Last month I made a move towards increasing accountability for The Creative Boss and I’m not going to sugarcoat it - it was scary.
I posted my business goals publicly with only a vague idea of how I was going to accomplish them. But what’s important is that for the first time - I made goals and held myself accountable.
Now that September’s a fading memory and we are almost halfway through October, I guess it’s about time to follow through and publicly recap the results.
And I can fill you in on my plan for October - better late than never, right?
Traffic Goals
September Goal: 1500 pageviews. I was so close to hitting my mark with this one; I ended the month with a total of 1394.
What happened: I think I fell short on this one because I put most of my energy into creating a new product which led to me not having time for new blog posts. I failed to publish any posts towards the end of the month and my traffic took a nosedive as a result.
Lesson learned: The importance of consistency. By setting specific goals, I was able to pinpoint where exactly my traffic declined and why it happened. I know now that I need to stay consistent and try to build my content bank so that it covers more than a month at a time. The more blog post batching I can do, the more time I will have available to create new products or implement new ideas without falling short on keeping my regular content consistent.
October Goal: 1750 pageviews.
My new plan for October is to make sure I focus on keeping my regular content consistent. I need to pay attention to time management and take on new projects at a slower pace so I can still keep everything else on track.
Social Growth
My social goals were lofty and that’s because I wasn’t very consistent with tracking growth to see what trend was in order to set realistic goals.
I know social following is often thought of as vain, but some fans and followers engage and convert to email subscribers. So although it remains on the agenda, it’s not one of my top priorities for the 4th quarter.
September Goal: 500 fans, 250 group members. I didn’t hit either of these numbers this month. I ended the month at a total of 406 fans and 64 group members. There wasn’t a huge increase here, but I did see a steady incline gaining about 20 to each.
What happened: This was mostly not being sure what to expect and no real plan on how to grow the numbers. Since this was the first month where I set actual goals, I was really taking a shot in the dark with the social numbers. I simply threw out a vain number that’d be nice to have and figured I could tweak each month thereafter by my results. I didn’t do any research on what to expect from social following, but I can better gauge my goals now that I have started tracking them.
Lesson learned: Consistency is also a key element in gaining social following. By keeping track of where my audience is and how to convert them into engaging fans, I can better understand what I can try next to hopefully see a bigger increase.
October Goal: 500 fans, 100 group members.
Now that I have an idea of what to expect, I’ve tried to set what seems to be a more realistic and attainable goal. My plan is to continue promoting the group and Facebook page within other groups on social share days. I’ve also started adding more links to the group directly within my welcome emails sent to new subscribers.
September Goal: 1000 followers. The month ended with 480 Instagram followers - another social goal that didn’t quite hit the mark.
What happened: Here again - there was no actionable plan set in place. This first month of goal tracking was basically picking a number out of thin air. And with Instagram especially, I wasn’t consistent with posting regularly which definitely didn’t help any.
Lesson learned: When posting content from others in my niche, I did notice a jump in the followers on each post, so now I know it’s possible to piggyback off those with fans in a similar niche. Keeping track of where I notice the best results will help me to better reach my goals each month.
October Goal: 600 followers.
Now that I have a better understanding of what to expect, I’m attempting to set a more realistic goal. I’m planning to use more quotes and links to others regularly, and I’m taking time each week to write content and schedule it within SmarterQueue.
September Goal: 1500 followers. Although this is another goal I didn’t reach, I did end the month with 895 followers which is an increase of nearly 50 followers from the month before.
What happened: It seems that almost everyone had a drop in their Pinterest traffic and engagement. I’m not sure the reason, but I did still see steady growth. I did, however, overshoot my goal anticipating a much larger boost in followers.
Lesson learned: Social platforms are frequently changing, and I need to be prepared to either go with the new flow or risk losing followers and let it fall to the wayside.
October Goal: 1000 followers.
