Review of 2019’s Goals

Last year, I set myself twenty writing and blogging related goals. Throughout the year, I found my focus changed quite a bit so some of my goals sort of fell by the wayside, and there were quite a few that I did want to get done but just couldn’t fit in as my ghost writing clients increased and ultimately, that’s where I had to focus the majority of my time.

Below is a list of what happened and what didn’t happen:

Goal One

Goal: Grow my the DA for my new site, deborahstansil.com, to 25+

Outcome: I managed to get it to thirteen, which while fairly short of my aim, I am still quite pleased with, because in all honesty, I didn’t really do anything to grow it except post on the blog, and I don’t think a DA of thirteen is too bad for a year old blog.

Goal Two

Goal: Hit 5k monthly page views on my new site

Outcome: I managed 5K views in December – that’s cutting it a bit fine but yayyy.

Goal Three

Goal: Get 500 people on my writing focused email list (if you’re a writer, or are thinking about starting to write, click the link in point one and join the email list there for monthly writing, editing, publishing and book marketing tips, writing prompts and more)

Outcome: I didn’t even get close on this one. When I set the goal I had plans for all sorts of opt in freebies etc., but to be honest, in the end, I decided I would rather have people on the list who genuinely wanted help and support on their writing path than people who wanted to grab a free download. So while technically, this one was a miss, the people I do have on that list are the right people which actually makes it a win.

Goal Four

Goal: Grow my social media following by 25%

Outcome: I achieved this one.

Goal Five

Goal: Hit 1 million monthly views on Pinterest

Outcome: I achieved this one, although my views tanked during my Christmas holidays when I took a break from story pins. I’m confident I’ll get the numbers back up though.

Goal Six

Goal: Start playing around with a structured ad campaign on Facebook and aim to get the cost of customer acquisition down to less than 10%

Outcome: I achieved this one, although I didn’t run that many ad campaigns in total.

Goal Seven

Goal: Complete the April A-Z challenge on both blogs

Outcome: I achieved this one.

Goal Eight

Goal: Complete #NaNoWriMo

Outcome: I achieved this one – the book will be getting released later on this year and is available for pre-order now!

Goal Nine

Goal: Complete and publish the novel I’m currently working on, For The Love of The Law

Outcome: I achieved this one.

Goal Ten

Goal: Write and launch a course which will take someone from the wisp of an idea to a fully completed and selling novel

Outcome: I achieved this one. Check out the course here.

Goal Eleven

Goal: Run three free writing related challenges (these will mostly be taking place in my Facebook group, The Writer’s Den)

Outcome: I achieved this goal

Goal Twelve

Goal: Write and publish a non-fiction eBook

Outcome: I achieved this one. You can check out my book, Market Your Book Like a Boss here.

Goal Thirteen

Goal: Write and publish Twisted Tales 4

Outcome: I didn’t manage to fit this one in which I’m a little bit disappointed about.

Goal Fourteen

Goal: Write and launch two small courses related to writing

Outcome: I achieved this one. Check out the free No Nonsense Guide to Book Marketing course here.

Goal Fifteen

Goal: Increase my income by 25%

Outcome: I achieved this one. This was probably my most important goal and I’m really pleased to have achieved it, and yes, that meant some of my other goals had to fall by the wayside, but overall, I’m happy this was one of the goals I achieved.

Goal Sixteen

Goal: Grow my resources page on my new blog to include a range of free and paid charts, guides etc to help writers make their journeys easier

Outcome: I didn’t get much of this one done as this was one of the goals that kind of slipped through the net as my focus began to change.

Goal Seventeen

Goal: Do more editing work as well as writing work

Outcome: I achieved this one.

Goal Eighteen

Goal: Put together and launch some packages for writers

Outcome: I let this one slip away intentionally. Ultimately, I decided I don’t want my whole Twitter/Instagram/Facebook accounts to be one long book advert which likely would have happened if I had started to sell book marketing packages like I originally planned to.

Goal Nineteen

Goal: Get an affiliate strategy in place rather than just chucking the odd affiliate link in a post when I remember (don’t worry I’m not going to start talking about any old rubbish just to put a link in)

Outcome: I achieved this one – it was mostly just a case of adding the links as I wrote the post instead of telling myself I’d come back and do it later which rarely happened.

Goal Twenty

Goal: Set up a sales page where people can buy my books direct

Outcome: I didn’t manage to get around to this one.

Overall, I think I achieved my most important goals. I would have liked to achieve all of them, but I’m going to focus on moving forward rather than waste time berating myself about the past.

Did you achieve your goals in 2019? Let me know in the comments 🙂