Setting Achievable Goals

First step on your way to success is to set goals for yourself.

Situation
I am at this moment in a special situation. I used to be self-employed for the last 8.5 years. My partner and me were creating affiliate tools and leasing out websites. In January a customer issued a problem with a financial software we´ve created for him in 2003 and which he was using with satisfaction since then.
Now he has discovered that some of the financial figures that software used, have been wrong from the first day he has used the software. While investigating the problem, it came out, he was right.
So, clearly our fault, we will have to comensate the customers loss of money resulting out of that software failure.

In the end of january he came up with the final calculation: We have to pay $60,000 to compensate his loss.

A short look at our bank statement revealed the naked truth: we have to file bankruptcy. No question about that.

So, what should we do now? We both have a family and children. First step was, we were lucky enough to find a real job as employees. My partner now works for an online bank and I found a financial agent looking for an affiliate manager.
So, since Feb. 1st, we have a continuous income for the next months.

But, being an employee is not what we have always wanted. As a first step, this looks like an option for now, but not for the rest of our lifes.

Goal setting
For now, my financial situation is not satisfying. Though the money is enough to pay the bills, there is still my part of the $60,000 open for payment. As my person used to be a 50% portion of our company, I´m standing in front of a $30,000 pile of depts.
With my new income as an employed affiliate manager, I will clearly be unable to pay that bill.

So, I have to set goals for the next months and years to resolve from this situation.

Here is a first draft of the plan, I´ve made so far:

1. Setup an online business
2. Work on that business and make it profitable
3. Set the business on auto-pilot
4. Go back to step one

Step one is already in progress as your are reading this article on my website. This site will be my new online business.

Ok, this one was easy to take, step two will be much harder to achieve. I am already working on an article covering the topic of making a website profitable. I think, my experiences of the last 8.5 years will help me with that.

Achievable goals
As this is the headline of this post, I have to say at least a few words on that. :-)
Most people don´t even realize, that they have to set goals for themselves. You cannot achieve your goals, if you don´t even know, what your goals are.
Those who have set goals, sometimes realize, that those goals are too far away from reality, making it unpossible to reach them.
No wonder, most of them are getting somewhat frustrated and as time goes by, they also tend to stop heading for their goals.
Do you think, these people would ever achieve whatever they wanted to achieve?
No question, that they won´t.

Imagine, you have setup your new business and you want to establish an income of, let´s say, $10,000 per month from that business. Sure, a very attractive imagination. But is it realistic enough to say, I want to generate this amount of income within the next 3 to 6 months? That would be a very hard time and in the end, you will be really frustrated.

A much better approach is to set goals in smaller steps. When you setup a new website and you want to monetize it with Google AdSense for example, set a small goal to achieve first. Let´s say, I want to make more than $10 per day within the next 6-8 weeks. This is far more easy, and hey, that results in some $300 of extra income each month.

We consider that goal to be achieved in time, and your new website makes those $300 per month for you. So you are to setup a new goal then. Again, it´s better so set a smaller goal you want to reach within some weeks, than one large goal you want to reach within a year or more.
Let´s say, your next goal is to double your income. Who the hell would not like this idea? And guess what, doubling your first small success of generating $10 a day is not that impossible. Imagine you would make $1,000 a day at this time and want to double that amount. That would be a very hard time.

So, your next goal could be to raise your income from $10 a day to $20 a day. Time range could be a bit smaller this time, as you have acquired some experiences and obviously know how to make money from a website at all. So new time limit is 4-6 weeks for doubling your daily income.

Success story
You surely will achieve your goals, when you keep in mind to set them small enough so that your own goals will not frustrate you on your way to financial freedom.
Keep up your track and remember to make your goals achievable for you. We have seen, that small goals can be somewhat easy to achieve. Now, your new business is max. 14 weeks old and provides you with more than $600 in revenues each month.

Check it with your calculator: If you keep up this way of adding $10 to your daily revenue every 6 weeks for the rest of the year, your income will raise to >$2,400 per month.
You can definitely find a job with a lower paycheck.

My next article will be about several ways to generate income from a website in general. I´m already working on that, so stay tuned for this valuable information.