Seeing as I’m only about 100 followers away from hitting this number, I think it’s a more reachable goal for October. I’m going to continue to use BoardBooster to automate sharing and add new niche boards relating to upcoming product ideas that I have brewing.
Email List
September Goal: 1000 subscribers. My total for the month on this one was 341 which is a long cry from my 1000 goal. However, I did end up with roughly 40 new email subscribers.
What happened: Similar to my social goals, I set a goal without having much of a plan on how to achieve it. I knew what I had planned, but most of it wasn’t published at the beginning of the month, so I didn’t see results until later in the month.
Lesson learned: Find something of high value to give away and promote it everywhere. I began offering website audits to help creatives get a better grasp on what works best for their site and what areas could use improving. Of course, it helps to target those that may be interested in my services or the new course that I’ll be releasing in the near future.
October Goal: 500 subscribers.
I plan on hosting one (possibly two) webinars during the month along with continuing to offer website audits. Additionally, I have a challenge in the works, but I may not start it until November. I don’t want to be overly ambitious and take on more than I can handle.
Income and Expenses
I like to begin this section by prefacing that The Creative Boss isn’t my primary source of income. Without my other business, this wouldn’t be able to thrive. But, my goal is to make The Creative Boss my primary source of income by the end of 2018.
September Goal: $500. Not only did I not reach this goal, but I was in the red for September.
What happened: There are a couple of reasons for this. I’ve been writing content for a new product and my copyeditor has been hard at work making it awesome for you. I also had an opportunity to sign up for a year of hosting for about $50. It was a hefty expense for the month, but it will save me tons of cash over the next year.
Lesson learned: In order to reach my monthly goal, I need to try and factor in any expenses that I can possibly foresee. Depending on the results over the next few months, it may even help me hit my goal to deduct a small amount every month for any unexpected costs.
I plan on continuing to offer audits and to focus on promoting the freebies that funnel into small upsells to help prime my audience for a bigger product launch in the coming months.
Income: $160.02
Digital Products: $56
Ads and Affiliates: $104.02
The products I have currently on sale are Create the Ultimate Opt-In Offer for $39, Creative Biz Toolkit for $4 (you see this after opting in for the Editorial Calendar Trello board), and the Get Your Blog On! ebook for $5 (you see this after signing up for the free course as a way to get all of the content in one tidy pdf). There are a few more small products in the works and a much larger course that will be released in the coming months.
Expenses: $357.54
Hosting: $54.60 (yearly)
Domain: $14.99 (yearly)
ConvertKit: $29 (monthly)
SmarterQueue: $19 (monthly)
Adobe CC: $53.11 (monthly)
Stock Photos: $15 (every 2 months)
Education: $10
Independent Contractors: 161.84
As you can tell, a couple yearly expenses fell in this month and I sprang for a course in Udemy. That’s an outgoing cost that won’t repeat every month, so my total expenses for next month should go down.
Because I know what all I have in the works for the rest of this year, I’m still comfortable with these numbers and things should be moving up the scale to at least break even and I expect to see a higher profit margin in 2018.
October Goal: $500.
I’d love to see more of my revenue come from a combination of affiliate income and more product sells. I know my expenses will be down next month so this number shouldn’t be too hard to reach.
Accountability
The biggest reason for sharing my monthly goals is to hold myself accountable. Part of having a business is knowing what works and what doesn’t. This first month was more of a starting off point to see how far off I was at setting my goals since I didn’t really have anything to base my numbers off of.
I was rather ambitious and as much as I would love to accomplish everything it takes to hit these numbers, I don’t want to become discouraged by trying to take on more than I can handle. I ended up falling behind on my regular blog content which is also why this is just now getting published already halfway through the month. But after studying September’s goals, I’m hoping I have set more realistic goals that I can steadily improve on every month.
It’s all part of making sure I follow through with holding myself accountable. And this is why I want to invite you to join The Creative Boss Mastermind, so you can put your monthly goals on full display and we can help encourage one another to achieve them!
