How to achieve your online goals in 2009

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The start of a new year is a good time to reflect and set your goals for the upcoming year. Now you may have done this before and you may have been disappointed that so few of these goals were actually achieved. So how can we set goals that can be accomplished? If you can try to answer the below questions for yourself you may be a lot more successful in achieving your goal.

1. Positively state your goal: What exactly do you want? State what you WANT and not what you don’t want.
   eg.”I want to have a succesful profitable content website that provides useful information to my visitors on a topic that I have a passion for”
2. Prioritize: Which goal is the most important to achieve? Although you may have several, define which goal would have the largest influence in your life and make that a priority.
   eg.”If I can have a profitable website it can earn money for me in the future without me having to keep a full time job.”
3. Control: What will you do to achieve this goal? Make sure that you have full control over achieving your goal: there should be no room for you to blame others for not achieving it. Realise that only you are responsible for the outcome.
   “if my articles have a problem of finding an audience I will investigate the needs of my audience  and adapt accordingly.”
4. Evidence: How will you know that you have achieved your goal? Try to see, hear and feel what it would be like if you had already achieved this goal and try to describe that in your answer to this question.
   “I know I will have achieved my goal if I receive lots of responses on my website and my revenue increases on a monthly basis. I will be able to cut back on my regular job and be able to spend more time working at home.”
5. Context:When do you want to achieve this goal? Specifying a time frame will help to give you a deadline and gives you something to target.
   “I want to have 200 subscribers to my website by the end of this year.”
6. Blocks: What has prevented you from already achieving this goal? Knowing what usually stops you from achieving your goal helps you to take steps to overcome this.
   “I have to cut social activities and work on an article every day.”
7. Resources: Which resources (skills, belief, support, behaviour) do you already have that can help you achieving this goal? And which ones would you need? This will help you realise that you may already have plenty of resources/ skills and can make you aware of what resources you will need, eg. additional training in some areas.
   “I already know a lot about my subject matter and have a passion for it, I love to do the work and connect with others in my field. I will need to update my skills on internet marketing and the use of social networks.”
8. Ecology: What will you gain or lose in achieving this goal? It’s good to look at your whole life and look how succeeding with your goal may effect other goals or people.
   “I will need to work in the evenings in the beginning but if I succeed with my goal I will be able to work from home full-time.”
9. Worthwhile: How is this goal worthwhile (what will achieving this goal get for you)? When you are clear about how your goal will fulfill you it will be easier to reach it.
   “I know that goal is worthwhile because it will give me the chance to do the work I love (writing about my passion), work from home and be closer to the people I care about, I will have freedom over my own time.”
10. Action: What is your next action in order to achieve your goal? Make sure that you break your goal down into smaller manageable steps. And focus on the NOW. Only the current moment and the actions you do in that moment can bring you closer to your goal, one step at the time.
    “I will write one new article each day, I will educate myself on web promotion and particpate in discussions on my topic every week, I will research my target audience”.

If you answer all these questions for yourself and write the answers down, you will find that you are clearer about your goal and why you want to achieve it. This will keep you motivated.

The next step is to break the goal down into smaller steps and realise that all necessary work has to be done in the current moment. Doing this  you are well under way to actually achieve that goal.

Good luck!