I have been busy working to establish my SMART Goals and objectives for the upcoming year. SMART goal setting will help me set clearly stated objectives that will allow me to grow my passive income business. Without these goals, I would not have a clear plan in place for the upcoming year, which would cost me my time and more importantly – lost dollars.
Today I would like to detail the plans I have to grow my eHow earnings during the next year.
eHow Earnings
While I have had a lot of success writing eHow articles in the past, I would like to increase my earnings. In order to meet this objective, I have decided to include this as one of my SMART goals for next year.
2010 SMART Goal – eHow Earnings
Grow my monthly earnings from eHow by 100% (or earn $500 per month) by June 30, 2010. I will commit to writing at least 21 new articles per month on eHow over the course of the next 7 months in order to meet my earnings target. I plan to continue to leverage past experience as an eHow writer along with several tools focused on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to maximize my investment. Doubling my monthly eHow earnings will allow me to use these extra dollars to fund new passive income projects, which will help my business to continue to grow.
Is my Goal SMART?
Writing for eHow has been a wonderful and exciting experience for me over the last year. I would like to leverage my experience and use it to accelerate my passive income. That is why I have decided to include it in my 2010 objectives. So is this a SMART goal? Let’s take a look -
Is my goal Specific?
YES – The statement “… writing at least 21 new articles per month …” gives me immediate actions that will help me reach my goal. Based on past experience, I have determined that writing 21 highly optimized articles each month for the next 7 months will allow me to reach my goal.
I have also included a statement of Why this goal is important – “… allow me to use these extra dollars to fund new passive income projects …”. I plan to use my projected earnings to fund new passive income streams that should allow me to grow my business significantly over the next year.
The goal also details How I plan to reach this target – leveraging past experience and using several SEO tools. I will continue to use Micro Niche Finder as a way to pick out keywords for my articles. In addition, I will continue to follow the guidelines laid out in the following eHow reference guide titled – How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com: Maximize Your Online Earnings. Both of these tools have allowed me to grow my eHow passive income earnings over the past several months.
Is my goal Measurable?
YES – My goal to grow my eHow earnings has a measurable amount – $500 per month. This statement makes it clear of how I will measure myself at the end of June on the status of this goal. I have also detailed that writing 21 articles per month for the next 7 months are the steps needed to reach my goal.
Is my goal Attainable?
YES – While this goal will require some upfront hard work and time, I believe it is definitely attainable. Writing 21 articles will take up about 10 hours of my time each month. As long as I stay focused and plan my time accordingly, I should have no problem hitting this target.
Is my goal Relevant?
YES – Even with my recent frustration with eHow and their article sweeps, I still believe the site is a great tool. If I can increase my earnings by 100%, I will have establish a $500 passive income stream that can help fund other projects.
Is my goal Timely?
YES – I have set an exact time line to reach this goal – June 30, 2010. I have also broken my effort down into months by stating that I will write 21 articles per month. This will help provide me with a status check each and every month to ensure I am on track with my goal.
Final Thoughts
There have been some obvious flaws in eHow’s system recently that have not gone unnoticed by many long time members. I could decide to completely abandon this income stream in place of a new tool like Info Barrel. Instead of completely giving up, I plan to continue on with eHow for the time being as well as work to grow new income streams. With the recent addition of a new article approval process, eHow is beginning to take some action in cleaning up submitted articles before they are published.
Tell me what you think – Is my plan to grow monthly eHow earnings by 100% a SMART Goal? Is it worth the effort? Should I be concerned about eHow’s credibility?
For more information on SMART goal setting, check out – How to Create SMART Goals.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Good luck, John, and keep us updated! Remember to keep all your articles saved on an external Word document, though, *just in case*
…..then, if anything ever happens to them on eHow, it’ll be easy just to upload them somewhere else (I had to learn this lesson the hard way….and it oftentimes took a little nudge to remind me….) 
@Howie – Thanks. Yep, I always back every article up now that I post to eHow. I actually started doing this for all sites were I write content (unless I own the site).
Hey John, I love your objective goal setting. I’m either not motivated enough or a little too laid back to start setting up SMART goals. Maybe I’m missing out.
The one point I wanted to argue was that you’re goal is Measurable ($500) but not directly, especially when considering the number of articles. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell how much your articles will make at any given point. I guess you could have enough experience writing in your niches to know how an article will do over time. Do you think your 21 articles/month will do the trick? I think that with eHow there’s definitely a quantity vs. quality issue. Especially since eHow can take the rug out at any moment on any article.
Just some thoughts. Best of luck on your goals; maybe I’ll work on setting some for myself.
@Reed – You bring up a very good point that I didn’t really consider. In my goal, I am assuming that I can continue to earn a certain amount from eHow. The $500 mark is based solely on past performance and experience. Tomorrow, eHow could change their entire payout structure which could make it very difficult to meet this goal.
Based on my experience over the past 5 months or so, I think 21 articles per month will do it. But that also is assuming I won’t have any of those articles deleted from the site and eHow will not change their payout structure – whatever that is?