Hi Fellow Blogger,

Thanks for reading and taking the time to check out the blogging goals for 2018!

Before setting the goals, I wanted to take a few lines to mention the recent milestones that were accomplished by RTC.

Most notably, December 2017 officially marked 2 years of blogging on Reverse The Crush. Yay!

In addition, RTC recently crossed 1,200 published comments, more than 50,000 page views all time, and this is now the 215th blog post published.

To celebrate the milestones, I regrettably took a small break from blogging in December. But it was for a good cause, as most of my time was spent investing to increase dividend income.

Admittedly, my interest sways back and fourth between blogging and investing depending on how much money I have to invest.

I’ll also admit that I needed a break from the pressure I placed on myself to keep up with monthly posts – specifically, the goal-setting and blogger analytics reports.

As for December, there were only 2 posts published during the month with a 3 week gap in-between (smh).

Nevertheless, those posts were solid pieces of content, and I followed up with the Forward Dividend Income Update and now the Blogging Goals for 2018.

Now I’m heading into 2018 as a much more experienced blogger, with improved awareness, and a better sense of direction. My Financial Plan is more refined, and both my financial plan and understanding of why I blog fit in line with my definite purpose.

My Perspective On Why I Blog Now

Most importantly, blogging has always provided a creative outlet to document.

It has allowed me to organize my thoughts and analyze certain projects that I’ve been working on.

And to be honest, it gives me a strange level of comfort to thoroughly cover a topic.

As an over thinker, blogging provides a channel to clear my mind.

By organizing my thoughts on a given topic, my mind seemingly has one less topic to over-analyze, which helps me become less of a frantic mess.

In short, blogging helps me stay out of my own head because it provides a channel to upload thoughts.

In addition to the personal benefits, I experience great personal satisfaction from blogging.

I enjoy the feeling of publishing dividend income reports as if I’m writing for a publicly traded company.

I require a personal project to feel fulfilled, and I absolutely need an outlet to express myself.

Because frankly, the concept of financial independence and dividend investing are flat-out too different to share elsewhere.

Moreover, I’ve looked at all the many income opportunities blogging provides. After gaining real experience with freelancing and sponsorships in 2016, I’ve learned the most appropriate channels for RTC.

If I continue blogging because I enjoy it, and if the slow but steady climb is maintained, and if I continue to put an emphasis on quality content, then I’m certain blogging will work out how it’s supposed to.

[bctt tweet=”Milestones and Blogging Goals for 2018″ username=”reversethecrush”]

My Plan For What Blogging Could Ultimately Become

I’m perfectly fine with a slow climb to blogging full-time as long as I’m building dividend income on the side.

Sure, I could label myself as a blogging consultant after more than 2 years in the game. I could try to turn every interaction into a sales opportunity. I could spend all day searching hash tags on Twitter and Pinterest to find businesses that need advertising, sponsorships, and freelance work. It would be easy to make it my goal to send as many e-mails as possible to increase sales opportunities. And quite honestly, I would be willing to do all that if I was successful full-time blogger.

However, I don’t feel as though I’ve accomplished enough with blogging yet. There’s a mere 215 posts published on this blog, and I haven’t come close to covering all of the articles I eventually plan to write.

Furthermore, the following on social media and subscriptions could be larger before making income the goal. And it would be much wiser to develop a larger online presence before launching a potentially large money-making operation.

Many successful bloggers write “how-to” books that solve problems for their readers, and then sell those books to earn income.

I think it’s interesting to speculate on the possibilities that blogging could provide if I continue down this path. Perhaps I reach my goal of financial independence by dividend investing one day.

At which point, I’ll be able to retire, blog about it, and I’ll have years worth of financial goals and dividend income reports published that documented the journey.

I don’t think it’s far-fetched to imagine putting together an e-book on how I reached FI by dividend investing.

Not only would I be able to include hundreds of posts worth of examples, I could edit, add more, and publish it in an easy-to-read e-book that actually provides value.

The worst case scenario is that blogging remains a creative outlet that earns a side hustle income.

---

Blogging Goals for 2018

Of course, an ultimate destination such as retiring to live off dividends and blogging requires years of planning.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to reverse time or time travel forward to FI.

But there’s a course of action I can take, and I’ve started taking action by focusing on my Financial Goals for 2018.

Here are my blogging goals for Reverse The Crush for 2018:

1. Publish 12 Dividend Income Updates and 2 Forward Dividend Income Updates

In case you haven’t noticed, this blog has increasingly focussed on dividend income investing.

