Blogging Goals for the Next Six Months

As I have seen several more bloggers I know either go idle or announce that they are retiring from blogging altogether I realized that I need to update and refresh my blogging goals for the next six months. Below are some of the goals that I have for my blogs that I hope to implement over the next six months:

1) Implement more regular podcasts and screen casts.

I would like to be able to do at least 2 audio/video cast per month instead of my one every two month rate now. I bought a cheap “mini” tripod so my camcorder can stand on my desk and maybe this will help me do some more video (though I may just buy a real webcam).

2) Leave more comment breadcrumbs

Backlinks are key and visiting other bloggers and reading their articles and showing support helps get some traffic and notice back, so I need to do more of this and make the time. I hope to be able to devote at least 1 hour per week where I do nothing but read other blogs and leave comments on them.

3) Continue to Optimize AdSense and other Affiliate programs

I am finding that the amount of time I have to blog is whittling away rapidly between a busy work life and family life, I need to implement more automated ways to generate income and not be so reliant on paid posts and reviews (I had no time to do paid reviews in March and was very picky, meaning March was my lowest earning month since I started blogging 2 years ago as a result). Clearly my blogging income is too reliant on doing sponsored posts and I need to shift a little to other sources of earning.

4) Redo my blog theme for JustinGermino.com

In the next six months I am hoping to purchase the Thesis theme and redo my theme for this blog, I don’t like the green/yellow/tan look and the CSS code is a nightmare. I can’t ever get pictures to embed in posts without word wrapping unless I manually enclose all photo’s in a table which is time consuming.

Summary:

Those are pretty much my main blog goals over the next six months, I have clear goals that I can directly influence. I could say (I want a PageRank 4, or I want better than 30K Alexa rank) but these are goals that are not easily in my control and directly affected by traffic and backlinks as well as not linking out of your own site too much. Focus more on the things you can do to improve your blog and help promote it and the traffic, rankings and statistics will improve on their own.

-Justin Germino