7 SMART Blogging Goals Every Blogger Should Set + How to Do It

Do you want to grow your blog to the next level, but you don’t have a plan and don’t know where to start? Starting and growing a successful blog is hard work, much harder than people think.

I’ve always said the learning curve for blogging is steep and never ends. I’ve taken enough free and paid blogging courses here that I could have a master’s degree in blogging now.

But as much as I love blogging, it can be very time-consuming, and sometimes it’s hard to create a work-life balance. When I first started blogging, my workday as a lawyer was 12 hours. Then I would come home and work on my blog for another 4-5 hours. That schedule was insane and definitely not sustainable.

So, to be efficient and make the most out of the time you have, it’s essential to create blogging goals. But you must be specific with what you want to achieve and set a deadline to keep you motivated.

If you’re not sure how to do this, don’t worry, this article includes some blogging goals every blogger should have and how to set them.

That’s one thing about blogging that never changes, you need a strategy to be a successful blogger such as here.

Table of Contents

Why Do You Need Blogging Goals?

Setting goals for your blog may feel like attempting to choose a subway stop to exit while the train is traveling at 55 mph without slowing down. But I promise you, once you see how to do it correctly, it won’t be so overwhelming.

Goals guide your blogging activities and provide the strategy you need to be a successful blogger. They help you focus on the right tasks that will take your blog to the next level instead of working on things that don’t further your goals.

Setting blogging goals allowed me to make seven figures from my blog and also quit my 9 to 5 job. Your blogging goals also guide your content creation as well as the topics you write about that further your objectives and solve problems for your audience.

Use these content creation tips to write faster and meet your blogging goals.

The bottom line is that you need to set SMART goals if you want to grow your blog, so here are some blogging goals you should consider setting.

How to Set SMART Blogging Goals

You’ve probably seen this acronym before, but in case you haven’t, here’s what SMART goals are.

S – Specific

SMART goals must be as specific as possible. Instead of saying I want more email subscribers, you would say I want to grow my email list by 50 opt-ins every month. Or I want to double my email subscribers each month.

When choosing a goal, try to answer the five W questions – what, who, why, which, and where.

Define exactly what goal you want to achieve. When you define a goal, such as I want to make $60,000 this year, you could break that down into a monthly goal of approximately $5,000 each month.

Here’s an example of how I set a goal: I said I wanted to make more than $50,000 per month, and I did so here. So be specific in your goals.

M – Measurable

You must be able to prove that you met your goal, so each one needs to be measurable. Goals are dynamic. They can change, and in fact, you should be reassessing them and tweaking them regularly.

So, choose goals like, I want to get 100 new email subscribers every month, or I want to double my income in six months.

Numbers and specific descriptions make your goals measurable. A measurable goal answers questions such as:

How will I know when I achieve my goal?
How many?
How much?

A – Achievable

A goal shouldn’t be too easy. It should push you to your limits and motivate you to work hard, but it should also be attainable. Setting a goal of $200,000 in your first year as a new blogger is unlikely to be met.

I’m not saying it’s impossible because I actually made $210,000 in my first year of blogging but that wasn’t my goal at the time. My goal was simply making $100,000, which was a lot more realistic.

You should ask yourself how realistic the goal is and how you can accomplish it. So, choose a goal that challenges you but isn’t too difficult to reach; otherwise, it may discourage you instead of motivating you. Then once you surpass your goal, you’ll be more excited and happy to keep going!

R – Relevant

Your Blogging Goals must be relevant to what is going on now and align with any other relevant goals you have set. One goal may have been to go to a networking event during the pandemic, but COVID made this impossible.

So, is the goal relevant to the current economic or social environment? Is now the right time, or is this a goal I should put off for now?

Does it match and align with other goals? These are questions to answer.

T – Time-Bound

Every blogging goal you set should be associated with a date or time so you can measure your success. This gives you a deadline to work towards. If your goal is to make $60,000 in a year, you now have a way to break it down into smaller goals. What do you need to make monthly, weekly, and even daily to reach that goal?

By setting SMART blogging goals, you know exactly where you’re going, and you can create the steps to get there.

Now that you understand what SMART goals are and how to set them, let’s look at smart blogging goals that every blogger should make in one form or another.

