At the start of the year, I outlined the goals I had for the Know The Ledge website for 2008. Being that the site is just a baby in terms of age, I know the progress is always the slowest at this time. Still, I’d like to make a habit of going over the goals progress throughout the year as a way to share my experience with you as well as keep me focused on what the goals of the site are. That constant repetition will help me stay on track with what I need to be doing to build the site. So with no further ado, here’s our first progress report!
1. Be able to write roughly a post a day
I have done an outstanding job so far with this, as it has been my main focus. I knew this was the most important of all the goals, since it really determines whether or not any growth or success will happen. Content is king for websites, and so far I’ve done a good job of keeping up with regular posting. I have posted 63 articles in the 69 days since January 1st. Even better than that, I’ve posted at least once a day for every day since January 13th. As long as this continues, the site will grow and things should fall into place nicely.
2. Build steady traffic and have over 100 subscribers
After 2 and a half months of steady writing, you can’t really expect to have 100 subscribers and steady traffic. But the site has seen some slow (but steady) organic growth. I haven’t had a lot of time to advertise the site, or even network as much as I’d like to, but it has been slowly growing. The handful of subscribers I have now will eventually grow larger as the site grows and continues to provide valuable content.
3. Have the site earn over $500 a month
The site is currently not making any positive profit with the various ad networks, so we still have a long way to meet this goal. With the site being so new, it’s pretty obvious that we don’t currently have enough traffic to really make a dent in the profitability goal. It’s hard to really see what the earning potential of the site will be. At this point the focus is just to provide as much useful content as possible, and the rest should take care of itself.
4. Successfully administer 2 great contests
I have some great ideas for Know The Ledge contests, but am currently waiting until the overall reach of the site expands a little. The problem with putting out one of those contests now is that not many people would see it and participate, which defeats a lot of the purpose of having the contest in the first place. I want to foster more of a collaborative environment to the site, and the contests will help to accomplish that. Hopefully we’ll be able to have the first one in the next 3 months or so. Then possibly with a bigger event towards the end of the year.
5. Create a mobile version of the site
Initially I had visions of creating a mobile version of the site, and maybe once things slow down a little in my life I’ll want to go back to this, but I haven’t really even started working on this so far. I would like to have a mobile administrative login for the site, and actually I think that should be a higher priority at this point. I don’t want to change this goal just yet, being that we’re only 2 months into the new year, but I can see this one getting pushed out of 2008 and possibly adding some more short-term goals.
Overall the most focus has been on the daily content of the site, which is where I think it should be. If we can continue at this same pace, I think we’ll start to see things fall into place over the next 6 months or so. I’ve been really excited by the progress of the site in terms of number of articles and slow organic traffic growth, and think everything is really going about as well as can be expected. For the next few months we’re planning on continuing the focus on daily content, but also to increase our networking by participating on more forums and other blogs to try to spread the word about Know The Ledge. We’ll be back in a couple months to see how things are progressing at that time, and how much things have (or have not) changed.