[join group graphic]
Last month I made a move towards increasing accountability for The Creative Boss and I’m not going to sugarcoat it -it was scary.
I posted my business goals publicly with only a vague idea of how I was going to accomplish them. But what’s important is that for the first time - I made goals and held myself accountable.
Now that September’s a fading memory and we are almost halfway through October, I guess it’s about time to follow through and publicly recap the results.
And I can fill you in on my plan for October - better late than never, right?
Traffic Goals
September Goal: 1500 pageviews. I was so close to hitting my mark with this one; I ended the month with a total of 1394.
What happened: I think I fell short on this one because I put most of my energy into creating a new product which led to me not having time for new blog posts. I failed to publish any posts towards the end of the month and my traffic took a nosedive as a result.
Lesson learned: The importance of consistency. By setting specific goals, I was able to pinpoint where exactly my traffic declined and why it happened. I know now that I need to stay consistent and try to build my content bank so that it covers more than a month at a time. The more blog post batching I can do, the more time I will have available to create new products or implement new ideas without falling short on keeping my regular content consistent.
October Goal: 1750 pageviews.
My new plan for October is to make sure I focus on keeping my regular content consistent. I need to pay attention to time management and take on new projects at a slower pace so I can still keep everything else on track.
Social Growth
My social goals were lofty and that’s because I wasn’t very consistent with tracking growth to see what trend was in order to set realistic goals.
I know social following is often thought of as vain, but some fans and followers engage and convert to email subscribers. So although it remains on the agenda, it’s not one of my top priorities for the 4th quarter.
September Goal: 500 fans, 250 group members. I didn’t hit either of these numbers this month. I ended the month at a total of 406 fans and 64 group members. There wasn’t a huge increase here, but I did see a steady incline gaining about 20 to each.
What happened: This was mostly not being sure what to expect and no real plan on how to grow the numbers. Since this was the first month where I set actual goals, I was really taking a shot in the dark with the social numbers. I simply threw out a vain number that’d be nice to have and figured I could tweak each month thereafter by my results. I didn’t do any research on what to expect from social following, but I can better gauge my goals now that I have started tracking them.
Lesson learned: Consistency is also a key element in gaining social following. By keeping track of where my audience is and how to convert them into engaging fans, I can better understand what I can try next to hopefully see a bigger increase.
October Goal: 500 fans, 100 group members.
Now that I have an idea of what to expect, I’ve tried to set what seems to be a more realistic and attainable goal. My plan is to continue promoting the group and Facebook page within other groups on social share days. I’ve also started adding more links to the group directly within my welcome emails sent to new subscribers.
September Goal: 1000 followers. The month ended with 480 Instagram followers - another social goal that didn’t quite hit the mark.
What happened: Here again - there was no actionable plan set in place. This first month of goal tracking was basically picking a number out of thin air. And with Instagram especially, I wasn’t consistent with posting regularly which definitely didn’t help any.
Lesson learned: When posting content from others in my niche, I did notice a jump in the followers on each post, so now I know it’s possible to piggyback off those with fans in a similar niche. Keeping track of where I notice the best results will help me to better reach my goals each month.
October Goal: 600 followers.
Now that I have a better understanding of what to expect, I’m attempting to set a more realistic goal. I’m planning to use more quotes and links to others regularly, and I’m taking time each week to write content and schedule it within SmarterQueue.
September Goal: 1500 followers. Although this is another goal I didn’t reach, I did end the month with 895 followers which is an increase of nearly 50 followers from the month before.
What happened: It seems that almost everyone had a drop in their Pinterest traffic and engagement. I’m not sure the reason, but I did still see steady growth. I did, however, overshoot my goal anticipating a much larger boost in followers.
Lesson learned: Social platforms are frequently changing, and I need to be prepared to either go with the new flow or risk losing followers and let it fall to the wayside.
October Goal: 1000 followers.
