As a new year is just days away we have been both reflecting on our six short weeks writing for this website and we have been planning what we would like to do with our blog for the upcoming year. We feel that if we put our ideas, dreams and aspirations in writing we can better track our progress while achieving a sense of accomplishment if we follow through with our resolutions. Here are our goals / resolutions for the new year for our site.
Keep Writing
The key to a successful blog is content, plain and simple. We have received a lot of great feedback from bloggers and our readers regarding our writing style and the nature of the content we produce. We make every attempt to write meaningful articles regarding balancing our financial goals with our ethics and morals regarding sustainable living and we try our best to include financial data to show our readers that our approach to our personal finances often saves us money and at the very least does not cost us more than a less sustainable option. Our goal is to write 3-4 full articles per week.
Challenges
We hope to complete the Yakezie challenge, with work and a bit of luck, by late January. We will continue to produce content and network and hopefully get our rank below 200,000.
In the new year we plan to post every day listing 365 Sustainable Lifestyle Tips. These tips won't be nearly as in depth as our articles and we will likely expand on many of them in subsequent articles. We feel we can give our readers a reason to check in regularly and provide some useful green / sustainable lifestyle tips!
Mrs. SPF and I are strongly considering attempting the 100 Mile Diet during the summer months and possibly part way into the fall. For those of you who do not know of the 100 Mile Diet it works I will be posting a book review in the next month or so on the published book. Essentially, we will endeavour to only eat food that is produced within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of our home. It won't be easy (coffee and sugar aren't grown in Canada!)
We may consider writing an eBook chalked full of sustainable living and personal finance tips. Time will be the biggest hurdle to take this project on.
Lastly, we are floating around the idea of running a series of contests where the reader will be able to pick a charity and we will donate $50 to it. We really feel charity donations are invaluable.
Guest Posting
In the upcoming year we plan to embark on increased guest posts. Our goal is to participate in guest post exchanges where we will guest post on a fellow bloggers site and they reciprocate by guest posting on our site. By approaching guest posting this way both parties will gain excellent content and keep up with our busy writing schedules. Readers from both sites will be exposed to quality content and perhaps venture to the guest posters site to read more from the writer. Our second strategy with guest posting is to provide a one way guest post on some popular sites in order to gain exposure to a larger audience.
Networking
I have worked quite hard this year to reach out to other bloggers for advice, support and friendship. I think that so far this has worked out quite well and I want to keep this up. Part of this relationship building has been accomplished via Yakezie, following bloggers on Facbook and Twitter and by subscribing to RSS feeds. We are very appreciative of the bloggers who have decided they are not above helping new bloggers out. Good karma pays dividends.
We are also exploring a relationship with socialfinance.ca where we have been invited to share our practical take and style with the readers and writers on that site. Peter Deitz, the managing editor of socialfinance.ca appreciates how we write about how we apply sustainability principles to our personal finances and would like us to write for his site regarding some of our investment decisions and other similar topics. We're very excited to explore this partnership.
Making Money
The goal of our blog is not to make money but we do incur costs (hosting etc) so we do use some advertisements right now. We will look to expand our blog's monetization in the new year and will research strategies on how to turn our project into a small business. Hopefully our Alexa rank will help to get advertisers.
Great blogging resolutions, I’m sure you’ll reach them this year. Your climb up the Alexa rankings has been off the charts. Slow down will ya, I’m having a hard time keeping up with you! :) I wonder if Sam keeps track of who breaks the 200,000 mark the fastest. That would be interesting to see. I’m sure you’re near the top of the list. Happy 2011!
Buck recently posted..Resolutions 2011
Thanks Buck!
You are so far ahead in the game than I was at the same point. Good luck with all your goals; they seem quite achievable.
Happy New Year!
Kay Lynn @ Bucksome Boomer recently posted..2011 Goals and Plans
Thanks Kay Lynn - we may get onto the February Yakezie network update if we keep this up!
