How to Set Blog Goals That You Can Actually Achieve

Last updated on 4 April 2025

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I gotta say right from the get-go that I’m terrible at setting blog goals. 🙈 I forget to set them, and when I do remember, I forget I’ve set them at all. If that sounds familiar, you’re exactly who this post is for.

But even though I’m bad at it, and I sometimes forget (oops), I do think they’re really important.

Setting blog goals means that you’re always working towards something, and if you’re working towards something, then hopefully you’re taking those steps to make them happen. Which means you’re working on your blog. Right? But more than that, setting blogging goals means that you’re able to see where you’re going really well and where you could work on things.

Why blog goals matter

Even though I’m bad at them, like I mentioned, I do think they’re important.

Having blogging goals, whether they be really big and lofty goals, or smaller, more achievable goals in a shorter space of time, keeps you focused on the task at hand. They give you something to see in the future, and even if there’s a big difference between you and them, the more you focus, the closer you’ll get.

They also help you track your progress and measure any sort of success you’re having – whatever that looks like for you. ‘Success’ for me might look different from ‘success’ for you.

Blog goals give you consistency, because you’re always working toward something, and consistency is what actually grows a blog.

But having goals might not be the only thing you need to succeed with your blog.

Why systems matter more than blog goals

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a fantastic book. And one of the things Clear says is that “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

According to Clear, it’s your systems – the things you do consistently – that actually create that success. In blogging terms, that means your systems (what you do every week) matter more than the goal itself.

And I tend to agree – perhaps that’s why I’m terrible at setting goals. 🙈

If we think about our blogging world, then that means instead of just saying, “I want 50K page views this year!”, you focus on the habits that will get you there – like writing epic content regularly, making sure your SEO is savvy, and engaging with your audience.

Goals can be a bit of a trap because they make it seem like you’ll only be happy after you achieve them. But if you fall in love with the process – writing, creating, improving – you’ll not only enjoy blogging more, but you’ll also see better long-term results.

That’s not to say that blog goals are pointless, no at all! This whole blog post is about setting blog goals, after all. But I do think that Clear makes a great point about setting those goals and having really good systems in place to help us move the needle, as it were.

Types of blog goals you could set

But we are talking about blogging goals, so we’re going to truck on. Just keep that in mind when you’re thinking about setting your blog goals – back the goals up with a good system.

There are lots of types of blog goals that you could set, but it really depends on what you want to get out of your blog. Here are some examples to get you thinking:

Traffic Goals

These might be pages views, or bounce rate, or maybe organic search growth compared to paid, Pinterest growth compared with social media … these are traffic goals – where are your blog views coming from?

Monetisation Goals

Perhaps you have a blog goal to make X dollars in a month. Fantastic! These monetisation goals might have small goals, too, like getting accepted to an ad platform, or making affiliate sales, creating a product that you can sell etc.

Content Goals

I love a good content goal. This might be things like publishing 1 x blog post a week for the rest of the year. That’s a great content goal. Or it might be creating evergreen content more than you’re creating seasonal content, or ensuring your content is optimised for search engines, or even updating your older blog posts. All content goals.

Engagement Goals

An engagement goal might be harder to put into words and also to achieve, as they’re so informed by external forces. Your content goals are about you – you’re the one creating the content – but an engagement goal might be things like growing your email list, or getting more social media followers etc. You’re relying on other people to take action to help you achieve your goal.

Branding & Authority Goals

One of my goals recently (look, I did set one!) was to have more speaking opportunities as a blog coach. Each year, I grow the number of speaking opportunities I get, and I’m excited to be able to share my knowledge of blogging with others. These are branding and authority goals – things like guest posting, or getting media features, or even working with others in your niche or the blogging world in collaborations.

Blog goal-setting frameworks that might help

Setting blog goals is all well and good, but sometimes it pays to have some frameworks to help you out. And there are lots out there – have a google! – but here are a few you could think about.

The SMART Framework for Blog Goals

You might have heard of this one before – it’s been around for a long time and is often whipped out at conferences and educational places. But it’s still a goodie. When you’re setting your blogging goals, make them SMART.

Specific

Clearly define your goal. This isn’t ‘grow my blog traffic. It’s “Increase blog traffic by 30% in 6 months”. Super clear and specific.

Measurable

It needs to be measurable somehow. This might be logging where you’re at at the moment (eg 1,000 visitors per month, and then plus 30% is where you want to get to. Or it’s 100 email subscribers and you want to get to 500), so that you can track how you’re going.

Achievable

Set realistic goals. This is an interesting one. But if you’ve literally just started your blog and you want to get accepted into Mediavine to run ads, for example, they currently require 1,000 sessions a month for the Journey programme (that threshold has dropped over time, so it’s worth double-checking on their site before you plan around it).

If you say you want to get accepted into that programme in 3 months … it’s unlikely. Your blog needs time to build up content, authority, and readers. So make sure your blog goal is achievable in the time frame (coming soon).

Relevant

Your blog goals (or any goals!) need to be relevant. You’re not going to set goals that are eg be a guest on Jane Doe’s gardening podcast if you’re a book blogger. Make sure your blog goals are relevant to you and your blog.

Time-bound

Set deadlines for accountability. This is so helpful to give it a deadline, or a time frame to work towards. I find that if I don’t have a deadline, then I don’t really do the work. I do … but not really in a timely manner. As soon as I have a deadline to work towards, my work becomes faster, more efficient, and better in general. Also … you don’t want to have your goals forever … they’re not going to do well in the long run.

The WOOP Framework

The WOOP Framework for setting goals was created by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, and is another helpful way you could try setting your blogging goals.

