Writing Goals

Another writer recently described her progress and plans toward her goal of having 1,000 articles posted before the end of 2011.  I liked the idea but a thousand felt a little too optimistic — I only have 26 so far (27 when this one posts).

There are 289 days left in the year now and I want to set a goal that would push me a little but not be over-the-top impossible.  When I set my mind to it I can usually write two articles in one day, so 500 articles by the end of the year should be attainable if I keep at it but allow for a certain amount of slow days when life happens.  So far this month, I’ve written 22 articles, which isn’t enough to reach my goal at that pace but isn’t hopelessly low either.

I’m thinking about how to set another goal, related to page views.  Now, I’ve said before I’m not in this for the money, but the point of writing on the internet, as opposed to in a notebook in my purse, is for other people to be able to find it and read it.  (Not that I have anything against money either; it a pleasant side effect.)  I’ve noticed certain trends in my views so far and am working on a way to turn them into a goal.

• Some articles take off fast and generate a lot of views all at once, notably two of my pet-related articles.
• Some articles don’t take off fast but generate a lot of views over time, such as my first article about solving a math problem.
• Some articles don’t get a lot of views but are time-effective because they’re so easy to write, like my upgraded chicken soup recipe based on that night’s dinner.
• My top referring site is StumbleUpon.
• A significant minority of my referrals are from the Triond sites I have been published on, possibly due to cross-linking related articles.

Then I need to translate those observations into strategies.

• Identify topics that generate traffic spikes and continue to write about them.
• Identify topics that generate long-term traffic and continue to write about them.
• When a “quickie” article idea strikes, don’t question it, throw it out there and see if it works.
• Submit articles to StumbleUpon.
• Write clusters of articles on related topics and cross-link them within the text.  Use the fix button to add cross-linking after the fact if it is relevant.

The difference between a strategy and a goal is that a goal has criteria that allow it to be measured by any honest person with a checklist.  Usually this means numbers that tell how many times something will happen or how often, such as the 500 article goal.

• Write an average of at least one article a week on an identified traffic spike topic.
• Write an average of at least one article a week on an identified long-term traffic topic.
• Using random ideas will probably be necessary to get to the 500 article goal so I don’t feel I need a separate way to measure this.
• Submit every article to StumbleUpon.
• In articles on identified topic clusters, link to at least one previous related article.

I am not going to make a goal about how many views or how much money I will get by using these strategies because both of these outcomes are a result of other people’s actions as well as mine.  It is not fair to myself to set a goal where I can do everything right and still fail.  However, I hope that these actions will lead my daily views to be consistently above 100 by the end of the year.  If this does not happen, I will have to consider why not; the potential points of breakdown are the strategies or goals, the way I implement them, factors beyond my control, or going overboard in what I hope will happen.