Interestingly enough, this blog started shortly after a vacation to Mexico during my mini-retirement year.

This meant that I wasn’t working, and therefore could not make consistent projections with my dividend portfolio.

Hence why I started blogging about my experience with day trading crude oil. Not only was trading a means to earn income, it was something to blog about, and it was also something to preoccupy my mind. But it was never a strategy that I believed in for more than 10% of my net worth. I was always a value/dividend investor.

Nevertheless, I always wanted to become a dividend blogger.

Back before I ever took time off work, I even came up with a WordPress site named, mydividendbusiness.wordpress.com.

Since I was working for a brokerage at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to get approval to blog.

In turn, I would’ve required a new job or I’d need to be extremely secretive about blogging.

Ultimately, I never ended up writing on that site. I took a year off and started Reverse The Crush instead.

As I stated earlier in the post, I truly enjoy the feeling of publishing dividend income reports as if I’m writing for a real publicly traded company.

And the purpose of this blog is to document my dividend income growth, while using the audience, and the blog itself as a motivator to help me save and invest more.

With that said, my goal for 2018 is to publish 12 dividend income reports and 2 more forward dividend income updates to further document the journey to FI.

2. Start a Tailwind Subscribtion

I’ve mentioned before that my trial run with Tailwind was a great experience.

The Tailwind platform is helpful because it pins at the best possible times during the day, and it lets you know which boards you’ve already shared pins on.

Although I’ve been experiencing recent success with growing my Pinterest following, a Tailwind Subscription would allow me to take Pinterest to the next level.

The only set back is that it cost around $100 per year to subscribe. However, based on my experience, the product is well worth the cost.

Admittedly, I’ve been so focussed on investing every extra dollar into the dividend business, and that’s made it difficult to come up with the $100.

But the goal is simple: Take $100 from one of my 26 pay cheques during the year to purchase a Tailwind subscription.

3. Reach 3,000 Twitter Followers

Since the RTC Twitter has been gaining approximately 1,000 followers per year, the goal is to maintain the same pace.

Please note that I’m not tryna gain followers for superficial reasons.

The reason is because Twitter is a channel that can help with achieving my ultimate blogging goals.

And it doesn’t hurt to have thousands of followers on a sell sheet when you’re talking to potential sponsors either.

Be that as it may, the RTC Twitter is currently at 2,057 followers, and the goal by January 19, 2019 is to reach at least 3,000.

4. Reach 500 Pinterest Followers

This is actually a very modest target.

It could easily be 1,000 based on recent growth on the platform.

However, I’m still learning and it’s still early in the year.

New years typically creates a fury of new bloggers, and the growth could easily fade off.

Hence why I’m taking the Apple approach and lowballing the projections.

Overall, though, I’m excited at the potential Pinterest brings to the table.

Since most of my social media traffic is generated through Twitter, it’s nice to see another channel slowly bringing in more traffic.

Furthermore, I noticed that Pinterest traffic tends to be high quality traffic. Typically, the bounce rate is low, and readers seem to visit more pages and spend more time browsing.

Although I haven’t published a blog traffic report over the last few months, I can confirm that Pinterest traffic has slowly been increasing.

And my interest in the platform continues to increase as well.

5. Reach 100 e-mail Subscribers 

There are currently 48 e-mail subscribers, which is up 8 since the last blog report.

Though it’s taken two years to reach 48, recently, I somewhat reluctantly added a pop-up e-mail subscription notification for mobile and desktop.

While including a pop-up was something that I wanted to avoid, I caved because it provides another channel for readers to stay connected with the blog.

Moreover, if I had’ve included a pop-up since the beginning, perhaps my subscriptions would be a lot higher. Especially on the days I was fortunate enough to get interviewed, featured, or published on other blogs.

In addition to the pop-up, I believe there is more decisiveness within my writing this year that will resonate well with readers.

---

Concluding Thoughts

The purpose of setting blogging goals for 2018 was to set the framework for the year.

Though, there are a few other points of emphasis that could be mentioned.

For example, the predominant aim is still on adding quality content that adds to the story.

Otherwise, I will continue to seek organic search traffic growth, which accounted for approximately 27% of blog traffic in 2017.

In conclusion, I focussed on accurate blogging goals for 2018, and I was extremely intentional in selecting goals that fit.

Now I just need to stay the course…

Questions for the readers: What are your blogging goals in 2018? How many years have you been blogging?