10 Goal Setting Tips for Freelance Writers

The new year is upon us and at the first of any year, it is important to not so much set New Year's resolutions, but rather to set goals. Freelance writing is a profession that requires good goal setting and adhering to a schedule in order to meet those goals. Many freelance writers want to earn more income, write more and better content, gain a larger readership, and the like, and others still may want to set goals for being published in high paying markets, high profile markets, or simply being more prolific.

Whatever your writing goal is for the New Year, I have put together a list of ten items that might help you get down to the core of your goals to help your freelance writing career really take off this year.

Goal Setting Tip #1

Take a moment to reflect on the past year before you start setting your freelance writing goals for the upcoming year. You want to look at what worked for you and what didn't work for you. You want to review what articles and markets made you the most money or received the most exposure, and then you want to look at the ones that didn't do as well as you had hoped.

Compare and contrast your past successes and failures so you know what works and what doesn't before you go about setting freelance writing goals for yourself. There is no sense setting multiple goals for something that has been proven in the past not to work.

Goal Setting Tip #2

What's your ultimate goal? In other words, if you were to take every individual goal you are about to create and lump them into one big goal - what is that goal? Is it to make more money freelance writing? Is it to game more exposure through your freelance writings? Is it both?

Find what the core goal is, the one main goal you have for yourself, because the smaller goals you will set should all somehow be able to assist you in achieving this one main goal.

For example, if you want to write more articles, then taking more time to do research will be counter productive to that goal. If you want to write better quality articles, then increasing the amount of articles you write might hinder that goal. All your small goals should lead you to your one main goal.

Goal Setting Tip #3

Write down your goals on a piece of paper or type them in the computer where you can see them regularly, refer back to them, and check your progress. This will help keep you on task. It has been proven that people who put their goals into written, tangible form have a better chance of achieving their goals than those who do not detail them in writing.

Goal Setting Tip #4

After you have written your goals, put them in numerical order, in order of priority. What is most important to you should be listed first and what is least important should be listed toward the end.

Goal Setting Tip #5

Once you have your goals prioritized, look at some of your most important goals and see if you can break those down a bit further than just the main goal. For example, if you have a goal to make $40,000 dollars through freelance writing this year, break that down further into how much you will need to make each month, or each week, or even each day, and you can use this to help you stay on task as you go along and gauge your progress that way.

If your goal is to write 1,000 new articles for one particular site by the end of the year, then you know you will need to write about 20 articles per week to achieve that goal.

Along the same lines, break down your goal for the year and set mini-deadlines for achieving your goal in increments instead of waiting until the end of the year to check your progress.

Goal Setting Tip #6

Don't make your goals generic; make them specific. A goal such as: "I want to write more articles this year than last year" is not specific. You need to actually look at how many articles you wrote last year and set your goal to be a numeric value more than that.

There is no real way to track your goal progress if you do not have an actual numerical value for the goal. Whether this numerical value is a number of articles, a dollar amount, a percentage of page views, a certain amount of traffic, gaining a readership of XX number of people - the goal needs to be specific and have a tangible number you can achieve attached to it.

Goal Setting Tip #7

Stretch your limits and challenge yourself, but don't set unrealistic goals. If you know in the past you have only been able to write about 10 articles per week and you want to increase that goal to write more articles, then by all means, do so. However, if all you have ever written was 10 articles per week maximum, setting a goal of 50 articles per week is probably not realistic.

When you set unrealistic goals, you might achieve them, but more likely than not, you will only end up frustrating yourself and many will give up their goals completely once they get a bit behind and feel the goal is now unachievable.

Goal Setting Tip #8

Setting goals for your freelance writing career is great, but those goals mean nothing if you don't DO something to achieve them.

After you have written your goals, go back and review them and write below each goal some practical ways you can go about achieving the goals you have set for yourself and then DO those things. A list of goals means very little if you don't take some progressive action to achieve them.

Goal Setting Tip #9

Be flexible and willing to change your goals should something come up that legitimately prevents you from achieving your goals. Being lazy or lackadaisical about your goals is not a legitimate excuse for resetting a goal, but there are a lot of things that might prevent you from achieving your goals that are legitimate.

For example, you may have a desire to write 1,000 new articles in a year, but then you receive a high paying assignment to write some very well researched and highly paid articles for someone that will make you more money but will prevent you from achieving your original goal.

Goals don't have to be set only at the beginning of the year. Goal setting is an ongoing process, so be flexible enough to adjust your goals in such a way that you continue to succeed.

Goal Setting Tip #10

Relax and trust yourself. Achieving your goals should be fun and exciting, not a chore or a reason to admonish yourself.

Reward yourself with something special each time you achieve one of your goals and are able to cross it off the list. Keep motivated by constantly adding new, achievable goals to your list all throughout the year.

Best of luck to you in achieving all your freelance writing goals for the year. Keep writing!