1. Grow Your Blog Traffic Every Month

SMART goals must be specific and measurable. You have to set a traffic goal that you can use the data from your SEO tools like Google Analytics to see if you’re successful. So that may mean your goal is to increase your blog traffic 10% every month or 50% every six months.

Just about every blogger wants to make money with their blog and to do that, you need traffic. Increasing blog traffic is an eternal struggle for many bloggers. Setting traffic goals allows you to break them down into manageable steps.

If you’re a newbie blogger, you definitely shouldn’t set a traffic goal of 50,000 page views in your first month. You can set realistic goals each month like the following:

Month 1 – 500 page views
Month 2 – 1,000 page views
Month 3 – 2,000 page views
Month 4 – 4,000 page views
Month 6 – 7,000 page views

And just a note on page view estimates. Every blog is different, and no two bloggers are the same.

Please do not get discouraged if someone got 2,000 page views their first month and you’re stuck on 500. While it’s good to note how you’re doing compared to others, constantly comparing your journey to someone else’s can cripple you. It can cause you to lose focus and miss the goals you need to set.

Focus on growing your organic traffic from Pinterest right away, and this is the exact course I used to make that happen in my first month of blogging. More traffic increasing tips here, where you’ll learn 21 strategies to get 400K+ page views.

Install Google Analytics, so you have the data you need to reassess your goals every month. Google Analytics will be your best friend as a blogger. Learn how to use it here.

One way to get more blog traffic is to write guest posts for other bloggers so that you get referral traffic from those posts for years to come. And on the flip side, you can do the same for other bloggers and allow guest posts on your site (such as me!). It really helps you fill in the content gaps.

But you have to be smart about this. Make sure you protect yourself legally and make sure all the people writing guest posts for you sign a guest blogger agreement.

This agreement safeguards you against legal ramifications that may arise when you use and own the content created by others. It also grants you the legal right to use it in business promotional and marketing materials.

I’ve helped more than 30,000 entrepreneurs just like you protect their blogs and businesses. Listen to what Richard had to say about my legal templates. He purchased nine of them, including the guest blogger agreement. Richard says:

Listen to Richard and the many other people (you can see the hundreds of love notes here) who purchased my easy-to-customize legal templates and made their life easier.

If you want to start accepting guest posts, get my guest blogger agreement here.

2. Learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is very important for bloggers and business owners. Many new bloggers choose not to focus on it right away because it’s a difficult topic to learn, especially if you just started blogging.

SEO is a long-term strategy to increase the organic traffic you get from Google. If you optimize your blog and articles right, you can land on the first page of Google. Google keeps the ranking factors a secret, but SEO experts have learned proven strategies that they teach to others.

This is the exact SEO course that helped me increase my Google traffic, which in turn helped me make money from my blog. See my results with it here.

Aside from the course, I also loved this bundle of SEO books, which was much easier to digest and finish in a couple of hours to save more time.

I encourage you to start learning SEO from day one. Like many other bloggers, I wish I had started sooner because organic traffic from Google is critical to your long-term success. Here are some more helpful SEO resources for you:

Easy On-Page SEO book
Easy Backlinks for SEO to increase your domain authority and find out secret ways to increase backlinks to your site
A new way to use SEO to increase your blog views
The SEO tool you’ll need for researching keywords
The best SEO course out there for bloggers

Work on SEO as soon as you can to get more organic traffic from Google. Here’s a helpful blog to help you get started!

3. Write Two Blog Posts Each Week

As a blogger, you probably know how important content is, and if you don’t, content is related to traffic. If you’re not publishing content consistently, you’re not going to get a lot of traffic. So, content is a necessity for blog traffic, whether that’s video or written content.

Here are 7 tips to blog consistently that helped me with my full-time job as a lawyer.

To get more traffic, you can scale your content creation like my friend Kelan who teaches you some great tips about outsourcing and growing a multiple six-figure blog!

But if you don’t have a lot of time, you could set a more manageable goal of one or two blog posts each week. If you need blog post ideas, check out this post I wrote on 7 ways to find them. Here’s a free blog checklist of 24 things you must do before and after publishing a blog post!

Having a lot of blog posts doesn’t guarantee you constant traffic; it simply increases your chances of ranking the more content you have. Plus, it gives readers who land on your blog more to read so they stay on it longer.

It fits the SMART goal process and will definitely further your blogging goals. Content marketing is a key part of getting more leads and sales so you can grow your blog.

