January 1st, 2011: 1,005 Visits
I’ve outlined some traffic goals you should generally have for each year but sometimes you need shorter goals to help you not only stay motivated but also to gauge and measure whether or not you’re on track to achieve those goals!
So what do I do? I create those short term traffic goals that can do just that!
For example, starting January 1st of this year I crossed 1,000 site visits on a Saturday, which was, at the time, the largest traffic day for a Saturday historically. Both Saturday and Sunday are very low days for this blog. I wasn’t sure what I wanted my short term traffic goal to be but it kind of fell into my lap (that happens a lot, by the way).
I had luckily passed a milestone! So, I made a note of this and then created another short term goal to see if I could continue the pace up: Get 1,000 visits every day for the month of January!
And so far I’ve been able to do it:
Traffic is on an upward trend, over 1,000 a day.
Benefits and Strategy:
So, what are the benefits and strategies that I’m leveraging with a short term traffic goal? Here are those 3 things:
- Concentrated Bursts of Motivation: If you’re anything like me then it can be hard at times to set the “big” goals and then stay highly motivated. With short term goals I can stay highly motivated in a strategic set amount of time.
- Creating Sustainable Momentum: We all desire to actually see progress and by creating measurable short term goals you can see one’s progress clearly. Hitting those goals creates momentum which, when done well and repeatedly, can create sustainable momentum. Momentum, as a theory of practice, is a powerful factor in many different areas of life.
- Creating Opportunities to Celebrate: As I’ve mentioned previously, What is Celebrated is Repeated! This is a practice that you can begin today: Celebrate all the “Wins,” even the small ones, and they will be repeated! Small, short term traffic goals are easy to repeat too!
Now, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to keep the pace up for the next 9 or 10 days left in this month and so when February 1st arrives it’ll be time to set another goal.
Strategies for Creating Short Term Traffic Goals:
Joule iPad Stand
Here are a few thoughts that might give you some clarity on how to create the best short term traffic goals for your blog:
- Make it Challenging: Push yourself here! Go the distance!
- Make it Realistic: Don’t make any goals that are way outside the boundaries of your blog’s capabilities or in light of your current traffic metrics.
- Make it 4 Weeks: You can make as short of a time as you want for a traffic goal but 30 days seems pretty good and that’s what I use.
- Share Your Goals Publicly: This will help you stay motivated (or give you a lot more motivation) and give you the opportunity to celebrate it publicly as well when you make it! Involving the community around your blog is always pretty neat too.
- Give Yourself a Prize: This may sound pretty cheesy but I always give myself permission to have a “prize” or reward at the end of completing a traffic goal successfully. For example, if I’m able to pull off 1,000 visits for 30 consecutive days this month then I’ve set aside some money to purchase this neat iPad Stand pictured above.
Good luck and would love for you guys to start preparing for February with some short term traffic goals! Let’s hear it in the comments what they specifically!
Great post John, I was just looking at my stats this morning and hoping I would see more visits.
Wow! You are hovering around the 1,999 on good days and I am around 6. Yes, that was a single digit.
The stats graph also reminds me of a heart rate monitor, which is really the same for a blog I think. You don’t want your blog to go flat-line or it could signal its death.
This post has motivated me to set some goals. Like you said, I will start out with a small goal and I am setting it at 10 visits a day till the end of January. February I will set a higher goal.
So if any one out there would like to help me reach my goal, please visit:
http://www.mutantminds.com
While you are there, please leave a comment; it would really make my day.
awesome! we all start there mutant!
Awesome post, thanks a lot for the ideas. I’m definitely going to implement goals into my blog’s future.
I was just wondering, how close should I watch my stats?
Many of my visitors and pageviews I’m sure come from bots and spam so I’m just curious is you have any tips. Thanks a lot John!
you should take a look at it daily, but not more than once or twice.
This is great!
Need to work on my short term goals more. Will help make the long term ones more scalable.
let me know what they are!
