Effective Goal Setting: Freelance Writers Who Want to Succeed and Make Money

All freelance writers who want to succeed and make money on the internet or with regular publications, should sit down and make effective goals for the year 2009. A goal properly set is a half way reached, as Abraham Lincoln said. It is not an exaggeration to say that for the freelance writer, goal setting can make the difference between startling success and dismal failure. Unfortunately, it’s freelance writers who rarely make goals-perhaps because they don’t appreciate the important or because they don’t know how to make them.

An example is a writer who wrote to me from the United States stating how happy he was to get in touch with me. “I am sure you will be of great help to me!” he wrote. When I asked him in which way I could help him, he wrote back and said, “You know I want to succeed in writing. I’m sure there is something you can do.” It may be. And again it may not be.

The point here is that if my friend had set goals, he would have been more specific. He would have told me exactly what he wanted to do, and exactly what he thought I could do to help him achieve it. And that is really the first thing about goal setting:

1. Create specific, concrete, measureable and achievable goals. As one man said, your goals are your command to the universe, and the universe does not know how to respond to unspecific goals. Don’t just say “I want to write” or “I want to be publish.”

One day, I was asked by a radio station to review its work. The station had a set of “goals” which were “to entertain, to educate and to inform.” When I questioned these “goals”, the boss was beside himself in defense. But the truth is that these are vague statements which can not be measured. What kind of entertainment will you offer? When will you know when you have entertained enough?

A good goal for a freelance writer who wants to succeed and make money should be something like, “I will write and submit two articles a week.” Another could be, “I’ll find two new markets every week.”

Of course, you should make your goals challenging. The more challenging your goal is the more exciting and therefore the more achievable.

2. Create deadlines for your goals. As you have seen from the examples above, the goals are set with a deadline. A deadline distinguishes a goal from purposeless day dreaming. It is meaningless to say, for example, “I’ll find two markets.” When will you find the two markets?

3. Write down your goals. Writing down your goals helps you to visualize their achievement. Your goals should create positive emotions in you. Emotions, psychologists tell often us, are the vehicle for carrying your message – in this case your goals – to the universe. They will further tell you that emotions create motivation and motivation creates action and action creates results. That means that your emotions will determine how successful you are in attaining your goals.

4. Include marketing in your goals. Many freelance writers do not think about marketing. They just hear from other writers that you can sell your articles in such and such a place and so they send their there too. Serious writers should, however, design marketing into their routine work. You could even take the example above and write, “I’ll find two new markets and submit my articles to them every week.” If you don’t market, you don’t sell anything!

5. Finally, read your goals regularly. Napolean Hill, in his classic book, Think and Grow Rich, suggests that you should read your goals, aloud, twice daily “once just before retiring at night and once after arising in the morning.” And as you read, according to Napolean Hill, see and feel and believe yourself already to have achieved your goals.