4. Get More Leads or Customers

We all want to make more money, whether it’s through selling services or products here. This is the exact system that earned me six figures in my first year of blogging.

The best way to do this is to grow your email list. Email marketing is also vital to growing your blog and making more money.

Your email list will always be yours, unlike social media or other platforms that own your list. Social media channels will come and go, or you could be suspended even if you did everything right!

So, setting a goal to get 7 new customers or clients a week is an attainable goal. In turn, it will help you make money, so it furthers your income goals too.

Here are some great email marketing platforms you can use to start growing your list right away:

ConvertKit
Kartra (I personally use this and find out why here)
Mailerlite

Here’s a complete email marketing solution – A blueprint to grow and monetize your list of super fans without any sleazy sales tactics!

5. Make Your First Affiliate Sale in Four Months

One of the easiest ways for new bloggers to make money is through affiliate marketing. So, making your first affiliate sale is a big deal.

But when you make your first affiliate sale is different for each blogger. It depends on many factors such as your niche, how much content you’re creating, whether you’re optimizing that content, and much more.

Some bloggers are making $1,000 consistently by their sixth month, while it may take others a year or two. It’s all about setting a sound affiliate marketing strategy like this one.

So, setting a goal to make your first affiliate sale in four months (or you’re 50^th if you’re not new) means you then set up the new goals that you’ll need to achieve to do it. And you’ll know if you reach your goal because it’s measurable and time-bound.

Learn more about affiliate marketing in this blog post.

Also, here’s a list of the 60 best affiliate programs you should join to start making money blogging. And one of those high-paying affiliate programs is MINE!

Join for free here and start earning a 40% commission on each sale. I’ve paid six-figure in commissions to my affiliates already.

Once you join my program, I’ll even share my secret list of 8 ways to use your affiliate links to make money quickly with examples.

6. Figure out 1-2 ways to monetize your blog

There are at least 7 different ways to monetize your blog as shown in this blog post. But in the beginning, you won’t have the time to focus on all of them!

So you have to be smart with your time and concentrate on 1-2 big ways to monetize your blog. As you work on getting your blog noticed with these tips, you should also start thinking about how you’d like to make money blogging.

For example, do you enjoy affiliate marketing – promoting other people’s products and making commissions OR do you want to create your own digital products and be in control of your revenue OR do you want to get paid to write blog posts as shown here?

Starting a blog is easy, especially with these 6 tips but monetizing it successfully takes time and dedication. That’s why you need a proper monetization strategy in place. Take a look at these blog posts below where I show you how I monetized my blog in the beginning:

Need more personalized help to discover the best way to monetize and legally protect your blogging business? Schedule a call with her here, and I’d love to help you.

7. Networking – Connect with Four Other Popular Bloggers in Four Weeks

Successful bloggers don’t get that way all alone. Networking is incredibly important in blogging. Why? Because working with other bloggers gives you the chance to get in front of their audience and extend your reach much further than you could on your own.

By setting a time frame and a specific number of people to connect with, you’re making it time-bound and measurable, and this is an attainable goal.

You want to connect with people in niches similar to yours that have an audience that can benefit from your content and products and vice versa. They must be accessible. If they are too popular, you don’t have a chance to get close to them.

Start your networking by helping them first without any strings. Link to them, promote their content and products, and build a genuine connection.

You can find people to connect with in Facebook groups and other social media platforms.

Join my Facebook group here to start building relationships with other bloggers and entrepreneurs (we have a thriving community of over 6000 entrepreneurs from all over the world!)

Final Thoughts on SMART Blogging Goals

Your blogging goals depend on where you’re at in your business. They are specific to you and where you’re at in your business journey.

It is important to remember that someone new to blogging will have different first-year blog goals than an established blogger. A goal of gaining 300 more subscribers in a month may be irrelevant or unattainable for a new blogger.

If you follow the SMART goals process to set yours, you are more likely to be successful because these goals are validated as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Intelligent bloggers set SMART goals to help them succeed in the long run.

Now you know how what blogging goals you should focus on and how to achieve them!

For more goal slaying tips, check out this planner that you’ll love.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR BLOGGING GOALS? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.

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7 SMART Blogging Goals Every Blogger Should Set + How to Do It

Why Do You Need Blogging Goals?