is valid.
I figure the blog post wouldn’t be as indepth as the ebook. This makes your blog post a lead into your ebook.
You can even go back to a post with the top 10 and if your book ends up with an expanded top 20 then you can highlight this on your original post “see the ebook for a bonus”…
That’s what I’m planning on doing. Either using an excerpt as a blog post or creating a much shortened version of the chapter for inclusion on the blog.
I’ll definitely take your suggestion about adding a “see the ebook” link to those posts!