Well, with the craziness of the holidays, and my father’s recent knee surgery, I totally missed out on the group writing project, Internet Goals For 2009.  I only even thought to look in to this when I saw it had been a year since I wrote Blogging Goals For 2008, and I figure why not go ahead and join in the fun, even if I am late to the party.

The Goals For 2008

Daily Page Views – My goal was to increase my page views by 50%, and I am pleased to report that my average page views are up around 200% a day over the same time last year!  Again, we aren’t talking huge numbers, but quite a respectable gain.

Google Pagerank – I was a PR4, and I was aiming to be a PR5 by this time.  Well, didn’t make that one, I’m afraid.

RSS Subscribers – I had 30 RSS subscribers and I hoped to be at 54 by the end of December 2008.  Well, depending on how insane FeedBurner feels on any given day, I have seen reports as high as 90.

Social Bookmarking – I wanted to increase the amount of social bookmarking back to my site.  Well, Digg still alludes me to no end, but I have had quite a successful year on StumbleUpon, leading to my biggest post ever, Who Is The Best James Bond.  The numbers for that post were astronomical.

Finding my niche -Ha… yeah… right.  I think my niche is, “Sean is a cranky old man, and he complains… a lot.”

Improving my personal skills -I wanted to write better posts, and I think I have improved them some this year, but not quite as much as I would like.

New design -Well, the designer I was working with at the time of that post completely flaked out on me, and I ended up going with Blog Design Studio.  You are looking at the results on my blog currently, and I am quite happy with them.

Internet Goals For 2009 – Blogging

Measurable

Comments -The number of comments is very sporadic, I would love to see some more sustained conversation going on.

Daily Page Views – Again, I am hoping to increase my average over this year, and though I am still seeing slight growth, it won’t be easy.  I will again shoot for a 50% increase, and hope to do this through writing more general appeal posts that result in better search engine traffic.

Daily Revenue – Something clicked this year, and I am actually making a tiny bit of money with this blog now.  It’s not bucketloads, but enough to cover my hosting costs each month.  I don’t ever plan on seeing this blog being a steady source of income, but if I could increase the daily revenue by even 50%, I would be quite happy.

RSS Subscribers – As of right now, FeedBurner is showing 64 subscribers (I swear that service is insane, yesterday it showed 77), so I will be cautious and aim for a total of 120 subscribers by this time next year.  You can help me reach this goal by just going ahead and subscribe to SeanPAune.com right now!

Social Bookmarking – Just once I would like to see this blog make the front page of Digg.  I know people debate if it is really worth it, but seeing as I have made it there multiple times with other blogging work, I would like to see my own blog make it just once.

Immeasurable

Writing Skills – Still trying to improve those skills.

Internet Goals For 2009 – Other

Scattercast – Scattercast, my weekly podcast, currently averages about 10 listeners a week.  I am going to be wild and shoot for the moon here and say I’d like to see an average of 100 a week by this time next year.  I plan to do this by:

• Get more serious about booking guests
• Focusing the content on more broadly popular topics
• Increase the number of subscribers (again, you can help by subscribing via iTunes)

Twitter – I currently have 1,504 followers on Twitter, I would love to break through 2,000.  You can follow me on Twitter if you like, and help me reach my goal!

Conclusion

2009 will be a year of refinement for me.  Just trying to improve what I’ve already got out there, and making it the best I can.