How to set goals for your (side)project properly.

In order to be clear on what “success” for a project would look like, it is always good to define goals.
Just like riding a bike, it is always good to look where you want to head, and this is the equivalent of setting goals for a project that you’re working on.

I’ve been thinking about concrete goals that I want to reach for Shipharder.com recently. It proved hard to just set some goals without thinking about what you’re trying to build first.

I gave it all some serious thinking and found that only after defining what Shipharder.com is and thinking of which direction it is going I could come to concrete targets.

This is why my approach for setting goals were divided into the following concrete steps:

• write down a definition for your product or project
• make clear what the mission is
• based on the previous points, decide on the targets that need to be met this year

In the case of Shipharder.com, this all resulted into the following:

• The definition: Shipharder.com features mindshaping content on how to build viable products and documents a developer’s efforts on doing so

• The mission: Shipharder.com provides interesting and inspirational content that will guide (digital) product makers to get a mindset to create viable products

After I got this clear, i defined my goals as:

• 📩 reach 1000 subscribers for the Shipharder.com mailing list
• 📈 5k monthly visitors that read the Shipharder.com cornerstone blog posts & watch the vlogs
• 💵 ads income generated by the website: aiming for revenue (any!) and a payout in 2019
• 📦 at least one side project of mine becoming viable and getting me additional income

These aren’t shocking goals. And I know that shooting for the stars will help you to get bigger than expected goals.

Read more on my goals in this post: https://www.shipharder.com/goals-shipharder-2019/

I'm really curious about your feedback on these. Are they too weak, too soft or too specific?
How did you set your goals for your product(s) for the last/this year?

Thanks for reading 🙌🏻 looking forward to any light you can shed on the matter.