Seeing as I’m only about 100 followers away from hitting this number, I think it’s a more reachable goal for October. I’m going to continue to use BoardBooster to automate sharing and add new niche boards relating to upcoming product ideas that I have brewing.
Email List
September Goal: 1000 subscribers. My total for the month on this one was 341 which is a long cry from my 1000 goal. However, I did end up with roughly 40 new email subscribers.
What happened: Similar to my social goals, I set a goal without having much of a plan on how to achieve it. I knew what I had planned, but most of it wasn’t published at the beginning of the month, so I didn’t see results until later in the month.
Lesson learned: Find something of high value to give away and promote it everywhere. I began offering website audits to help creatives get a better grasp on what works best for their site and what areas could use improving. Of course, it helps to target those that may be interested in my services or the new course that I’ll be releasing in the near future.
October Goal: 500 subscribers.
I plan on hosting one (possibly two) webinars during the month along with continuing to offer website audits. Additionally, I have a challenge in the works, but I may not start it until November. I don’t want to be overly ambitious and take on more than I can handle.
Income and Expenses
I like to begin this section by prefacing that The Creative Boss isn’t my primary source of income. Without my other business, this wouldn’t be able to thrive. But, my goal is to make The Creative Boss my primary source of income by the end of 2018.
September Goal: $500. Not only did I not reach this goal, but I was in the red for September.
What happened: There are a couple of reasons for this. I’ve been writing content for a new product and my copyeditor has been hard at work making it awesome for you. I also had an opportunity to sign up for a year of hosting for about $50. It was a hefty expense for the month, but it will save me tons of cash over the next year.
Lesson learned: In order to reach my monthly goal, I need to try and factor in any expenses that I can possibly foresee. Depending on the results over the next few months, it may even help me hit my goal to deduct a small amount every month for any unexpected costs.
I plan on continuing to offer audits and to focus on promoting the freebies that funnel into small upsells to help prime my audience for a bigger product launch in the coming months.
Income: $160.02
Digital Products: $56
Ads and Affiliates: $104.02
The products I have currently on sale are Create the Ultimate Opt-In Offer for $39, Creative Biz Toolkit for $4 (you see this after opting in for the Editorial Calendar Trello board), and the Get Your Blog On! ebook for $5 (you see this after signing up for the free course as a way to get all of the content in one tidy pdf). There are a few more small products in the works and a much larger course that will be released in the coming months.
Expenses: $357.54
Hosting: $54.60 (yearly)
Domain: $14.99 (yearly)
ConvertKit: $29 (monthly)
SmarterQueue: $19 (monthly)
Adobe CC: $53.11 (monthly)
Stock Photos: $15 (every 2 months)
Education: $10
Independent Contractors: 161.84
As you can tell, a couple yearly expenses fell in this month and I sprang for a course in Udemy. That’s an outgoing cost that won’t repeat every month, so my total expenses for next month should go down.
Because I know what all I have in the works for the rest of this year, I’m still comfortable with these numbers and things should be moving up the scale to at least break even and I expect to see a higher profit margin in 2018.
October Goal: $500.
I’d love to see more of my revenue come from a combination of affiliate income and more product sells. I know my expenses will be down next month so this number shouldn’t be too hard to reach.
Accountability
The biggest reason for sharing my monthly goals is to hold myself accountable. Part of having a business is knowing what works and what doesn’t. This first month was more of a starting off point to see how far off I was at setting my goals since I didn’t really have anything to base my numbers off of.
I was rather ambitious and as much as I would love to accomplish everything it takes to hit these numbers, I don’t want to become discouraged by trying to take on more than I can handle. I ended up falling behind on my regular blog content which is also why this is just now getting published already halfway through the month. But after studying September’s goals, I’m hoping I have set more realistic goals that I can steadily improve on every month.
It’s all part of making sure I follow through with holding myself accountable. And this is why I want to invite you to join The Creative Boss Mastermind, so you can put your monthly goals on full display and we can help encourage one another to achieve them!
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