I hope everyone enjoyed Father’s Day. It was my first Father’s Day with my little girl and it was a great day. My wife made chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for me – it was fantastic. I started making a baby gate, spent some quality time with my daughter and wife, and cooked everyone dinner. My first Father’s Day was definitely a success – a huge thank you goes out to my wife for making it special
June Goal Check In
Provide value to my readers by sharing information they can use to either: get out of debt, take better control of their finances, and start investing.
One mark I use to gauge my progress on this goal is the number of comments I receive on the blog. Overall, the number of comments is up and to the right.
Write one new post each week.
I continue to publish at least one post every Monday. Some weeks I can get out an additional post, and I’ve received quite a few requests for guest posts. Check out my latest guest post from Mr. Need2Sav on the hockey stick effect on his 401(k).
Reach 20k monthly page views
June was a record month for my blog. I broke the 5k page view mark. I obviously have a long way to go to hit 20k pageviews before the end of the year. I’ve been listening to a new podcast, The Do You Even Blog Podcast, and Pete interviews successful bloggers. These bloggers discuss their strategies for growing traffic, and I plan to implement some new strategies.
Honestly, we’ve had quite a few events pop up that have taken away some of my time for blogging. The biggest one being the flooded basement. Once my framing nail gun is back from the repair shop, I will put up the main door and closet door in the room we finished in our basement and the remodel will be complete!
Here are some additional resources I recommend if you are trying to increase your blog traffic.
Physician on Fire has a great how to get started guide – check out step 8.
I would also visit Grant’s post over at Millennial Money on SEO optimization.
Grow email subscriber list to 500 people
Similar to my monthly page view goal, I am not close to 500 subscribers. I continue to get a few new subscribers each week, which isn’t many. There are a few ideas I am brainstorming to increase the number of subscribers. The one thing I don’t want to do is pay to advertise my blog on social media to increase the number of email subscribers.
Grow Twitter follower list to 10k followers
I’m halfway home on this goal. Check me out on Twitter! One thing that sucks is Twitter starts to limit the number of people you can follow when you get close to following 5,000 people. Hitting 10k subscribers has fallen down on the priority list because I would rather focus on quality followers over quantity.
Spend at least 15 minutes each week on marketing
This goal has been easy to achieve because of my activity on Twitter. Because it was easy, I pushed myself to spend more time on marketing. Currently, I am working my way through Millennial Money’s 67 SEO tips to improve your blog. I highly recommend checking out Grant’s article to help grow your traffic.
Read one book each month relating to personal finance.
I’m falling farther behind on this goal. I’ve read three books in the last two months, but none of them were related to personal finance! I did download Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Vicki Robin.
I could use a few recommendations to keep my reading funnel full, so feel free to drop me a note.
I’ve read three books (one last year) that all have the same overall theme – invest in low-cost index funds. These books are:
99 Minute Millionaire
The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read: The Proven Way to Beat the “Pros” and Take Control of Your Financial Future
The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life
How are your goals coming along this year?
