Goals Update for End of June 2009

This goals update for the end of June is coming rather late in July as I spent a good amount of time working on my self employed income. Also, my company shipped me out to Knoxville to set up for a clinical trial. Finally, I was sick for a good week, which kind of killed my ability to think. Enough with the excuses, I did get some good work done towards my goals for 2009.

Personal Finance Goals

• Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($8,207.00/$8,207.00) – Completed in March.
  
• Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in April.
• Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($0/$5,264.00) – As mentioned in my end of July financial status post, I have $10,000 in cash, which will act as my emergency fund. At the end of each month I will siphon off whatever I have above $10,000 in cash and put it into my Individual 401k. If I have to reach into my emergency fund, I will do so to fulfill these goals by the end of the year, however, the goal is to not have to do that. I will fund my Individual 401k before my Roth IRA as I have to pay taxes on that money if it isn’t invested in the account. My Individual 401k account goal for 2009 will increase every month as I realize more self-employed income.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – Funding this account is secondary to funding the Individual 401k, however, I believe I will be able to fund both.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – I’ve done some extensive work with my blog format to enable the monetization of my blog. Last month I added Microsoft’s Pubcenter Ads to my blog for the first time. In June I expanded further and added a large block of ads to the individual posts. I’ve read that the location of this block of ads should be pretty effective. I did add a plugin to prevent them from showing up to my regular readers as they can be pretty annoying when reading a post. I finally added the affiliate ads that I’ve been saying I will adding for months now. I have four 250 X 250 ads in my sidebar. I’m anxious to see how these ads will do. Finally, I added a tabbed hopbuilder that promotes clickbank products. I’m not sure how well these will work, but it can’t hurt to try. In June I earned a total of $7.06 from text ads. So far I have earned a total of $107.06 through affiliate marketing and text ads, which is already enough to cover the $35 for my first year of hosting and the domain name. My overall goal is $565, which also covers my new laptop.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – After switching my focus towards producing self-employed income, I haven’t done a very good job promoting my blog and I’ve also slacked off in the number of posts. My monthly page views decreased from 1,304 to 1,212. I will try to spend more time in the next month or two to get my blog to ranking higher for specific keywords. I also want to host a carnival by the end of the year.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – I’ve decided to spend most of my free time developing niche marketing campaigns and working on projects with my dad. For this reason, my blogging here will probably be effected, but in the long run this is better. I hope to develop enough income to quit my job. At that point I will have more time to pursue blogging. I may still tutor on my own, but I will not consider doing so until the beginning of the next school year.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – Technically I went to Knoxville for the clinical trial this past week, but I was sick and didn’t spend very much time checking out the city. I did have some delicious BBQ. If you’re in Knoxville you have to check out Boomerz BBQ. I am definitely going to Atlanta to watch some Braves games and visit a few college friends. I’m still hoping to visit DC, Cleveland or somewhere in Mexico by the end of the year.
• Get in shape – Getting in shape has been very non-existent this past month. Getting sick and having some friends visit has killed my exercising groove. I hope to get back into a groove soon. I’m going to try to exercise not only once, but twice a day as many times as I can. Between biking, rollerblading and swimming, I think I should be able to do that if I find the motivation.

I made some good progress towards some of my goals this month. I will continue to strive towards completing my goals by the end of the year. Now that I think about it the end of June marks the halfway point. I should step up my efforts if I really intend on completing all of these goals. I will continue to share all of my successes and failures on this blog.