I don’t really have “traffic goals” for my personal blog since it’s more a lab where I’m experimenting with a few things but as I launch a few other blogs this year my goal is to set short term traffic goals that lead to long term results.
On my personal blog though… I’d love to see 750 a day for at least 5 days in a row by the end of February. I have pops now and some days with over 1300 when I’m hustling but my average is inconsistent.
few more blogs? do tell!
I noticed that Google analytics reports a lower number of visits than the WordPress stats plugin.
Which one is correct; or do they record different types of visits?
that depends on some of your settings as you can track your own views in wordpress stats (via settings).
Their will definitely be differences as some bots can attack (or hit) parts of your wordpress admin and register hits. it’s happened before, I know from first hand experience.
use both and find a middle ground. don’t pay so much to the actual numbers so much but the trends and patterns (and, of course, growth).
Thanks for the quick reply.
I tried to find a way to block my on ip from the stats plugin, but I couldn’t find a setting for that so I thought maybe it was recording my own hits. (I guess if I have a low day I can visit myself and make me feel better. Might even comment to myself.)
Speaking of trends and patterns, I remember a post you wrote about viewing what key words show up on google analytics. It is amazing how you would think something would be more popular, but it is not. I have a couple of posts that have comments on them (thanks to you), but they are not the post that is viewed the most. The most viewed post is http://mutantminds.com/antique-pencils/.
Pencils? Who knew?
is this checkbox clicked?
http://cl.ly/3N2L362s0z453c0x0M3Z
I have the Admin Bar and Shortlinks checked, and Registered Users unchecked.
Report Visibility is for Administrator, Author, and Editor.
The Donate to Tentblogger is checked. Wait a minute, no, that must of been somewhere else on my Dashboard.
DOH! keep your money! i don’t want it!
But my wife gave me my allowance.
whoa. yay!
and weird about pencils….
1000 views per day? Pah! That’s nothing!
I can get at LEAST 2% of that.
No… wait… the idea is to get more rather than less, right?
Oh. Wow. You get in a day what I get in a month!
Do you monitor the difference between visits and unique visitors?
Sorry I haven’t been commenting much lately. I’ve been trying to come and read regularly but I’m working on designing a theme from scratch… and it’s not as easy as it looks!
go on and be awesome! design that wordpress blog theme!
In fact, you don’t really realize how much goes into a theme at all.
It’s been an awesome learning experience though. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Going through and trying to remove all the unnecessary css that springs up as you go along is fun, too!
well done bro. you’re on your way1!
I’m having a very hard time deciding on a short term goal. It’s only been in the past 2 months that I’m actually getting a more consistent flow of traffic (and I’ve had the site for about 7 years). In the past 2 months I’ve been getting around 70 views a day.. I know, it’s really nothing considering you’re getting over 1000 a day… but hey, I’m pretty excited about it.. because it means I’m putting out interesting content (finally).
It’s easy for me to say that I want to hit 70 visitors a day.. but I’m already hitting that, so it’s not a stretch. My biggest problem in picking a realistic number is, I see some days where it was 70, but then I see other days where its more like 600.. (I’m thinking the 600+ day was the day you and I had a tiff John..thanks? LOL) Is it to big a stretch to say I want another 30 visitors a day? If it is a realistic goal, considering I’m working on putting out new posts daily now, how do I get there? What can I do aside from twitter, to get my posts read?
any help is appreciated.
I’d say start at 100. See if you can get there first. then go up from there!
Great post, especially the ‘prize’ part!Rewarding yourself is something I’ve always advocated; it keeps your personal motivation high and makes you less reliant on seeking the approval of others.
for sure!
This post is exactly what I needed to give me the motivation necessary to keep on. I will set a goal for the rest of March and see how it pans out. I am only posting 4 times a week but I guess I should be doing so daily. If the weekend is slow in traffic should I post new content on these days anyway?
sure. i think you should always write, every single day. but that’s just me.