Six Month Goals for Cash Flow Mantra

I have started a new blog that is a little over a month old now called Cash Flow Mantra.  It is a personal finance blog with the primary focus being cash flow.  You can link to my latest posts in the sidebar at the right.  In fact, many of you have been doing so because this blog is responsible for 7.5% of my traffic over the last 30 days according to Google Analytics.  I want to say that I sincerely appreciate your support in helping me build traffic over there.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I would share with you my goals for the remainder of the year with this new blog.  I honestly haven't had much of a chance to sit down and consider them in detail.  I also haven't had the opportunity to put them down on paper so I will actually be developing them on the fly as I write this post.

First, I would like to be able to publish some quality and thought provoking articles.  I am realistic and know that I won't be able to do that for every post.  I simply don't have that many good ideas but at least a couple absolutely knock-out articles each month is possible along with lots of other good articles on personal financial topics.  As part of the Yakezie Challenge, I will need to publish at least twice per week.  I certainly want to be able to maintain that pace at a minimum.  I would like to have a total of 100 posts by the end of the year.  I am currently at 17 and feel that 12 per month is reasonable.

Next, I would like to be able to get my Alexa rank down to 200,000 by the end of the year.  That is one of the primary goals of the Yakezie Challenge.  I think that this is possible but I will need to grow traffic and probably need to increase it 4 or 5-fold.  As the number of posts increases, the amount of search traffic would be expected to increase as well and could actually surpass my current levels of traffic.  I would also retain and hopefully grow my social readers at the same time.

I don't expect to earn a lot in the first six months, but I would like to see the total slowly grow.  I think this might happen as the search engine traffic grows.  I will not be targeting keywords necessarily but plan on writing what I view as quality content letting the chips fall where they may.  I would expect that by after one year, I should at least be able to cover my hosting expenses of $10 per month.  I currently have enough money in my PayPal account to cover one full year's worth of hosting expenses.  Plus I am getting close to payout with the HubPages Ad Program which would provide another $50 or five months of hosting fees.

I would like to also get some advertising on the site which could help.  As the traffic builds and Alexa rank declines, I might be able to get someone to advertise on the site.  Right now I have a special going, so hop on over and check it out.  Now would be a good time to get in on the ground floor as I build up the site.

These are the main goals that I would have for the site for the remainder of 2011.  I think they are reasonable and achievable but will require that I put forth some effort.  I can't simply ignore the site after a few posts.  I am continuing to interact with other financial bloggers by commenting which has helped me enjoy the best initial traffic success that I have ever had.  I will have to keep working hard in order to meet my goals, but plan on having some fun in the process.