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Blog Goals for Beginners
These blog goals for beginners are perfect for new bloggers!
If you have recently started a blog, setting goals is a great way to keep yourself accountable and make progress with your blogging endeavors.
It’s important to treat your blog like a business from the start if you want to make money blogging, and setting goals can help you do that.
During my first year of blogging, I set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) for myself each month.
Need help figuring out what’s important to focus on?
Here’s a look at some blog goals that are great for beginners:
1. Stick to a publishing schedule.
One of the most important elements of becoming a successful blogger is consistency. If you can master this, you’re well on your way to success.
An excellent goal is committing to a publishing schedule.
This can be whatever cadence you want: three new blog posts per week, one new blog post per week, two new blog posts per month… whatever you can stick to.
You might even challenge yourself to something like Blogtober or Blogmas where you write one new blog post every single day for a month.
Remember, quality over quantity is what matters the most.
So don’t set an unrealistic goal and let the quality of your writing suffer. It’s better to publish less frequently, but have higher-quality content.
2. Publish 50 blog posts.
Another goal I recommend for new bloggers is publishing 50 blog posts.
I often hear new bloggers wonder why they aren’t getting much traffic or making any money after several months… and they only have 10 blog posts published.
You need a solid “library” of content before you can start getting consistent, meaningful traffic and earning real money from your blog.
Although 50 blog posts is an arbitrary number, it’s a number I consider to be a good “base” amount of blog posts. You can break this goal into smaller chunks like 10 blog posts, 25 blog posts, etc. to make it more manageable.
Once you hit 50, you can aim for 100 blog posts, and so on.
3. Get 10,000 monthly sessions.
When it comes to blog traffic, 10,000 monthly sessions is a GREAT number to aim for. This is an achievable traffic level for new bloggers to reach.
It’s also the amount of traffic you need to apply to a premium ad network like Journey by Mediavine or Monumetric, which is a great milestone.
I honestly don’t recommend having ads on your blog when you just start out because you’ll likely be earning pennies a day from them and it’s not worth it. But 10,000 monthly sessions means you can join a better ad network and start earning a significant amount of money from ads on your blog.
This is a great way to monetize your blog early on.
4. Get 50,000 monthly sessions.
The next traffic milestone to aim for is 50,000 sessions per month.
At this point, you can join Mediavine, a premium ad network that is pretty much the gold standard for bloggers. Mediavine lets you earn more money from ads.
This is also the point where you can start earning a significant amount of money from ads alone, making this a great goal to aim for with your blog.
5. Sign up for three affiliate programs.
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money as a new blogger.
With affiliate marketing, you earn a commission every time someone makes a purchase after clicking one of your affiliate links. This is great for bloggers in every niche, and tons of retailers and brands offer affiliate programs.
A good goal for beginners is joining three affiliate programs.
I have a free list of 250+ affiliate programs you can use for ideas.
6. Start an email list.
Having an email list is super important for bloggers.
Unlike social media, where you do not have any control over the platforms and you’re at the whim of algorithms, you own your email list.
Email marketing is an amazing way to engage with your audience, drive traffic back to your blog, earn money from newsletter sponsorships, promote offers for products you’re an affiliate for, and market your own products to your audience.
I have a whole guide on how to start an email list for bloggers.
Don’t let it overwhelm you! This is something you can set up in a day, and the email marketing platform I recommend offers a free plan.
7. Grow your email list to 1,000 subscribers.
After you’ve started your email list, a milestone to aim for is 1,000 subscribers.
This is another arbitrary number, but I think it’s a good goal to focus on because 1,000 subscribers is around when you can start expecting to see real engagement (and sales for affiliate products or your own products.)
Once you hit 1,000 subscribers, you can change to goal to 2,000, 3,000, and so on.
8. Launch a digital product.
Digital products are one of my favorite ways to make money.
This can be something like an ebook, an online course, a template, a paid newsletter, a membership, printables, and so on. The options are endless!
I have a whole list of digital product ideas you can check out.
The great thing about digital products is they are passive income. Once you create your product, you can sell infinite copies of it to customers.
9. Publish three guest posts.
Guest posts are good for SEO (search engine optimization) because doing one gets your blog a link back from another website, which shows Google that your blog is legit and makes it seem more authoritative.
There are additional benefits to guest posting too. It can be a good way to get your name out there and drive traffic back to your blog, especially if the website you guest post on is authoritative and gets a lot of traffic.
When I first started blogging, I made a point to do quite a few guest posts.
You don’t want it to take too much time away from writing content for your own blog, but I think that three guest posts is a good number to target.
10. Master one social platform.
Finally, one excellent goal for new bloggers is picking one social platform to master. When you first get started, you might be tempted to do it all.
Shouldn’t you have a presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube? My answer to that is firm and resounding no!
It’s better to get really good at one platform first.
You’ll get better returns if you focus all your efforts in one place rather than spreading yourself too thin trying to be everywhere at once.
My top pick of what to focus on would be Pinterest. This is different from other “social” platforms because Pinterest is really more of a visual search engine, which means it’s really good for driving traffic to your blog.
Blog Goals for Beginners
These are the best blog goals for beginners.
Setting goals is a great way to keep yourself accountable and having some structure like this will help you make progress with your blog.
When I was in my first year of blogging, setting goals gave me something to work towards and motivated me to turn my blog into a profitable business.
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