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Getting from broke to bank online requires setting a few website goals, and these 7 critically essential points will help you get there.

Understanding your website goal or goals is so important, we make it one of the first exercises of our Website In A Weekend Workshop.

Setting goals is easy and hard. The easy part is the “what” and the hard part is the “how.”

For example, your what might be “Make money,” and your how might initially be “???”. Specifying your goals precisely will help get rid of those question pesky marks, and we have just the thing, the following list proposed by Drayton Bird:

1. What is my website’s purpose for the reader?

Write out your grand vision. This is where your passion should flow out, creating an image in your mind of such strength that you have a bottomless well of enthusiasm helping drive you forward.

2. What am I doing to get people to go to it?

Getting people to your website, as reader or customers, is called “building traffic.” There are many, many ways to build traffic, and you can build traffic organically as you create your website.

3. What am I doing to get people to stay on it for as long as possible?

The more valuable information, education or entertainment people find on your website, the more likely they are to read more, and if you have products, the more likely they are to purchase from you.

4. What am I doing to collect prospect’s names?

If you are creating a website for products and services, you will soon need to learn who your customers are, and establish communication with them. The most common way to do this is by using a mailing list. We’ll have more information on how to use mailing lists, and how to purchase the appropriate mailing list service (these services are inexpensive, it’s something you really don’t want to do yourself).

5. What am I doing to turn those names into money?

There are three ways to make money directly from a website:

1. Sell your own products and services.
2. Sell someone else’s products and services.
3. Sell advertisement.

Note the operative word here is “sell.” You can hard sell or soft sell, but… no sell means no money.

Turning names into money is a bit beyond our scope for your first 48 hours, but we’ll make sure you build this infrastructure into your website as we go.

6. What am I doing to measure what happens on my website?

You need a Google Analytics account. Get a Google account if you don’t already have one and sign up for Analytics. It’s easy and it’s free.

7. Is the copy in English or is it pretentious jargon?

(Drayton notes he spends a lot of time rewriting website copy; starting by asking people what they actually mean by some of the phrases they use; many [Drayton notes] find this quite taxing.)

Writing effective copy is critical. Even you have no interest in selling products or services, growing your readership requires effective written communication. There is a vast amount of material available on the web to help you learn to write. For most people, especially people interested in blogging, Copyblogger is a great place to start.

Once you have answers to these questions, consider setting up a Goals page on your website. Having your Goals page on your website is handy, you always know where to find it. And you can make it private if you like.

Let’s do it!

How to add your “Goals” page

1. Pages > Add New
2. Page title should be “Goals”
3. Copy the list above into your Goals page
4. In the Publish widget (up and right from your page editor), set the “Visibility” to “Password Protected.” Make sure to click “Ok” to save your changes.
5. Publish the post.

Next, log out of your website and visit the page. The URL pattern should be be “http://yourwebsitename.com/goals” where “yourwebsitename” is, of course, the name of your web site.

Now you have the goals for your website in an easy-to-find location, but only you can see them.

You may want to make your goals public, as I have: Goals for Website-In-A-Weekend. If so, skip the password-protection step above.

Make your Goals page now

It’s worth doing, whether you decide to password-protect or not. If you decide to password protect, you will be in good company.

Let’s have some reader participation. Write out your website goals. Are your goals public? Would you like to share? If “yes” to both, send me a link to your Goals page and I’ll add it to the following list:

1. BACKLINK 1: Josh Kohlbach more than rose to the challenge. He positively schools me on Code My Own Road Goals! Well played, Sir.
2. BACKLINK 2: Dave Thackeray’s rocking out his audio marketing goals for The Podcast Guy.
3. BACKLINK 3: Annabel Candy gives us 5 simple steps planning for success.

Let me know your preferred anchor text, and if you want, send the meta description as well. Links usually work better with contextual support.

First published on: Feb 8, 2009
Updated April 11, 2010
Updated May 9, 2011
Updated January 7, 2012