Travelwires.com 2010 goals – GROWTH & REVENUE

As we’re only a few hours before we enter the new year, this is an opportunity to declare 2010 goals for Travelwires.com.

1. GROW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS
The mailing list is currently standing at 923 of whom only 582 confirmed their subscription and are actively receiving my daily updates. As you can confirm, the current figure is too tiny and I aim to grow it to 3,000+ by end of 2010. With the new look blog, I’ve ensured that I add subscription forms in three different visible spots to improve on the subscription rate with a new position next to logo.

2. CREATE OWN REVENUE STREAM
Travelwires.com has been surviving on Google Adsense (R1,000pm), private advertisements (averaging R4,000pm) outsourced through third party sales agents and the very rare direct advertisements purchased by companies without using sales brokers.

Google Adsense generated money with all clicks received on text/image banners displayed on the blog. In order to improve on the monthly income, that meant I would have to drastically increase my blog’s traffic, which unfortunately doesn’t happen overnight.

Advertisements from sales agents and direct companies wasn’t guaranteed, which meant in some months only the Google Adsense monies will be received. The main reason for not attracting impressive revenues on advertisements is because my figures are not impressive for prospective advertisers.

I’ve resolved to do away with all banner advertisements from private companies in the New Year. Instead the focus will now be on promoting in-house web design services. This will involve adding exclusively www.4thedesign.com banners on the blog, without any other form of advertisements competing for the reader’s attention.

This all means, I’ll be starting on a zero balance from January 2010. Your support in this regard will be highly appreciated in order to sustain this blog into the future. I’m aiming to at least ensure that I process web design related orders amounting to R20,000 each month in order to be able to pay the bills.

3. GROW TRAFFIC
At present 14,000 unique visitors are loyal readers of the blog each month, with only 31,000 impressions recorded per month. Again these figures are not satisfactory and the aim is to triple them…which could also be an added bonus since I could rethink on re-introducing banner advertisements.

For me to increase traffic into the blog, I’ve resolved to introduce more industry news from across the African continent. This will help in getting new readers who will add up on the existing numbers.

4. OUTSOURCE A FREELANCER
This will only happen once Travelwires.com has managed to secure constant revenues since I’ll need to pay freelancer a monthly retainer. The idea is to hire a freelancer to help with generating ongoing quality content, while I focus my attention on other projects (have many on the pipeline in different industries, but all online).

As you can agree with me, running Travelwires.com alone cannot pay the bills, therefore I have to diversify my interests in order to be able to meet my monthly bills each month.

5. GET MORE AFRICAN CONTENT
As I’ve explained earlier on the ‘GROW TRAFFIC’ subheading, I’ve resolved to targeting tourism entrepreneurs from across the continent in order to add a new crop of loyal readers.

I’m appealing for your help in recommending Travelwires.com to your contacts outside the borders of South Africa to send through news worthy industry press releases.

Lookout to next Monday’s blog post, where I detail further about the new look and way forward…

Blogger Muzi Mohale

I’m Muzi Mohale, based in Roodepoort (South Africa). Blogger with www.travelwires.com. Love Travelwires.com since I get to travel our beautiful country through blogging and get first hand tourism experience.

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