Wish

This is about defining what your big goals is. Think about it as a really clear, specific goal that might be challenging to reach but that is still achievable.

Outcome

Visualise the best possible result, what the outcome would be. What’s the best outcome you can see for your Wish? How would it feel?

Obstacle

Here’s where you jot down any obstacles or potential blocks that might get in the way of your reaching that Wish or that goal. It might be things like knowledge – you simply don’t know what you need to know to make it happen – or it might be finances, or the right people in the right place, or something like blogging alone.

Plan

Knowing those potential obstacles means you can plan around them. How are you doing to overcome those obstacles? Who do you need to talk to? What do you need to learn? What is going to help you figure it out?

💡 WOOP is all about dreaming big and preparing for the roadblocks along the way. Instead of just focusing on the end goal, it helps you identify challenges before they come up, visualise the success, and create an if-then plan to tackle obstacles. You’re not just hoping things work out, but actually making them happen! Which is what we want for blogging goals.

The HARD Goals Framework

The HARD Goals Framework was created by Mark Murphy, and you can check out this Forbes article to learn more details about it. But essentially, HARD goals are designed to be more about ambition and encouraging people to be connected to their goals and what they want to achieve. They’re meant to push you beyond what you know.

Heartfelt, Animated, Required and Difficult: in the article, they do mention that they swap the letters around so the flow is better (and because AHDR isn’t a word, I guess??).

Animated

This is about visualising where you’re headed. For us as bloggers, that might mean picturing your dream blog in one year, three years, and five years – what does it look like? Describe the kind of content you’re creating, your audience, any collaborations or income streams, and what a typical day as a blogger feels like.

Heartfelt

This is getting to the heart of it  – What are the reasons you want to achieve this blogging goal? These could be personal reasons, or things like providing financial stability for your family, they might be that you want to become a leader in your niche … what’s the reason?

Difficult

Thinking about the gaps between where you are now and where you want to be … what are the skills you need to work on in order to get to this goal? And how will you work on improving them? What does that look like? You might need to challenge yourself a little bit for this one.

Required

This is bit like the time-bound one. It’s looking at the things that need to happen – are required – in order for you to make good progress on your blogging goals. What do you need to have accomplished by the end of the next six months to keep on track toward achieving this blog goal? The next quarter? The next 30 days? What’s one thing you can accomplish today?

How to actually make and keep your blog goals

Perhaps none of those goal frameworks are your jam. And hey – that’s totally fine. We’re all wired differently. Thank goodness, right?

So how do you actually go about making and achieving these blogging goals?

Here’s what I recommend, keeping in mind all those frameworks we’ve looked at (and any others you can think of!) because at the end of the day, while they all different and they use different language and phrases … they’re actually similar.

So, here’s the Anjali / This Splendid Shambles blog goal-setting framework:

1. Start with the big picture: Write down 3 blog goals at the start of the year that you want to achieve by the end of the year.
2. Figure out what you need to do to make it happen.
3. Break those things into mini-goals for the four quarters.
4. What do you need to do to make those happen? Break it down for the month.
5. If you need to, break it down for the week or the day.

Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re making strides to your big Year goal, you need those daily/weekly actions to build up to the month goal, which leads you to the quarter goal, which leads you to your ultimate goal.

Here’s what it might look like:

Year goal: Make $1,000 through my blog in one month.

What do I need to make that happen? I need to figure out some income streams. Let’s focus on creating one per quarter.

Quarter 1: Create and sell a digital product	Quarter 2: Affiliate marketing	Quarter 3: Ads	Quarter 4: Brand partnerships
For this, I need to brainstorm, write, design, and package a digital product to sell. And get that in front of people.	In order to make money with affiliate marketing, I need to sign up to companies to be an affiliate. Which means I need to find programmes that I can apply to, get accepted, start writing blog posts and promote their products.	I need to sign up to an ad network, but before I do that I need to research and find out what the requirements are, and then work towards getting accepted. This might mean doubling down on blogp posts to get my traffic up.	I need to find brands that I’d love to work with and pitch myself. Which means I’ll also need a media kit, find out which brands work with bloggers, and write and send some pitch emails.

Now, we’d be here for days if we broke these down further, so let’s just focus on one of them. Here’s what I might do for January – March in Quarter 1 if I wanted to create a digital product that I can sell that will help me on my way to my $1,000 months.

January	February	March
Brainstorm digital product ideas What is going to work for my niche? Narrow it down to the type of product and draft it Edit it and get it reader-ready	How am I going to sell this? Decide on a platform that you’re going to sell it on. Set up my email flows so that when people buy it, they’re actually delivered it.	By the end of March everything needs to be ready to go I need to be talking about my digital product and getting it out there into the world

You might even break it down further into what you need to do each week to achieve this, but we’ll stop there. I hope you get the point.

You can take your big goal and break it down into little goals and little steps that you can take … Start with a big-picture goal and break it into smaller tasks.

How to Stay Accountable

If you’re struggling to set your goals or actually do the work to make them happen, then you might be missing:

• The knowledge: what do you need to learn to make it happen?
• The flexibility and patience: things take time. Allow it to breathe.
• Guidance: perhaps you need someone to talk to
• Accountability: if it’s just you setting your own blogging goals and you need that accountability but you don’t have it … you might not get very far.

So what now?

Now you need to go away and set yourself some blogging goals. Just keep in mind James Clear’s great points about systems. Yes, it’s good to have these goals, but in our example before, it’s better to have the systems in place to create digital products going forward than to just create one and tick it off and move on.

Try setting one blogging goal, even if it’s a quarter goal, and seeing how you go. And let me know! Flick me an email or message me on Instagram. I’d love to hear how your blog goals are coming along.