[...] New Year Blogging Resolutions @ Sustainable Personal Finance. SPF is shifting into high gear and is poised to make huge gains in 2011. [...]
Hey you want to guest post on my site? ;)
You guys are doing great!
Very original content and useful too.
You’ll reach the <200,000 in no time.
We may desire to do so Y&T! Are you at all interested in a mutual exchange guest post?
Great goals! Guest posting is essential as it gets your name out there, you meeet people and make friends. Congrats on getting one of the big Canadian sites interested in you. You are doing a great job for someone who just started! Happy New Year!
Thanks Aloysa! I’ll be in touch about our guest post exchange idea soon!
Wow, great goals! Blogging every day is going to be tough. You guys are doing great so far.
Happy New Year!!
A short 100 word or less Sustainability Tip should be doable.
Excellent goals guys! I definitely think they are reachable. You have been doing so well in the 6 weeks you have been live…I’m jealous but also really happy for you. Wishing you the best in 2011 and thanks for all of your comments and feedback.
The best to you as well Miss T. We look forward to swapping guest posts with you on a regular basis!
Looks like you have some work ahead of you in 2011! Sounds like some great goals though.
I think we are at about the same point in our blogging careers. I am beginning to get some traffic and I expect some advertising dollars soon. But, even if no money comes I think you’ll agree that writing is a blast!
I would like to guest post more often as well, but it is difficult to find the time! But, I would be interested in swapping a guest post with you next year. Just contact me through my website if you are interested.
Agreed! Writing is a blast. We get a lot of satisfaction simply from the fact people have enjoyed reading our content.
How are you able to get so many articles written? (just checked out your site) We can’t seem to find the time to be extremely thorough and produce content daily.
Guest posting is also going to be one of my new year’s resolutions! I have never done it the entire year I’ve been blogging! I’ve heard it is of great benefit though!
We got approached for our first guest post, and we definitley thing it can be mutually beneficial for some, and when yer dealing with the popular sites, can advertise your site to a larger reader-ship.
You mentioned our progress. I can’t really explain how fast we’ve moved up the Alexa rankings aside from networking endeavours, remaining active and writing content people care about. This warms our hearts as we think there is a way to live a sustainable lifestyle and still save money, and, invest in things that help the earth.
That’s great! I haven’t been approached yet to write a guest post. But, I tried to offer one to one of the bigger PF blogs, but the article wasn’t quite what they were looking for! No harm in trying though!
You’ll get the requests soon enough Jacob :) We have a bunch of them, but as I wrote, we only have X amount of time to write so we really need to swap posts with others to ensure we get enough content written each week. We will make exceptions if some of the big blogs want us to write for them, but there haven’t been many of those yet!
These 2011 goals are definitely admirable and this post almost reads like a how-to for new bloggers and website owners, which I think is fantastic. I have many of the same goals you do for 2011 and I’m sure you are going to be able to achieve all of yours!
Good luck in the New Year!
Thanks Saving Mentor! We love your site, as indicated with the inclusion in our blogroll. You’ve done so much leg work for people who truly car about saving money. We’re still learning and growing but we truly appreciate feedback and the great content those we follow provide us in our journey toward sustainable and independent PF!
Looks like some good goals for the new year. All the best in achieving them. I’ll be following all along.
Thank PIE! We read everything you write as well in our RSS.
Only 6 weeks and you already have an Alexa rank below 400,000 - you are definitely doing something right. I strongly agree with your statement that creating content is the key to success. Personally, I would be careful with bringing in too much advertising too soon - it can be a turn off for new readers (I know it is for me).
And great idea on the charitable donations!
..looking forward to following the blog through the new year.
Thanks Jaymus. Please follow our feed if you would! A great way to keep up to date.
As for the ads, we actually believe it is better to have them up front so people don’t think we “sold out” later. We’re up front about what we’re doing and honesty is always the best policy!