It’s that time of year once again, and while some people call them New Year’s resolutions, I’ll stick with what they called it back when I was part of the corporate world: Goal Setting.

I never had any goals when I started my blog, mainly because I didn’t know what I was doing. Now that it is a business and my main source of income, I have definite goals. The focus of what I will go through here in this article is to help you set aggressive, but realistic goals, while at the same time using this opportunity to set some for myself.

The key word here is aggressive. Don’t let yourself off the hook, don’t make it too easy on yourself, and set some goals that if you reach them, will be something that you are truly proud of and give yourself a sense of accomplishment. Here are my goals for the new year…

1) Automate Repetitive Tasks

There are certain tasks that everyone has to do for their blog that require you do the same thing over and over again. Whether it is a core piece of data, the adding of a logo, the actual formatting of each article or just a cosmetic thing, these are the kind of tasks that are important and a necessary evil.  While we wish this portion of blogging would go away, we can’t get rid of it because it has been an integral part of our success.

About a month ago I timed myself as to how long it takes me to do just the setting up of an article. I didn’t just do it once, I did it several times. I included everything but the actual writing and I found that it took about 15 minutes. Then I looked at all of the articles that were written over the course of the year and it came to about 6,000. I did the simple math and that’s 17 days a year we spend just on the formatting and with my site growing every day, my guess is that it will actually be closer to a month. Of course that would be if we worked 24 hours a day for all of those days consecutively. If time is money as many say, then that’s a lot of money I’m not making.

While some tasks can be done by outsourcing, this is one that for me will take heavy duty custom programming to automate. To be candid, this project (to outsource the formatting of blog posts) would cost more than I ever thought I would make from my site and three-fourths of what I made in a year working on Wall Street in my first job out of college. It is all relative though and a situation like this is possible on a blog of any size. I know many people feel they don’t have the money to put in to automate tasks like this, but when you think in terms of how much time you could save, you gain an opportunity to work on tasks and posts that will directly generate income.

2) Make A Lot Of Money

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The term “a lot of money” is really relative and it is one of the more subjective things there is.  I never expected or planned on making money online and for those of you who have been following my journey since title="Mitch Interview" href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/993/mitch-interview/">Yaro first interviewed me over two years ago, this goal may surprise you. The thing is, now that my blog is my primary source of income, is a business, and also has a lot of sizable expenses that go along with it, money has become more important.

I don’t feel guilty about wanting to make a lot of money nor have I ever approached making money with a sense of entitlement. I have worked thousands of hours and up until early 2010, I never made anything from blogging. I watched many others who didn’t work nearly as hard as I did nor give nearly as much as I did away for free, make decent money online. I can safely say in 2010 I got even and then some as the hard work and countless hours with no monetary reward all paid dividends. While I expected that at some point I would make money and it would be a windfall since I had built such a large site on many levels at title="The Sports Chat Place" href="http://sportschatplace.com">Sports Chat Place, I never expected the money to just keep coming.

I am constantly looking at new ways to make money on my site and I am approached by some of the industry and Internet giants daily about joint ventures. I know that the best way to make recurring income in life changing quantities is to provide a quality product at a quality price. I know from my experience that if quality is delivered, people will want it and will pay for it. I don’t expect people to just give me money because I have an idea or because I provide some sort of service, I want them to give me money because they feel it is something they want and something they are getting solid value from.

For every partnership I do or product I endorse, I literally turn away hundreds. Blogging isn’t and never will be just about making money but like everything I do, I want to do it to the best of my ability. If making money is what I am doing, I want to make a lot of it and be the best I can be at it.

3) Help Other Bloggers Become Successful

The day I typed into Google “How Do I Start A Blog” turned out to be a day that changed my life and actually rewrote my future. None of what I have accomplished online would have ever happened if I didn’t type those words and even less would have gotten done if I didn’t follow through and take it seriously.

I think it’s important for me at this point to give back to the blogging community. By giving back to the blogging community I don’t mean to the people who get a host, register a domain name, post once a week or less and slap their blog with Adsense or a bunch of affiliate ads. I mean the people who are willing to make the serious commitment to what it takes to be successful. A lot of people start blogs with the intent of making money, and I believe that’s a realistic goal, but it is something that happens later, not right away unless you are really famous or you have built a better mouse trap.

I’m not a household name when it comes to the blogging world, it wasn’t my intention to become one. What I am though is someone who built something from nothing and it’s something of considerable substance and value to a lot of people.

I know there are a lot of great programs out there about getting started with blogging, good blogging techniques etc, and I seriously doubt I would be where I am now if I never joined title="Blog Mastermind" href="http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/">Blog Mastermind. While I have used it for all that it is worth, we all develop some of our own techniques that can be effective in many areas, whether it be traffic generation, monetization, or just about anything else.

I will continue to post here at Entrepreneur’s Journey regularly in 2011 and I would very much like to teach what I have learned to others who are willing to put in the work involved.

4) Let Go

I am a very passionate person in just about everything I do and most people who know me tell me that is what makes my blog successful and why they never even questioned that I would get to where I am today. I know sometimes I can be over the top and even in forums, I have left some comments that can be pretty rough when communicating with people when it comes to blogging.

Let me put it simply: It really irks me when people try and take short cuts or think they are entitled to make money and get traffic for simply registering a domain name and setting up a template. It doesn’t work that way.

When I hear people say they “work hard”, for some reason I always hear it about things like back linking or social media, which really aren’t going to make a site a success. While those methods can bring traffic, the much more important thing is getting people to stay at your blog. I am adamant that content creation is the most important thing and should be what 95 percent of what people’s time should be spent on if they want to be successful. Content in itself can bring a ton of traffic, social media and back linking will never create a loyal reader on their own.

Now after reading this, I am sure I will read comments like “content is king” and the like, but to say it and live it are two different things. What I hope I can do is to just let people find out for themselves, if they don’t they will surely fail anyways. I know it’s my passion that gets in the way as it pains me to see people go down the wrong path. This leads me to….

5) Teach Bloggers Some Simple Math

Last time I checked, I had a few thousand Twitter followers at most . Last time I checked I had less than 70 fans on my blog’s Facebook page. Last time I checked, I hadn’t Stumbled, Dugg, or really done all that much in the world of Social Media. Last time I checked I wasn’t on the map as far as any search terms I would have had to spend hours back linking to get indexed on.

Last time I checked I had no balance on any credit card, have a $ 3,000 a month tech bill I can pay cash for generated 100 percent from the revenue of my site. Last time I checked I had to hire someone just to keep track of the multiple income streams on my blog and the revenue coming in. Last time I checked I had three offers from prominent advertising agencies trying to get me to leave my current deal. Last time I checked I had over two million page views in the preceding month. Last time I checked I had hundreds of subscribers paying $ 39.99 for my Premium Edition. Last time I checked we posted over 7,000 original articles on my site this year.

What I am trying to say here is that social media and all of that stuff may have a place in blogging and traffic generation but it isn’t even close to being as important as content. I don’t rank for any keywords but I am number one in key phrases in Google for every article on my site. Would you rather have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, or anything of that nature or would you rather make money?

Content makes money. It’s really that simple.

Mitch Wilson