A new year means new goals! After an ambitious year of goal setting in 2018, I’m starting fresh with a new set of goals for 2019.

Reach 70,000 monthly blog page views.

I’m still in shock that I’m setting my 2019 monthly page views goal at 70,000. When we kicked off 2018 and I set a 10,000 views monthly goal for the second year in a row, I still had doubts about meeting it. Now I’m aiming for 70,000. I’m excited about everything I’ve been able to accomplish by reaching 10,000 and can’t wait to see what this year brings for the blog.

I shared my 2018 page views broken down by month in my 2018 goals wrap up post. My December page view total was 34,374, which averages to 1,108 daily views. To achieve 70,000 monthly views, I need to increase my average to 2,333 daily views. It seems a bit crazy but after so much growth in 2018, I’m optimistic.

My two primary methods for increasing my monthly blog page views remain largely unchanged from last year. They are as follows.

Publish posts weekly with two evergreen posts per month. Ideally, I’d like to publish 2-3 posts per week, at least one of which is evergreen. I did achieve this posting schedule in 2018. I think that I will in 2019, too. But I would rather set a conservative goal and meet it consistently than scramble or rush to meet a more ambitious goal, especially with my other writing goals for 2019. (Also, if baby #2 arrives sooner rather than later, I will be scrambling. I don’t want to start out the year setting myself up to fail.)
Maintain consistent social media sharing, particularly for high traffic and seasonal posts. Creating and maintaining a social media sharing schedule has been huge for growing this blog the past two and a half years. While I will continue to cycle through promoting all of my evergreen content, I’ll be prioritizing my top performing posts in the hopes of helping them perform even better. Depending on how this goes, I may share more details in goal update posts throughout the year.

Reach 7,000 Pinterest followers with three million monthly viewers.

I’m not going to lie: after such a slow start toward my 2018 Pinterest goal, I went back and forth a lot the last few months about where I wanted to set the goal for 2019. I finished strong enough that I’m pushing ahead and setting a fairly ambitious goal again.

I started 2018 with 3,920 Pinterest followers. To reach 7,000 followers, I need to gain 257 followers monthly or 8-9 followers daily. It’s a major step up from my 2018 goal of gaining 137 followers monthly or 4-5 followers daily but appropriate given the level of Pinterest growth I’ve had the past couple of months

I’m also setting a monthly viewers goal for 2019. Honestly, if I can keep growing my viewers the way I did in 2018, I don’t care as much about my followers total. I started 2018 with 1.3 million monthly viewers, which is roughly 5.5 times the monthly viewers I had in January 2017, a huge increase. I’m hoping to hit two million around June/July with the goal of three million for the end of the year.

My primary methods for increasing my Pinterest followers and monthly viewers are also largely unchanged from last year. They are as follows.

Schedule content from other bloggers via Tailwind. I collect pins from others through my Pinterest homepage feed, favorite accounts I follow, and occasional searches. I schedule 6-10 pins from others daily via Tailwind. My goal is to stay at least one month, often closer to two months, ahead on scheduling content from other bloggers.
Schedule my own content via Tailwind. I followed Amber’s advice in her Pintessential Planning Course to create a blog post spreadsheet, which helps me keep track of social media sharing for all of my evergreen posts. I rotate my highest traffic posts weekly and all other posts monthly. Of course, holiday posts are a little different. I always have the next holiday or two on my radar, so I can schedule those posts in a timely fashion.
Manage my photography group board. I didn’t create my photography tips and tutorials group board with the intention of it helping me grow my followers. But it definitely has helped me grow my followers the past couple of years. At this point, I’m getting new daily followers and new weekly requests from potential contributors without much work of my own beyond weekly scheduling and periodic promotion on Facebook and Twitter. I will be continuing these efforts and making any adjustments as needed throughout the year.

Finish and publish ebook #2.

I wrote 3,300+ words for my second ebook in 2016. (I’m a little unclear on exactly when I did this writing. But it was after I had started this blog, so sometime in 2016.) I’ve even shot a handful of photos for it, but I never got it together to finish the book. I’m way overdue to get this project done.

My first steps are going to be to update everything in the book that needs updating (the about me section, my camera equipment, the additional resources list with links to relevant blog posts), decide if I want to add anything significant, and make a list of photos I need to shoot. When I get a better sense of how much photography I have left to do, I can put together a timeline for publishing.

Publish one article per week on Constant Content.

I know that publishing on Constant Content regularly wasn’t very successful in 2018. I’m sticking with it and am determined to do better in 2019. Earning regularly through Constant Content and similar sites (I have yet to add anything else yet) is part of my long-term earning strategy. I don’t want to slack on it.

There is one key strategy that did help me improve with this goal toward the end of the year, which I’ll be sticking with for 2019. Instead of calling it quits when I’d finished one article, I’d get started on the next one right away. So when I picked up writing the next day, at a minimum, I’d already have another article outlined with keywords done and resources ready to go.

I haven’t talked about my other key strategy for Constant Content here before and wanted to mention it briefly. I’ve had a running brainstorm list for Constant Content for several years now, really ever since I started writing there. I add to it periodically, so I always have new ideas waiting.

Finish out all 2018 and earlier vacation photos, and keep up with current photo editing.

Currently, I have the following sets of vacation photos not yet finished that I’d like to wrap up in 2019.

November 2015 – Hawaii (haven’t finished editing)
August 2016 – Montana (haven’t finished editing)
October 2016 – New Orleans (finished editing, need to make a photo book)
May/June 2017 – Mediterranean cruise (finished editing, need to make a photo book and order prints)
September 2018 – Montana (haven’t finished editing)
October 2018 – Washington D.C. (haven’t finished editing)

I think allowing two months per trip is a realistic goal to finish editing, make a photo book, and clear out and back up the photos. I have a lot of photos left to edit for a few of these trips (namely Hawaii and Montana 2016), and making photo books is time-consuming. If I finish out a trip early, most likely I’ll work through some other old editing or focus on the other half of this goal: keeping up with current photo editing.

Making keep up with current photo editing part of my photo goal in 2018 pushed me to stick with it all year, which paid off. Most of the time, I was caught up through the past couple of months. (For example, when it was September, I just had photos remaining from July and August). I want to do the same in 2019.

Read 40 books.

I’m keeping my reading goal conservative because I’m simply trying to maintain a healthy reading pace, not beat my totals from previous years. As I’ve talked about before, I don’t want to choose short books or read books I don’t really want to read just to boost my numbers.

Reading 40 books in a year means reading a little over three books per month. I’ve maintained or exceeded this pace the past few years. I’m confident I’ll be able to maintain it for another year.

I have two sub reading goals for 2019.

To read a minimum of 20 books. In 2017, my reading list was audio book heavy. In 2018, my reading list was split more evenly. I’d like to maintain a more even balance for 2019.
Re-read a handful of books. I really enjoyed re-reading books in 2018 and would like to re-read a few more in 2019. My re-read list still includes Harry Potter (I have one book left), Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari (I listened to it again but still haven’t read it), Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (have listened to it but still haven’t finished reading it), State of Fear by Michael Crichton, and pretty much everything by Emily Giffin, especially Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and Where We Belong. There are plenty of titles here to keep me busy with re-reads for 2019. So I’m not adding anything new at this point.

[Disclaimer: There are a few affiliate links in this post. Thanks for your support!]

What are your goals for 2019?

I love reading goals posts! Feel free to leave your links in the comments.

2019 Goals