For a couple of months now, I’ve been considering writing monthly goals for myself, but never quite seemed to get around to it. So when Eric offered me the opportunity to write a guest post for theAdmin.org and suggested starting my own progress reports I jumped at the chance.

So here it is, my first Monthly Progress Review. In the future, I plan to post a review on my own blog at the beginning of each month. Since I think that marketing is my weak point, that’s where I’ve chosen to focus my goals for now.

January Goals and Actions

1. Add 40 more RSS subscribers to my blog

Despite what it looks like, this wasn’t stolen from Eric. Towards the end of the month it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to meet this goal, since I’d been stuck at 25 new subscribers, but just in the last couple of days there has been a jump of 17 more subscribers.

Goal accomplished, plus some.

2. Write 4 guest posts

This month I wrote the following guest posts…

1. Avoid Freelance Horror – 6 Lessons from Stephen King on Freelance Folder
2. Focus and Flow for the Insanely Interested on Jarkko Laine’s blog Insanely Interested in Everything
3. 3 Ways to Become More Productive by Drawing on Your Inner Artist on Productivity in Context
4. And of course, this post itself.

Goal accomplished.

3. Create an AdWords campaign for one of my niches

I accomplished this goal fairly early on in the month. Haven’t had great results from it yet, but I’m looking to improve that.

February Goals

1. Add 60 more RSS subscribers to my blog

Since I met my goal for January, its time to up the ante a bit, and I think 60 new subscribers will be enough to be challenging without making me insane about it either. Want to help me out? Go ahead and subscribe!

2. Write 4 more guest posts

I have been very happy with the success of my guest posts so far, but I also want to maintain a high quality of posts on my own blog, and at this point, I think that 4 guest posts per month is a good balance.

3. Obtain at least 2 guest posts from other bloggers

Related to the goal above, I think it would be good to feature a couple of guest posts on my blog, both to get more of others’ perspectives, as well as to give me the opportunity to focus on some very high quality posts. If you’re interested in writing for my blog, contact me.

4. Optimize my AdWords campaign

While I think my keywords are good, I need to rewrite the ads and landing page to increase clickthrough and conversion rates.

5. Release a free WordPress theme

This will be my first attempt to create a theme for a broad audience, so I will also be asking for feedback on the theme before it is released.

6. Outline an ebook and write one chapter of it

I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind for a short (25 page) ebook for a while now. This month I intend to take the time to draw up a formal outline and write at least one chapter of the content.

Lesson learned

If you are posting quality content on your own blog and leaving quality comments on other people’s blogs, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll ask you for a guest post before you ask them.

Thanks to Eric for letting me guest-post!

Joshua Clanton is a freelance web designer who blogs about design, productivity, and creativity. If you liked this post, you might also like 18 Productivity Haikus – Get Things Done and Achieve Inner Peace through the Power of Poetry.