I wonder how many people complaining about not being able to make money online actually take the time to sit down and write out their near-term, intermediate-term, and long-term goals.  I would suspect that very few of them even bother to think about their goals and objectives, let alone write them down.  On the other hand, I would guess that many individuals who are actually making money online do take the time to formulate goals, write them down, and then seek to accomplish those goals which plays a major role in their success.

So, what are your goals for making money online?  Do you wish to replace your current income?  What is it that you are trying to accomplish?  My first intermediate goal is to achieve $1000 per month in earnings.  That amount sounds like it is enough to make it worthwhile to me.  It would certainly help with the bills or savings.  I could use that amount to take a nice vacation once in a while.  An extra $1000 per month would be very useful.  The problem is that $1000 per month seems like an awful lot when starting with zero.  It is incredibly easy to get discouraged before you even get started.  So, to get there I have to break it up into some manageable pieces and from there define what it will take to get there.  What will it take and how long?

For me, this is a part time gig.  I don’t plan on it replacing my usual source of income for quite some time so I need to be realistic in my goals based upon the available time that I would expect to have.  I think making $1000 per month within 2 years is reasonable.  I also think that it is reasonable to divide that time into 6 month segments and expect to double my income in each 6 month block.  That would mean getting from $0 to $125 in the first 6 months, from $125 to $250 in the next 6 months, from $250 to $500 and then to $1000.  So, I need to figure out what it will take to get to $125 monthly income by the end of this year, December 31, 2009.

I should expect that I could make roughly between $0.50 and $1 per article per month.  This means to make $125 in monthly income by December, I would have to have somewhere between 125 and 250 articles.  I really can’t control my income directly, but have to set my objectives based upon what I am able to do—namely, write articles.  I also need to be able to drive traffic to those articles in order to earn anything from Adsense.  Some of my objectives can be based upon driving traffic.  I have a rough idea based on my first 3 months of what my overall page impressions are and what I can expect based upon that traffic.  With these numbers in mind, I have to find ways to not only increase my articles but to increase my traffic.  I have several objectives for my content production and ways to increase traffic.  You can read about the specifics at my blog.  So far, I think I am on target but that is only because of well defined goals with written objectives that should get me headed in the right direction.  If you want to make money by writing content online, you need to define how you plan on getting there.  Otherwise, you will just be spinning your wheels wondering why it isn’t working.